Owain stayed with us until lunchtime, then I drove him to Grangetown to call on a friend for a socially distanced chat over the fence, on his way to the station. He was back home in Bristol just after half past three, having returned thankfully on an almost empty train - quiet a relief for us to know that.
We went out for a brisk walk in chilly damp air around the park together after a post-lunch siesta, it was busy with people socialising at a safe distance, if not walking their dogs or jogging. I seem to need a lot of sleep at the moment. On returning, a bout of curiosity prompted me to potter around with my HP Windows desktop PC to see if I could access its BIOS settings and change the boot order, to allow me to run a Linuz Mint live distro. It was a matter of trial and error, as tracking down which BIOS version applies to this device, and how to access it, is less onerous than googling it when you don't have that info to hand.
I found out what I needed to know, changed the settings, booted Linux Mint without a hitch, and was astonished how fast it loaded and what a crisp screen display it gave me. Now, shall I convert it to a dual boot system, or decant my data make a fresh start? The device is a 2005 Core-i3, the youngest I've ever tried Linux with, and the operating system doesn't get in the way of performance or annoying update ritual like Windows. Trouble is, if I abolish Windows I'll have no idea how to help others if something goes wrong and they ask my help.
In the evening we watched a play based on Charlotte Bronte's novel 'Jayne Eyre' on the Sky Arts channel. It was a National Theatre co-production with Bristol Old Vic, superbly done with minimal staging and powerful acting, laced with humour, showcasing uncompromising integrity of its heroin, reflecting the emergence of feminist thinking in the early nineteenth century. It was nearly four hours long, but well worth a late bed-time. I'd forgotten just how inspiring live theatre is, and how it leaves freedom for the imagination to work.
We've become opera buffs over the past twenty five years, and rarely go out to watch a play. Nowadays, we watch movies, probably far too many, and in many if not most of them, too little is left for the imagination. Too much is inevitably mediated by the film director's perspective, and reliance on real life film locations. If a setting has symbolic significance in terms of the story-line, it may not necessarily add value to the plot. In the past few years we've had movie series in which the the clothing or car driven by the heroine has evoked as much comment as the actor and narrative. Authentic portrayal of period pieces is much praised, until someone spots and comments on an anachronism. Theatre, opera and ballet use open symbolism and settings artistically to stimulate memory and free the imagination.
Funnily enough, what I found superb about this live audience production was the camera work which drew you right into the stage in a natural way without being intrusive, and made the choreography visible, and there's much movement by the cast on two level stage with ladders. A prime example of the powerful use of symbolic stage sets was in Matthew Bourne's masterpiece ballet production of 'The Red Shoes' on Christmas night. It supported the narrative without imposing itself on the performance. Owain a vocational 'vinylist' is fond of pointing out how many great record albums since the 1950s featured cover designs of artistic merit, inseparable from the content, and there's been a renaissance of this kind of art in the techno scene of late. Fascinating.
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