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Published: December 2nd 2009
My boss said that my camel hasn’t arrived yet. Which is why after 6 weeks of being back I’m still a little displaced because, for as long as it would take for a camel to walk from Suzhou to London is the time it will take for me to feel ‘placed’.
In this short time, so much has already happened and more awaits, 2 house moves, another on Sunday leading to another in the new year. Visits to my old house in Sheffield layered with someone else’s lives and mine moving at the speed of light in London ahead of ‘the camel’.
So now, already, I’ve been working for 3 weeks and 3 days and I really like it. I’m lucky. The school is vibrant and the vibrancy takes everyone along with it and the movement of everyone, in turn, takes the school with it. Every morning, from where I sit, I can see into one of the dance studios and hear the accompanying piano notes drift up, I can see the company practice and above the flat studio roof, I can see the top of flaxman terrace and hear the old St Pancras church chime the quarter and
then the hour.
Sometimes, especially when the sun streams in, it all comes together in one small blissful moment. And, I know it’s a home because I’ve hung my nanas old crystal necklace on the window. I enjoy the work, organizing a tour, another tour, a day out, an exchange, a party for an organization 40 years old.
And inbetween, I catch the tube and see art and dance and go the to sausage and mash shop with patti
If you had been with me on Saturday night, you’d have been up ‘in the gods’ at the Coliseum and you would have seen Fabulous Beast perform to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. The dance pushed every button, didn’t explode just reached the point but didn’t quite blow but it was good, very good. The women danced in snow in full skirted swirling dresses whilst wearing mouse/rabbit heads whilst the men smoked and stomped in suits, moving boxes with dog heads in, only to drop their trousers to hump the ground, to wearing the dog heads, unlooping a great coil of fabric looking like a rope to reveal 17 dresses which the men stripped off their suits and wore
to finish the dance. I loved it. The Coliseum's 2,350-seat auditorium, built as a grand music hall in 1904 by the renowned architect Frank Matcham, was restored to its former glory in 2004 as part of an £80 million restorationcapacity - full to capacity every night with folks watching snow, stomping, animal heads, rhythm, swirling dresses and a dance that didn't quite reach a climactic moment though the men did on stage. Fabulous beasts.
Another great tradition that Patti and I have found is the sausage and mash shop at the end of Portobello Road. 'Arrive sad, leave happy' and it's true. Good old fashioned british grub served up in a warm friendly atomosphere with copious amounts of condensation running down the windows, daddies brown sauce and mustard on top, lashings of tea in mugs and apple crumble and custard. MMMMmmmm... Because the memory of old street food and spleen being easier to buy in China than a sausage is funny now - marvelous.
It's quarter past ten and the birds are singing in the dark - not sure why, maybe London light pollution. But I can hear birds again. and not quite both feet in London as
Gilles Perin sent me the copies of the prints he took of Cai Gen Lin and Lao Wang in Suzhou - he only took them 4 eons ago. so far and yet so close in time.
Tomorrow the students are going to Corpus Christi College in Oxford to perform, then attend a carol concert and then attend a special dinner - I’ll watch Gavin and Stacey on a borrowed TV - the first time I will have properly watched tele in 18months - just so that I can see my son’s name roll up in the credits as camera assistant.
Where is that camel?
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