katherine gregor | katherine gregor
Aug.26.2012
A couple of years ago, my colleagues and I were watching BBC News 24 during our lunch break. There was a report about the Chilean miners trapped underground for several weeks. Finally rescued, the men were telling the interviewer about the bond of solidarity that had developed...
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Aug.19.2012
It was Michael who first taught me the difference between soundtrack and cast recording. “Soundtracks are from films, darling,” he said, pushing up his glasses, his mellow Irish accent softening a vague distaste for my ignorance, “and cast recordings are from stage shows.”
I...
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Aug.15.2012
As some of you may already know, I write a Sunday blog – both on WordPress and here, at The Red Room.
Last Sunday evening, I received an e-mail from one of the editors at WordPress, informing me that my latest post The Delight of Hand Writing had been selected for the Freshly...
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Aug.12.2012
I am sitting on a wooden bench, by the red-brick wall of a small Elizabethan palace. I am leaning against the arm-rest. My legs, stretched out before me, take up two thirds of the seat, and my bare toes are wriggling with the pleasure of sunshine. Behind the bench, a few...
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Aug.05.2012
I was seven years old and auditioning to be the voice of the Russian commercial for an Italian chocolate spread. The director was desperately trying to drag more enthusiasm out of me. “Do you really, really like this chocolate spread?”
Blood out of a stone. I repeated, in the...
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Jul.29.2012
Take a lyre. Take a harp. Both string instruments, right? Well, not
just string instruments. The lyre and the harp have been heroines of the music stage since the dawn of times. Since Orpheus first charmed his way in and out of hell. The lyre and the...
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Jul.22.2012
A ten year-old Italian boy called Federico went to the Tate Modern with his mother. When he saw Damian Hirst’s formaldehyde-pickled cows, he said, “That’s cruel. Why didn’t they allow this calf to grow up and have calves of its own?”
I was told about this occurrence over dinner, that...
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Jul.15.2012
My Armenian grandmother, Yekaterina Gregorian, passed away last March, at the age of one hundred. Several years ago, when, blind and almost deaf (but her mind as sharp as a needle), she was moved from my mother’s to a nursing home, I raided her cupboards and drawers, grabbing anything...
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Jul.08.2012
Ask me if I like London.
No, I don’t, would be my frequent answer.
Architecturally, I don’t think it’s beautiful. Not as ugly as some other places (no names mentioned) but not a city where you can walk down the streets and feast your eyes on one beautiful building after another...
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Jul.01.2012
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a grey wolf ran up to him. “What is the matter, Tzarevitch Ivan?” asked the wolf. “Why so downhearted?”
“Grey wolf, I have lost my trusted steed.”
“It is I who ate your steed... And now I am sad for you. Tell me, why are you so far from home and...
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