Breakfasting with Barty

There is a very exciting part of my life concerning Martin M Bartelt. Is it hearing about his years working alongside Pina Bausch, I hear you cry? Or when he talks about touring his dance shows all over the world? ....Maybe. Yeah, well, no, no it's not. It's not that. By far the most exciting part of my time with Bartelt is finding myself on the cusp of breakfasting with him and wondering how on earth it will go.
There is no doubt we have both worked hard with this show, but I feel my still being on the planet, as well as the show itself, of course, to be a collaboration. From my family's acceptance that I was going to make it in the first place, to the endless hospitality we have been offered over the years, via free rehearsal spaces and that house in France where we did the major edit of the show back in 2009. Oh, that house in France. It was in the Frenchest of towns, small, but with two cafes and various independent stores. And French people largely ignoring us. And the town hall where there was a jumble sale....
Two cafes though, two. Possibly the world's most distressing dilemma: where should Barty breakfast? And I'm not even going to go into the fact that it's possible that neither of them will be in the sun at the requisite breakfasting hour.
Bartelt himself is a work of all-knowing, brilliantly idiotic, behaviours, travelling around in the body of a broken lizard with the mentality of a five-year-old or a zen master, depending on... well, mostly depending on the quality of any given day's breakfast. Get it wrong and he will suffer. And when I say he will suffer, I of course, mean I will suffer.
In this little French town we hit the cafe-elect, sometimes together, sometimes apart, both sleeping until we needed to, both working late to suit Bartelt's working hours. He is, after all, the one in constant pain who mostly cannot taste or smell anything, though he maintains he can tell the quality of coffee from its texture. I choose to believe this, it would be to my detriment not to. And he's the one who had had his heart valve replaced just two months previously. In fact, let's add some collaborators to that list of those who have got us here: Jacques and Jean who have nursed this creature, my collaborator, back to... existence, after his operation to replace his heart valve, and the bonus death-on-the-operating table that he got for free as part of the experience. He has a sophisticated heart monitor with him which has to be taken out, together with his heart and astonished body, for a walk of exactly the right kind every day. We talk work as we walk, and life, and about his poor, poor heart, so overwrought that the doctors wondered how he was alive at all. He is, my friends, an enigma wrapped up in a corpus unsound, engulfed every day by a tidal wave of irrational emotion concerning breakfast.
And so it is one day that we find ourselves breakfasting, sharing thoughts about how he is a connoisseur of the coffee with several sugars and the pain au chocolate and I am, essentially, a food disposal unit. I am desperately unrefined. He feeds my his croissant crumbs when he has finished doing his thang - I'm a sucker for Crispy Bits. Obviously I have already had my own croissant, or similar: not my usual breakfast choice, but when with Barty I find I often do as Barty does.
If this were a business consultation we would be bottoming out the problem of why breakfast affects him so much, and it seems to be that he feels that if it goes well, everything will go well, and if not, then not only will it be a bad day, but everything will be a disaster. And it is here, at this moment, outside this French cafe that we discover The Truth: a good chocolate croissant doth not make a good day and a bad cup of coffee doth not a day ruin. We laugh like drains. And we quote ourselves endlessly. I'm sure we exclude many people over the subsequent years and breakfasts with our clever cleverness, but, we have both to admit, we are tremendously funny.
Back in South Africa it is morning, early morning for Bartelt - anything before 9am being the early hours. Outside our room there are horses in the morning mist. It is cold and, what is more, it is time to leave for breakfast. Following breakfast we will have 350 schools students around us for two whole days: I don't know about Bartelt, but I am feeling for our poor chosen-cafe owners - they have no idea of the pressure on them, but they really are going to have to deliver.

Bartelt and me: the most unwanted

Thursday 11 April 2013

I find my way from my place to Martin's couch-surfing haven to to the house of the fellow we are driving to the Grahamstown Foundation KwaZulu-Natal Schools Festival all by myself without getting lost once. I'm hoping I've been rewired in the night, but I realise it's just a stroke of luck, like all those other strokes of luck, some good some bad. I have not had a knock on the head and unearthed the ability to find my way, so I should stop hoping that's the case as it will inevitably lead to my heading off, confidently, in the not too distant future towards a potentially far too distant point in the wrong direction.
What is even more remarkable is that I have already been for breakfast with a friend and colleague of Kate's - South Africans begin their day at leat an hour earlier than the average Brit. And likewise Brits who are in South Africa. This woman came to the show, I'm a big fan of her work, and it turns out she and Kate knew each other a long time. She's lovely to me.

We eat in a cafe near where Kate used to live, full of memories of those terrible two weeks after her murder, when we would come here, if we went anywhere. We talk about all sorts of things, I unburden myself of the same stories of frustration, fear and despair which thinking back on the extra pain the BBC put us through always brings me, and she listens, seemingly not surprised. When we come to say goodbye I want to tell her what it means to me that we have met and talked... but that would be ridiculous. It means a disproportionate amount to me: I am absurd. Why does it matter so much to me? If I told her she'd probably run a mile. We embrace, say goodbye and promise we will stay in touch. As I go to my car I am losing Kate again, I want to find her through this woman, through any woman, frankly, through any person, through an object or an experience, I don't care what and I don't care what I have to do to get it. I would give everything up to get her back. I am going down that rabbit hole again and I have to grip hard to the wheel of the hire car as I go in search of Bartelt in the hope of finding some space in my racing brain.
Bartelt and I, reunited, and our passenger are looking at at least five hours on the road. We do engage our passenger in some chat, but pretty soon he's asleep while we talk on. Bartelt listens patiently to my bizarre, wonderful, exciting, draining, precious start to the day. (Oh, but being with me requires endless patience.) Bartelt and I will probably talk forever about everything and never come to the end. I suppose that's one of the reasons we are so close - I have an endless curiosity about him, his life, how he functions, his fears, hopes, mistakes, doubts, ridiculous certainties (these are legion) and abject terrors (these are legion plus one). And, miraculously, he is endlessly interested in me, my badly formed opinions, built on my lamentable memory, my lamentable memory itself, my anger, my copious stories of loss and loneliness and self-pity, my friends, family, foes and extraordinary former bosses. And my lamentable memory. He laughs at my jokes, defends my behaviour and tells me I am, essentially, worth it. As I often say to him, thanks be to lady luck that we are not attracted to one another.... we would have been married and divorced a few times by now.
Given how well we get on we are rather mystified that the other is single..... well, it's that bit harder for Martin to meet a man than it is for me due to sheer numbers, but one of our regular conversations is how are we so unwantable? (I refer you to the accompanying photos for what is at least part of the answer, surely.)
It is autumn in South Africa, yes, but nothing can justify the stark closing in of the weather as we head south. By the time we reach our destination we have been through wind, rain, fog and, it looks like,.... Wales. Of course it looks like Wales. As I have mentioned before, in the end everything looks like Wales. I could have said it looked like Ecuador, but, in fact, lots of Ecuador simply looks like Wales and there's an end to it.
The school has a very friendlyly staffed gate at which we stop and then we are welcomed onto the hallowed turf.  It's quite a place - like a particular kind of public/private school in the UK with which I am familiar yet, like a dream, this one has been styled by a 17th century Dutch architect. It's a dream - it's so green and schooly and European, even down to the glass fronted wooden cabinets that house the sports teams, play castings, church reading rota. The sight of these cabinets brings me to a lurching halt. So much of my childhood was taken up by looking into them, scouring them for a particular set of dread information that I feel nauseous just looking at them: exam results, violin lesson rotas, excursion information. Excursions. Urgh.
We head off to find our contact and do our tech. Our travelling companion finds his team and quickly we are in a huge, fabulous theatre, doing our little tech. There seem to be a few stressed performers? directors? around, but we have a laugh with the lovely technician and then spend some time getting to know Ingrid who runs the Schools Festivals, all nine of them, for the Grahamstown Foundation. Then there's Sheryl, the person who runs the venue for the school, and Jocelyn, the English/drama teacher. Three mighty, excellent women, plus the volunteers - what joy - and we haven't even met the school students who are attending the Festival yet - we will do that tomorrow when Sometimes I Laugh Like My Sister completes is 2013 South African Tour by being the opening show at the Grahamstown Foundation KZN Schools Festival. On my non-existent life ambitions list I quickly write down opening a massive schools festival and cross it off, like you do when you complete the hoovering and find you'd never put it on your to-do list in the first place.
Bartelt and I are staying off campus, so we get some advice about where to eat in the very small town and go to find our B&B and it looks as good as it does on the website: a free-standing building, beautifully fitted out, with a wall of books to boot. We spend some time in bed because we are COLD. It is freezing. Bartelt, my pet lizard, is not coping well with this sudden change in his fortunes. The heat relieves the constant pain he is in and this damp cold does not bode well. Our hosts have given us some wine, so we have a bit, take pictures of ourselves with the festival programme and then head for a restaurant which is strangely Czech or Polish or similar. The food is great, the welcome is warm and they slap up a meal the like of which we believe a doctor would want for us. I am full of nervous anticipation as we slip into our electric-blanketed beds: tomorrow's audience will be 350-or-so 15-year-olds. What on earth will they make of it? And how can I possibly be nervous again, after 102 shows? I reflect on the fact that I am, maybe, more nervous about the place we think we have found for breakfast in the morning: what if Bartelt doesn't like it? What with the terrible weather, tomorrow's breakfast could make or break these last few days. I turn my light out and dream fitfully of vengeful fried bread humanoids.