Stories in your ears

This morning I discovered that the trilogy of stories I wrote for BBC Radio 4 in 2011 - Portrait - is now available online, on AudioGO and on iTunes.

This came as a complete surprise to me - the BBC hadn't notified me they were making my work commercially available.

At first I was indignant that they'd not asked my permission or had the courtesy to inform me of their action.

Then I was really glad that the stories were out there and could be heard (because I think they're good stories, and good readings).

Then (quite possibly because I was doing all this before breakfast) I became irritable in an all-round writery fashion... so I dug out the original contract (over which there had been a lot of tricky negotiation, in which I was very usefully advised by the Society of Authors) and inched through the complex clauses I'd forgotten about since signing it, namely the rights to commercial usage.

Ah. Yes, it was in there, but written in language that hadn't stuck in the crevices of my mind. And yes, some miniscule percentage of the original fee will trickle my way in the fullness of time. I intend to keep my eye on that.

So they are legitimately available, and I'm relieved and glad and far less irritable. I still think they could and should have alerted me!

Below is the original BBC R4 blurb about the stories themselves -  they're a sequence which builds to form a whole, much like painting a portrait in stages...

If you listen, I hope you'll enjoy them.

Download them for 99p each

PORTRAIT: A Triptych - 3 stories looking at the significance of a portrait. 
First broadcast August 9th, 10th, 11th, 2011 - produced by Sarah Langan at BBC Bristol.

1-The Painter's Story, read by Burn Gorman - Tom meets Nic at an arthouse cinema. She's out of his league, but he throws her a line about wanting to paint her, and one day she turns up at his studio and agrees to sit for him. By the time the canvas is finished, Tom realises she means more to him than just a female form he can observe.

2-The Model's Story, read by Federay Holmes - Nic wakes up in a hospital; she's battered and bruised, and as memory begins to return, her husband turns up. But is he there to console her, and will she go home with him? And what happened about the portrait of her painted by Tom?

3-The Voyeur's Story, read by Bill Paterson - screenwriter Andrew meets painter Tom on the set of a detective series, for which Tom has supplied the original artwork in a story about revenge. What's the real story behind the canvases, in particular the beautiful nude?

Things I used to be

photo by John Brown

Ages ago I promised someone that I'd find and post some photos of my 'musical career' - that sounded quite grand, and it really wasn't, though I did have a song-wot-I-wrote* played by John Peel, and then 'playlisted' by Radio Forth.

I began doing comedy in the early 1980s with an Edinburgh-based Feminist Theatre company called Mother Hen (don't blame me, I didn't name it!). One year (date eludes me) we called ourselves Polly & The Phones (groan) and took on the offer of a two week run at Theatre Workshop during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.  Here's a pic of me being Deeply & Seriously Feminist.

School For Clowns/TheatreWorkshop

I was also performing in a production of Ken Campbell's School For Clowns in the mornings (an hour's solid frolicking - phew - never been fitter) during the course of which, on the first performance, I managed to break my own finger by sitting on it (I was supposed to pop a balloon, and it wouldn't always pop, so...). Ouch. Art-injury.

(I'm the naughty clown on the bottom right, tootling a tootler.)
 
Anyway - in the evening shows I did sketches, did a monologue (as another of my alter egos, Mrs McGillicuddy, who talked a lot about the quality and price of groceries) and, more to the point of this rambling story, performed a rap called 'Classic Tweeds' (*with the help of music-maestro Lenny Love, the single was sent to the John Peel show and indeed he did play it) with the house-band (eek, we had a drummer and guitarist who were not women, though the bass player was).

Poppy Newton Stewart/ Derek Reid

The rap consisted of me, as yet another character: Poppy Newton-Stewart. She spoke in a posh voice, and in rhyme, about the marriage of Charles & Di, of jolly times skiing in Gstaad, and of the dreadful ignominy of having to walk home in a ball gown. I wrote this half a year at least before Tracey Ullman did her 'Yah' sketches on A Kick Up The Eighties. Tough, when someone famous gets there first.

We recorded Classic Tweeds and a couple of rather dirge-like you-broke-my-heart songs in a tiny studio in Penicuik. I wasn't involved in the Grand Plan of selling the resulting vinyl object at the door of the theatre; and unfortunately those who were responsible (financially, too, so I have no gripe really) on that side of it didn't know anything about the music business, or about selling. I may still have a few copies - in their hideous yellow paper sleeves - up in my attic, but I wouldn't care too deeply if it was never seen or heard of again.

Except that, dammit, the lyrics were funny, and it's useful to remember where one started liking things one writes, and attempting to regain the sense of play of early times.

Around that time I'd also begun singing a capella with two other women. We called ourselves The Midget Gems, at my suggestion, because we were all under 5ft 3, and it was a kind of comic reference to all those Motown-ish girl-groups with more glamorous names like The Supremes, or - well - The Pips - whilst also being the name of teeny little iced biscuits mostly popular with grannies.

Midget Gems/GinnieAtkinson

The Midget Gems entire act was to croon songs from the '40s, '50's '60s & sometimes later, adapted to emphasise the stupidity and sexism of their lyrics; so, we'd speed things up or insert ridiculous harmonies, make our voices very deep or very squeaky, and generally camp around.

Songs included Cliff Richard's nauseating 'Living Doll', 'I'd Like To Get You On A Slow Boat To China', 'Bye-bye, Blackbird', 'Let's get Together, Yeah Yeah Yeah'- ah, can't now remember what else, but I really enjoyed listening to old '45s on my red Dansette, transcribing the words, working out ways to make them funnier. 

Here we are 'rehearsing' for the camera, c. 1985. I'm on the right, with the punk haircut, having my dress unzipped by Myra McFadyen who is being fawned over by Grace Kirby.

We would come on stage wearing sunglasses, big 1950s duster-coats, stilettos, fishnet tights (apart from Myra, who didn't dress 'femme', so she went for a more 'If Sammy Davis Jr hailed from Winchburgh' look). After a couple of songs we'd take off the coats and sing a few more; after that we'd take off our shiny little dresses to reveal 1940s swimsuits. One night we shared the stage (as they say) with The Proclaimers (who got booed quite heartily) and Billy Bragg (who suggested we might tour with him as a support act. My fellow Gems didn't want to. Regrets, yes, I've had a few...  *sob*)

Hang on, you're saying. Swimsuits? SWIMSUITS? Yes. Feminists, having it both ways... happy days.

NB - the costumes all came from my years of trawling jumble sales and charity shops. I still have some of these items up in the famous attic.

 End of part 1

Olympia and her sisters

Urbino Venus ~ Titian ~ Uffizi, Florence

Further to my previous post, I re-read my own short story 'Olympia' about Manet's painting 'Olympia' to remind myself of how I'd done it.

I already knew, when I started writing, what I wanted to say about it, knew at least that it would have to incorporate or hint at the facts of the artist's life; his studio practice, the model herself, the clothes and language and manners of the era. I read a little Zola to tune my ear to the tone I wanted for the narration, and read one of those Eyewitness Guides which looked in some detail at the paints he used, the textures of canvas, the period during which he was painting this particular work. It helped me to realise how much Manet (like many artists) was borrowing from extant images, and how in this instance he was re-intepreting a classical Venus, and deliberately setting out to alter the effect of a female nude on the sensibilities of the viewer. (That was stuff I thought I knew already, but it helps to have a firm foundation on which to build a fiction, especially when writing about so famous a work of art.)

Because the story is narrated neither by the artist nor the model, I had to find a way to inform the less-informed listener (or reader) a little, without spelling it out so that the actual narrator (the studio cat) sounded intelligent, and of his time, but wasn't giving a lecture. Tricky. Here's one para of the story, to give a flavour of the result:

"Some years earlier [Manet] had painted a study of the Urbino Venus by Titian, and this he hunted out from an old portfolio, and studied as the basis for his composition. At first, he directed Victorine to lie with her left hand on her knee, the near leg drawn up, the fingers of her right hand toying with a twist of hair. But after one drawing, it was clear that this pose did not altogether please him. He tugged at his moustaches, scratched a brush through his beard, paced the room, stopping before the Titian copy. There, the Florentine courtesan lies languid on crumpled sheets with her head turned in coy invitation, a bunch of flowers dangles casually from her right hand, while her left, at the meeting of her thighs, alludes to the source of her power. At her feet lies curled a sleeping spaniel and, beyond, two serving women occupy themselves with items of clothing in a pillared hall."

If you'd like to read the rest of the story, it's in Furthermore

p.s. - I like these two paintings which also play with the notion of the classical Venus. Manet was himself influenced (as seen in his portrait of Zola) by Japanese art, so it's rather pleasing that a later Japanese artist was sufficiently influenced by Manet to attempt an Olympia, in a way which brings the two distinct styles into one painting. Of the Cezanne, I just love the playfulness, the dream effect of that plump woman on her cloud, and the nods to Titian again with the maid, the flower arrangements and the attentive dog, and the upended top hat casting its shadow on the couch.

Nu a la toile de Jouy, 1922 ~ Foujita

Une Moderne Olympia ~ Paul Cezanne (Musee d'Orsay, Paris)