Sarah gets married.

What makes a great wedding? The answer that people often seem to have is to spend more money, and to spend it on increasingly stranger things. And somewhere in this mass of discussions and pure unadulterated justifiable consumerism the whole point gets rather lost.

Sarah, one of my best friends from UEA got married today, and it was a fantastic wedding because it relied on good natured people and a couple who just glowed with love for each other. They got driven to the reception in a Landrover, the food was solid rather than Haute cuisine, and they had a ceilidh instead of a wedding singer, but all these things were great because the people were just fantastic. Both families were bursting with energy and the guests all jumped themselves straight into the ceilidh.

Oh, and Sarah never stopped smiling all day, because it was what she wanted. I wish them all the best, but they really don't need it as John and Sarah are so right for each other.

On a side note, I got to wear my kilt. Woooo!

Great book shops.

I went to the children's bookstore in Muswell hill today, as it was the school's annual library book buy day. I hadn't gone to this place before and it was a very well stocked bookstore which was also fanatically neat and tidy. Although being much smaller than I expected, the books themselves were very well chosen, with none of the cheap and cheerful tie in rubbish that haunts major book shops.

It was a great shop for us to choose books for the school, as the selection available was so top notch, but the neatness bothered me. When I was young my parents would take me to Foyle's on the Charing Cross road. I loved Foyle's, which at the time claimed to be the biggest bookshop in the world (a claim that seems laughable in this days of Borders and Waterstones). Largest or not it was certainly the messiest. In it's labyrinthian interior there were piles of books everywhere and I always had the impression that nobody had a clue what books were there. They also had a Victorian way of selling you books which involved receipts and a cashier on a different floor from most the books. This shop had character even if it may or may not have contained the tome you were searching for, and the staff may or may not have helped you in your quest depending on their mood . I miss the way Foyle's was, it's now modernised and isn't the same. A little bit of me knows I'll never find a book shop where I will feel so at home.

A Little Englander missing a rose coloured past, or a slob with a pathological hatred of order, you decide.

Mercedes servicing.

A faulty key destroys my Smart Car alarm system. The cost of this is £370 to repair (mainly for door actuators, which are the bits that physically move the locks), but I can't put petrol in the car because the petrol cap is still locked as the actuator in this wasn't repaired (obviously they though my car would only need one more tank of petrol for the rest of it's life). So when I got the car serviced today I told the guy that I needed the actuator in the fuel cap replaced, he told me not to worry. When they give me the total for the service, I think it sounds high, so I look and see that they have charged me £45 to diagnose that......the actuator in the fuel cap needs replacing. They didn't replace it mind, just tried to charge me £45 for telling me what I had told them.

So we sort that out, with the help of a very nice customer care guy. This of course meant I wasn't closely following the next bit, which is when I get home, by boot won't shut properly and when I use the boot release button, it falls out of the dashboard. So another phonecall together.

Earlier this year I used a different Mercedes dealership to repair my windscreen wipers. When I got home it transpired they had forgotten to put my radiator grill back on (I didn't notice as it was parked up against a wall in the garage car park).

And these are the official (expensive) dealerships. Arghhhhhh!

A Smart car (not mine)

Spamalot at the Palace Theatre. A surreal day out in London part two.

I'm really embarrassed to say I went to this. Over the years I have been appalled at the number of West End shows using established brand names: Abba, Queen, Dirty dancing and various others. I have also always been suspicious of fans of TV shows going to see plays just because actor x was in show y. And yet, here I was watching a musical based on one of my favourite shows (Monty Python), starring Peter Davison (from Doctor Who). I felt positively dirty for doing this.

Having purchased a seat in the balcony of the palace theatre, so high up you should get an oxygen mask, and so steep you feel like at any moment you are going to tip to your death, I settled down to an enjoyable couple of hours. This is an odd one though, it has a great film script as a basis (which it lifts from liberally) and at least two cracking musical numbers ready to go (Knights of the Round Table and Always Look on the bright side of Life), and yet it didn't quite hit the mark.

The show as a spectacle is excellent. Everything from video projection, spiralling scenery and expensive trees, to dance set pieces, excellent special effects and rollicking musical hall song pastiches. There was a large live orchestra and the performance of the cast was to a very high standard but it just didn't work for one big reason. Harry Enfield once said that comedy songs just are not generally funny, and it was the songs I thought that let this down. Most of the numbers were designed to make fun of musical theatre, but this has been done before (The Producers), not forgetting that most musicals are high camp extravaganzas anyway. Southpark the Musical also did this, and I wonder why everybody lines up to kick a victim that is already down. The staging had a heavy American influence (maybe because Eric Idle lives there) which seemed at odds to the peculiarly English humour of the Pythons material.

Where the show did succeed was in managing to stage scenes from the film, the Black Knight, the bunny, the hand of god, which must have seemed impossible to stage. The cast were asked to sing, dance, and perform comedy all at the same time and they did so with real professionalism. Amy Field was an excellent singer, but it was her Character of 'The lady in the Lake' that got lumbered with most of the annoying pastiche duties.

Peter Davison has some of the same qualities of Graham Chapman, such as an ability to project a person just confused with the modern world, and so he seemed an inspired piece of casting for Arthur. He did a capable job of the comedy, and looked nimble enough in the dance routines (although his involvement was limited in these compared to everyone else). His singing though sounded a little like he was struggling, well, compared to all these young identikit uber-performers that made up the rest of the cast. Generally though he stood up well as the focus point of the story.

I did laugh, but less than when watching the film or reading the script. Do these first, before going to see this. I saw Les Miserables at the Palace theatre, and I would go to see this ahead of Spamalot. All in all I saw three films surreal films and a musical trying to be surreal today, but how can something be surreal when it is based on sketches we know so well? Right, I'm off to find a shrubbery.

Dali and film exhibition at the Tate Modern. A surreal day in London part one.

I so enjoyed this exhibition, that I went back for a second, more detailed, look. Dali has always interested me, along with other surrealists, especially Magritte. I was always able to impose my own stories on Dali paintings, and it was one of the few artists that my Dad and I agree on. There was a print of a Dali sketch hanging at home for many years and I was always fascinated by it.

The exhibition itself looked at Dali's association with film making. This was done by collecting a series of films, photos and paintings with cinematic links. The films were shown in gallery rooms converted into small cinemas. The films themsleves covered a wide time line of the Moustached ones career. Ranging from 1929 to 1975.

I went twice, because the first time I really didn't have time to sit and watch the films, and as this was really the point of the whole thing, that seemed a waste. The design of the cinema rooms didn't help the situation first time round as they seemed to discourage casual viewing. This time I found sapces on the floor at the front, so that I was actually able to see the screens, rather than the backs of peoples heads.

So after all that, what did I think of the films? My first general comment is Surrealist films are great in a gallery such as this, as you can almost join them at any point, and this allows you to have to fill in yourself the allready minimal plot. 'Un Chien Andalou' (1929) is a classic, with certain elements transcending the fim itself. I remember being told about the more gruesome parts of this film by an enthusiastic art student at school. That it was filmed in 1929 and can still shock me and make me laugh out loud is a testament to it's originality. The follow up film L'Age d'or (1930) had it's great surreal moments, and was far more technically adept as a film, but it slowed slightly in places. Again though, it was shocking (probably the most scary shooting on a film I have ever seen) and amusing (a Pythonesque moment as a series of unrelated items, including a priest are propelled out a bed room window onto the ground below). The final scenes though had a truly daring representation of Christ, and it is no surprise to me that the film was banned after only ten days or release. The fact that neo-nazis hated it, and it was banned for fifty years makes me warm to it more than it probably deserves. Cow on a bed anyone?

The making of the Dali segment of 'Spellbound' (1945) were interesting, but this was the start of Dali repeatedly trying to get himself links with Hollywood, a union that was bound to fail. Dali was hardly going to American mainstream tastes in the 1940s. As a result it was not surprising that many of these collaberations came to nothing; the Spellbound piece was heavily editied, a collaberation with Fritz Lang was abandoned by the studio, even a promising year spent working on story boards at Disney was abandoned. Although, having said that the now finished 'Destino' (1946 +2003) is fantastic, a recreation of Dali paintings as animations which is a visual feast. Disney should be congratulated for having completed this piece so many years after shelving it. Time though was yet again against me, and I was unable to view 'Impressions of Upper Mongolia' (1975) and 'Chaos' (1960) fully, although, like many made for TV movies I doubted their abilty to match the celluloid efforts.


The paintings were fascinating, and I was able to drift into scenes of strange lands, where nothing seems to fit properly. I also saw another great portrait of an actor playing Richard III. Now stop me if I digress, but I din't start the year expecting to see one great portrait of an actor playing Richard III and I end up seeing two. How does this happen? The portrait of Olivier playing the aforementioned character was striking with it's alternative angles of the famous actors face. Hogarth's portrait of Garrett playing the evil king was equally striking, aloutgh it relied more on the way Garrett appeared to be mid oration.

The Tate also shoehorned in pieces from the permanent collection, therefore I had my obligatory meeting with the Lobster Telephone, which I have now seen in so many locations that I do believe it is breeding.