Memories are made of this...

Memory is a deeply mysterious thing, don't you think?

Take the example of how a couple of weeks back, when Diarmait was over from Dublin. After being out in Squirrels we wound up drinking tea in my room with a few of the others. Stories were swapped. 

Diarmait entertained the crowd with a story of how we'd cycled down towards the river in Palmerstown as children. His bike was a Releigh Grifter, which bore much the same relationship to a BMX as a rhino does to a horse; mine was its idiot cousin, a small blue beast with solid tyres and back-pedalling rear brakes and a regular front brake. Hurtling downhill, for Mill Lane is very steep, I pulled the front brakes for no apparent reason and was catapulted not merely over the handlebars but over an adjacent wall into the local hospital for mentally handicapped people. There I was surrounded by the patients, who were deeply fascinated by this unusual visit. A nurse charged over, scattering the crowd, and yelling at me to leave. I gladly obliged.

An entertaining tale, I'm sure you'll agree, but one which, as I pointed out to Diarmait the following day, rates at about a mere eight per cent on any authenticity index. Elements in the tale do certainly converge, however tangentially, with reality, but I'd not say more than that...

We did indeed cycle headlong down the very steep Mill Lane, and accidents nearly took place, but nothing like this. The bike as described by Diarmait is a mutant hybrid of my sister's bike, a maroon machine with back-pedalling brakes, and my own inferior specimen, a tiny thing, navy blue with solid tyres and, by the time we took to hurtling down Mill Lane, no brakes whatsoever. My braking technique consisted of putting my shoes on the ground several times in succession to slow the infernal device down, and then a final application of sole to ground. It was a braking technique that wore out many a shoe, as you can doubtless imagine. The only person I know of who was cast over the front of his handlebars was Christopher Cass, and that tale has already been narrated on this site; I certainly never suffered such an ejection; indeed my cycling accidents were usually more elaborate, less dignified, and more painful. I would rather not speak of them. And while there is indeed an enormous hospital for mentally handicapped people in Palmerstown, located to either side of Mill Lane, I'm fairly sure that there is no point at which someone could be catapulted from the road into the grounds. The wall is too high, and would surely be at an impossible angle to the road for such a feat to occur. Which is a shame, because the story, while entertaining as it stand, would be even better if true.

Diarmait believes this story. He has apparently been telling it for years. It is possible that a true story, based perhaps on simply how stupid it was for me even to attempt cycling down that hill on my ridiculous 'bike', grew with the telling, mutating in strange directions, converging with other anecdotes and speculations, eventually freezing into the form in which it was told the other day. I guess it's been told that way for so long that it's become almost 'historical'.

What's the point of this, you might ask? This site, you are probably saying, while rambling and never remotely to the point, usually has at least some tangential connection to events that happened that day. Well, true enough. I'm getting there.

I described at some length yesterday the rules and etiquette of our computer room. For the past couple of days, keys have been rarely necessary, save to provide support when you absolutely needed to claim a computer, because the door was really difficult to shut. There appeared to be nothing wrong with the lock. At some ungodly hour last night, or this morning to be chronologically accurate, I realised what was causing the door to remain so conveniently open.

Along the floor, at the base of the door, where a door jam ought to be, lies a thin metal strip, pinning the carpets in place. This strip has been loosened by the simple expedient of having partially unscrewed one of the screws. The strip is now slightly raised; more importantly the screw itself protrudes a good centimetre above the strip, creating a small, but fairly effective, doorstop.

I was impressed. Indeed, I still am.

I have no idea who did this, but that's not the point. This minor act of sabotage reminded me of an old school friend, a potential criminal mastermind who was content to waste his talents and become a mere Tom Sawyer-esque waster. God only knows where he is now.

Eoin was a great man for minor acts of sabotage. His speciality was lightbulb theft. Many's the time he'd be spotted sauntering about our school's corridors, drifting aimlessly between classes, stretching a casual arm above his head, swiftly and nonchalantly removing lightbulbs. The Lord alone knows how many lightbulbs the school was deprived of during Eoin's five year reign of mischief.

One of his finest hours took place while in our Inter Cert year, if I recall even remotely correctly. Whenever we'd have book-keeping homework in commerce class the answers would be displayed on the overhead projector the following day. One day, for some reason, no sooner had the class begun that our teacher had to leave the room; hardly had he gone, leaving us with work to do, that Eoin darted out of his seat and over to the projector. He calmly took the plug from the socket and produced a screwdriver from his pocket. It was the work of a moment to open the plug, remove the fuse, reassemble it, plug it in again, and then merrily skip back to his seat. Not a word had been said, and I think less than a couple of minutes had passed. When our teacher returned he was not in a good mood, and his temper was further aggravated by the inexplicable failure of the projector to work. Much time was wasted in that particular class that day.

A good story, I think you'll agree, and one I've been telling for years.

Lately, however, I've begun to doubt it. Could I have once been talking to him, and he merely suggested doing this? Or maybe a few of us had been talking in the canteen over whether such a thing would be possible? In either case the scenario could well have been vividly imagined and described, always preceded with the words 'Wouldn't it be brilliant if...' And at some point those opening words could have been dropped. And eventually the story would have become, to all intents and purposes, true.

In the World Fantasy Award-winning 'Midsummer Night's Dream' issue of Sandman Neil Gaiman has Dream comment to Auberon and Titania that 'Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.'

He has a point. But I wish I could be sure.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern might have been better off dead

Two years ago, when I was intermittently working at the Canadian excavations at Stymphalos in Greece, I wound up attending a performance of Aristophanes' classic anti-war play, The Acharnians. Unfortunately, I hadn't actually read the play at that point, and it was in modern Greek -- or at least pronounced in the modern Greek fashion, so I understood nothing. Nor did my friends. Josh, Andrea, Lisa, Crystal, Dana, John, and several others including myself sat clustered together high up in the theatre at Epidavros, staring in bemusement, frequently gesturing in confusion, and laughing in the wrong parts. Afterwards, I commented that it was like watching a Monty Python sketch in a foreign language, if it had been directed by Salvador Dali. I'll tell you all about it some other time, if you're good.

Anyway, I never imagined that I would someday have the same experience when watching an English play.

Last night was extraordinary. It was beyond all my expectations. 'Theatre of the Absurd' indeed... you have no idea.

I mentioned yesterday that last year's play, A Bird in the Hand, was by all accounts abysmal. Among other oddities, it featured, I am told, one character who was unaccountably covered in glitter for the duration of the show. To this day, nobody knows why. Marlisa, who attended that show, was somewhat anxious that this year's display might not remotely rival that mess. She need not have worried. Brace yourselves . . .

Of the two main characters in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Guildenstern tends to be the wordier, having longer speeches, questioning the meaning of things; Rosencratz, on the other hand, is simpler, earthier, more concerned with the here and now. This is not always the case, as at times the characters are virtually interchangeable, but it works as a general rule of thumb.

It was inconvenient then, that I could hardly understand a word Guildenstern said. He had an impenetrable Geordie accent, tended to splutter, and spoke incredibly fast. Now, I speak fast, as you know, but at least I make a brave effort to separate the words. Guildenstern made no such attempts, so that whenever he spoke, which was often, all that would be emitted were strange machine gun-like bursts of Geordie, loud and incomprehensible splutterings of northern saliva.

To give an example, take a look at the following passage, where coins have been flipped, turning up heads on eighty-nine occasions in a row. After the eighty-ninth flip, Guildenstern wonders how this could happen:

"List of possible explanations. One: I'm willing it. Inside where nothing shows, I am the essence of a man spinning double-headed coins, and betting against himself in private atonement for an unremembered past. Two: time has stopped dead, and the single experience of one coin being spun once has been repeated ninety-times. On the whole, doubtful. Three: divine intervention. Four: a spectacular vindication of the principle that each individual coin spun individually is as likely to come down heads as tails and therefore should cause no surprise each individual time it does."

Now, I count ninety-four words there. I may be off, slightly, but that's about right. Guess how many I could distinguish when they were (spl)uttered last night?

Two.

'Divine intervention.'

I make that less than 3 per cent of the whole thing. Granted, that was a particularly puzzling passage, but even so, I doubt he made it above a comprehensibility ratio of 15 per cent over the course of the play. What made this particularly bizarre was that the girl playing Rosencrantz was fine, or at any rate I could understand her. I don't ask for much really. So what would generally happen was that Guildenstern would splutter away for a minute or two, and the Rosencrantz would reply with a clear, pointed, one-liner. Than Guildenstern would go off again. . . with barely a word being distinguishable.

To say I was mystified would be putting it mildly. Marlisa constantly had to turn away from me, or to shield her eyes so that they did not inadvertently alight on my dumbfounded face. Every time Guildenstern spoke I leaned slightly forward; sometimes my eyes narrowed and my head tilted in a futile effort to catch some semblance of Guildenstern's meaning; other times my eyes simply widened, my jaw dropped, and my hands spread in a blatant state of hopeless perplexity. My mixture of horror and confusion had her on the edge of laughter for the duration of the play, and she constantly had to nudge me so I adopted a more seemly countenance.

Guildenstern, for the record, was played by the same guy who played the lead in a Bird in the Hand last year. Sadly, Marlisa can't remember how he sounded, but, I'm told, he was distinctive by having just one facial expression, a perpetual sneer of some sort. Shaw remarked at the interval that, although it sounded really nasty to say this, the guy playing Guildenstern had the same face as the guy who haunted her childhood nightmares.

A bit of a breather...

The interval was fun, it must be said. We resisted the temptation to run away - to be fair, I was enjoying the weirdness too much, and in any case, I don't think our warden would have been happy had all five of her postgrads in the audience all scarpered at half-time. She knew we were there. When we arrived, we were announced to the two wardens, who would then shake our hands... ' Miss Hubbard!.... Miss Cartwright!.... Miss Ross!.... Mr Daly!....and so forth.'

No, the interval was spent munching sandwiches and drinking wine, while laughing at the photos of the boys in the hallway - our brother hall, as you might expect, is an all-male hall. Aside from the fact that it appears that the boys must get through a vast quantity of hair gel - I felt decidedly undergroomed -- many of them have highly entertaining names. Mr Drinkall... Mr Drysdale... Mr Coxhead. Need I say more?

Before returning to the play, Shaw and I explained the plot of Hamlet, so that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead might be slightly more comprehensible to the others. In case you don't know, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are just about the two least significant characters in Hamlet, and R&GaD takes place in the margins of that play, with the action occasionally intersecting with episodes from the source play.

The explanation given by Shaw and me was quite entertaining, I think, and must have come across as something from 'The Reduced Shakespeare Company,' with each of us completing the other's sentences, adding in quirky references, surprising ourselves my how much we remembered, and being mutually nonchalant when our memories failed us. I'm not entirely sure that it helped the others, though.

Having resisted temptation...

The second half began with us trying to keep straight faces. Not a hope. The minute Guildenstern opened his mouth it was all I could do to stifle the paroxysms of laughter than threatened to overwhelm me. I was shaking with mirth, keeping my mouth shut the whole time, and occasionally failing to control the snorts from my nose. Jenny, two seats along, held her programme over her face to conceal the tears that were running down her cheeks. She had the added disadvantage of being able to see the guys working the lights constantly holding up cards with hastily scrawled words on them in a desperate attempt to prompt the leads.

Making our situation, and indeed, behaviour, worse, was the fact that the lads who'd been sitting in front of us during the first half had all done a runner, so that we were in plain sight of the cast. And we'd gone to so much trouble, sitting in the back row over at the edge.

(The back row is the only place to sit when you have a bad feeling about plays. Alison, Georgia, Claire, Daron, and I once saw a spectacularly bad version of King Oedipus in UCD, where we were all very grateful that we were seated well away from the stage. Especially when all five of us were quaking with silent laughter. I had to take my glasses off that time, so I couldn't see the stage. I'm not sure what caused me to crack that time... was it the dubious bandage Oedipus wore over his gouged-out eyes....or the rather busty messenger falling onto the stage.... or the shepherd with crutches and a broken leg?)

During the second half the American girl playing Hamlet was far more prominent that earlier on - Shaw reckoned she was drunk, since she was slurring so much - and indeed, at one point I heard what sounded like a beer can being dropped backstage, but I half-suspect that she'd been taking acting lessons from Guildenstern. Whenever she spoke it seemed as though the stage was being filled with a fine mist. There's a bit where Hamlet says that Rosencrantz is like a sponge 'that soaks up the King's countenance, his rewards, his authorities... when he needs what you have glean'd, it is but squeezing you and, sponge, you shall be dry again.' By the end of that I bet that poor Guildenstern was wishing for a sponge to mop the spittle off herself.

The Player King definitely had the privilege of creating the second half's most memorable moment, revealing himself on the ship to England by leaping up and declaring 'Ah Ha!' Not, in the traditional manner, I must point out. No. Think Alan Partridge.

As for the rest of the cast? 

The director played Polonius, and was clearly inspired by every Hammer Horror 'Igor' that has been committed to film... 

Ophelia and Horatio were played by the same person, who was fine in that small part (there are no small parts - only small actors - blahblahblah)...

Gertrude was nicely unobtrusive, a good thing compared to some of the others... 

And the King? Ah, Claudius was definitely a real find. This smiling damned villain was wan and insipid, almost zombified in appearance. His speech was a thin and reedy upper-class English accent, punctuated with countless pauses, each one located with a truly Shatnerian randomness.

I quite liked the guy playing Alfred, one of the tragedians... definitely the play's unsung hero.

I should stop now. Who am I to take the piss out of this? I'd never have the nerve to do it myself. Fair play to them for having the balls to do it.

(Except for Guildenstern, who has apparently been in thirty-five plays, and doesn't feel complete without a script on his desk. By this point he should have realised how crap he is. Plonker.)

Rubbing my hands in anticipation...

This evening I'm going to see 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead' in our brother hall. Last year the combined halls Christmas play was an unintentional comic masterpiece - a farce, for want of a better word. This was, however, as much due to the material being performed as it was to the performance. At least this year they're doing a decent play. I'm looking forward to this...