I woke up this morning to find two video links in my e-mail inbox, which conjured up very different emotions.
Ian Pittaway, my early music teacher, having seen so many examples of video-conference-based music making in the past few weeks, was amused to find a seeming spoof of the genre…except that the following video was made years before Zoom and lockdown:
I laughed a lot.
In truth, some of the examples I have seen of lockdown music making have been very good indeed, while others have been unintentionally laughable.
Actually the best example of multi-part lockdown music-making I have seen so far came out quite early in the lockdown. Especially impressive because the supremely talented Peter Whelan, whom Janie and I saw at The Wig at the end of last year, really can play several instruments and sing in more than one register…
…so he performs this beautiful Bach Cantata all by himself, with his tongue only slightly in his cheek:
But the really thought-provoking video this morning came from Rohan Candappa. Rohan has now decided to vent his spleen at the UK Government’s mendacious attempt to claim success so far in the coronavirus pandemic, where all the evidence suggests that we have a great deal to learn in the UK if we are to emerge eventually from this crisis without additional self-inflicted damage. It includes a touching tribute to transport workers, who are among the forgotten heroes of the crisis.
Rohan’s short, beautifully-crafted monologue is entitled “Bus”:
This last piece won’t cheer you up, so you might want to go back to The Muppets and/or Peter Whelan after watching Rohan’s piece, to make yourself feel a bit better again.
Kay Scorah (top left in the above picture) was “head girl” for this evening’s Virtual ThreadMash. She chose the topic of soft furnishings, perhaps thinking that such a topic might lighten the mood in these unprecedented, lockdown times. If you were to judge by my Tale Of Beany & Baggy piece and Kay’s Big Dog’s Big Question (below), you might conclude that Kay’s choice had succeeded in generating lighthearted pieces…
Big Dog was trying to sleep. It had been a rough night, with a great deal of tossing and turning and intermittent hugging. At one point he thought he was going to fall out of bed, but Seán, himself only half awake, had grabbed him just in time and held on to him tightly. Now, just before dawn, things had quietened down and the boy had released his grip as sleep took over. Lucky Seán.
Big Dog had a busy day ahead, and knew he needed the shuteye, but his mind was too active. That same old question spinning around and around in his head.
He felt the softness of the pillow under his cheek, and, opening his eyes in the brightening pre-dawn light began to count the stars in the pattern on the pillowcase. He’d heard of counting sheep – perhaps counting decorative fabric stars would have the same effect. But of course, thinking about the pillow only made things worse. Made That Question even louder.
Giving up, he opened his eyes wide and looked across the room to where Rabbidog and Blumberg seemed to be sound asleep on the chair. Rabbidog propped up on a cushion, Blumberg with his head on Rabbidog’s knee.
Rabbidog is called Rabbidog because no-one has ever worked out if he’s a dog or a rabbit. And Blumberg is called Blumberg because he was a gift from Jane Blumberg.
Not for the first time, Big Dog wished that he could move like the real dogs he had seen through the bedroom window. Or even like the small child now sound asleep next to him his head on the same pillow. He longed to jump down from the bed, run across the room to the others, jump up on the chair and ask them the Big Question. What are we, the fluffy toys? Are we toys, like the Playmobil and the Brio Train set? Or are we soft furnishings like the cushions and the blankets?
How could they sleep with this existential question unanswered?
The very next day, Big Dog was invited to dinner, and, at Seán’s insistence, given his own seat at the table. A couple of spare grownups were there, along with the mum and the dad. Their conversation turned to the question of gender and sexuality, to something called LGBTQ and the slow but welcome demise of the binary. And suddenly, although he didn’t quite understand everything that was being said, Big Dog realised that he was free! He need lose no more sleep over what he had thought was the Big Question. He could be soft furnishing AND toy. A place for Seán to rest his head, and a friend for him to play with and talk to.
Big Dog went to bed that night and fell sound asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow. “Good night, big dog”, said the boy, resting his head on his friend’s furry back, “Sleep well.”
The picture above shows Kay, who hosted the evening, top left, reading her piece at the Virtual Threadmash. In normal times Threadmash is held at The Glad, but these are unprecedented times. Chris wrote a poem about the evening during the evening and Rohan presented a short, stray piece about nicknames. Eight of us prepared and presented pieces for the evening, either on the theme Charlotte Thomas (I didn’t present my text piece on that topic) or on the theme of soft furnishings. Below is the text of my soft furnishings piece.
Before Beany and Baggy…
…what a strange sense that phase has to me; “before Beany and Baggy”…
…I can barely envisage Janie’s place without Beany and Baggy.
But of course there was a before.
There is photographic evidence from before. I even took a photograph myself of “before”:
There’s Janie. The year is 1994. And look; there is an array of floor cushions; quite nice ones. But not Beany and Baggy.
That picture was taken before.
Here’s how it was. Before Beany and Baggy, there were floor cushions. Several floor cushions. For a great many years, Janie had been content, nay, even happy, with that array of floor cushions. Here is a picture from the mid 1980s. Same Sandall Close living room, same floor cushions.
But, early in 1996, something must have changed in Janie’s brain. Those floor cushions were lacking something; they were no longer sufficient to satisfy Janie’s need for large scale soft furnishings suitable for sitting, reclining or lying around upon.
There are rough scribblings as early as January in Janie’s 1996 diary that indicate, to my razor-sharp, investigative writer’s brain, that soft furnishing schemes were on the march in Janie’s mind. Ikea. World of Leather. Just the odd name and/or telephone number. Then the diary paper trail runs cold.
But Janie remembers clearly where and roughly when she acquired Beany & Baggy.
“I saw an advert in a magazine for gigantic, armchair-like beanbags. I really liked the look of them, size and shape-wise, but the advertised ones were all garish colours. I phoned the vendor, who turned out to be a Greek-Cypriot gentleman named Costas, to ask him if he had any of those armchair-like beanbags in black.
Costas said that he didn’t have any black ones in stock, but he was expecting a new consignment any day which would include black ones. He said he’d call me when they arrived and he did call me back quite soon. Costas’s shop was in Richmond, near a shop I wanted to visit anyway to get a garment to wear at Michael and Elisabeth’s wedding…”
That’s how we know that Beany and Baggy entered our lives in the spring of 1996. Back to Janie…
“I had intended to buy just one giant bean bag, but Costas was a persuasive salesman and offered me a very good price for taking two. When you came over on the Friday, you said I’d made a mistake buying two, because the pair of them seemed to dominate the living room. I was already thinking along those lines. But you named them Beany and Baggy and we both soon got used to the idea of them”.
Beany and Baggy don’t actually speak, but they do make sneery noises, usually when Janie and I address either of them by name, implying that we have got the two characters mixed up. Our hit rate for guessing the right name is so bad, precisely 0% over 24 years at the time of writing, Janie and I are starting to think that these rebukes might just be a little game that Beany and Baggy play with us.
Anyway, after their arrival in 1996, the next 15 years were Beany and Baggy’s glory years. They had pride of place in the living room, where they were the first port of call for us to flop into and relax after a hard day or week’s work.
And it wasn’t just Janie’s and my rump that graced Beany and Baggy back then. Janie’s living room was also the waiting room for her surgery and there were high-falutin’ folk who could not resist the charms of Beany and Baggy.
Perhaps the most high profile rump that regularly graced the cool black leather of Beany and Baggy was the late, great actress Anna Massey.
Coincidentally, Janie and I saw Anna Massey play Queen Elisabeth I in Mary Stuart at the National Theatre in the spring of 1996, around the time that Janie first took custody of Beany and Baggy.
According to Janie, it was Anna Massey’s habit to arrive early for her appointment and she was keen to sit in Beany or Baggy, even towards the end of her life, by which time she needed Janie to help her out of the squashy armchair, be it Beany or Baggy, once Janie was ready for her.
It wasn’t all the celebrity lifestyle and relaxation with me and Janie though, even in the glory years. Both Beany and Baggy had their struggles with anorexia. Frankly, both of them got quite saggy after a few years.
Mercifully, Janie’s best friend Kim is a highly-regarded surgeon in the soft furnishings world (and indeed in the world of cuddly toys), so a quick visit to Kim’s Hospital; then Beany and Baggy were no longer saggy, indeed they were both really quite portly again.
Here’s the only picture I could find of me and Janie with Beany and Baggy in their pride of place position in that Sandall Close living room.
Really perceptive readers will spot three pairs of hands in that picture – Kim is hiding behind us holding up the embarrassing pom-pom things. Even more perceptive readers will notice the well-hung painting, top left. Rumours that I was my father’s model for that picture are, I regret to say, fake news.
Of course, all wonderful things come to an end. Janie moved from Sandall Close to Noddyland in the summer of 2011. Anna Massey never saw Noddyland; she died just a couple of weeks after we moved there.
Beany and Baggy nearly missed out on Noddyland too. At first there was still work going on in the house and very little room for soft furnishings – they sat stacked on top of each other in whichever room wasn’t being worked upon.
Janie even suggested that Kim might like them for her workplace, Theme Traders once the new furniture arrived. Kim demurred, Beanie and Baggy were too special; she suggested that we should find room upstairs for them both.
Kim was right.
Now one of them lives in the bedroom, under the telly…the other one lives in the spare room.
Beany…or is it Baggy…in the bedroom
It’s a sort of semi-retirement for them both. Janie occasionally sits on Beany…or is it Baggy?…in the bedroom.
In truth no-one these days tends to sit on Baggy…or is it Beany?…in the spare room.
They are sort of living back-to-back now, in closer proximity than they were before. Less than two meters. Not sure if it counts as social distancing what with the wall‘n’all. So they live separately yet together, very close and unquestionably a couple. Janie and I can relate to that.
If only we could work out which one is Beany and which one is Baggy.
Yesterday I finally plucked up the courage to attempt some filming of the half-sized table tennis that Daisy and I have been playing during lockdown.
We had played six games, which had gone: Daisy, Ged, Ged, Ged, Daisy, Daisy. That’s 3-3 (or, if you prefer, I won the first best of three and Daisy won the second best of three).
Nothing else for it, a one game decider.
We haven’t really got the hang of us changing ends mid game, nor of the camera placement, but this epic final is quite a thriller.
It’s also less than 5 minutes long.
After the decider, we checked out a different camera angle which, with the benefit of hindsight, I think might be better for future matches.
I get a bit arsy at the end of the screen test for this one. It had been a long, hard day.
The arsy ending is worth the price of admission alone in my opinion.
…and the surreal nature of some conversations continues unabated.
During the week most of my VCs are business ones, but we have implemented a programme of short “water-cooler” type gatherings for the Z/Yen team; one or two a day at the moment, to help people punctuate their working days with a bit of social interaction if they wish.
One topic which dominated the conversation last week was lentils. Linda, who has been laid low with suspected Covid-19, mentioned that she had made herself a pan-full of lentil soup for sustenance.
Janie picked up on this idea mid-week – her research suggested that lentil soup was almost certainly both a vaccine and a cure for Covid-19 (and many other ailments). So Janie promptly gathered together the necessary ingredients and made a large consignment of concentrated lentil gloopiness, good for many portions of soup and/or savoury breakfast mush with yoghurt.
I mentioned Janie’s research at the Z/Yen gathering on Thursday.
On Friday, presumably not wanting to risk being out-lentiled, Michael Mainelli showed us a 5kg sack of red lentils, which he had just procured during his “one-a-day” walk; on this occasion down Brick Lane.
Other brands of red lentil are available.
Given the quantity of nutritional lentilly substances that Janie managed to conjure up with just 250g of lentils, I should imagine that a 5kg bag will keep the Mainelli family going, as it were, for quite some time.
I suggested that London might replace Chicago as the “Windy City” if we carry on escalating pulse purchases at this rate.
But these Z/Yen virtual-breaks are not all talk about legumes. Oh no. I mentioned my early music playing hobby the other day, only to learn that Juliet enjoyed seeing Joglaresa recently and wondered whether I knew the medieval song about the killer rabbit.
In my opinion, the animated pork chop is more miraculous than the non-fatal rabbit bone one, but my opinion on Santa Maria miracles is really neither here nor there.
Anyway, all this talk of rabbits brings us neatly back to BBYO youth club virtual gatherings, as we regrouped on Sunday.
Mark was able to join us on this occasion, whereas Ivor was not; nor was Wendy. Nine of us, there were. Martin ran two sessions for part of the meeting for some reason, but that doesn’t count as two people.
We learnt that no rabbit has been spayed since we last gathered but that the pair were being kept socially distant for their own sakes. This felt to me like a societal metaphor in these days of lockdown.
We then had a macabre conversation about furry mammal morbidity, with several inappropriate suggestions about carnivorous possibilities, tales of burying various furry mammals at various stages of rigor mortis, Fatal Attraction style possibilities…
…I mean, really. Shouldn’t we all have grown out of this sort of thing by now?
No.
We’re going to gather again next week. One of the more disciplined among us really should draw up an agenda and some etiquette guidelines…I’m not volunteering, just suggesting that somebody ought to…
