England's Green and Pleasant Land

I just had such a brilliant holiday home, and here are some stories from my lovely UK

I am not Dead... I am in Herne Bay

My hometown is little. The kind of little where you walk around and know people. But it has reputation for being a bit dull. This is not entirely unfounded. There's little industry nearby, and not a great deal to do. When I was 10, they opened a swimming pool and cinema - but the roller-rink was recently closed down... swings and roundabouts, swings and roundabouts.

So a bit art festival is a big deal. Enter "I am not Dead... I am in Herne Bay", a centenary festival to celebrate the visit of Marcel Duchamp, the Franco-American artist, in 1913, when he famous wrote in a postcard to a friend the phrase from which the festival drew its name (in German).

After hosting some lectures and formal exhibits, the arts council also put some fun stuff out for the plebs (me!). 

Marcel Duchamp worked in an extreme form of extremism, producing a group of work known as "readymades". This involved taking everyday objects, and joining, signing, or simply titling them and hence allowing them to become an art piece.

Such as the urinal used for "Fountain"

 

And the cheap Mona Lisa Postcard "L.H.O.O.Q.". If you pronounce these letters in french it sounds like "Elle a chaud au cul" - She has a hot arse!

 

I didn't attend any of the events of the festival, but we had fun jumping all over the exhibits. I put Freddie in the urinal, not realising that it was just on two wheels and the whole thing swung about and almost fell over. He screamed until I got him out. No matter. I am still the best Auntie.

Don't Dream it, Be it.

While I was home, I also went to the Rocky Horror Show! This has been a dream for a while. I actually can't believe that I didn't put this on the 30before30 list. My friend sent me a message a while ago and said that it was touring and coming to Canterbury and did we went to go. Yes we wanted to go! But the times were difficult, because of my other commitments I could only make the matinee... could we still dress up for the matinee? My friend wasn't sure... maybe we would be the only ones. So we went in plain clothes. Boy, were we wrong.

Do you know about the Rocky Horror Show? It's 40 years old. Forty. Wow.

If you don't know it's a show about alien transvestites based on 1950's B-horror-movies. It's racy, but also a bit embarrassed of itself, very camp, lots of fun and energetic. Since the release of the accompanying film "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" there is a culture of audience participation, where the audience arrive dressed as characters from the the show, and shout responses at certain parts of the play and sometimes throw things, like toast, kit-kats and rice, as is appropriate in the script.

I guess that it's not that fun to clean up theatres (especially the new, refurbished Marlowe in Canterbury) so props were banned.

But we still destroyed the timewarp.

An Officer and a Gentleman

It wasn't that I never thought my university friend, Gemma, would ever get married, but headstrong and stubborn, she used to tell me she never would. 

"Okay" she once relented, "maybe for the dress..." 

So imagine my delight and surprise when she announced her engagement to a former student that she had met while doing her PhD in Astrophysics, who was now an officer in the army. This, I had to see.

The wedding was beautiful, very chilled out and relaxed. I've been privy to lots of wedding planning lately as I am bridesmaiding and maid-of-honouring all over the place, and I'm very aware of all the planning spreadsheets and tasting and whatnots that go into planning the reception. So I smiled and laughed when Gemma and Simon (the groom) were doing the rounds on the tables as the dessert was served and asked "ooh!? what are we having?". So Gemma!

The reception was the most raucous I have been to, the dancefloor was never empty. And just a day after seeing Rocky... 

I cannot be held responsible for my actions when they played the Timewarp...