My latest project is to stage a series of tableaux vivants. These will take place daily over the coming week. Each one will last for a duration of no more than one minute, at a push, at various locations in the hustle and bustle of the London streets, what Keith Pratt termed “the hurly-burly of the urban conurbation”, and each one will be a vivid, static, solo re-enactment of a significant historical event. I have thus far chosen six subjects:
The death of Socrates
The sinking of the Lusitania
The Punic Wars
The relief of Mafeking
The second resignation of David Blunkett
My first choc-ice
I would be grateful to readers for suggestions for the seventh and final tableau vivant, which it is intended will outshine the other six in both vividness and historical significance.
Expulsion of Lucifer from Heaven
Invention of the wheel
Birth of Baby Cambridge
Stout Cortez with eagle eyes/wild surmise, staring at the Pacific
Choc ice no. 2
Porpoises rescue Dick Van Dyke
The destruction by fire of Von Kempelen’s mechanical Turk
Emerson, Lake and Palmer release “Pictures at an Exhibition”
Pliny the Elder writes about soil for the first time
The Arduino Due is released, based on the Atmel SAM3X8E ARM Cortex-M3 CPU, the first Arduino board based on a 32-bit ARM core microcontroller
The US constitution is replaced in its entirety by a new interpretation of the lyrics from Pete Sinfield’s “Still”
Choc ice no. 7
Asclepius gets annoyed wondering when his male chicken will arrive
Carl Sagan gets annoyed with Plato
Dave Cranmer wonders if there’s really a hyphen in choc-ice
Frank Key stays up past his bedtime moderating Hooting Yard comments
Dorothy Ashby’s albums are all re-written for the laser harp
A giant cyborg constructed by ex-members of The Incredible String Band delivers an important parcel to Haemaglobin Towers
Leonard Nimoy realises his name is an anagram of “I’m only a drone”
Dave Cranmer realises he has work in the morning and is in trouble from various different sources…
Pythagoras hesitating at the edge of the bean field.