Life Less Literary

I love Object-Oriented Programming.

At least, I love the idea of OOP, but in practice it always turns out to be a nightmare. To be fair, this is more the fault of my brain than of OOP, and is true, to a lesser extent, of any and all kinds of programming. It’s just that OOP is so eminently sensible, it leads me to do stupid things.

Case in point, I have spent the last couple of weeks learning Flash and trying to write a simple image browser/viewer using ActionScript, Flash remoting and PHP. Now, this isn’t very hard to do. In fact, I’ve already done it several times, before tearing it down to the ground and starting again. Because, you see, it wasn’t quite right, the code was a bit sloppy, it wasn’t extensible enought, dammit man it just wasn’t OOP!

And this isn’t the first time that something like this has happened - seems that every time I get going on a programming project (and this is the first decent one I’ve got my teeth into for the last couple of years) I start off with high hopes and what seems like a clear idea of what I want to do, but the further I go down the road, the more doubt creeps in. And I can never, I mean never, settle on what seems like the right object model. Should object A contain object B, or a pointer to object B, or should object B contain object A, or… AAAARGH! This just goes on and on for ever.

Still, on the bright side, after nearly killing myself over it last night, I woke up this morning with a gloriously correct object model sitting in my forebrain, and so far it seems that I was largely right. So maybe it was all worthwhile, look on the bright side, I’m learning all the time, I’m getting better at this…

Of course, the likelihood that I’ll ever do enough of this stuff in my life to justify my two weeks of learning is extremely slim. Ah well, at least I was having fun. <cough>

Tonight was our first rehearsal off-book, flying without a safety net. We played through the whole of Act One in one go.

I had been dreading this, but over the last week or so everything has finally started falling into place. I’ve been carrying a copy of the script almost everywhere I go, out in the park walking the dog, running through lines in my head, pulling the dog-eared bundle of printouts from my pocket each time I feel a little unsure. It worked to the extent that, by last night, I could quite easily do a mental run-through of all my lines in the first half of the play (with of course the odd word substituted accidentally). So my worries slipped away, and I started to look forward to tonight.

But once I got there… well, almost everyone was late, which didn’t help, all that sitting around thinking. I became more and more worried that I would dry up: I know full well that I can recall my lines when I’m unstressed, walking around and with all the time in the world, but I know equally well that a bit of pressure can be enough to induce mental blocks. I pictured myself getting a few lines in and then having to be prompted for every remaining line of the act.

I needn’t have been so concerned. For two reasons: firstly, I did fine, I only needed prompting on two very small sentences (out of perhaps 70 or 80 that I get to say in Act One). And secondly, everyone else was far worse than I was, some stumbled on almost every line. Even Will, who is directing the play and also has a fairly small part in it, went to pieces after a good start and needed a fair bit of prompting.

So that was good. What was also good was that I felt my acting, although slightly hampered by my straining to remember words, was pretty good: I even threw in a few new facial contortions or exaggerated movements. The previous rehearsal had been, I felt, pretty atrocious on my part, so I was glad to get back into the swing of it. (I just hope everyone else gets it together soon… though I’m sure they will).

And Will seemed to acknowledge this at the end. He said something along the lines of “Andy and Dan acted like comic geniuses, wonderful stuff, so at least we have a brilliant solid double-act to base everything around”.

I love it when a plan comes together! OK, next week… Act Two! (I’m a lot less well prepared for that - so far).

This entry is here for no other reason than that there are no other webpages out there (according to Google) containing the word “Gogolwhack” and, as I’m in a play by Gogol, I thought I would make one.

That’s it. Pure and simple and stupid. please don’t look for any deeper reason because there isn’t one. It’s pointless.

Redesigned the poster for the play.

Had a great weekend, went out rather more than my weekend average. Saturday night was Alex’s (Mr Starikov’s) birthday, so most of the members of Next Best Thing, plus assorted friends of Alex’s, met up in the Devonshire Cat. I’d passed the pub before, thought it looked interesting if a little Wetherspoonsish. Little did I know what surprises waited inside for me. It seems that they serve every half-decent beer in the world. They have a kind of glass-walled coldroom or somesuch next to the bar, which is just shelf after shelf of mainly Belgian bottled beers, plus they have an incredible number of beers on tap. I started off with a couple of glasses of Pauwel Kwak, bizzarely beautiful stuff which, given its 8% strength and silly tall hourglass-glasses, it would have been unwise to carry on drinking any longer - those glasses were just asking to be knocked over). Then I had some Estonian beer, 9%, plus lapped up the dregs of some gorgeous 14% stuff which Will had drunk enough of.

Having had our fill at the Cat, we moved on to the Cavendish, a loud characterless student-packed warehouse-type pub. I think I was virtually drunk enough not to notice by then anyway.

A quick pint later, and the bouncer cleanup-operation swept us back out onto the street. Diverted via the chippy on Division Street on our way to the Leadmill. I’d last been there to see Ooberman with Gill three or four years ago, but last time I’d been there for a club night must’ve been about ten years ago, in fact I think it was the night we walked back up to Crosspool and talked about whether we should have a child, before deciding to have “chips instead” (ever since Gill got pregnant, Rowan’s unofficial nickname has been “chips”).

So, anyway, The Leadmill, kinda fun, I was rather too drunk to know exactly what I was doing, but I remember making some kind of attempt at dancing, which only became anything like the real thing once a song I knew came on (Franz Ferdinand, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Nirvana… mostly showing my age). I flumped into a cab at about 2.30am and, apparently, spent the rest of the night annoying Gill with hiccoughs and burps.

Then last night… out again. First of all Will came over for an hour or so, to help with the design of the Marriage poster and flyers (see the picture on the right - check out the handsome bloke in the middle with the Johnny Wilkinson-like leg action). Then we went down to the Coben View, where they hold a Sunday night music quiz.

I’ve been to the quiz a couple of times before, the first time we thought we might even have won it but… you know how it is with pub quizzes. It always feels like you’ve done well, until it comes time to score. Well, this time was different. It helped a lot that we had Hugh (Hugh plays bass for the Jim Muir Slideshow), whose musical knowledge exceeded mine and who thankfully owns just about everything by REM (five of the questions were snippets of REM songs played on a dodgy tape player; we had to name them; Hugh scored 4/5) and also used to have some dodgy acappella Christmas EP by the Housemartins (another musical question). For my own part, I made small but significant contributions by remembering at the last possible moment what James Newell Osterberg is better known as (it’s Iggy Pop), and also at the last minute realising that “Next Jabs Exam” is an anagram of “Basement Jaxx” (it was the Xs that did it). And I knew which of the four bands mentioned (Travis) is playing The Leadmill on 11th October, mainly because I’d been at the Leadmill the previous night and still had the flyer in my pocket. Oh and, if I’m being truthful, I did help a little by working out how to get Google on my mobile phone, and discovering that the 1999 #1 album “Come on Over” was by Shania Twain (I already knew it was somebody crap, MOR and female, but I just couldn’t put a name to her).

So, we scored 27. Out of 30. Which is incredible. OK, so if I hadn’t have cheated we’d have been on 26, but even so the highest I’ve ever seen another team score there was, I think, 25. So we were blinding. And we walked away with the prize, eight beer tokens. And as from next weekn, they’ll also be giving away free tickets to the Leadmill, which will make it even more worth going along.

After my experience in hell, I also had an interesting train journey back to Sheffield.

I was on the last train, setting off at 10.25pm, and due to engineering works not expected back in Sheffield until nearly 2am. I climbed on, tried to learn lines for a bit, found it impossible because I’d already spent so long staring at them that I was line-blind, tried to read some Aristophanes, found that going straight through me as well, tried to do some more of the Next Best Thing website but found that in the two hours it took for my laptop batteries to run out I did little more than get very confused over how to embed one Dreamweaver template within another.

So I was stuck, by the time we reached Leicester, with nothing to do but stare out of the darkened window. My mind wandered back to what I’d done that day… I’d had a meeting with Portcullis, had lots of stuff to do, designing all their stationery, letterheads, setting up some magazine templates. Then I remembered the scroll Trevor wanted me to put into the logo. I wondered how I would draw one in Illustrator, decided that knowing how to draw one on paper might help. I got out my notebook and covered two pages with messy, scrawly scrolls. I ripped a piece from the bottom of the page, curled it around and stood it on the table to see how it looked. Gradually, scroll by scroll, I simplified my drawings, extracting the key elements, the platonic essence of a scrolling piece of paper.

Then I started playing with other bits of design. I’ve been increasingly unhappy with the logotype I did several months ago, two uneven lines of Bodoni, not exactly reaching out to grab you. Although I couldn’t for the life of me draw out fonts (despite the fact that I used to make such elaborately-lettered tape labels, and once fancied myself as a future comics-letterer), I did the most crude imitations and worked out an idea of how different typefaces might interact.

I was running out of inspiration, I dearly wanted to stare at some piece of magazine design to get inspiration for other aspects of layout, but I had nothing suitable on me. Or did I? There was an already-read copy of the Guardian in my bag. The thought didn’t really inspire me, the Guardian is pretty uniformly (if well) designed, and although I didn’t doubt that I could learn some lessons from a close-up inspection, I know it well enough that I had a good idea what I would see, particularly in terms of typefaces. I pulled it out anyway and… inspiration! I had the Society section, which is always weighted down with page-after-page-after-hundreds-of-pages of job ads. Job ads! A massive resource of heterogeneous designs, some good, most bad, all of them different. I spent the next hour-and-a-half examining every ad in detail, looking at the lettering used, the layout, the design elements, the use of white-space (pretty rare in a job ad where every column inch of real estate is expensive), the logos (especially the logos). Whenever I saw an idea which grabbed me or struck me as new, I made a note of it or mocked it up into my own work.

By the time I reached Sheffield I had six pages of doodles and notes. And it must have paid off, because tonight I sat down at my computer, fired up Illustrator and drew a stylized scroll, straight off. Then, within only a couple of iterations, I turned this and my previous design into a logo which, although not the most radically innovative in the world, was a huge improvement on its predecessor. It seemed to me to convey the kind of establishment conservatism that I wanted, while all hanging together pretty nicely and being quite pleasant to look at, and importantly the type works with the logo (I think) instead of against it. Every time recently that I’ve produced a logo I’ve thought to myself “my first proper logo”, but this one feels like my first proper proper logo. I’m damn pleased with it. (but would still welcome all & any comments). Here it is:

Yesterday was a long day; it started at 4.30am as I prepared to leave for London, and ended about 3am as I got back to Sheffield, answered a few emails, and then hit the sack.

Before I left London, I spent some time in Ed’s studio. At about 10pm, I was sitting slightly stoned in my this tiny (approx. 2m x 3m, with a couple of little alcoves) fashion studio, trying in vain to learn some of my lines for the play. Squeezed in amongst the studio’s various tables, desks and pieces of equipment were about half-a-dozen other people, most of them operating some type of machinery (electric drill, lathe, sander, vacuum
cleaner, handheld heat gun…). The machinery spun and screamed in time with some loud and rhythmic Kimmo Pohjonen Kluster music, while the air filled rapidly with the carcinogenic dust of leather being drilled/lathed/sanded etc. I tell you, Hieronymous Bosch didn’t know the half of it. This was the Black Hole of Aldgate.

Another day, another dead Ramone. This is turning into a Blitzkreig Bop.

This is one of the most poetic pieces of spam I’ve received (or, rather, read) in a long time:

If ballerina about play pinochle with sandwich around, then deficit over gets stinking drunk.Sometimes inside starlet feels nagging remorse, but garbage can from always dance with over dust bunny!Any ribbon can throw at ball bearing defined by, but it takes a real CEO to jersey cow near.diskette over dahlia is psychotic.When tape recorder for cheese wheel hibernates, mastadon near hockey player gets stinking drunk.Young, although somewhat soothed by cab driver beyond curse and eggplant over.

For anyone within a 5,000-mile radius of Sheffield (I think that counts you out Guy) who I didn’t email this to last night, below are some details of my upcoming performance. Oh, and for the one person whose company’s email profanity filter would not allow this piece of filth through, what I actually meant to say was “there’ll be plenty of opportunities to see me male hen things up”.

As some of you have already heard, I am making my return to the stage after an 18-year absence.

I shall be appearing (perhaps even starring) in Nikolai Gogol’s play “Marriage” at the University of Sheffield Drama Studio, from 27th to 30th October. Tickets are an astoundingly reasonable £5, or £3.50 for concessions.

The play is more than a little amusing, and will no doubt be made even funnier (in either a good or a bad way, only time will tell) by my acting. It is, in the words of our press release:

“A true comic classic � slapstick, cowardice, romance, all with the whiff of revolution in the air � it’s Bridget Jones meets Doctor Zhivago. Come in your best hat and remind yourself why being single may not be so ghastly after all…” (more blurb at the end, if you’re interested)

I play Kochkaryov, an unscrupulous character who spends the entire play cajoling, bullying, persuading, lying and generally doing anything within my power to try and bring my evil plans to fruition. In a break from my previous roles (such as “man in crowd” and “third Nazi soldier on the left”) I will actually be on stage for most of the performance, and somehow seem to have ended up with more lines than anyone else, so there’ll be plenty of opportunities to see me cock things up. Am I persuading you yet?

Gill & I shall be making our floor available to all and sundry non-Sheffield inhabitants for the duration, bring a sleeping bag or a hotel booking.

So, I’m sure you’re all dying to book tickets (if not, why not?)… here’s everything you need to know about the booking process:

• We need to know a name, telephone number, which night (27th, 28th, 29th or 30th October) and number of tickets (full price and/or concessions)
• Payment can be by cheque (made payable to ZOE ENGLISH) or by cash (on the night) - although we’d prefer you to have your tickets beforehand.
• Please provide an SAE if tickets require posting (or I can hold on to them, if you trust me not to lose them. Not much to choose between me and the Post Office, I guess).
• Tickets are £5 (and £3.50 for students, OAPs and children).
• Curtain up is at 7.30. Please arrive at least 15 minutes beforehand.
• There will be an interval where teas, coffees and cold drinks will be served. The whole thing should be over in less than two painless hours.
• Any enquiries, you can leave a message on the Next Best Ticket Line on 07981 685 131 or speak to Will or Zoe on 0114 268 7328. Or me.

Or of course you can contact me direct with your enquiries, monies, bookings, whatever. I promise not to take your money off to Rio with me <insert evil cackle here. Sorry, just getting into character>

In the meantime, if anyone’s available to help test me on my lines, it’d be much appreciated as my family prefer to “keep it a surprise”.

OK, below is the rest of the blurb that I promised you… more details appearing soon on www.nextbestthingproductions.com as soon as I pull my finger out and get the website built.

Love you all,

Dan Sumption
www.sumption.org

THE PLOT

“MARRIAGE” was first performed in December 1842. It is set in St Petersburg, where the bachelors of the city are literally falling over themselves for the hand of one Agafya Tikhonovna, the orphaned daughter of a merchant, now living with her aunt, Arina. One such bachelor is Ivan Podkolyosin, a minor civil servant. He has been agonising over marriage for some time and a few months before had employed the services of a professional matchmaker, Fyokla Ivanovna, who is also working for Agafya in the same capacity. On the day Fyokla is to introduce Agafya to Podkolyosin and the other suitors she has selected, Podkolyosin’s best friend, Kochkaryov, decides to take matters into his own hands. Already (unhappily) married � thanks to Fyolkla � he plans to introduce Podkolyosin to Agafya himself. Kochkaryov knows how indecisive and weak-minded his friend is and plans to be with him every step of the way until he is walking down that aisle. Agafya meanwhile, is a neurotic, unworldly girl in her late twenties, her anxieties hardly alleviated by her superstitious nature and her reliance on a deck of cards to tell her what to do. All Arina can do is try and persuade her to marry the nice shopkeeper Mr Starikov, but her niece will hear none of it � her violent father was merely a merchant and she’ll settle for nothing less than a gentleman. To the consternation of Arina, Agayfa has instructed Fyokla to find her a gentleman, and on this very afternoon, four turn up at her door. How can she decide? How can Podkolyosin hope to compete? Has Kochkaryov really already ordered the cake and booked a church before the potential bride and groom have actually met? Prepare for some surprises and plenty of laughs on the road to wedded bliss…

THE AUTHOR

NIKOLAI GOGOL was no romantic. Far from it. A talented comic actor in his youth he moved from the Ukraine to the then Russian capital St Petersburg to write. “Marriage” came after the play for which he is now most remembered - the satire “The Government Inspector”, a play which Gogol distanced himself from as he took against the audience laughing so much on the opening night � he’d written it as a savage social commentary, not a farce. Gogol was also one of the great short-story writers of all time and his absurd tales of everyday Russian life are still as hilarious and provocative as ever. “Marriage” was his last foray into comedy before he embarked on a new dramatic phase of his career � the unfinished novel “Dead Souls”. Originally planned as an epic triptych of stories, only the first third was ever published, yet it is still regarded as one of the most influential works of Russian fiction � inspiring such great novelists as Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Nabakov. Gogol tragically never understood his own greatness, and for the rest of his life became obsessed with religion, travelling to Rome and the Holy Land on a lonely pilgrimage and becoming increasingly distanced from the social injusticies of his motherland he’d once sought to expose. His final writings effectively disowned the work that had made his name and confused a Russian audience that had fallen for his absurdist take on their lives. He returned to a Russia he no longer understood and died horrifically aged only 43 after fatally fasting himself to skin and bone. Like so many comic geniuses before and since he was never able to grasp the true extraordinary gift he had of making people laugh.

THE COMPANY

NEXT BEST THING PRODUCTIONS was established in 1994 in Norwich. It was the brainchild of Will Bird and Richard Jones, two graduates of the University of East Anglia, who had produced a number of plays for the University Drama Society and were keen to continue their work in the theatre. Thanks to the support of a talented team of actors and backstage crew the next year saw the company put on two epic modern-dress productions at the newly completed UEA Drama Studio: “The Merchant of Venice” by William Shakespeare and “The Country Wife” by William Wycherley. Elsewhere in the city we produced an intense and claustrophobic version of Ibsen’s “The Master Builder” at the Norwich Arts Centre, and a riotous and satirical swipe at the tabloid press in a brave updating of Sheridan’s “The School for Scandal”, which pulled in the crowds at the Norwich Theatre in the Parks Festival. The company then dispersed to pursue other projects but reformed two years later with some new blood for the Summer 1997 production of Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure”. Again for the Theatre in the Parks Festival the company performed in a variety of historic settings for free. A plan to take Congreve’s “Love for Love” to the 1999 Edinburgh Fringe hit the buffers, but now the philosophy of classic plays performed by an enthusiastic cast, with flair, wit and a dash of irreverence is back, just in time for our tenth anniversary. We aim to bring to Sheffield a wide range of plays with a dynamic combination of experienced actors and promising newcomers We have auditioned people from all ages and walks of life and the result is a company of unsurpassed talent.

THE ACTOR

DAN SUMPTION is returning to the stage after an 18-year sabbatical. He was previously with Hampton Court’s Youth Action Theatre, where he performed many classic roles including “Man in Crowd”, “Third SS Officer” and “Angry Hungarian Strongman”. He relocated to Sheffield from London with his wife and two daughters five years ago, a move which he claims was well worthwhile, even taking into account the hills. He spends most of his time building websites in a dark office in his basement, and is fortunate to have his dog, Gizmo the lurcher, on hand to remind him to come up for air.