Bruges

Hooray!  Sock Monkey & P are off on a little holiday.  Tomorrow we are going to Bruges. We're staying in a lovely 4* hotel which has a sauna, steam tub & jacuzzi and overlooks one of the canals.

The Christmas Market is on so we'll be wandering through that trying to find nice things to buy. Then we will visit the Markt area and attempt to climb the Belfort (bell tower which has 366 stairs!).  I quite fancy having a look in the Basilica of the Holy Blood the interior of which is described as 'bizarre'. We also plan to visit Engels Klooster which is an English convent. You ring the doorbell and a nun answers and lets you in!  I'm also looking forward to visiting the Groeninge museum which has a collection of paintings by Hieronymus Bosch, including 'The Last Judgement'. I do like Bosch and his weird paintings.

We are going on Eurostar and so have to go to Brussels first.  We have some spare time there so I want to visit the Musee de la Ville de Bruxelles.  Several time a year the Manneken-Pis (the statue of the little peeing boy) is dressed.  Yep they put clothes on him.  In fact they have a dedicated dresser who designs and makes his clothes.  It all started in the 18th century when the statue was stolen and left outside a brothel.  Louis XV apologised and offered the statue an outfit to make up for his embarrassment. So his first outfit was a gold brocade suit.  Henceforth the little statue was presented with costumes 4 times a year and so far he has accumulated 784 different outfits.  These include an Elvis Style jumpsuit and a Cosmonaut's space suit. Nowadays he gets a new outfit roughly every month. Anyone can propose a costume and each proposal goes before a committee. Once accepted the little statue is dressed at a formal ceremony where he turns his pee into wine.  How on earth could I miss this!

And of course I have to bring back some Belgian food.

I shall give you a full report on my return!

Catch Up Time

I know, I know.  I've been a very bad little monkey in the updating the blog area.  But Sock Monkey has been soooo busy!  Sock Monkey is never in and doesn't want to update at work in case I-Know-Who sees me (this tune follows her around: da da da DAAAAAAA!).

So I have written all about what I have been doing for months but have written it in little bite sized chunks.  So you don't have to read a 40 page post.

What a considerate little Sock Monkey! :)

The Undesirables Have Gone!

They have been evicted, they have been evicted (sung to the conga tune).

Got home the other night and both Mr & Mrs Undersirable had their front door open (as opposed to it hanging off its hinges) and were rummaging around in carrier bags.  This, however isn't unusual.

But I have discovered that these were no ordinary carrier bags.  Woah no.  These must have been their suitcases!  For the very next evening I arrived back at Sock Monkey Mansions to discover their keyhole taped up and an eviction notice taped to their front door.  They have 14 days to make arrangements to pick up anything they have left then they are vaporized.  Or something. Probably move into some other poor buggers' block.

I think it may have been Mr Undersirable leaving the gas on and passing out/going out or whatever he did.  The Authorities frown upon people blowing up entire blocks of flats.

Bye now! *waves*

La Damnation de Faust

P's birthday present to me was tickets to see Berlioz's 'La Danmation de Faust' at the IMAX.  It was being staged at the Met Opera Hose in New York and transmitted live to London.  The thing that made it extra specially exciting for me, though was that Robert Lepage had staged it.  And as I have said before, he is my favourite theatre director.

The sound system in the IMAX is amazing and that, coupled with the big screen made me imagine that this would be almost as good as seeing the opera live.  I had tried to get tickets for the showing at the Barbican but they had sold out but the IMAX would be much better due to this fantastic sound system.

Lepage has used interactive film as part of the staging.  The performers can trigger different pieces of footage to be projected onto the scenery with their movements and voices.  So although the actual set is on 4 levels and simply looks like 4 large open cubes, 4 rows high we have footage of people sinking into deep water, a cathedral's stained glass windows, horses galloping and grass blowing in the wind to mention just some.  I was so excited to see what he had done.

The show stared off with an introduction to the opera by Susan Graham who sang the part of Marguerite.  She was fantastic. Beautiful voice.  Then we saw the conductor, James Levine walking to the pit. Everyone actually did refer to him as Maestro!  Why do music (as opposed to bus) conductors and mad scientists always have hair like Albert Einstein's?  Simon Rattle?  I rest my case.  Lights down, audience hushed, conductor taps his baton and here we go! 

5 Minutes into the opera we knew we were going to be sorely disappointed.  Whoever directed the camerawork is one truly amateurish director.  The camera zoomed into the singer's faces.  It was so close we could see if they had fillings or not.  And we could see every tiny bead of sweat on their faces.  When the camera wasn't zooming right in and cutting every single other part of the stage out it was panning left, right, up, down! A 4 year old could have done better.

Because we could not see the whole stage we could not see how it worked properly.  We missed a lot of the video effects and completely missed the grandeur of so many singers, dancers and acrobats on stage.  What a missed opportunity!  It must have been phenomonal to see it live on stage and not through someone else's eyes.  The camera work gave you the effect of looking at the stage through a telescope.

I loved John Relyea as Mephistopheles.  Is it bad to say you loved someone's interpretation of the Devil I wonder? Did like his red outfit. And a special mention for Marcello Giordani who played Faust.  Although we started watching the opera at 6pm in London this was actually a matinee performance in New York.  Marcello stood in for an ill performer to play the part of Pinkerton in the evening performance of Madame Butterfly.

I do hope the Met manage to sort out the transmission of their operas. Its a brilliant idea and there are several more in this season but based on Saturdays filming and the very negative comments coming from the audience in London not many tickets will be sold here.  Robert Lepage was apparently watching a live transmission in Los Angeles on Saturday.  I wonder what he made of it?

I Have Become What Age??

Harrumph.  Sock Monkey is, like Queen Victoria, not amused!  Next thing I'll be picking up my bloody pension.  Oh actually, no I won't.  We don't get pensions any more.  I'll be raking through bins scravanging for food. 

In order to mark the momentous occasion of Sock Monkey turning another year older but not much wiser some friends and I went out for Sunday Lunch at a nice new place in Crystal Palace which I'd been keen to try out.  And I wasn't disappointed.  My Mr Piggy Pork was just delicious.  

And there were gifts!  Which softened the blow.  My favourite, though, had to be the notebook with a red cover and picture of Chairman Mao on the front.  It matches my watch. I like to ask "what time is it?" and reply to myself  "I don't know lets ask The Chairman". He waves his arm in time to the second hand. Like the one above but mine has a red face.

Theare Complicite - A Disappearing Number

We went to see this at the Barbican recently. I had never seen Theatre Complicite before but have always wanted to. This show won loads of awards last year and I was also interested because Nitin Sawhney wrote the original music.

It is basically the story of a man who meets a woman who he marries. This is it in a nutshell. However its a lot more interesting and complicated than that. The woman is a mathematician and in the background of this story is the story of two emminant mathematicians from the past: GH Hardy and Sirinivasa Ramanujan and their work at Cambridge University around the time of the First World War. Ramanujan had written to Hardy who in turn invited him to come from India to work with him.

The play goes backwards and forwards in time and tells their stories and the story of the man and his wife which is inter-weaved when she travels to India to see where Ramanujan lived and worked.

It does get a bit complicated in parts but I did lean something about maths. Here goes:

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 ...∞ (ie to infinity) = minus 1/12th.

Apparently.

Spy Monkey - 'Cooped'

Didn't tell you about this either. After I saw them in Miss Behave's Variety Nighty at the Roundhouse I thought SpyMonkey's new show 'Cooped' would be good. But I was slightly disappointed.

It was billed as Mills & Boon rewritten by Monty Python. (I hate Monty Python to be honest). Anyway so we went trip-trip-trip billygoats gruff to see Cooped at the Leicester Square Theatre. This clip actually makes it seem less good than it was. It is certainly very piss taking and surreal. But they all insisted in taking their clothes off again!

I overheard this in the loo after the show:

Girl One: "Really horrible willies"

Girl Two: "Oh yeah!"

It was an enjoyable night - I do like this theatre - and parts of the show were very funny. But it wasn't as good as the little snippet they did at Miss Behave's show accompanied by the tune 'Di Gue Ding Ding' Naturally I do have this piece of music at home and dance around to it. Often.

-Do I win the prize for the most links in one post?

The Kransky Sisters - Three Bags Full

I never got round to telling you what they were like.  Sock Monkey liked them v. much. 

A new sister has joined them.  According to their website:

"Due to the mysterious disappearance of tuba playing Arva Kransky, who was last seen exchanging sheet music with a member of the Hornbell Military Marching Band, the Kransky Sisters have enlisted the assistance of their rarely visited, reclusive sister, Dawn Kransky, who has taken leave of her job as a trolley librarian as the Esk Hospital to be with her sisters.

"Both Dawn and Arva Kransky studied the Tuba at Tafe Toowoomba.  On her return Dawn moved into a neighbour's laundry after discovering that her three sisters had commandeered the house.  Dawn has rarely performed before an audience aside from the early years when her sisters would play together as children at the Esk fairs while their mother sold among other things tasty fudge."

I would have liked to have seen them perform 'Overload' live, even if they don't know the ending of the song and it just stops abruptly.  Dawn tripped of the cable and unplugged the wireless so they never heard the end of the song. Even though they didn't play it they were most amusing anyway and I would definitely see them again. And their tambourine playing is second to none!  I got their autographs and Andrew partook of one of their tea towels from their tea towel signing session after the show.

Here they are singing Pretty Woman   

And Another Thing About Crystal Palace

Morning.

I was out with two of my nice friends last night. They usually read Sock Monkey. C said that my post about Crystal Palace sounded like I had been taking crack. So I will add a few things about the area that I forgot to mention:

I often see Bambi and Thumper skipping up Anerley Hill. There's a Unicorn at the bottom of my garden. The Bluebirds on my shoulder can sometimes be a problem, though.

I Love Crystal Palace!

Sock Monkey moved to Crystal Palace just over 2 years ago and Sock Monkey LOVES it here!

When I went to Tesco yesterday the girl who always ends up serving me saw me in the aisle and said, "Hello Madam. How are you today?"

Every time I walk past the chip shop the man waves at me gives a big grin, waves and shouts, "Hi! How are you?"

I bought my washing machine from 'Mike's Cookers' and ever since when I walk past they also shout 'Hi. How are you!"

The lady at the chemist is lovely. she is always hoovering the place when I go in. Her daughter works there, too. She is a right laugh.

The local pizza takeaway had to closed for ages and whilst they were doing it up I always asked the owner how he was doing. Now that they have opened he always says hello when I walk past. They do the BEST pizzas ever!

I just went to the local shop to get bin bags, Brillo pads & cigarettes. The man said "That's Eight Pounds Eighty-Three. Give me Eight Pounds". One time I forgot my purse and the nice man said, "Just pay me the next time you are in."

I feel like I sorta know everyone round here and feel so at home.

People who don't live in London seem to think it is a really unfriendly, anonymous place but in reality its just a whole lot of little places all sellotaped together and when you live in one area for any length of time you get to know all the locals.

I like living here and am so glad I decided to buy my flat in this area. And I do like my neighbours (well except for 'The Undesirables' across the hall!).