Wednesday 31 March 2010

Breakfast

I'm not a big of fan of breakfast, generally, but I read an article on it recently that may alter my perceptions. Here's a quote:

It's at the right end of the day: the morning, a time of beginnings and possibilities, a time when problems have been slept on, when solutions haven't yet proven unworkable, when nothing specific has gone wrong. And if you've made it to breakfast, even if it's just toast at the kitchen table, then you've already achieved something. You're alive. You're feeding yourself. You're viable. Breakfast may be a small thing, but greatness starts with small things. Greatness starts with breakfast.

Something to think about!

Sunday 21 March 2010

"Thou wilt turn again to me...for of all fowles that may fly, thou art most meeke and hende."

I'm currently in rehearsals to play Mr Noah for an RNCM Outreach production of Benjamin Britten's wonderful opera Noye's Fludde, based on Genesis 6-9. It's brilliant music, and we're planning quite a fun staging, with lots of umbrellas (hurrah!), but my favourite thing about it is the very first scene, which has Noah hearing God's voice ordering him to build the ark. In this production, the stage is covered in cardboard boxes laid out in the shape of a huge cross; that shape is then taken apart, and the boxes in it are used to build the Ark. I love this, because it's become, in my mind, a unintentional visual metaphor. How brilliant that the Cross becomes the Ark, as both were used in the Bible as a means of salvation: Noah's Ark kept a family and all the world's animals safe from the Flood; the Cross, on which Jesus died, provided a way for each one of us to be saved from the punishment we deserve for the sinful way in which we live.

The other wonderful thing is that it's written in old English, so you get amazing lines like
And heare are beares, woulfes, sette,
Apes and monkeys, marmosette,
Weyscelles, squirelles, and ferrette...

Such fun!