Comments on my story have been generally favourable – it would be good to hear what blog readers thought of it, too. If you haven’t read it yet here it is:
http://www.everydayfiction.com/olympic-summer-by-sarada-gray/
I’ve had a very busy weekend which involved, in no particular order, Kenneth Cranham and Joe Orton; poeting for Indian Summer with a background of tabla and sitar; a marsala dosha, a half of some very odd beer at Barceloneta where we gatecrashed our daughter’s gathering; Tomatoes and an ordination. At the Indian Summer event I did The Ballad of the Bowstring Bridge followed by ‘There’s a War on’ with tabla and sitar accompaniment. The tabla beat brought a whole extra dimension to the poem and I was able to feel a different rhythm in there – it was great!
Rishi Chowdhury is a brilliant tabla player and together with his friend on sitar they are excellent and a great accompaniment to poetry. The Joe Orton day at the University was also great: it included a talk by his sister Leonie who is the keeper of the Joe Orton archive; a talk by the director of the 1993 production of ‘Entertaining Mr Sloane’, a discussion with two academics (both sensible and not full of academic jargon) and of course a showing of the ITV film (black and white) of ‘Entertaining Mr Sloane’, a play about repressed sexuality and homosexuality. Kenneth Cranham turned up as well, full of jokes and reminiscences about Orton and people who had acted in his plays.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0186469/
http://www.joeorton.org/Pages/Joe_Orton_Plays3.html
I won’t go on and on again about how little Leicester celebrates its literary heroes; at least they’ve gone some way to redressing that here.
On Saturday Mark and I went to the cathedral for the ordination of our curate Simon. There were several other ordinands (as they are called while they are being ordained) and the main Bish was unable to be there so the assistant Bish called Christopher had to do it instead. I like him a lot better, for reasons I won’t go into at the moment. It was quite a moving occasion; the liturgy contrasting with a certain humour and informality in the addresses. There is something to be said for the old-fashioned liturgy on these occasions, I feel, so long as you don’t have too much of it.
And now God let thy servant depart in peace…
Kirk out
Sarada Gray 