Slot Cars

 An advert recently sent out by Rails of Sheffield...

Iceberg

 

Burnham Bounce or Farage Failure?

 Whether it is because of the recent reports of Farage's cooked dealings and undeclared donations, or the farce he has created in the Clacton byelection (where, as many have said, he is fighting a bin, and seems worried), or whether Andy Burmham has managed to connect in a real way during his first few days as PM, it does seem that the latest opinion polls show Reform's support going into reverse.  And Labour's increasing.

For more on this, see the Guardian from a few days ago.

Black Comedy

 And so to the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, to see Peter Shaffer's Black Comedy.

We were quite keen to see this.  It is an early Shaffer, a farcical comedy with a clever conceit. 

When the light is on in the flat where all the action takes place, the auditorium is plunged into darkness.  But when the lights in the flat fail, the stage is lit, and the audience can see the characters difficulties, fumbling in the dark.

It could have been very good.  But, sadly, the production proceeded at a continuous loud bellow.  There were no moments of quiet, or calm to accentuate the comedy.  Instead, it was just loud and raucous through pretty much the whole 80-90 minutes.

Disappointing.

Although admittedly, the Guardian liked it.

Urinal

We forgot to post about one of the more enjoyable things we have seen this year - Churchill's Urinal at the King's Head theatre in Islington.

It starred comedian Rosie Holt, whom we remember from her clever and funny short videos during the pandemic,  playing a put upon Tory MP trying to justify the behaviour of Boris Johnson's inept government. 

In this new show, she plays the first female Chancellor of the Exchequer (not Rachel Reeves), who discovers that the bathroom at no 11 downing street contains an ancient urinal installed for Chruchill.

She is desperate to get rid of it, but it is listed.  What to do?

Full of wit and physical comedy, with a lot of audience reaction, we laughed enormously. Holt was ably supported by Michael Lambourne (playing the urinal - which, yes, talks).

If it comes on again, we highly recommend it.  The script is tight, funny and viciously political (apparently the comedian Stewart Lee assisted with it), and the production well organised and structured.

Our small only reservation was the theatre itself - which is no longer in the back of a pub, but in a new, purpose-built building, and three floors underground.  Not for those with claustrophobia!

Authentic

 A couple of months ago, we also went to see The Authenticator at the National Theatre (Dorfman stage).

This had echoes of some of the themes of Arcadia - such as: How can you discover the truth abou the past, and indeed what does that mean?  How are History and the personal intertwined? And what uses do we make of what we discover?

But it was a very different play as well, focusing on black history, and slavery and the legacies of colonialism.  A tight three-hander, with Sylvestre le Touzel, Rakie Ayla and Cherrelle Skeete.

This was very good, and much supported by a clever production and surprising, adaptable set.

Bellingham

 Apparently this happened around Lewisham yesterday...

A Novel...

 

Semiquincentennial Crossword

 So, yesterday's Prize crossword in the Grauniad by Kite had a timely theme.  

Tricky, as we missed it!  

But fun.

Instructions to Journalists

 

So it Goes...

 Yesterday, to Southwark Theatre Borough for Slaughterhouse V. A very clever production, telling the fragmented, time-mangled story with stunning clarity and wit, while capturing the enormity of the Dresden firestorm.

It is only on until 4th July. But there may be tickets left. It wasn't (quite) full yesterday...

So it goes...

Bayeaux

 This morning at 10, non-member tickets for the Bayeaux Tapestry at the British Museum became available.
A little later:

Hot Poem

 

New Research Finding!

 

Take Pride in Some Good News

 Durham Pride goes ahead despite the despicable cuts of the Reform-led council.

RHDR Centenary

 A few days ago, on the 26th May, was the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Light Railway.

From the supporters association:

100 years ago - 26th May 1926, the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway was granted a Light Railway Order by the Ministry of Transport.

As the proposed route of the railway would cross public roads and create a need to purchase land from multiple landowners, a Light Railway Order was required - this was applied for in November 1925.

Once granted, this incorporated the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Light Railway Company as a statutory public utility undertaking, gave it powers to construct and work the proposed railway and also included compulsory purchase powers over the land required (which ultimately had to be used to acquire six plots of land on the proposed route).

Below are photographs of construction during 1926/27 with No. 4 The Bug operating Permanent Way duties.

And also, nowadays:

30,000 Redux

 Well, we think we solved it all...

30,000

 So, today's Cryptic Crossword in the Guardian was number 30,000.  

For which the paper prepared a real challenge.

Note:  There are many spoilers below!

...

....

Crossword No 30,000 was by Arachne (aka the Spider Woman).  Having solved it, the answers at top and bottom point the solver to the perimeter of the Quick Crossword.


...

Which is a Nina, presenting a cryptic clue.

...

Solving which points you to today's Editorial (The Guardian View).  Which is a lovely piece, worth reading, about the Guardian Cryptic Crosswords in particular, with lots of links (eg to an old interview with Arachne).

But that isn't all...

...

One of the answers to Cryptic 30,000 is "Acrostic".  And the first letters of each paragraph of the Editorial form an Acrostic.

Which reads:

...

LAST THIRTY FIVE PRIMES.

...

And then (this from a post by "Askival" to the estimable Fifteensquared Website):

 If you look at the bottom row of the cryptics whose numbers are the 35 primes before 30,000 (going all the way back to 2/1/2025!) you get:

29581 WELL DONE
29587 BRAVO
29599 HERE
29611 IN CONCLUSION
29629 IS OUR F
29633 INAL CH
29641 ALLENG
29663 E ARE YOU
29669 KEEPING UP GREAT
29671 THERE WI
29683 LL BE A WON
29717 DERF
29723 UL PRIZ
29741 E BUT FIR
29753 ST YOU M
29759 UST ENT
29761 ER A RAC
29789 E NOT A N
29803 ACTUAL ATHLETIC
29819 RACE OF C
29833 OURSE TH
29837 AT WOULD
29851 BE WEIRD
29863 NOT THAT
29867 IT’S A CER
29873 EBRAL RA
29879 CE IN THE
29881 FORM OF A
29917 CROSSWORD PUZZLE
29921 IT’S A GEN
29927 IUS PUBL
29947 ISHED AT
29959 NOON BST
29983 TOMORROW
29989 GODSPEED

So this has been planned for well over a year, and continues with a GENIUS puzzle tomorrow.
They are notoriously hard...

Arcadia

 Arcadia at the Old Vic was very good. 

In many ways a companion piece to Stoppard's Indian Ink, with its parallel stories of modern-day literary researchers and the lived lives in the past (which they misunderstand).  

But whereas the earlier play used art and literature as its ostensible subject, in Arcadia there is a rich discussion of mathematics and chaos theory.

We enjoyed this muchly.  A strong production, with a lot to untangle (and some good jokes).

Into The Woods

 We really like the Bridge Theatre.  It's where we saw the wonderful gender-switching A Midsummer Night's Dream last year, and the space is welcoming and flexible.

So we went to see Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods at the Bridge with high hopes.

The sets were very good, and the cast were great (and the production has won several awards, not least Best Musical Revival at this year's Oliviers). 

But... we were disappointed.  

I think we found the music a little same-y, and the plot over long.  It could have been trimmed.  

It was definitely the piece itself, rather than the production.

This may all sound heretical.  

But there you go.

Indian Ink

 So we went to see Tom Stoppard's Indian Ink. 

In the first ever production of the play, Felicity Kendal had played the young poet, Flora Crew, travelling around India.

At the age of 79, she was also in the production we saw at the Hampstead Theatre, playing Flora's elderly sister, Eleanor Swan, remembering Flora in the past.  

We enjoyed this immensely; the play was full of typically Stoppardian musing, and the cast were very strong.  This time, Flora was played by Ruby Ashbourne Serkis (Gollum's daughter).  

Some of us were a critical of Stoppard's picture of India from the standpoint of a white Englishman (although Stoppard did spend some time at boarding school in Darjeeling, that probably didn't provide much real insight).  However, others thought he got away with it via the character of Eldon Pike - the American academic who is trying to publish Flora's Collected Letters.  He misunderstands and makes assumption about her life - and Stoppard uses him to recognise the likely errors in his own presentation, (or so some of us thought).

At one point, Flora mentions pouring a jug of water on the critic JC Squire's head, after he panned her poetry.  Squire is a name we know from his book of essays "If it had Happened Otherwise" (1931) which have been considered proto-alternative histories.  According to Wikipedia, he moved further and further to the right through his life.  Despised by most of the Bloomsbury set, he eventually became associated with Moseley.

Meanwhile the Rajah mentions 'Bendor Westminster' - the Duke of Westminster and one of the many Grosvenors, who for a long time have used the name Bendor.  And it seems Chaucer, years ago, had a hand in that.  But that is for another time...

But those two small instances only reinforce the complex series of references and allusions in the play. 

Very good.

Mackerel from Nunhead

Mackerel sky over Nunhead. 
Better tell Sopers...

 

Solace?

 In today's Guardian...

Artemis II Advertising?

 As Space Junkies, we have obviously been glued to our screens and radios for the latest information about the Artemis II trip around the moon.

And we enjoyed yesterday's Guardian Prize crossword on a similar theme.

We do worry, however, about the advertising.

First a jar of Nutella flies weightlessly across the capsule on camera - to the joy, doubtless, of the Nutella advertising department.

And then there was this advert for Tunnock's Teacakes:

(Many thanks to one of our sons for pointing this out...)

Gilbert and Sullivan Goes Wrong.

 So to the ENO for Pinafore last February.  A warship of a show, hard to mess up. 

But for us, they kinda managed to.

Mel Giedroyc - who we at the Trees normally like, as a rule - was a 'special guest star', and she kept on popping up as a meta-guest, who was chaotically interfering with a show of the Pinafore.  Rather like a second rate version of The Play That Goes Wrong - where the play is a G&S performance.  Her style of clowning clashed with much of the rest of the comedy in the show, and the whole thing was rather scrappy.

Disappointing.

More Shows

So we booked four shows.

Indian Ink in Hampstead

HMS Pinafore at the ENO

Into the Woods at the Bridge theatre

Arcadia at the Old Vic.

...results were mixed...

Astrofest 2026

 It wasn't ALL Telescope Porn!

Lego Dinos

 From New Scientist 10th Jan, Backpages...

Dinomammoths

Feedback really doesn’t want to keep doing items about Lego. People will start to think we have an animus against the toy bricks, or that we are doing stealth marketing for them, neither of which is the case. However, palaeogeneticist Ross Barnett has drawn attention to a little book the company has produced, How to Build LEGO Dinosaurs. It contains instructions for 30 models.

A closer look reveals the issue. There are four models on the front cover, one of which is a pterosaur, which isn’t a dinosaur. We might let them off on that one, because it is, at least, an archosaur from the correct geological era. However, the back cover has a number of additional models, perhaps the most prominent being a woolly mammoth. Some of the others are a little hard to pin down (is that another pterosaur or an Archaeopteryx?), but as Barnett says, “I reckon 5/8 of the main images aren’t dinosaurs.”

Perhaps all this is pedantic, but then Feedback can think of no more pedantic an audience than 7-year-olds who are into dinosaurs. That said, full marks to the book’s creators for including instructions for a bespectacled dinosaur, Doyouthinkhesaurus. Feedback does enjoy a good dad joke, and also a bad one.

Sleep

 Our FitBit says we slept OK.

So we can't really be sleepy, can we?

Happy New Year!

 (If rather belated).