May 2020
Still locked down in Chiswick, still drinking a 5 o’clock negroni most evenings, still cooking and running, still drawing with my football team and my WHSmith pencils, still taking endless 35mm pictures of the next door neighbour’s cat. I began playing my violin again and I replaced my instant camera, and towards the end of the month starting seeing friends at a social distance. Things felt both routine and anxiety-inducing as the lockdown rules began to change. In the final days of May I returned to Hackney.
It was also a very intense month in terms of work, which perhaps accounts for how little I read and how few films I watched. I feel nothing but pride for the full day of live and digital performances and activity The Yard produced, and particularly the website we built to house it in. It was genuinely innovative work, which theatre’s glacially-paced rate of change does not often accommodate, and it got a lovely Guardian review.
top film: Water Lilies (Naissance des pieuvres), Celine Sciamma’s glorious debut on teenage sexuality and synchronised swimming
top book: I finished nothing.
top theatre: Yard Online in a totally objective and in no way biased decision. Abbey Theatre’s Dear Ireland was also good.
top art: again, all of my own drawings from lockdown still life classes. Particularly a still from In The Mood For Love.