Sunday, March 21, 2004
Who am I?
It's all been a bit long dark night of the soul lately. Well, let's be honest, here, a lot long dark night of the soul... I mean, hell, I've been listening to The Smiths to cheer me up - that, and I went to see Sylvia at the flicks. Trust me, there's something deeply reassuring about watching someone else sticking their head in the gas oven, and once you've spent a couple of hours in a darkened room vicariously experiencing their tormented soul, all you really wanna do is go home and have a nice cup of tea and a jammie dodger. Which is all a damn sight better for you than a Prozac smile.
And I'm fine now, really I am. But confronted by the dark forces of the Evil Empire at work, my painstakingly constructed identity as a talented professional with a glittering career got dusted with one swipe of Darth's light sabre. Then I had a punch-up with my class about the nature of gender identity - if they hadn't insisted that girls are made of sugar and spice and all things nice and boys of frogs and snails and puppy dog tails, then I really honestly wouldn't have inflicted postmodern theories about identity construction upon any of us. Because as always, I came off far worse from the encounter. One minute, there I was, made of flesh and bones, with a coherent personality based on my life experiences, genetic heritage, astrological composition and temperamental humours, and the next I'm just one big tabula rasa of chosen behaviours. Sure it gives you a blissfully heady rush of free will and endless possibility, but this is followed immediately and inevitably by the stomach churning plummet as you face up to the logical corollary that you and your life are crap because you always make rubbish choices.
And just when I was reeling from all that, gorgeous lovely tattoo-man went and left me. Okay, so on the surface he was just my tennis coach and a sensible rational adult knows that we would all eat our own heads with boredom if life stayed the same, but oh, god, I'm gonna miss him! Yes, there was the weekly shoulder rub, the kiss and the squeeze if I hit the perfect forehand drive down the line after only 27,000,000 attempts. But actually, in addition to sorting out my grip and my footwork, he also made huge inroads on my psychological tactics. He said I was the weirdest person he'd ever coached because every time I stepped on court I behaved mentally as though I'd never hit a ball before - no self-belief, just a sense of always starting right over again from scratch. "Fix that", I laughed long and hard, "and you'll fix my whole life". He taught me shedloads of mental strategies that have improved my game no end, but the job's not bloody well finished, you bastard!!!
So, there I was, one night when functional human beings had long been tucked up in their cosy beds, and I got to thinking that maybe I didn't really exist at all. The amount of physical contact I've had lately with living breathing organic species, I was beginning to wonder whether I was actually living in some Matrix-like cyber-reality in which my bodily form was social etiquette rather than practical necessity. And from there it was but a short stroll down the path to wondering whether I even existed in cyberspace. "Ah, I know", I thought with an Einsteinian flash of insight, "I'll check".
Plumbing the very depths of my despair with a kind of out-of-body objective curiosity, I asked Mr Google if I existed. What an utterly fascinating experience that was, one that I would entirely recommend as an intriguing parlour game for a wet Sunday afternoon...
My first hit tells me I'm a character in someone's novel, a detective specialising in computer crime - how cool am I, eh?! Well, except that a reviewer points out that she wears "control-top panty-hose" which is an item this version of me wouldn't touch with a barge-pole. I have nice wit, though, and am an expert in virtual reality and code breaking. On balance, the panty-hose aside, I like this me.
Hit number 2's good too. I'm one of a group of 1960s radical activists, "smarter, more competent, more ethical, more democratic, more sensitive to important issues, less racist, and better educated than their parents, their university administrators, and their representatives in Washington". Okay, so I'm having a small identity crisis about being American, but as my social network diagram connects me to the unutterably cool Joan Baez, I'm very happy and she can pop round with her guitar any time.
I'm also a talented graphic designer whose "boundless enthusiasm and old-school work ethic constantly astound clients and co-workers". That's nice... Another me is "the type of friend you stay up all night giggling with", which makes me sound like a right twat and not fun at all, though she has "ventured deep into Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica" which is mildly redeeming. I'm a civil and commercial litigator with appalling dress sense; I won joint 4th prize for "control of gaits" in some horse riding thing; and I just got elected treasurer of the Arizona Environmental Education Association. All of these mes I can chuckle heartily about.
And these mes help me to define this me, if you know what I mean. That laughter is recognition of the differences between us, things I'm just not and could never be however much my free will decided to try and get me on the back of a horse! And if there are differences then I must logically exist as a separate entity.
Jolly good, that's that sorted then. Well, no, not really, because a number of hits are spookily like this me! Another me and some guy have won a tennis doubles knockout tournament three years on the trot. What have I just spent the last couple of weeks doing but playing with some guy in a tennis doubles knockout tournament?.. Mr Google tells me I'm a "lifetime letterwinner" member of a sports club for my prowess at basketball. This me is also an honorary lifetime member of the Hull University Basketball Club. Is there something in the name?......
And then I found this me in cyberspace. Total surprise. There I was. About hit number 47,000,003. No photo. No career profile. No glowing list of personal qualities and achievements compiled by adoring friends, family or work colleagues. And that's cool, because I'd be mortified if they did. Just my name and some numbers in a table: my ranking of 1679 and my rating of 80 in the Association of British Scrabble Players. I didn't even know I had been ranked or rated, and I have no idea what these rankings and ratings are out of, but there I am. This is me. A fiercely competitive game-player and a lover of obscure words. It's not the identity I imagined, but it's fine. It's one I can live with.
And if ever reason were needed to explain why I've never used illicit drugs, this post is it. If you can get like this on Earl Grey tea, why bother?...
It's all been a bit long dark night of the soul lately. Well, let's be honest, here, a lot long dark night of the soul... I mean, hell, I've been listening to The Smiths to cheer me up - that, and I went to see Sylvia at the flicks. Trust me, there's something deeply reassuring about watching someone else sticking their head in the gas oven, and once you've spent a couple of hours in a darkened room vicariously experiencing their tormented soul, all you really wanna do is go home and have a nice cup of tea and a jammie dodger. Which is all a damn sight better for you than a Prozac smile.
And I'm fine now, really I am. But confronted by the dark forces of the Evil Empire at work, my painstakingly constructed identity as a talented professional with a glittering career got dusted with one swipe of Darth's light sabre. Then I had a punch-up with my class about the nature of gender identity - if they hadn't insisted that girls are made of sugar and spice and all things nice and boys of frogs and snails and puppy dog tails, then I really honestly wouldn't have inflicted postmodern theories about identity construction upon any of us. Because as always, I came off far worse from the encounter. One minute, there I was, made of flesh and bones, with a coherent personality based on my life experiences, genetic heritage, astrological composition and temperamental humours, and the next I'm just one big tabula rasa of chosen behaviours. Sure it gives you a blissfully heady rush of free will and endless possibility, but this is followed immediately and inevitably by the stomach churning plummet as you face up to the logical corollary that you and your life are crap because you always make rubbish choices.
And just when I was reeling from all that, gorgeous lovely tattoo-man went and left me. Okay, so on the surface he was just my tennis coach and a sensible rational adult knows that we would all eat our own heads with boredom if life stayed the same, but oh, god, I'm gonna miss him! Yes, there was the weekly shoulder rub, the kiss and the squeeze if I hit the perfect forehand drive down the line after only 27,000,000 attempts. But actually, in addition to sorting out my grip and my footwork, he also made huge inroads on my psychological tactics. He said I was the weirdest person he'd ever coached because every time I stepped on court I behaved mentally as though I'd never hit a ball before - no self-belief, just a sense of always starting right over again from scratch. "Fix that", I laughed long and hard, "and you'll fix my whole life". He taught me shedloads of mental strategies that have improved my game no end, but the job's not bloody well finished, you bastard!!!
So, there I was, one night when functional human beings had long been tucked up in their cosy beds, and I got to thinking that maybe I didn't really exist at all. The amount of physical contact I've had lately with living breathing organic species, I was beginning to wonder whether I was actually living in some Matrix-like cyber-reality in which my bodily form was social etiquette rather than practical necessity. And from there it was but a short stroll down the path to wondering whether I even existed in cyberspace. "Ah, I know", I thought with an Einsteinian flash of insight, "I'll check".
Plumbing the very depths of my despair with a kind of out-of-body objective curiosity, I asked Mr Google if I existed. What an utterly fascinating experience that was, one that I would entirely recommend as an intriguing parlour game for a wet Sunday afternoon...
My first hit tells me I'm a character in someone's novel, a detective specialising in computer crime - how cool am I, eh?! Well, except that a reviewer points out that she wears "control-top panty-hose" which is an item this version of me wouldn't touch with a barge-pole. I have nice wit, though, and am an expert in virtual reality and code breaking. On balance, the panty-hose aside, I like this me.
Hit number 2's good too. I'm one of a group of 1960s radical activists, "smarter, more competent, more ethical, more democratic, more sensitive to important issues, less racist, and better educated than their parents, their university administrators, and their representatives in Washington". Okay, so I'm having a small identity crisis about being American, but as my social network diagram connects me to the unutterably cool Joan Baez, I'm very happy and she can pop round with her guitar any time.
I'm also a talented graphic designer whose "boundless enthusiasm and old-school work ethic constantly astound clients and co-workers". That's nice... Another me is "the type of friend you stay up all night giggling with", which makes me sound like a right twat and not fun at all, though she has "ventured deep into Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica" which is mildly redeeming. I'm a civil and commercial litigator with appalling dress sense; I won joint 4th prize for "control of gaits" in some horse riding thing; and I just got elected treasurer of the Arizona Environmental Education Association. All of these mes I can chuckle heartily about.
And these mes help me to define this me, if you know what I mean. That laughter is recognition of the differences between us, things I'm just not and could never be however much my free will decided to try and get me on the back of a horse! And if there are differences then I must logically exist as a separate entity.
Jolly good, that's that sorted then. Well, no, not really, because a number of hits are spookily like this me! Another me and some guy have won a tennis doubles knockout tournament three years on the trot. What have I just spent the last couple of weeks doing but playing with some guy in a tennis doubles knockout tournament?.. Mr Google tells me I'm a "lifetime letterwinner" member of a sports club for my prowess at basketball. This me is also an honorary lifetime member of the Hull University Basketball Club. Is there something in the name?......
And then I found this me in cyberspace. Total surprise. There I was. About hit number 47,000,003. No photo. No career profile. No glowing list of personal qualities and achievements compiled by adoring friends, family or work colleagues. And that's cool, because I'd be mortified if they did. Just my name and some numbers in a table: my ranking of 1679 and my rating of 80 in the Association of British Scrabble Players. I didn't even know I had been ranked or rated, and I have no idea what these rankings and ratings are out of, but there I am. This is me. A fiercely competitive game-player and a lover of obscure words. It's not the identity I imagined, but it's fine. It's one I can live with.
And if ever reason were needed to explain why I've never used illicit drugs, this post is it. If you can get like this on Earl Grey tea, why bother?...
Saturday, March 06, 2004
Festival flunkeys
Okay, I'm just gonna come right out and say it how it is: the Brighton Festival is a load of toss.
I've made a similar complaint for some years now, but by scouring the programme twelve times with a fine tooth-comb, I've always managed to find one event to go to. It is not that I am a neanderthal with no aesthetic judgement. On the contrary, I am eclectic in my musical taste, literary by education and profession, and a passionate advocate of the value of the arts to the individual and society. I love more or less all forms of live entertainment, and most of all, I have been out the grand total of twice in the last three months and could do with a bloody decent night out, thank you very much!
But this year, the expat North London mafia luvvies who seem to run the town have produced a programme that defies belief. There is nothing - I repeat NOTHING - that I will attend. It takes all the problems with the past few years' programmes and magnifies them. The largest of these is the kind of stick-up-its-arse political correctness that makes the activities of Lambeth Council in the 1980s look tame.
At least Lambeth Council had the guts to slap a huge dayglo sticker on everything saying, "hey, look what we're doing. This is about what we think will make the world a better place". They gave money to minority groups of all sorts, and yes, quite a bit of it was barking mad, but it was an act of political faith - an idealistic attempt to give some kind of cultural power to people who didn't have any of it.
So what about the Brighton Festival, I hear you ask. No blind Jewish lesbians being promoted here, because this is about "Real Art" and "Leading Innovators", but you certainly don't stand much chance of getting your brilliant new play into the main programme unless it is "international". The Seven Dials fritterati are already squeezing into their frocks, crooning into teensy mobiles, "Dahling, no can do - off to see some divine little Chinese piece with those cutesy Russian subtitles. Can't understand a bloody thing but everyone's mad for it!"
Read on in the programme and all you see is "Diversity" writ large. I'm a great big cheering fan of diversity as a personal and political principle, but this makes me want to gag. It's like one of those oh-so-not-very-funny-at-all t-shirts young travellers wear with all the countries listed on the back and ticked off. It squeaks, "Oooh, oooh, someone from Zimbabwe, get them in". The programme has no unifying soul, nothing to make it a process of understanding rather than a bought-the-t-shirt tick-list.
But what about the Festival's commitment to Family and Cum-yoon-ity, I hear you ask? Bollocks is what I say, and bollocks is what I shall say again. Yep, lucky ol' Jemima and James get to see the Lyric's production of Oliver Twist, and jolly good luck to 'em, though it'll never beat the book I'm afraid, kids... What about Kayleigh and Kyle on Whitehawk? Well, at twenty one quid a ticket, I'm guessing they're not getting a look-in. But, hey, that's okay, because the Festival organisers are lovely right-on people and they're taking the festival to Whitehawk. Hurrah!! A gutsy streetwise production of Romeo and Juliet for all the kids doing it for Key Stage 3? A feisty urban music festival? A great big show for all the family? Nah, they get papier mache figures in a pseudo-carnival, cos that's what poor illiterate people the world over like, right? And don't criticise because we've got Cum-yoon-ity groups involved, right? Well, here's a radical idea, how about putting on shows that people actually want to see at a price they can afford, instead of the pile of pretentious shite the fritterati can afford to piss off back to London and watch anyway.
Ever a constructive critic, I don't, however, simply write to damn the fact that it'll be another three months before I get a decent night out. No, in the spirit of selfless community service, I have put together for the panel's consideration a Fantasy Festival programme. No tickets over ten quid. If they can do it at the National, it can be done here.
Dance
I'm like Bart Simpson telling Mel Gibson how to make a decent movie here - I don't know what you call it, but I definitely want to see some action. I don't wanna go on a "dreamy journey to a different state of mind" - I want big percussion, big music, acrobatics, and blokes in those leggings male gymnasts wear.
Theatre
The Al-Hamlet play just to show that I'm not prejudiced at all about subtitles. And a thumping good production of Hamlet alongside it, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and a newly commissioned play based on Margaret Atwood's retelling from Gertrude's point of view. All with really cool actors in.
International workshops
Fuck-off with your erotic glove removal workshops for professionals - spend the money on real people. I'm thinking "Rock School" - for kids, for hormonal teenagers, one for dads, and definitely one for Suzi Quattro wannabe mums. As Jack Black so rightly says, it's about sticking it to the man.
Classical
All right, you can have some of that and I'll let you choose, but 3 gigs tops, cos I'm spending the money on real music.
New Music
Just listen to yerselves, will ya? And then try walking into a pub and saying "a Taiwanese village meets a classical aesthetic; contemporary composition embraces installation art; and ensemble innovation encounters free jazz invention"! You're a walking stand-up comedy routine! And you're all fired. You don't mind, do you?... Think of it as liberation of your creativity...
Lunchtime
Lunchtime? Haven't you sodding people got jobs to go to? How you can even think of putting Jolie Holland anywhere other than top of a damn fine bill of Americana, for a festival-stopping show of real talent, I will never know. She's playing the Dome, in the evening, with Laura Cantrell, and The Mickeys. In fact, give them a prime-time gig each and I'll go to the lot.
Exhibitions
Here come the jokes, be warned, comparing this lot to watching paint dry. I want to see really cool portrait photography or recent newsjournalism - with hands on digital workshops for people who want to get a go with state of the art kit; I want to see that exhibition they did at the National a few years ago for kids, with Quentin Blake drawings on the walls; and I wanna see album covers, only really massive and with listening posts and sofas next to them.
Music
Okay, so we've already got Jolie Holland, Laura Cantrell, and the Mickeys, and that's a fine start. You can keep the Leonard Cohen thing in. Then I want a Johnny Cash tribute night; and a series of 'illustrated' lectures on specific themes in the history of popular music, but not academic at all and with albums and a live 'studio band' band playing examples; and Pop Idol in all the schools and colleges with a grand finale at the Brighton Centre. And street karaoke.
Books
Almost all of this is nothing more than mutual masturbation, as pleasurable as that may be for the participants. However, Rageh Omaar can come and do whatever he wants; Mark Haddon's in; and William Dalrymple gets moved up to a prime time slot and dinner at my place. I also want to see Christopher Hampton's play based on White Moghuls premiered at the Festival. Lynne Truss can come as long as she teaches punctuation workshops to frustrated adults rather than entertaining the fritterati with her "witty howlers" at other people's less well-educated expense. The rest can stay at home, while we hold a real fuck-off brilliant conference of English teachers and A-list writers. Why? Because English teachers are Brighton residents too and why should they always have to shell out their own cash going to these events, when they are really essential staff training in the creative inspiration department that Ofsted are so keen to see. And I want street poetry Olympics.
Family Friendly and Outdoor Events
Ceilidh - yawn, yawn, yawn... Let's have a massive line dancing thing for families - like all the way down the seafront! And some more free film screenings on the beach of family classics. And fireworks with a couple of rock bands playing along really loudly. And instead of just having loads of jugglers wandering round the streets, let's round 'em all up and have a massive circus skills tournament with the audience voting 'em off when they drop their flaming firebrands or fall off the trapeze. And how about a Gladiators' show in a big top with chariot racing and stuff? That'd be really cool.
But I do like the cover of the 2004 Festival programme and I look forward to organising the inaugural International Powerball tournament just as soon as I'm done with all that Arts stuff.
Okay, I'm just gonna come right out and say it how it is: the Brighton Festival is a load of toss.
I've made a similar complaint for some years now, but by scouring the programme twelve times with a fine tooth-comb, I've always managed to find one event to go to. It is not that I am a neanderthal with no aesthetic judgement. On the contrary, I am eclectic in my musical taste, literary by education and profession, and a passionate advocate of the value of the arts to the individual and society. I love more or less all forms of live entertainment, and most of all, I have been out the grand total of twice in the last three months and could do with a bloody decent night out, thank you very much!
But this year, the expat North London mafia luvvies who seem to run the town have produced a programme that defies belief. There is nothing - I repeat NOTHING - that I will attend. It takes all the problems with the past few years' programmes and magnifies them. The largest of these is the kind of stick-up-its-arse political correctness that makes the activities of Lambeth Council in the 1980s look tame.
At least Lambeth Council had the guts to slap a huge dayglo sticker on everything saying, "hey, look what we're doing. This is about what we think will make the world a better place". They gave money to minority groups of all sorts, and yes, quite a bit of it was barking mad, but it was an act of political faith - an idealistic attempt to give some kind of cultural power to people who didn't have any of it.
So what about the Brighton Festival, I hear you ask. No blind Jewish lesbians being promoted here, because this is about "Real Art" and "Leading Innovators", but you certainly don't stand much chance of getting your brilliant new play into the main programme unless it is "international". The Seven Dials fritterati are already squeezing into their frocks, crooning into teensy mobiles, "Dahling, no can do - off to see some divine little Chinese piece with those cutesy Russian subtitles. Can't understand a bloody thing but everyone's mad for it!"
Read on in the programme and all you see is "Diversity" writ large. I'm a great big cheering fan of diversity as a personal and political principle, but this makes me want to gag. It's like one of those oh-so-not-very-funny-at-all t-shirts young travellers wear with all the countries listed on the back and ticked off. It squeaks, "Oooh, oooh, someone from Zimbabwe, get them in". The programme has no unifying soul, nothing to make it a process of understanding rather than a bought-the-t-shirt tick-list.
But what about the Festival's commitment to Family and Cum-yoon-ity, I hear you ask? Bollocks is what I say, and bollocks is what I shall say again. Yep, lucky ol' Jemima and James get to see the Lyric's production of Oliver Twist, and jolly good luck to 'em, though it'll never beat the book I'm afraid, kids... What about Kayleigh and Kyle on Whitehawk? Well, at twenty one quid a ticket, I'm guessing they're not getting a look-in. But, hey, that's okay, because the Festival organisers are lovely right-on people and they're taking the festival to Whitehawk. Hurrah!! A gutsy streetwise production of Romeo and Juliet for all the kids doing it for Key Stage 3? A feisty urban music festival? A great big show for all the family? Nah, they get papier mache figures in a pseudo-carnival, cos that's what poor illiterate people the world over like, right? And don't criticise because we've got Cum-yoon-ity groups involved, right? Well, here's a radical idea, how about putting on shows that people actually want to see at a price they can afford, instead of the pile of pretentious shite the fritterati can afford to piss off back to London and watch anyway.
Ever a constructive critic, I don't, however, simply write to damn the fact that it'll be another three months before I get a decent night out. No, in the spirit of selfless community service, I have put together for the panel's consideration a Fantasy Festival programme. No tickets over ten quid. If they can do it at the National, it can be done here.
Dance
I'm like Bart Simpson telling Mel Gibson how to make a decent movie here - I don't know what you call it, but I definitely want to see some action. I don't wanna go on a "dreamy journey to a different state of mind" - I want big percussion, big music, acrobatics, and blokes in those leggings male gymnasts wear.
Theatre
The Al-Hamlet play just to show that I'm not prejudiced at all about subtitles. And a thumping good production of Hamlet alongside it, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and a newly commissioned play based on Margaret Atwood's retelling from Gertrude's point of view. All with really cool actors in.
International workshops
Fuck-off with your erotic glove removal workshops for professionals - spend the money on real people. I'm thinking "Rock School" - for kids, for hormonal teenagers, one for dads, and definitely one for Suzi Quattro wannabe mums. As Jack Black so rightly says, it's about sticking it to the man.
Classical
All right, you can have some of that and I'll let you choose, but 3 gigs tops, cos I'm spending the money on real music.
New Music
Just listen to yerselves, will ya? And then try walking into a pub and saying "a Taiwanese village meets a classical aesthetic; contemporary composition embraces installation art; and ensemble innovation encounters free jazz invention"! You're a walking stand-up comedy routine! And you're all fired. You don't mind, do you?... Think of it as liberation of your creativity...
Lunchtime
Lunchtime? Haven't you sodding people got jobs to go to? How you can even think of putting Jolie Holland anywhere other than top of a damn fine bill of Americana, for a festival-stopping show of real talent, I will never know. She's playing the Dome, in the evening, with Laura Cantrell, and The Mickeys. In fact, give them a prime-time gig each and I'll go to the lot.
Exhibitions
Here come the jokes, be warned, comparing this lot to watching paint dry. I want to see really cool portrait photography or recent newsjournalism - with hands on digital workshops for people who want to get a go with state of the art kit; I want to see that exhibition they did at the National a few years ago for kids, with Quentin Blake drawings on the walls; and I wanna see album covers, only really massive and with listening posts and sofas next to them.
Music
Okay, so we've already got Jolie Holland, Laura Cantrell, and the Mickeys, and that's a fine start. You can keep the Leonard Cohen thing in. Then I want a Johnny Cash tribute night; and a series of 'illustrated' lectures on specific themes in the history of popular music, but not academic at all and with albums and a live 'studio band' band playing examples; and Pop Idol in all the schools and colleges with a grand finale at the Brighton Centre. And street karaoke.
Books
Almost all of this is nothing more than mutual masturbation, as pleasurable as that may be for the participants. However, Rageh Omaar can come and do whatever he wants; Mark Haddon's in; and William Dalrymple gets moved up to a prime time slot and dinner at my place. I also want to see Christopher Hampton's play based on White Moghuls premiered at the Festival. Lynne Truss can come as long as she teaches punctuation workshops to frustrated adults rather than entertaining the fritterati with her "witty howlers" at other people's less well-educated expense. The rest can stay at home, while we hold a real fuck-off brilliant conference of English teachers and A-list writers. Why? Because English teachers are Brighton residents too and why should they always have to shell out their own cash going to these events, when they are really essential staff training in the creative inspiration department that Ofsted are so keen to see. And I want street poetry Olympics.
Family Friendly and Outdoor Events
Ceilidh - yawn, yawn, yawn... Let's have a massive line dancing thing for families - like all the way down the seafront! And some more free film screenings on the beach of family classics. And fireworks with a couple of rock bands playing along really loudly. And instead of just having loads of jugglers wandering round the streets, let's round 'em all up and have a massive circus skills tournament with the audience voting 'em off when they drop their flaming firebrands or fall off the trapeze. And how about a Gladiators' show in a big top with chariot racing and stuff? That'd be really cool.
But I do like the cover of the 2004 Festival programme and I look forward to organising the inaugural International Powerball tournament just as soon as I'm done with all that Arts stuff.
