Hitchcock’s of course, as I recall, and it was the blood on their faces in glorious 1960’s Technicolor which ran down their cheeks in carmen red. Despite the pecking ferocity of the seagull beaks which rips the bodies to pieces, it was the intelligence of the crows sitting together on the telephone wires which still terrifies me more. A swoop, the black shadow of a beating wing, our eyes are gone in an instant. And after that…
…cast adrift and far from our familiar landmarks and safety zones, my crew and I have landed up for the next two weeks in an enormous country house of Gormenghast proportions, over whose front door – if only I could find it, so far I have been unable to escape the west wing, but I have heard it told – a flashing neon sign in pinks and greens with the title “Diva Club” is to be found.
We are on Circe’s Isle I think, the gulls are circling ominously overhead, and the dark enchantress who rules here is an ominous quasi-St Cecilia in black. Officially, she is in charge of ‘costumes’, and she has now turned our entire crew into pigs. We run about on all fours, males and females squealing and grunting all together, and trotters tapping the floor as if marking out a musical, time out of time, tempo. I am of course also transformed myself but incompletely compared to the others, being unable even in the presence of the enchantress to sing in tune, so that my voice appears to belong to another kind of hybrid being whose nature is unknown…
…I am become a man bewitched by this carmen red, and sometimes we are transported to Cyprus, and sometimes to the dungeons of San Angelo in Rome. Time has ceased to have meaning here, as we feast on the sumptuous foods provided for us, and fill our eyes with delightful sounds and heavenly voices. I am become a man bewitched and yet not entirely unknowing, realizing that tomorrow or tomorrow we shall again awake in some foul smelling pigsty.
After all it IS still only Monday isn’t it?…