Be what you would seem to be, or if you'd like it put more simply: Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.
[The Duchess]

Curious that I bought cider, not lager, before the ballet. But no matter. Flushed rosy velvet whatever.

Special effect screens in the theatre often irritate me, but spiralling alphabets, falling down rabbit holes, growing/shrinking doors, and scattering playing cards work well for SPECTACLE in an opera house.

Home Sweet Home was stitched on a backdrop, words as tall as me and over an embroidered cottage. The needlepoint rose to reveal butchery. Pigs in copper pots: carved up rumps, severed heads, ears and snouts as kitchen clutter. A tiny fireball woman wearing aprons, wielding an enormous butchers' knife choreographed into recklessness. All pig pink and oven hot. Then a Victoria sponge trampoline and teapots like wheelbarrows. Tutus shaped like playing card suits: diamonds, hearts, clubs, spades. Voluptuous flamingos (as busty as ballerinas can ever be), roses reluctant to be painted red, and raging Tamara Rojo, an ever-striking carmine caricature. Alice in lavender, kicking out fouette after fouette. The axe swung down to signal the interval with a droplet of blood like an upside down heart on the blade.

Jack and Alice danced a pas de deux, all long lean limbs, their muscles forming a heart. HEART MOTIF.



Bit of a wonderland week. I saw a man have a fit on the bus so I summoned sirens. I had bad dreams that made my body hurt, as though my insides were being dragged out through my ribcage, the ghost of nightmare gripping my bones after I woke. I smelled of someone else for a day, wearing their jumper, wearing their skin. I ate pancakes with blue cheese and mushrooms late at night and saw a picture-book crescent moon over Mabley Green. And I watched a marvel of a ballet.