I am in my first week of rehearsals for an industrial theatre project. It is for a client I have worked for for many years, although the show itself is totally new and fresh, and I’m working with a brand new cast of five gorgeous performers. It’s scary that first day; getting everyone together for the first time, checking the dynamics, watching the energies, managing the nerves. Then comes the slightly hysterical delight that it is all going to be fun and maybe even fabulous. And now we have started to come to terms with the words I have written and are putting the thing on the floor. It is fun. But it means that my focus is pretty narrow. I am thinking about this show all the time. Which is what took me to Boardmans yesterday, to buy three chairs for the set. Anyway, the guy there convinced me to open a Boardmans account because of the discount I would get if I did, and it seemed like a fantastic idea to save R400. I am a sucker for a deal. I had to speak to their centre on the phone; had to in fact speak to two different women and managed to control myself pretty well until one of them asked me to give them my husband’s cell number. Naturally, I refused. I thought that would be the last of it until she asked me whether I had got permission from my husband to open the account. I. Kid. You. Not. My husband’s permission to open a Boardmans account. In 2010. Had I known what kind of a production it was going to be I would have just paid cash. Which is what I did anyway because I am terrible at managing accounts. Focus on the discount. Focus on the discount. Now I have three very sexy, made in China, white bar chairs from Boardmans. (I would link to their site but yesterday it was flagged as dangerous and today you can’t see any pics, so don’t bother).
So last night I ended up being a TV head and got sucked in (reluctantly) to watching The Reader, with Ralph Fiennes and Kate Winslet. I love her, which is what made me stick with it, but honestly people, I have no idea, barring her performance, why there was a big fuss about this dreary little piece of film making. And it has my worst thing in a movie; English speaking actors pretending to be Germans. I cannot explain how this drives me nuts. Find German actors. Subtitle the thing for us English speakers to understand. Make it real and representative.
And jumping right ahead randomly, to another thing on my mind, the submersion of Heritage Day into Braai Day. Now don’t get me wrong, I am delighted that there is one non-politically charged thing that all South Africans (barring a few vegans I guess) have in common, it’s just the huge commercial hi-jacking of the thing that has caught my eye. It’s a Checkers, or Standard Bank, or Roller towel, or Coke Braai Day. Replace all of those mentioned by their competitors as well for an accurate picture. C’mon. Stop ramming it down our throats, and let us all make fires in our back yards and char to blackness whatever we can, without your expert advice on what we can’t do without.
Now that’s all of my chest, I’m up and attem.
Simon Cooper
*&^&% braai-ing on Friday. Its another Mother’s/Father’s/Secretaries’/Bosses’/my arse’s day – all commercial and no heritage.
BigFriendly
happy arse’s day Simon. hope you have a good one.