Snow

If the words ‘do you want to build a snowman’ send dread shooting from woolly socks to knitted hat, and cause that song to burrow, arctic-weasel-like, into your mind, prepare to be buried in the avalanche of what’s coming. This blog – unsurprisingly for people currently residing/surviving-on-tinned-goods in New York, Munich and special corners of the UK – is all about what happens when rain gets really cold.

To finish my thoughts about Frozen (with a solemn promise never to mention it again on this blog) I will say that Arendelle is certainly not a major urban conurbation. In fact, given that their entire economic stability is reliant on ice, I would imagine that their infrastructure is fragile at best. Had it been a riotous, congestion-charge city, I doubt that Olaf would have captured the heart of a nation as a slightly dirty molehill of rapidly defrosting slush. Unfortunately, my Child’s Christmas in Wales with Dylan and his pals, waving my inflatable daffodil (not a euphemism) and frolicking with a dragon (that’s not either), did not include any of this mysterious white tumbling entity. Unless half way up the Beacons, it was too warm, too wet, and the almighty too hell-bent on my getting to school bright and early every morning without the merest whiff of a snow-day. Sigh… The only snowmen I encountered were worthy of some serious Tim-Burton-esque nightmares: all disfigured limbs and melting faces. (although, if anyone captures all the magic and horrors of snow with aplomb, it’s Bill Watterson).

Munich, on the other hand, is a veritable snowy paradigm, ‘deep and crisp and even’ as Wenceslas encounters whilst doing his community service. And as the snowflakes spiral down around you – as though they relocated the opening scene of iconic twirling and spinning to dump twenty tons of snow on Julie Andrews – it is some comfort to reflect that a few degrees warmer and it would be more like the tsunami sequence in The Impossible. Yet after a couple of days struggling and unexpectedly skating back late at night from German lessons (akkusativ and possessivartikel) I am beginning to feel a touch like Ratty and Moley in the Wild Wood: small, lost and a little bit cold. It is undoubtedly beautiful, but sleet in your eyes is uncomfortable, and needing to be bundled up as though re-entering the earth’s atmosphere every time you take the bins out, rather outweighs the wintry wonderlandiness of it all.

However, I have encountered a hitherto-unsuspected gene which attaches itself to the Y chromosome and, as a heroic icicle, clings on for dear life. I was always 99% certain that small boys were pretty much at the back of the queue when God (or not God, but evolution is a far less workable image for this particularly trenchant metaphor) was dishing out intelligence. They weren’t dawdling at the back with the cocker spaniels. Nor – unlike the turkey – did they inadvertently join the wrong queue, and end up waiting in heavenly line for free frankincense. But human males under the age of… let’s be generous and say 14, located the back of the queue long after lemmings, chickens and some of the more sophisticated insects. And if you need definitive proof of this, look no further than the effect snow has on the otherwise rational eight year old boy. They are unable to see snow without scooping it up.

Every day this week that I’ve donned half a sheep for warmth and abandoned the cosiness of my heater, everywhere I turn, boys are holding snow. They’re not necessarily pelting passing cars or ambushing each other with torrents of chilly missiles – though this too is abundant. Instead, the mere sight of snow has reduced them to robotic morons, incapable of anything other than the repeated thought ‘buuuh, snooooooow’. Their brains befuddled by the excitement of weather, they are innately compelled to traipse along with a handful of snow simply because it’s there. The result is that their bare hands are chapped and reddened with cold, and so, of course, the celestial queue they need to join is whichever one gives them really long chest-hair, which would drag along the ground, collecting snow and leaving the hands/paws free for other nobler pursuits. It’s probably the complaints department.

PS. Goodness, January whooshed by didn’t it? For anybody who is still reeling at my unjust swipe at the good name of Turkey, here is the reason that turkeys were slandered in the name of male intellect. I recently discovered that a raffle, posse or death row of turkeys (man, I do love a good collective noun) caught in a heavy downpour – or, I fear, snowfall – do not retreat to their homestead, crack open the mulled wine and open a good Dickens’ novel; but look up, open their beaks and therefore often drown. I feel far less bad about eating them now.

Baths

My parents downsized to a property with four bathrooms. They own a veritable empire of bathing. And, when home, the bathroom that I have sole occupancy of – aside from the occasional outraged, forcibly bathed spaniel, or a dachshund dashing away with trailing loo roll – is entirely without charm. On her regular tours for visitors, my mother is not wrong in describing it as having ‘all the charm of a French pissoir’. This may in fact be an insult to the beautiful, much-misunderstood style of the French urinal. My bathroom’s large puppy-poo tiles from floor to ceiling, its champagne suit resplendent with floral bidet (no, it’s worse than it sounds), and the gaping hole where past inhabitants wrenched the shower-screen out of the wall, create an ambiance into which my Christmas Laura Mercier honey bath soak, complete with unpretentious honey dipper, has a hard time remaining insouciant.

However, perhaps the aforementioned previous owners enjoyed to pluck the gowans fine with a spot of light operatic trilling as they immersed themselves in bubbles, for the entirely ceramic surroundings provide a certain acoustical advantage when singing in the bath. The only other redeeming feature is the bath itself. If, like Kirstie in Dick King-Smith’s The Water Horse, you are accustomed to trotting along to your local beach and bringing home with you an armful or so of the surrounding flora and fauna… well, firstly I hope you do not accidentally find yourself hand-rearing the Loch Ness monster in your bathroom. And secondly, if you do find yourself in the precarious position of Nessie-hatching, whilst you wait for the relevant authorities to rock up, you’ll need a bath like mine. He will have ample space. You can even bathe alongside him. Northumberland’s climactic conditions being what they are – imagine a beautiful sandy beach, and a lone figure crawling along it at a 45 degree angle to allow for the gale – it is no bad thing that my absolutely enormous bath fills almost instantly with lashings of very hot water into which it is possible (nay, encouraged) to disappear up to the nose, and remain submerged until feeling returns to the limbs and your ‘nice day out’ is but a distant memory.

The Romans: now they knew a good thing when they saw one! If they weren’t too preoccupied – and my first class education tells me that they were – baiting hungry Christians with quivering lions, plotting how to sneak up on Caesar, and making themselves sick simply to cram more food into their laurel-bedecked faces, they were busy bathing. I recall some – to my childhood self – hilariously nude pictures (I assure you, extremely tasteful) in children’s books of men in baths of various temperatures or being scraped down with a strigil. And my goodness, my eight year old self is proud of me for remembering that piece of useless information for so many years, in place of infinitely more handy facts about quadratic equations or The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The Romans knew that the secret to ensuring you are not overrun with Hydras like bunnies, and to building a really good Colosseum, was a good long soak and to whiff gently of eucalyptus (a plant that would not arrive in Europe for another couple of thousand years). Yes, civilisation begins with the bath.

As, coincidentally, does the universe. Trust me on this. And if you don’t, then trust Douglas Adams and, more importantly, Ford Prefect. Any true fan of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy will know that the best way to understand the creation of the universe (or possibly just an amazing way to relax) is to fill a conical, ebony bath with sand, let the sand spiral away down the plughole, film said procedure, and then watch the footage backwards. Whip out the strigil – not a euphemism – and it never fails to liven up a party. (If you are not a Hitchhiker’s Guide fan, you totally deserve to feel as baffled as you do right now – what have you been doing with your life if it isn’t listening to this masterpiece on every car journey?).

Steamed up mirrors, toes wiggling through the bubbles, rapidly shrivelling fingertips, fluffy towels warming on the radiator, the sweet scent of honey, the gurgle of hot water down the overflow, the occasional aria rendition to much imagined applause from the fans… It transpires that some peace and quiet in my gigantic bath is the perfect antidote to the January blues. Even better with a book (I am hugely enjoying The Owl Who Liked Sitting On Caesar and its title lends itself perfectly to such a Roman escapade), but I live in fear of the inevitable ‘splosh’ when book meets water in an inky, irretrievable mess. Instead, I shall have to rely on the magnificent Flanders and Swann for a suitably bath-themed ending for this blog, and they provide it with aplomb:

Then the loathing for my fellows rises steaming from my brain, In the bath, in the bath, in the bath! And condenseth to the Milk of Human Kindness once again, In the bath, in the bath! Oh, the tingling of the scrubbing brush, the flannel’s soft caress! To wield a lordly loofah is a joy I can’t express. How truly is it spoken, one is next to Godliness, In the bath, in the bath!

PS. Someone who never trusted that the Romans were onto anything, and has yet to understand the mystical relaxing nature of the bath, is my eleven month old, long-haired dachshund. When my parents had one of their legions of bathrooms refurnished, they installed a rather lovely Belfast sink. Or – as it has become known – a dog-torturing station: perfect for frequent shampooing opportunities for those of the family who insist on re-enacting the more wallow-ier hippo scenes from a David Attenborough documentary. When endearingly low-slung with legs that are little more than feet, it is surprisingly easy to get muddy even in the shallowest of puddles… Sorry Martha.

Paddington

Think you are too old to see a children’s film? With a combined age of 321, we were without a doubt the most advanced in years and experience of the parties attending Hexham Forum Cinema a few days before Christmas. You see, a certain bear has gone up in the world. He has taken the bear’s classic route to fame: from a children’s book, to a television series (the only one from the 1980s that is not currently under inquiry), a dubious advertising campaign for Marmite, and now – finally getting the recognition Michael Bond’s loveable creation most assuredly deserves – his first feature length film. And *revelatory harp twanging* it was superb. It’s a rare – possibly unique – moment, but today, magnanimous and gleeful, I get the opportunity to blog about a film I genuinely and utterly enjoyed.

But it wasn’t off to a good start. *snapped harp strings and weeping angels everywhere* Our splendid little trip did not begin so thoroughly stinking of roses. In fact, I can’t say that I was delighted to be my parents’ and neighbours’ token child-accomplice in our bear-riddled venture. Although Paddington’s world was part of my culture from cradle to four-poster, I was never in that quoting-singing-twirling mineshaft of dreamy intoxication and obsession into which I am so capable of tumbling. Whilst I would have nodded as a wise sage at any reference to ‘please look after this bear’ or marmalade sandwiches, as a literal Master of Winnie-the-Pooh, ‘bears of very little brain’ are far more my companion. But when you fly a thousand miles to be in the bosom of your family for Christmas, it is prudent not to kick off said festivities by refusing the benefits of said bosom. So along we trudged.

Go to this film for the cast! It has everybody in it. Throw in Colin Firth, Bill Nighy and Kate Winslet and I think we’d have the crème de la crème of the British acting monarchy well and truly covered. We start with only-bloody-Michael-Gambon, move on to oh-my-goodness-is-that-Imelda-Staunton, and are soon in a swirling puddle of Ben Whishaw – albeit in teddy-bear form – Sally Hawkins, Downtown Abbey’s Hugh Bonneville, Julie Walters, Bridget Jones’s dad Jim Broadbent, and Doctor Who himself, Peter Capaldi. Throw in Nicole Kidman for some Hollywood appeal – and an evil taxidermist to boot – and what do you have? That’s right. You have an award spangled Christmas tree of famous faces on your hands, that’s what! The kiddiewinks are fantastic too: unsentimental, un-slappable and un-nauseating. On the subject of Mr Firth, it must be embittering for Ben Whishaw that the internet (or certainly Google and IMDB) is unwavering in its belief that Colin Firth is in some way still connected with the voice of Paddington.

Stay for the film! Writer Hamish McColl (of Mr Bean-penning fame) has masterfully sewn together a moving and compelling story inspired by the original Paddington tales, with a dash of classic good-defeats-evil children’s movie. The story is enchanting and a voyage of self-discovery for all the characters as they attempt to find Paddington a permanent home in London. (with those house prices?) The script McColl has created is joyful, gentle and not infrequently worthy of the embarrassing audible cinema laugh. Never again will I be able to ride the escalator on the tube (or, more likely, the German U-bahn) without the sign ‘dogs must be carried’ reducing me to snort like a gaffed rhinoceros or steal a neighbouring dachshund. It’s a surprisingly intelligent film – stretching far beyond its audience in Velcro-ed shoes – which subtly shows that the lovely Mr Gruber came to England through Kindertransport. Like almost every aspect of this film, Mr Gruber’s past is portrayed with beauty and humour, but not at the expense of a sophisticated message. And on the theme of intelligence, there’s even a pleasing spattering of bear references, including The Winter’s Tale‘s famous stage direction. Most satisfying to us English students who so love a good wink wink nudge nudge moment. Oh, and a quick word here about directing too, by Paul King: I adore the doll’s house as a way of looking around the Brown’s house. Simple, effective and aesthetically delightful.

Oh, you’ve lured it out of me once again, you sneaky things! Of course I have a criticism, even of this divine and heart-warming little film, and it falls (as it naturally should) at the high-heeled dominatrix-inspired feet of Nicole Kidman. She’s the villain of the piece and she’s fine. Absolutely fine. Honest. I just wasn’t bowled over by her. And I so wanted to be.

Briefly turning my attention to costume (now that I can knit – very very slowly – I feel entitled), my mother was deeply impressed by the variety of splendid knitwear on display and pitched a potential book of knitting-patterns. You see what I live with?! And, like the moment when Sherlock dons his deerstalker, I couldn’t end this review without a nod to Paddington’s duffel coat. It is a thing of supreme beauty. Without this iconic piece of jacketry – and his hat, around which the entire film’s plot is based – he is not being welcomed into the loving arms of any smart London family, but is just another naked bear with a troubling addiction to preserves, roaming the streets and evading the local bear-catcher. It’s true. The right clothes really do matter.

Don’t be embarrassed as the only childless group at a cinema more stuffed with infants than an orange is with marmalade potential. This film is the perfect antidote to the world around us, especially in the wake of events this week. Paddington‘s charming sense of humour and celebration of people’s (and bear’s) differences, are a timely reminder to be inclusive, polite and kind to one another.

Dear Michael Bond, cast and crew at Warner Brothers, Forum Cinema audience, and blog readers: thank you for looking after this bear.

Cats

Status quo is resumed this week (not to be confused with any inkling of boogie rock) and my inane ponderings are back. Hooray! Let us leave behind the noble pursuits of world peace, Elgar and Larkin for another year and turn instead to cats. This week’s blog is entirely turned over to please those rendered helpless by a strange chromosomal abnormality, that transforms normally rational, intelligent individuals – their sparkling panel show wit and informed debate about Boson Higgs –  into the sort of gibbering messes who waste days of their lives tittering at Simon’s Cat YouTube videos and buying cat mugs. Or cat duvet covers. Or pictures of stranger-cats to sway from their rear view mirrors, frame on their mantelpieces and adorn their cat shrines. I am not a cat person. And when I hang a dachshund calendar on my wall, or delight in my dachshund keyring, it is totally different and does not make me the sort of lunatic who is reduced to shouting ‘it’s so fluffy I’m gonna die’, Despicable–Me-Agnes-style, whenever I see a dog. That fate is reserved for cat people.

Incidentally, our cat was about 105 when she died… at least according to the online cat calculator I just found. No kidding. And, as a family who would rather have dogs slobbering on our laps, chickens digging up the cabbages, and sofas without holes, we have never replaced Morgan (as in Le Fay not Freeman). But the family whose home I have invaded – leaving my dogs 995 miles away – currently have one kitten and are on the brink of attaining another… whose ears, I think you will be forced to agree, are entirely un-foolish.

The cat currently in residence, with whom I share my room, dairy products and dressing-gown cord is called Emma. Not many cats of my acquaintance are called Emma, but there are plenty of great Emmas knocking about: Jane Austen’s Emma Woodhouse, Gustave Flaubert’s Emma Bovary and Emma mother-of-ten wife-of-Charles Darwin (okay so she was his first cousin too but it was the 19th century: Bach had done it, Einstein was doing it, Christopher Robin was going to do it – it was in vogue). Excellent role models for any young kitten growing up in the modern world.

Although Kipper, Spot (delightfully called Smot in the Welsh copies I had) and Harry the Dirty Dog – don’t do your own jokes – did their best to discourage any great feline conversion, there were a host of fictional cats attempting to draw me down the beguiling path of cathood from earliest age. It can’t just be me who is still a touch peeved with J K Rowling, as Jill Murphy irrefutably won the egg-and-spoon of life with regards to the whole abracadabra boarding-school thing. And, sickeningly, she was only fifteen when she began writing The Worst Witch series. They are enjoyable, funny and – a concept lost on Rowling – short. Miss Cackle’s Academy is troublingly similar to my school. Not sadly its owls, its cauldrons and turning the more obnoxious of the pupils into pigs, but our headmistress was uncomfortably reminiscent of Miss Hardbroom; walking through walls and all. But we didn’t have cats which I think is a great pity. They would have enlivened orchestra practice, fire drills and swimming no end. Not only was main character Mildred Hubble forgetful and with long plaits (she was basically my idol), but she also possessed the imaginatively named Tabby. Each girl is presented with a black cat – imagine the sorting hat but infinitely better on account of not having a talking hat – who rides triumphant and superior on the back of their owner’s broomsticks in the traditional manner. Unfortunately, due to a mix up, Mildred’s kitten lacks the motor skills, braincells and pigmentation necessary for such feats. Tabby is therefore dangled in a rucksack off the broomstick in a highly dignified manner.

For even younger readers – or for the heady delight of mummies and daddies everywhere, hoarse and bored, reading aloud to their little poppets – I present the seven deadly sins (or a few of them anyway)… handily raising their paws in cat shape. (what do you mean, by comparing cats to mankind’s vices, I’m revealing my anti-cat agenda?) First, the deadly sin of Gluttony: Six Dinner Sid, who has everyone on Aristotle Street completely fooled into thinking they’re his only owner. Complete with flabbergastingly beautiful illustrations by Inga Moore, this book is a childhood treat. Then, the deadly sin of Wrath: Beatrix Potter’s evil Simpkin in The Tailor of Gloucester, resplendent in rather dashing jacket, running his mouse torture chamber of teacups and failing to get his home healthcare certificate by stealing silk off bed-ridden men. (the spoiled Miss Moppet, with her face tied up in a duster, is also one of my favourite, and less known, Miss Potter kitten creations).  Next up, is the deadly sin of Pride: Alice in Wonderland’s Cheshire Cat, courtesy of Lewis Carroll. And finally – Sloth – please welcome Garfield: the lazy, obese ginger tom with a fairly serious pizza addiction and, I suspect, a below average life expectancy. He looks like something you’d find in the shower drain or clogging up the hoover pipe. It turns out that children’s books are a veritable who’s-who of Felis Catus.

I recently learned – during a fascinating, if dehydrating, three-hour walking tour – that in Munich, cats suffered a great wrong when they were blamed for the spread of the bubonic plague. The ill-feeling was deepened when (turn away now readers of a sensitive and cat-cuddling disposition) all the cats were *ahem* disposed of. With the inevitable result that the rat population soared, and cats from Italy – all spaghett-twirling and smug – had to be shipped in to (turn away now readers of a sensitive rat-snuggling disposition) convince the rats to desist. I imagine in some sort of business-meeting scenario.

Adults encounter fewer felines in their fictional worlds, but cats do take the grown-up and sophisticated leap into poetry. Here they preen their whiskers in works such as Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T S Eliot or William Wordsworth’s perhaps unexpected penchant for cats in The Kitten and the Falling Leaves; both works of staggering genius, portraying all the playful kitten’s joy and frivolity, which I now experience daily when a claw is sunk agonisingly into my leg without warning. Leading me to rather honour Thomas Gray whose no-nonsense approach to cats can be found in the wonderful poem Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes. He’s my sort of a guy!

But, without a doubt, my favourite feline (seriously, there aren’t enough synonyms for ‘cat’) is Sprite, Bill Watterson’s beloved cat and the inspiration for Calvin’s soft toy and best friend. Hobbes’s fluidity of movement, the arches of his body and the dizziness he experiences from the washing-machine’s spin cycle are perfectly observed. He underlines all that is brilliant and perilous about having a pet tiger. And, honestly, it’s hard not to love someone who is so pleased to see you.

PS. This blog has been a long time in the pipeline. For almost two months, I’ve set out to write it and, like Sisyphus – if Sisyphus’s eternal damnation had involved writing a blog about cats – it has continually rolled back over me and I began to regret ever being King of Corinth in the first place. So a couple of weeks ago I was forced, by a thirteen year old anxious to see her feline pals in print, to sign the following contract: “I Kate will write a blog about cats in 2 weeks”. There are no stipulations as to my punishment had I not worked to deadline, but I’m happy to keep up my end of the deal.

Gingers

Recently, I eschewed my job for a week without a tear and, bidding a fond farewell to parents, home and menagerie, I listened to the entirety of Heavy Weather read by Martin Jarvis as I made my extremely slow and majestic Cross Country journey down to Oxford. In amongst the cascade of divine people I was lucky enough to see, two of them had something oddly specific in common, which they also share with about 2% of the human population and my dachshund. It is not waking up in the morning and chewing their own ear mistaking it for an intruder. They all have red hair.

And one such lovely friend of mine was part of a small number of us who, after messing about on a punt in the rain, headed for lunch in the burgeoning sunshine at a local café. At which point I could have echoed Archimedes and cried ‘eureka’.. twice, for I was struck by two epiphanies: that with the sun getting his hat on and the humidity reaching Brazilian levels, I was now inappropriately dressed and likely to create the boil-in-a-bag from first principles, and also that being redheaded is a tough gig. Living in my naïve, blonde bubble I had never paused to contemplate that under the dreaming spires, a group of strangers would be spurred to bellow abuse at my companion, dizzied by their own rocketing melanin levels. So this blog is on a bit of an humanitarian mission (just call me Gandhi).

Now, all children get teased and I’m not convinced that a bit of light joshing amongst friends is a bad thing. Whether it’s the amount of the bronzer your thirteen year old self thought created a stunningly natural glow… that could actually be seen from space, or the leggings which you told your mum looked like an old lady’s duvet set, or the fact that you listened to Robbie Williams and thought he was cool when no one else did! But bullying people because they happen to have two copies of a recessive gene on chromosome 16 which causes a mutation in the MC1R protein – a sentence so complicated that I didn’t understand a single word of it and lifted it directly from Wikipedia – seems to me nonsensical. I can’t say that I didn’t tease a few redheads in my time, but I would also defend my sandy pals from the taunts of randomers and would never rebuke a stranger. Even the most good-humoured, tolerant and patient redhead is bound to eventually snap and attempt to take over the world. Or, more successfully and far more satisfyingly, just hit you. It’s a fantastic and enviable genetic trait that has got a bad press, and on this note I must say that Anne of Green Gables has a lot to answer for, as do mothers in giving their auburn-headed offspring carrots for snack.

Redheads are seen to be extrovert and courageous. This is of course only half true. There must be some truly pathetic and slap-able people with red hair, but that’s due to bad parenting or the hitherto under-researched ‘wuss’ gene, not the red hair. But this mythic fierceness undoubtedly comes to fruition for if I was forced to endure from a tender age being called ‘cheeseball’ ‘fanta head’ and ‘rusty gusset’ I think I would be a little bolder and a little braver too. However, myths about people with red hair have spread like (sorry) wild fire and on behalf of my flame-coloured brethren, I am attempting to dispel one or two now. Gingivitis is inflammation of the gums. It is not caused by or spread by people with red hair. If a strawberry-headed friend of yours bites you and then your gums swell up, you should rethink your friends and your dental hygiene routine, but I promise you that the two facts are entirely unrelated. Non-destructive periodontal disease is no more common in redheads than in anyone else and, whilst you may catch hepatitis B, herpes simplex virus, tuberculosis, syphilis and tetanus as a direct result of your so-called pal sinking their teeth into you, there is no correlation between people contracting TB and their proximity to Damian Lewis or Julianne Moore. You do not have to be Irish to have red hair. You do not have to be Scottish to have red hair. You do not have to be a friend of Boudicca, the lovechild of Wilma Flintstone, or related to Animal (the drum-playing Muppet) to have red hair. Some redheads tan. Some redheads dyed their hair red. On purpose. They like it. And red hair isn’t going away.

Think 50s Mad Men glamour makes everyone look this good? Think again? I wouldn’t.

Of course, there is a certain movement giving ginger a sexy name in the acting community: Karen Gillan proving that Timelords think redheads can smoulder, Amy Adams is unbelievably nearly 40 demonstrating that redheads don’t age, and Christina Hendricks… yeah, she’s coma/jealous-inducingly hot. Don’t forget that the Tudors left the fate of their nation up to a redhead, and that worked out okay what with the defeat of the Armada and all. Not to mention a plethora of fictional characters doing their part for orange equality: The Little Mermaid, Merida in Pixar’s Brave, Jessie in Toy Story 2, Jessica Rabbit from Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and a Powerpuff Girl. Redheaded males are harder to come by, sometimes masquerading as brunettes and blondes. But look carefully. They are there, lurking in the crowd of celebrity: Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, (not standing up for my ‘not all redheads are Celts’ argument, guys) Benedict Cumberbatch and Eddie Redmayne. And really that’s enough said. After a list as comprehensive and fantastic as that, all you need to do is chuck in serious swathes of American Presidents, a whole heap of the Royal family, Vincent van Gogh and Winston Churchill and it’s all any of us can do not to rush into our local chemist and demand a bottle of L’Oreal Hot Chilli hair dye. Probably with disastrous consequences.

I come from a family where the redheaded gene thrives and multiplies, and I have no fear about having children with copper or fox red ringlets. After all, Botticelli and Titian knew it was the best way to be. And if one day I lead a brood of children through the streets like a Waitrose pack of red delicious apples bobbing along, I shall fall back on my dubious Catholic education. For as St Mark wisely taught us in his baffling parables, thou must not hide thy ginger light under a bushel, but let it shine brightly and proudly in all its gingery glory. Amen.

Told you!

PS. I apologise for my brazen use of the word ‘ginger’. Who could forget Tim Minchin – unashamed and flying the redheaded flag with gusto – and his epic song ‘Prejudice’, which redheads throughout the land must be thoroughly sick of people PMing to them. However, for all who disparage my use of the G word and feel, as Minchin does, that ‘only a ginger can call another ginger ginger’, I present you with this picture and these simple yet terrible words of warning to all you non-redheads out there:  I told you I could never look like Christina Hendricks.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

If you weren’t lucky enough to have £40 to spend on a train into London – or £800 000 to spend on a studio cupboard in London – and then a delicious supper at Browns, a ride on the London Eye and stroll on Hampstead Heath, all topped off with a £65 ticket to see the adaptation of Mark Haddon’s book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at the Gielgud  Theatre, then join the club. I cannot be the only one whose open inverted commas graduate job does not involve finding, receiving or excreting gold. Fortunately I could – or more importantly my parents could – afford the tickets at the Hexham Forum cinema to see this much-hyped production streamed for only £11. Long may such a scheme continue for the likes of us in the Frozen North; partly because it makes the theatre a more accessible, less London-centric pastime for us non-gold-defecaters, but also because it means that I can indulge in a totally necessary review.

For those few of you who haven’t had the privilege of reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, first of all, what were you doing with your life in 2003? And secondly, I suggest that you jot down the title before you – right now and post-haste – launch into your nearest bookshop and request The Weird Thing That Happened to a Poodle at Sunset. A brief summary so you’re not left behind clinging to the diving-board, cold shivering and afraid to jump. It’s a book told through the eyes of a boy with behavioural difficulties (think Asperger’s). His name is Christopher John Francis Boone, he is fifteen years old and he wants to be an astronaut. The book is a twist on that old British favourite, the murder mystery and Christopher’s quest to find out who killed his next door neighbour’s dog with a garden fork. During his sleuthing, he discovers things about his family, his neighbours and himself that lead him to the killer. It’s brilliantly written and in 2012 it was expertly transformed for the stage.

This is not going to be a review where I snipe about the selection of rubbish that artistically falls from the sky or moan about the apparent shortage of actors capable of saying their lines and convincingly being someone else (you know, the really unusual, hard-to-come-by bits of acting that only the true pros know about?). First up, a resounding cheer for Marianne Elliott who, unlike Josie Rourke – who I was tragically forced to disparage in bygone days – has managed to pull off a masterpiece of flawless and beautiful directing. This is despite being portrayed as a vapid ninny in the totally pointless and spoiler-riddled preamble that the National Theatre force you to watch if you go to a streamed show. She oh-so-cleverly confided in us that she’d spotted a blindingly underlined metaphor in the production. Good job, Marianne. You get a gold star. Also she fell several further notches in my estimations for saying to the actors, in her best solemn voice, ‘I feel like the energy is very dissipated today’. All aboard the Pretension expressway. *Slap*. However, the spectacle of the show completely redeemed her. For those two million people who read the book, what captured our hearts and minds – what made the book stand out – was Christopher’s narrative voice. His difficulty in understanding others allows him to express himself with total honesty in the face of etiquette, whilst he makes us question the bizarre ways in which we communicate: ‘I think [a metaphor] should be called a lie because a pig is not like a day and people do not have skeletons in their cupboard.’ (By the way, I can think of no better way of showing you how great the narrative is than by quoting chunks at you – apologies). Dialogue and narrative from the book was lifted straight out and read aloud, as though from Christopher’s diary, by all the members of the cast to recreate his voice. And it worked. Elliott’s direction captured every aspect of Christopher’s relationship and interaction with everything around him, using dance, lights, music, shadows, voice-overs, drawings, mathematics and projections. It was a totally immersive sensory experience and not pretentious or complicated or frankly bamboozling. To be honest, she should win an award simply for how she portrays an escalator. You’ll have to see it, but it’s great. The entire directorial composition was clever and sophisticated and elegant.

It was also really funny. The woman next to me left during the interval saying to her friends – friends who genuinely couldn’t have cared less and barely turned their heads from the screen to acknowledge her departure – that it was too upsetting for her. I’m not sure that I know what she was watching. Alright, bits of it were distressing to a more shrinking-violet nature than my own – Christopher’s screams of confusion and fear in the face of physical abuse, for example, although it’s far less Hollyoaks than that sounds – but by using lines straight from the books Christopher’s deadpan, concrete approach to our confusing world is also humorous: ‘if heaven was on the other side of a black hole, dead people would have to be fired into space on rockets to get there, and they aren’t or people would notice’. Even the moving and magical scene in which Christopher imagines himself achieving his dreams, floating in space as an astronaut, the constellations drawn out in lights on the floor, can’t help but add his pet rat Toby drifting about in zero-gravity in a hamster-ball. Pictures are a big part of the book and Christopher’s explanation of the way he views the world. In the play, the whole floor acted as a gigantic blackboard on which Christopher drew, attempting to understand what facial expressions denote. He tried, for example, to understand how ‘if you raise one eyebrow it can mean lots of different things. It can mean, I want to do sex with you, and it can also mean, I think what you just said was very stupid’. Seeing the world through Christopher’s eyes perfectly captured the book, its quirkiness, its humour and its philosophical nature.

I may never say this again. Every member of the cast was faultless. I repeat – and so am saying it again – every member of the cast was faultless, with many falling into that category where you have to remind yourself, over the interval’s vanilla ice cream, that they probably have lives of their own when the curtain closes. Metaphorically of course, as there was no curtain. Niamh Cusack is superb as Siobhan, Christopher’s charming, patient and caring teacher. If only all teachers were like Siobhan I suspect the world would be a better place and I really hope that Haddon was inspired by one of his teachers to create this character. Of course, I shall struggle to think of Cusack in any other role than as Beatrix Potter, and my parents kindly reminded me that since the days when I curled up thumb in mouth in front of The Tale of Samuel Whiskers or The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies, I have aged far worse than Ms Cusack, who clearly has a portrait in the attic. Cheers. And the real Mrs actually Hudson, Una Stubbs, as one of Christopher’s neighbours was as delightful and talented as ever. Star of the show, Luke Treadaway (and here is as good a place as any to spare a thought for his twin brother, who is also an actor) created the role of Albert in the National Theatre’s production of War Horse and was superb, I suspect irreplaceable, as Christopher. Despite obviously not being 15, Treadaway is believably ageless and not like Joey in Friends trying to play 19 by pulling the waistband of his underwear up over his trousers, wearing a ridiculous beanie and saying the word ‘whack’. Nothing I could write would really do him enough credit. He simply was Christopher: uncringeworthy, innocent, honest and loveable. But of course, the stars of the show were the rat playing Toby the rat (who wasn’t credited on the cast-list, so I can only presume his name was Toby or he is currently in touch with his union and a good solicitor) and the gorgeous yellow Labrador puppy whose stage debut was met with universal acclaim.

However, Wednesday’s child is full of woe and no review would be complete without a good dollop of creamy criticism. So it’s been arduous, but I have managed to unearth my bugaboo with this production… and it was the second half. Not the train section. That was epic. The commotion of the overwhelming train station choreographed with intrusive crowds, imposing announcements and the passengers beating the floor and their chests to represent the pounding of the train. That was physical theatre at its best. But after this it was a tad slow. The tortoises skipping by. And all a bit GCSE. Too many Dramatic Moments in Meaningful Voices and not enough plot driving it forward. Too much Significant Silence. And that tiny bit of me – the part that inwardly groans during a film over 100 minutes and hates that it takes 10 series for Ross and Rachel to get together – wanted to shout, “get on with it!” But that’s it. I promise. The nitpick brigade has stood down. Honest.

So finally an echoing round of applause that will outlast many moons, train journeys and brutally stabbed dogs for Mr Mark Haddon, vegetarian, atheist and – most importantly to me – author. This was without a shadow of a doubt my favourite book when I was 14 and I needn’t have been afraid to revisit it. The stage show stands up to the hype and enhanced the book rather than trampling all over it. His next novel, A Spot of Bother, had me distracted and laughing through A level not-so-revision, and his latest, The Red House, kept me page-turning through the night, exhausted and sun-burned, during my holiday round Italy. I only hope he’s writing now.

PS Here is another curious incident concerning a dog. My dog. Fortunately, I am not about to reveal that last night a demented neighbour stabbed my dachshund with a pitchfork, although it could be done with a cake fork. The people in my village are much nicer than that, my dog is adorable and we don’t have a garden fork. However, I have learned that dachshunds were bred to hunt and kill badgers, so for the highly sensitive badger-cuddlers amongst you – well, first of all I salute you because badgers are feisty and pointy, so I myself would never feel comfortable to give one a hug – but I also advise you to look away now. What you are about to see may upset and distress your inner badger-disciple.

I can only apologise

Sausages

Stop it at once. Scoop your mind up from the gutter and act your age, not your IQ. There is not going to be one iota of double entendre in this merry pondering of the noble and humble sausage. I am referring to the perfectly correctly named sausage dog and not the delicacy wrapped in pastry. For you see, within the last week, I have joined an elite and discerning circle – including but not limited to Picasso, Jack Ruby, Grover Cleveland and Adele – by spending two weeks’ wages on a fourteen week old dachshund puppy. (Adele probably didn’t spend two week’s wages or if she did, she was conned into buying the most expensive dachshund in Europe).

she’s actually a beautiful red-head, but this reveals her inner clown

This is how my little purchase came about. Almost every year since I was born my mother and I have been to a county show: the New Forest Show, the Royal Welsh, Morton in the Marsh and now the Northumberland County Show. Aged 3 I curled up with a swarm of otterhounds, aged 8 my ferret won the ferret race (a sport endorsed by the Conservative party as a programme encouraging ferrets to get off benefits and train as plumbers), aged 15 we got chickens as a result of one lap of the poultry tent. We’re kind of suggestible that way. And every year I have sat in various rare-breeds and petting enclosures, and begged and begged to smuggle a guinea pig or rabbit home under my jumper. And during the long dark teatime of the soul that was my immediate post-MA unemployment, many a happy day was deliriously frittered away in pursuit of a lionhead rabbit. So this year, as happens every year, I said I wanted a guinea pig and, as happens every year, my mother heartlessly said no. She asked me why I wanted one and I said it was because I couldn’t have a dog. And she plunged head first, Homer Simpson-like, over the edge of the precipice: ‘you can have a dog if you want one’. So I spent two days on the internet and arranged to buy a dachshund before the maternal melting mood passed. Compared to going from the preferable state of ‘not considering a cocker spaniel’ to the far less restful scenario of ‘owning a cocker spaniel’ within half an hour, this is pretty slow thinking.

Our latest member of the family’s Kennel Club name is a brand of Scottish bottled water which we sell at work, and she spent the first two days nameless whilst I agonised over lists and naming books, but I now often catch myself calling her ‘little sausage’, reminding me irresistibly of One Hundred and One Dalmations: ‘Mr Dearly always called the tiny puppy Cadpig, which can be a nice little name when spoken with love’. And this – along with the fact that I have already had a blopic called dogs – is why, dear reader, this blog is so titled. See. Not a drop of vulgarity in sight.

Lump

A note about the impeccable members of the daxie club. Adele’s dachshund is called Louis after her musical idol Louis Armstrong, although I suspect her short-haired monster is a less talented trumpeter. Jack Ruby, who murdered Lee Harvey Oswald after he in turn had assassinated President Kennedy, had ten of the little things, including Sheba often referred to as his wife. So many hounds either explains his unsound mind and murderous tendencies, or getting them was simply a manifestation that a good psychiatrist should have picked up on. Former President of the United States Grover Cleveland had three dachshunds who are the envy of their species being the only ones of their breed to have lived in the White House (JFK briefly owned Dunker – fab name by the way – but left him in Germany due to allergies, which must have been quite something to require a distance of approximately 4 170 miles). Finally, my heart is actually won over by Picasso whose adorable dachshund Lump features in much of his artwork. J’adore. Or rather, en espanol ‘me encanta’.

PS. The big reveal. *drum roll* After my mother and I painstakingly considered every name in the human language, several objects, rivers and towns, and used up more paper than the earth’s resources can comfortably manage on lists, we finally dismissed Bumble, Posy, Edith, Gussie, Plum, Moth and Flora – trust me, those are the edited highlights from the shortlist, whittled down over the days with more rounds and critique than the Nobel Prize – and settled upon Martha. It suits her. It’s a great Beatles song (named after Paul McCartney’s old English sheepdog). It’s a lovely character in The Secret Garden (which I wrote my MA dissertation on). And the nation’s favourite hobbit, doctor and office-worker Martin Freeman has a dachshund named Arthur. Thus being homage. Superb!

Wodehouse and Jed

PPS. Since writing this blog, I have learned that my absolute literary hero P G Wodehouse had a dachshund named Jed. Of Dachshunds, the divine Mr Wodehouse wrote: “Talking of being eaten by dogs, there’s a dachshund at Brinkley who when you first meet him will give you the impression that he plans to convert you into a light snack between his regular meals. Pay no attention. It’s all eyewash. His belligerent attitude is simply-” “Sound and fury signifying nothing, sir?” “That’s it. Pure swank.” And this fact just about makes my life complete.