Drama

The last week has been one of drama. Admittedly, not mine, but rather I have watched others' dramas unfold before me on London stages.

First up was Life is a Dream, with Dominique West, which G and I saw at the Donmar. It was excellent and has received glowing reviews from people whose tastes are far more credible and reliable than mine. The Donmar is a tiny theatre in the West End and is one of our favourites. It's a not-for-profit theatre with seating for only 250 people. The seating is set around a small stage, and no matter where you are seated, you are close enough to the actors to be able to see every drop of sweat fall from their brows. The Donmar also gets excellent plays with terrific actors on its stage and the tickets are well-priced. The downside, of course, is that for these reasons it is a very popular theatre and you have to be on the telephone queue for tickets for shows the very minute the telephone lines open. Getting on that telephone queue is one of the few things that can make me get up early in the mornings, and so G and I are often fortunate to see plays at the Donmar.

One of the things that never ceases to entertain me about the Donmar is the sheer Englishness of its audience. No matter how amazing a play or actor, you will never, at the end of a show, hear a whoop, over-enthusiastic applause or see someone give the cast a standing ovation. The applause is always moderate and controlled, as is the audience. The last play we saw before Life is a Dream (a Streetcar Named Desire) had Jude Law in the audience, just four or so seats to the left of us. It was obvious from the ever-so-slightly raised eyebrows that the entire audience recognised Mr Law, but no one did anything to draw his attention or that might indicate to Mr Law that he had been noticed. This sort of behaviour is in stark contrast to the audiences of the big musicals, which are mostly comprised of tourists. From my experience (gained when I first arrived in London - now I avoid musicals like a plague) you can usually hear and feel the emotive nature of the musical audience the moment you take your seat. Seemingly each performance, no matter how appalling, is treated with whoops, whistles and standing ovations. This is particularly so for those musicals containing a "star". No matter how wooden an actor's acting or monotonous their monologues, if they have graced the cover of Hello! magazine, the audience seems to applaud and shout for them at the end of each show with rapturous delight. Were Mr Law to be spotted amongst such an audience I suspect he would soon find himself signing the body parts of various strange females from around the world. Although, judging from recent media reports, he doesn't seem adverse to fondling strange females' body parts.

Moving on from the Donmar, the other play I saw last week was Speaking in Tongues (better known as the play that was turned into the movie Lantana). Sadly, G decided he had had enough thespian delights for the week, and so declined an invitation to attend this with C and me. He missed out! It was excellent, especially for the price paid for the tickets. Taking advantage of the recession deals, for £20 each C and I had dinner and saw the show. Our cheap "restricted view" seats were upgraded to stalls and so we got to see all of the stage rather than, as we had been expecting, simply half an actor and a pillar.

Having sated my desire for theatre, I will be having a bit of a break now, as G and I head off to Perth tonight. Expect the blog to be silent for the next couple of weeks - with any luck, I will be having so much fun that I simply won't have an opportunity to update it!

Things I've learned from the news

The last week has been a rather dull one; we finally had bookshelves erected in the sitting room, reorganised the house and started preparing ourselves for our trip to Australia next week. To sustain myself during this uncharacteristic period of domesticity, I have therefore been reading every paper online, from cover to cover (so to speak). And it is amazing how much you can learn from the newspapers.

This week, I've learned that men should always marry smart women and grow moustaches. Men do not care about looking good when they are in a relationship unless, of course, they are having an affair. Meanwhile, while all women want to eat cake, they should not delude themselves into thinking they can burn off those calories with a bit of exercise.

I've learned that the best way to irritate the clergy is to request they play Tina Turner at your funeral. On the topic of celebrities, some people will seemingly do anything for fame, even committing crimes to get on the news. However, we need not worry, because we have new supercops in the form of leeches. But if the current state of the world does depresses us, we should not expect to be able to take refuge in children's books. We can instead cheer ourselves up by peeking in on the world of fashion, a world that is very hard to take seriously.

Why I still hate the Daily Mail

This article sums it up better than I can. I am, of course, referring to the horrible, homophobic, hateful bucket of bile served up by Jan Moir.

The only good aspect of this saga has been that it appears I was not alone in feeling repulsed by this material. It's good to see that people stand up against this nonsense.

some friends are bad

Last night G and I went to see Willy Mason at St Giles-in-the-fields. St Giles is a circa 18th century church, and so a very atmospheric venue suited to Willy's acoustic-style music.

It was a terrific gig. Actually, I should qualify that statement and say that it was almost a terrific gig. The detracting feature was Willy forcing us all to listen to what must be a friend/relative/drug creditor sing. I say that she must have had such a relationship to Willy because, quite frankly, if she did not there is no way I can believe he would subjected his audience to listening to her sing. Imagine the worst X-Factor contender you have ever heard and you'll be close to picturing this woman. Her music was terrible. I believe it was intended to be folksy, but could most kindly be described as spoken poetry, it was so flat and lifeless. The lyrics were no better. One painfully long song was to the effect: "I am a foal. A little horse, running on the field. I have a master." The song went on for some time, describing the little "pretty" foal. By the end some audience members were loudly booing. I'm also sure I heard a "you suck" shouted from the back row.

All of this served as a rather painful (for my ears) reminder: being kind is not always a good thing. Particularly if it means you agree to friends' requests to sing, even when they are manifestly unsuited to doing so.

Oh, and for those masochists out there, you can hear Willy's friend here.

It's easy to be racist

The news in London has been dominated of late with stories of racism. One of those stories has come from Australia, with the rather surprising decision of the producers of Hey Hey it's Saturday to have performers on its Red Faces segment "black up". The other story has involved a reference by a Strictly Dancing contestant to a newly spray-tanned dancer looking like a "Paki". Both incidents have been defended (with varying degrees of success) as simply harmless jokes, with no racism intended.

Both incidents were, in my opinion, a result of some serious lapses in judgment. I do like an excuse to be judgmental and feel morally superior. Therefore, I tend to tut and shake my head with glee when I hear of the lapses of judgment of others. However, unfortunately, I have had to avoid the moral opprobrium I would typically display on reading these recent stories of racism. This is because I too have been guilty in the past of being a racist.

The first arguably racist display of mine was in 2004. G and I had bought our first home, a flat in the newly redeveloped East Perth. That part of East Perth used to be an inner-city semi-industrial area. The only people who lived there then made their beds in the doorways of the warehouses or, depending on how much they had drunk that night, on the floor. All that changed when the developers' bulldozers moved in, and turned the warehouses into smart apartments and manicured parks.

Being successful young lawyers (or rather, having just finished law degrees and so being rather too confident in our own abilities), G and I decided to execute the property purchase ourselves, and so duly found ourselves at the Land Titles Registry Office. I had six months more experience in law than G and so, quite naturally, took the lead in this whole process. I therefore dealt with the friendly Land Titles man behind the counter.

"Hmm, East Perth" he said, looking at my Title Deed. "That area's pretty smart now. But it used to be full of Coons. They did a good job getting rid of all those Coons. You don't see any of them there now."

This was, I confess, the first time I heard the term "coons". I therefore immediately assumed the man to be referring to a small (and possibly dangerous) marsupial. Accordingly I nodded approvingly and, not wanting to admit I had no idea what he was talking about, agreed it was good the Coons had gone. It was only when I walked out of the office that I noticed G standing, agog, next to me. G then kindly explained that by "coons" the man had been referring to Aboriginals.

The second incident of my racism was this year on a bus. G and I were travelling to London from Oxford. I heard the noise of a group of men in front of me, breaking the cardinal rule of English public transport and having a very loud conversation across the bus isle. I couldn't see these men but I could hear their conversation, punctuated by numerous "oohs" and "uhs". I turned to G and said (rather too loudly) that the men sounded like a group of monkeys. Again I saw G's agog expression, as G explained that (unknown to me) the men were of apparently Indian descent and that (also unknown to me) to call them monkeys was extremely racist.

I am not the only person to have been caught out being inadvertently racist. When I relayed the above story to my work colleagues the following day (no doubt in breach of our anti-racism work policy), I discovered that everyone had their own story of accidental racism. Perhaps the best was the story of a work supervisor who, being a bit of a fashionista, regularly used the expression "it's the new black!" when referring to anything about which she was fond. When trying to praise a new trainee, she told a group of people that "she's the new black!". As it happened, the trainee was, in fact, black. Someone in the group took offence to this description and the supervisor was promptly sent off on a equality training course.

Real racism is never funny. But knowing that I too have been guilty of it, despite having good intentions, I am going to withhold my judgment on the latest incidents.

Death to the Pixies

When I was in primary school I was an avid watcher of movies like Pretty in Pink, 16 Candles and, later, Beverly Hills 90210. Like most tweens I laboured under the misapprehension that when I was a teenager, my life would be as exciting, my skin as clear and clothing as beautiful as the actors I was watching. No one told me, back then, that the actors playing teens were in fact in their 30s because, quite frankly, teenagers are, on the whole, an unattractive group. Most teens are beset by acne, an odd body odour, mood swings and have more metal in their mouths than Mr T had on his body. When I finally became a teen and discovered these rude truths, I felt justifiably angry and robbed of a life about which I had dreamed. Like most teens, I then retreated to my room to listen to music and complain about "the man", not to return for a few years. During those years of living in my cave, I discovered the Pixies. With the same passion with which I hated "the man" I loved the Pixies. I spent hours sitting in my room, listening to their acclaimed 1989 album, Doolittle, and singing along to every song, finding meaning in every word. It didn't matter that the Pixies formed in 1986, when I was only 5 years old. Nor did it matter that they disbanded in 1993, when I was 12, and so about the time I started listening to their albums. It just made my passion all the greater, knowing that the Pixies were both physically (being a Boston band) and temporally out of my reach.

In short, the passion with which I loved the Pixies was that passion that only a teenager has. The overwhelming, intoxicating and almost painful sort of passion that seems to dissipate from your body the day you can legally drink alcohol. While I am now passionate about such important things as a 10 course degustation with matching wines, it is unlikely to bring me to tears the way the pixies did. Or at least, the tears are more likely to have to do with the 10 glasses of wine than any overwhelming passion for the wine or food.

I still love the Pixies. Part of that is the music and part of it is the nostalgia - the moment I hear a Pixies song, it brings back waves of memory of the passion I had for the band as a teenager. I was therefore more than a little excited when I heard the Pixies were reforming in celebration of the 20th Anniversary of Doolittle, and touring through England to boot. The day tickets went on sale G and I were on the tickets phone queue with the best of them, and managed to purchase tickets within the ten minutes it took for the tickets to sell out.

Wednesday night was the big night, and to say I was excited is an understatement. I harnessed the spirit of my teenage self and, after downing a few drinks for encouragement, went to the Brixton Academy ready to dance and scream. And dance and scream I did. The crowd was mainly people my age and older - a crowd who largely abandoned their ties for the night to scream along to the songs and dance the night away. I was proudly at the front, still able to remember every word to every song. I left the gig utterly exhausted, drenched in sweat, with bruised ribs and a horse voice. It was everything I'd ever dreamed and more.

I'm not sad that I've lost the ability I had as a teenager to feel that overwhelming and intoxicating passion. Especially given that it came hand in hand with an overwhelming and intoxicating sense of angst and anger at the world. However, it was truly great to be able to relive a bit of that passion as an adult, and to have a toast to my teenage self as I screamed along to the Pixies on Wednesday night.

Sharm el Sheik

G and I are back from a wonderful week's holiday in Sharm el Sheik, Egypt. I would like to say that we immersed ourselves in Egyptian culture and traditions. In fact, we didn't leave the walls of the resort, finding ourselves enjoying the 8 swimming pools, private beach, crepe bars, ice cream stands and massages far too much to venture outside. Therefore, the only culture we absorbed were the Eastern European and German cultures, thanks to the other many weird and wonderful guests of the resort.

Amongst the cultural lessons learned, we discovered that the further East you go in Europe, the smaller and more outrageous men's bathing costumes become. While in the UK the bathing costumes are of an ordinary men's shorts' size, usually in muted colours, by Germany they have shrunk to very small and tight trunks, preferably in bright primary colours. By Russia, they have shrunk even further to minuscule speedo size, usually in lurid fluorescent colours, such as the man pictured above doing beach aerobics in fluorescent green speedos.

We also learned that there is a significant number of very white European men and woman who enjoy basking in the sun to an extreme degree; that when Berlisconi commented on Obama's "tan", he wasn't making an ill-advised joke, but having seen so many of his country men and women transform themselves from pasty white to brown perhaps really thought Obama's skin tone achievable to all. G and I received quizzical looks in response to our insistence on sitting in the shade, smothering ourselves in sunscreen and wearing floppy hats. While I lust for brown skin, I know my genetic limitations. The idea of shriveling my skin in the sun to the prune-like state required to achieve a deep brown did not seem worth it.

Finally, to my great joy and relief, I discovered that even the most beautiful and skinny Russian models have cellulite on their bottoms. I had more opportunities to examine bottoms than I wanted, thanks to the insistence of many a Russian on wearing thong/g-string bikinis.

Of course, we also managed to learn a little about Egypt. Or at least we learned that Egypt has a wine industry. It shouldn't. Nor should it produce beer or spirits. Unfortunately, it does.

All in all, it was a great holiday, with many valuable lessons learned.