shadows of echoes of memories of songs

The 39 Steps
Oxford Playhouse, Monday 23 June 2008

For weeks now I've been meaning to go to the Playhouse to buy tickets for a whole raft of upcoming plays, but keep somehow forgetting, so it was fortunate that addedentry remembered that The 39 Steps was on tonight, and even more fortunate that we hadn't booked anything else to clash with it.

If you've read the book, go and see it. If you haven't read the book, go and see it. Really, the book is a re(a)d herring: go and see the play, because you're more or less guaranteed to enjoy it. The famous film is more or less a red herring too, though do look out for the sly Hitchcock references (including the inevitable Hitchcock cameo).

So what's it all about? For about an hour and a half the intrepid Richard Hannay (ably and hilariously supported by three quick-change actors) tears up and down the country from Scotland to the London Palladium (though really, they could have changed the theatre name for the touring version without any damage being sustained to the plot) trying to prove that he's not a murderer, and track down the dastardly villains, and put a stop to their evil plans to steal some top-secret documents, and save the country from CERTAIN WAR. Oh, and getting the girl probably wouldn't go amiss. Undaunted by dizzying manipulation of the scenery and occasionally deafening special effects, our hero maintains a stiff upper lip (adorned by a fetching pencil moustache) and manages several death-defying scrambles over, under and occasionally straight through the fourth wall.

If rousing tales of derring-do don't move you, really, it's worth seeing for the effects and scene-changes alone; the four actors manage all the props and scenery as well, seamlessly when necessary and self-referentially when it's funnier: everything from lampposts, windows and doors to trains, planes and automobiles. Forget Miss Saigon's helicopter, or Phantom's crashing chandelier (ooh, spoilers): The 39 Steps has not only a chase along the top of train carriages, but a biplane crash on stage! The actors themselves are excellent too, though, maintaining a blend of melodrama, farce and meta-theatre (which even manages to avoid too much do you see what we did there) that's so delightfully lively and joyous you can't help getting caught up, so to speak, in the action.

It's on at the Oxford Playhouse for the rest of the week; it's still on at the Criterion Theatre in London; go and see it!

A few words from the Public Orator, at Encaenia:

"Jane Austen does not usually tell us about the education of her characters, but two of her villains were at Cambridge, and two of her heroes are Oxford men. [...] And since the name of Cambridge has crept into this oration, let me add that we always look with maternal complaisance on the successes of our daughter university, and as so often, we can once again congratulate them on some splendid silver medals: second in the Guardian's University Guide for the fourth year running, second in The Good University Guide for the sixth year in succession -- second in the Boat Race too. It is indeed like being the proud parent at the school concert: 'Honestly, darling, you were so good.' Well done. Keep it up."

Spam this morning:

Subject: Greetings, I have learned an interesting thing

What interesting thing have you learned recently?

Phoned to activate my new debit card and ended up getting a lecture on the dangers of identity theft from the sales girl (trying to sell me some kind of 'identity protection insurance').

"According to your records, you don't seem to have any identity protection in place. Is that correct?"
"Er, yes, guess so."
"Is there a good reason for that?"
"Er?"
"Or is it just that you don't know anything about it?"
"Well, I'm aware of the issues, and the bank has tried to sell me all sorts of card protection things before, but it's not something I'm overly worried about..."

There followed a long and might-have-been-patronising-if-actually-coherent lecture about the difference between card fraud and identity theft, along the lines of "see, with your card, if they defraud your card, then that's your card, and the bank takes responsibility for that, but if they steal your identity, and use it to get new cards, then they've stolen your identity, and that's when the problems start, because they've got your identity." Well, glad they've cleared that up, anyway.

Of course, they're not trying to sell me anything, no, just advising. So in the hope of shutting them up I said they could send me some information about the service they're offering, yes, please, that'd be great. Which triggered another lecture on how "well, we can't send it in the post, because it would be really stupid to send things about identity theft in the post." Huh? I try to explain. "I'm not suggesting sending the Identity Protecting PIN or whatever it is in the post -- though obviously you do send cards and PINs in the post -- I only meant that you could send some information about the service you're offering." "No, but, that's your card, and your PIN, and we have to send that in the post, because of law, but that's different. But you see obviously it would be really stupid to say we want to protect your identity and then send you something about it in the post. I don't know if you're aware but they only need your name and address."

My name and address, fact-finders, are in the Phone Book. My post comes via the Royal Mail or whatever they're called these days now that they're probably owned by Microsoft and it's Health and Safety gone mad out there. My post gets posted through the letter box. It doesn't go through some kind of secret mail escrow system, it doesn't get picked up by W.A.S.T.E and delivered to me by cycle courier at midnight when there's a new moon. If Alliance and Leicester are so fucking worried about putting my name and address on an envelope, they could start by not sending me a) the letters offering me loans, b) the letters offering me more credit, c) the letters offering me more credit card cheques, d) the letters telling me what the current rates of interest are, all of these with -- you guessed it -- my name and address, and a bloody great orange-and-blue "ALLIANCE AND LEICESTER" stamp on the front of the envelope. (I seem to remember HSBC went through a phase of sending new cards in a big envelope with no branding and the name and address in Comic Sans, so that nobody would think "ooh, new bank card, must steal"; unfortunately this had the side-effect of making me more likely to throw it away or at least leave it unopened for a month because it was clearly junk mail. I'm sure when I was a student you could only pick your new card up from the bank -- cue regular sessions of trying to explain that my branch was in Loughborough but I lived in Oxford so I'd like to collect the card from the Oxford branch, HOW HARD CAN THIS BE? -- whereas now you don't even seem to get offered that option. Presumably that would be the more secure way to do it, forcing you to turn up at the branch with your passport, but that would cost the bank money rather than gaining them money. Market forces are not about trying to make things easier for you. But I digress.)

Anyway, apparently identity theft is on the increase, and they get nearly one case a month now (so, not really that many out of the 1.72m active current accounts -- and that's just personal accounts, not businesses -- that their annual report claims they had in 2007). Also, I'm assuming that it still counts as a case of identity theft even if it's caught early and doesn't cause any major damage -- in the same way that I'm part of the INTERNET CARD FRAUD OH NOES statistics because somebody tried to defraud my card (to the tune of about 2 quid) and A&L caught it, told me, and gave me a new card. If all these cases involved real scare stories like people being thrown out of the country because someone else had claimed their identity, then surely it would be a spate by now, and would be reported more often? Not in the news, where obviously people wouldn't report things which might damage the economy, but on the web? Come on, bloggers, how many of you have been given hush money not to blog about the identity theft you've suffered? Or is it that once you've had your identity stolen, you can't get a blog any more, so you are SILENCED?

I'm not trying to trivialise the awfulness of identity theft actually happening to an individual (like all crimes, if it happens to you, arguing about the probability of it having happened to you is somewhat less interesting/relevant than the process of trying to undo the damage or get compensation) but I am fed up of the amount of scaremongering that goes on in an attempt to sell extra insurance to neurotic people. "We're not trying to scare you," said the girl on the phone, "we're just trying to advise you and give you the facts and figures." Hmmmm. I counted precisely one fact and/or figure, and it wasn't a very impressive one. It really takes quite a lot more than that to sell me insurance.

Also, unrelatedly, I am annoyed that 'activating' my debit card requires me to listen to a fifteen-year-old insurance salesgirl trying to tell me the Facts of Internet, while 'activating' my credit card merely requires me to go through an automated key-press system, which I can do without switching the music off. Also also and furthermore, I AM TRYING TO DRINK COFFEE, STOP TRYING TO SELL ME THINGS. I think that might be my new meaningless t-shirt slogan catchphrase for this week.

Still, let's have a poll:

[Poll #1196865]

So there.

It's time for a revolution. Who's with me?

Thanks to sesquipedality for pointing me at this:

http://www.musopen.com/

Free public-domain music! I have thrown some dollars at Bach, as you do.



Unfortunately their blog widgets don't quite seem to be working, the amounts of money are all wrong... have emailed to let them know.

I suppose it's like a peculiarly Oxford kind of triathlon: 2 miles' cycle from suburb to town; a 10K run around town; 3 hours' singing in chapel; 2 miles' cycle home...

Yesterday's Town & Gown 10K Fun Run was, as the Oxford Mail says, a big success. It certainly was for me: I raised nearly £300 in sponsorship money (or will have done when I've collected it all!); beat my previous best time by over 2 minutes; and had fun.

( rambling about the race )

So anyway, in fact my official time was 56:13 (only just over 9-minute miles). I couldn't believe it!

Then after the race there was plenty of space between the town and and and and and gown, as we went for a leisurely lunch in the Jericho Café and then an even more leisurely sitting around in the St Giles churchyard, before I had to head to Pembroke for rehearsal and a rousing choral evensong (Howells' Coll. Reg. and Elgar's Light out of Darkness) to stave off the post-running sleepiness.

Of course now I can't help wondering what the Oxford Decathlon would involve: running, cycling, punting, singing, essay-writing.... come on, LiveJournal, help me out here!

I still haven't finished Ulysses (FAIL!) partly because it's too hard to read in the bath, and I just keep re-reading Chalet School books instead. Writing this, however, I now find myself wondering about The Chalet School in Bloom (or vice - as it were - versa), which is probably going to make it hard to concentrate on reading either for quite some time.

Someone who really is my kind of feminist more or less warned me off a recent F-Word article about Oxbridge sex workers, so I can't blame her. Still, La Penny's rant shocked me: I'm frankly disgusted to see a fellow Oxford English graduate prostituting her literary learning like that.

Though if she must get her lit. out for the lad(ie)s then she could at least try to look like she's enjoying it.

Get happy, says Judy! And I am happy. My lovely colleagues got me cake and a card and a present, all unplanned and surprise-like, and I went to the pub with some of them and they were lovely again and I managed not to disgrace myself too much despite being awfully crushy-crushy-crushy and I came home and my lovely boyfriend^Wfiancé was watching Judy Garland videos on YouTube and then Rufus Wainwright videos and I got to show him that I (sort of) knew the chords for "Hallelujah". And now it's Liza (with a 'Z') Minnelli videos and he's honestly not gay, really, and even so, I do love him more than the people I am crushy-crushy about, and yes, anyway.