The week that wasn't

 So this has been the week my luck in swerving the thin red flow-test line ran out, leaving me dutifully isolating amid a litter of cancellations, with only Boris' Partygate debacle and jigsaws for entertainment. So here are the excitements that would otherwise be filling this week's bulletin: 

In pride of place, press night at Bristol Old Vic for Dr Semmelweis, developed from an idea by, and starring, marvellous Mark Rylance. No-one who saw this actor in Jerusalem will ever forget his powerful stage presence, and the theme of a doctor struggling to save lives - albeit in a very different situation from our present one - is bound to chime. This is one cancellation I will definitely replace as soon as it's safe and legal to do so.

Also an immense disappointment was sacrificing my ticket to view BELFAST at the Westway in Frome - Kenneth Brannagh's memory of the Troubles of the late 1960s and early 70s in Northern Ireland. These disturbances are the theme and backdrop to my last novel The Price of Bread, based on my own experience of those fearful and violent days - if the movie stirs you up and you want another angle, you can get my story from Hunting Raven Books or me...      Meantime, that movie is going right back on my to-do list!

Sadly not replaceable is my planned trip to see the Red Dress in Somerton, as it will be en route to its next show-place next week. There's a film here about this impressive project, started in 2009, which has involved hundreds of women decorating the dress with emblems of their culture and their stories. It looks wonderful from the glimpses online - here's one small section of this full-length, voluminous, vivid, luxuriant dress textured with stories of women all around the world. 

Also struck from my diary: the opening night of a new exhibition at Hauser & Wirth on Friday night: Ida Applbroog, a feminist pioneer now in her nineties - the work looks fascinating & I had tickets to be there at the party....You can see the whole tour on this link - but at least this event is on for a while...

Also deleted: meetings with friends, my writers' group, a precious lunch date with my son and his family, a party, and a Burns Night event, with vegan haggis, bashed neeps and tatties followed by cranachan - portions kindly carried over to my house by hostess Emily, but I missed the poetry readings, including our annual favourite:  Tay Bridge Disaster by William McGonagall.  

Still, all in all, what with arrivals of flowers, food, chocolate, wine, jigsaws, offers of provisions and messages of condolence, being incarcerated in Frome isn't a bad experience. If only it were so mild for everyone...

Really? one month already?

Last Sunday was Burns Night, as significant around the world to expat Scots as St Patricks night to exiled Irish, and we had a great session at Emily's dining on (veggie) haggis with neaps and tatties, whisky for the spirited and Rioja for the less so, and many poems.
My contribution was Elvis McGonagall's spine-tingling Operation Undying Conflict ~ though of course it sounds better from a shouty Scotsman (this link is from the Stop The War rally in London 2011, where I first heard it). Marian, the oldest and most authentic Scot in our party, gave the authentic recital for the slashing of the haggis: "Great chieftain o the puddin'-race! Aboon them a' ye tak your place... His knife see rustic Labour dight, An cut you up wi ready slight."

Moving seamlessly from words to visual art ~ easy online, as everything's either words or pictures ~ Trowbridge Town Hall has a wax installation upstairs in the waiting room until 27th February. The artwork is called The Waiting Room, because as the artist's note explains the object and the room are integral to each other.  I went with David and while we were pondering this mutual integrity a lady came in and said 'I thought they said there was some art in here?' and went away. The silent room has become a place of transition, the notes explain. Eventually it will cease to exist. Which is of course true for everything. Except maybe cockroaches, and plastic.

Back in Frome there's always music. Superb sessions here are like prophylactics at a festival: well-advertised and free to both the committed and the merely curious. The regular Roots Session at the Grain Bar on Wednesday featured the extraordinary Blues virtuosity of Eddie Martin, and the newly introduced Sunday afternoon music slot at the Archangel featured the luscious retro-style of Bonne Nouvelle.  Live music too at the Silk Mill, on the Day to Make a Difference for the Calais refugees in the Jungle ~  collection of requested winter-wear and donations, with stalls, soup, cakes, and songs from the Wochynskis.

Writerly things are bubbling too, of course, but I think I'll leave you with a magical dialogue chanced upon on a facebook page (thanks Morgan.) It's a contemporised view of Norse mythology and explains the origin of sentient life on earth.
Odin gestures to As and Embla.
Odin:     I have made Mankind.
Frigga:  You fucked a couple of perfectly good trees is what you did. Look at it, it's got anxiety.

Happy February, y'all.