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º May 28th-June 3rd 2001
Sunday Noises Off
Saturday Closer to Heaven
Friday Superfluous nipples
Thursday Gay blogmeat
Wednesday At a rodeo
Tuesday Tuppeny toss
Monday Non-knoll
º Sunday 3rd June 2001
0700 Saturday: Having pottered around on the net for most of the night, decide it might be time to get some sleep. Congratulate self on alcohol-free night.
1030: Woken up by noisesome next-door neighbour calling to her daughter. (Neighbour always overestimates distance from kitchen to sitting-room by approx. 3,000 miles.) Feverish attempts to subtract 7 from 10 consistently result in less than 8. Consider recent sleep-patterns. Groan. Sigh.
1045: Relinquish, yet again, any immediate idea of getting back to sleep. Consider coffee but decide against it on the basis that missing 5 hours of sleep may yet be found between now and the (as-yet-unplanned) evening. Pick up book.
1130: Help self to third slice of homemade tortilla. Try not to think about coffee. Try not to think about alcohol. Read.
1245: Notice that sun is failing to shine and that there is therefore, at least, no moral imperative to get up and go out despite lack of sleep.
1305: Try to recall what it is that normal citizens do with their Saturday afternoons that does not involve alcohol. Shopping? Snort.
1400: Recall that there is an Underwear session at the A-bar on Saturday afternoons. Check libido, which shows willing. Remind self that proposed outing will presumably forestall any (as-yet-unplanned) evening outing.
1420: Try to calculate odds on Friend being available for evening outing. Try to imagine ideal evening outing. Fail. Sigh. Get up and make industrial strength coffee.
1425: Sip industrial strength coffee whilst considering (limited) wardrobe options for Underwear session.
1426: Answer phone. Friend: "Free tickets for the theatre tonight!" Self: :Oh cool - what?" Friend: "Noises Off. Meet BarCode 1830?" Self: "Oh cool."
1428: Remember laughing like drain at first production of Noises Off in the early Eighties. Remember passing new production at Piccadilly Theatre recently and wondering if Friend would care to see it. Remember remembering West End theatre prices and going: nah. Congratulate self on yet another victory for apathy.
1445: Attempt complex calculations involving outstanding sleep debt, industrial strength caffeine intake, time available between now and 1830.
1530: Another slice of tortilla. Approaching final chapters of enjoyable book.
1600: Embark on final chapter of enjoyable book.
1700: Arrive A-bar. Buy beer.
1715: !
1745: Plan departure from A-bar.
1746: Buy beer.
1815: !!
1827: Depart A-bar. (Grinning.)
1845: Arrive BarCode, rehearsing witty speech of thanks to Friend's friend for procuring free tickets. Find Friend, but not Friend's friend - who, apparently, works in the theatre bar. Listen to Friend's rehearsal of complex arrangements for procuring free tickets, contingency plans if seats not immediately available, etc. Need coffee. Buy beer.
1925: Wait patiently while box-office find last two empty seats in full house.
1928: Seat selves in front row of vertiginous Grand Circle. Congratulate selves.
1929: Vacate seats in favour of paying customers.
1930: Curtain up.
1931: Hustle into back of stalls too late to find newly-arranged seats. Stand at back of auditorium. Laugh.
2015: Interval. Search for Friend's friend in various theatre bars. Need coffee. Buy beer.
2030: Find Friend's friend. (Note that Friend's friend is very attractive.)
2032: Discover newly-arranged seats also taken. Take vacant pair in back row. Lights down.
2100: Muse on vital need for split-second timing but also metronomic rhythm when playing farce. Consider how weird it is to hear actors projecting to rear of auditorium without artifical aid. Laugh like drain.
2150: Applause. Curtain calls.
2155: Try to spot Friend's friend amidst crowd spilling out onto pavement. Wait for Friend's friend's friend. (Note that Friend's friend's friend is very very attractive.)
2205: BarCode. Need coffee. Buy beer. Attempt witty speech of thanks. Give up. Introduced to Friend's friend's friend's friends (who, sadly, just fail to be very very very attractive.)
2245: Seriously consider following Friend's friend's friend and Friend's friend's friend's friends to The Edge but decide that, really, enough is enough.
2310: Thank everybody and declare intention of leaving.
2311: Buy beer.
0010: Leave.
0040: Arrive home. Another slice of tortilla.
0110: Finish enjoyable book.
0113: Sigh.
0114: Smile.
0115: Pass out.
º Saturday 2nd June 2001
Gathering in the reviews of the Pet Shop Boys musical Closer to Heaven, David at Swish Cottage has some details of the Guardian's two-out-of-five review:
"When the club owner cried 'You know where the exit is' I felt like taking the hint."
Elsewhere, the Daily Telegraph hated it. I quote Charles Moore's review at length (largely because it reflects my own views:
The Pet Shop Boys, an unusually intelligent pop group, and one whose songs have always been highly theatrical (have produced) a terrible mess - tacky and tasteless when it isn't being quite nauseatingly sentimental. The real disaster though is Harvey's book... he has dug deep into a rag bag of gay and showbiz cliches, offering an unforgiveably trite story of sex and drugs and rock and roll.
(When our hero is) caught on a security camera enjoying a hearty snog and more with a male drug dealer... the show - until now a compendium of filthy jokes and S&M dance routines - turns all lachrymose on us.The mix of crude gay caricature with a manipulative attempt to tug at the audience's heartstrings proves hideously misconceived.
Gemma Bodinetz's scrappy production, in which every emotion seems mawkish and every joke is overplayed, seems cruelly designed to emphasise the weakness of the script.
Though the show was wildly applauded on the first night by a disparate group of camp followers that included Sir Elton John (his wig, as always, was the best joke of the evening) and Boy George, I fear that this show is closer to closure than it is to heaven.
And finally, my thanks to blast!blog for pointing me to the Mail/Standard/Metro website This is London and a favourable review by no less than Nicholas de Jongh:
...a rush of excitement and daring..loud and alluring. The Pet Shop Boys' music ... is simply beautiful, though the lyrics are nothing special ... rather sanitises this unlovely milieu ... Harvey's sardonic slow-moving storyline ... Frances Barber's endearing, interfering French hippie... She's German actually but, hey, who's counting.
Me, I'm counting - bearing in mind yesterday's Independent review ("nearer to purgatory") I make that three to one against - with a surprise bonus point to Charles Moore (rather than Nicholas de Jongh) for highlighting the stereotypicality of the gay content.
I enjoy walking the city streets but it's an easy habit to get out of., especially when the weather's inclement.
After work last night, on a whim, I walked home from Canary Wharf. It's roughly a mile east and then a mile south and not too wearing at all: probably not worth the effort when the tube's running, but certainly worth contemplating after midnight - even more so if I can time it so that the White Swan is open as I pass by...
º Friday 1st June 2001
Can't find any reviews of Closer to Heaven online yet, so quoting The Independent fresh from my letter-box will have to do:
"Is there no art form free of pop stars trying to muscle in?...This latest vanity project, sorry musical... played ineffectually by Paul Keating... an even more ineffectual Tom Walker... Cue bare breasts, bare bums and a big identity crisis...Then there are the endless platitudes... The only saving grace of this whole fiasco is the choreography... and some great set designs.
"The Pet Shop Boys have finally lost their much-vaunted cool. Closer to Heaven? I'd say it was nearer to purgatory."
(Apart from that, how did you enjoy the play, Mr Lincoln?)
Todays hot news: it seems that I come forty-third on a Google search for superfluous nipples.
º Thursday 31st May 2001
Headbut? Headbut? I don't remember no Headbut. Maybe I'm not so wise after all...
I have to add, though, that if David thinks moving on to BarCode is disgraceful (and, yes I do recall what happened), he should have tried moving on from there to The White Swan and Sailors...
Eight gay bloggers, sitting in a tree, k.i.s.s.i.n.g?
Well not quite, though elevation was something of a feature. The words 'piss-up' and 'brewery' were mentioned a fair bit in the earlier part of the evening when the eight gay bloggers (plus one, um, curious) discovered that the venue of choice, the upstairs bar at Comptons, was closed for the evening.
We ranged ourselves decoratively across the stairs instead - until Jude's incessant whinging threatened to turn into a broken glass tantrum, at which stage we moved down the road to the upstairs bar at The Yard.
Other than that, the evening was remarkably free of incident: boisterousness was avoided (by and large), dweeberie was kept to a minimum, no hissy-fits were thrown (that I saw), no affairs were started (as far as I know) and no-one got their cock out.
Nice, nonetheless.
º Wednesday 30th May 2001
I hope Scally makes it to the gay blog-meet tonight, despite his poor broken arm: I really want to know about sex "in the escalator engine/machinery room at Knightsbridge underground station."
Always carry a grammarian with you; you never know when you may have need of one.
But surely I wasn't the only person round that table last night who knew that one would ride out on a horse in a star-spangled rodeo, rather than at one?
º Tuesday 29th May 2001
I can't pretend to be on great terms with my neighbours on this estate - but I try to be on nodding terms, at least with the ones I recognise.
Her downstairs across the courtyard, a frail wizened stick of a woman in a pink tracksuit, always nodded back. But today the forecourt outside her flat is a carpet of flowers in the sunshine.
I guess she died.
Is it just gay men who have suddenly taken to wearing clothes with numbers on them? Or is everyone at it?
Either way, you can now spend a night out playing t-shirt bingo. Last person to forget that they're supposed to be adding up every number they see, wins.
("Three thoushand fife hundret and sheventy...Damn.")
Proof, if proof were needed, that even the most intelligent of women sometimes just Do Not Understand Men:
A woman at our office offered her male colleagues a free three-month supply of 'natural Viagra' which she'd originally bought for her lover.
She seemed surprised that he'd not been delighted at her purchase. And even more surprised when none of us rushed to take her up on her kind offer...
Good news about the Natural History Museum deciding to stop charging an admission fee.
Now y'all can pop in next time you're passing and check out the touch-screen information kiosks that I spent six months programming in 1993, and three months re-designing in 1996 (and which, as far as I know, are still running faultlessly.)
Let me be very clear about this, Jeremy.
I was not consulted about the abolition of the crown, or the half-crown. My opinion was not sought over the disappearance of the farthing, and nobody asked me whether I would miss the thrupenny bit.
So why on earth should I give a tuppenny toss about what happens to the pound?
Other favourite but untraceable headlines last week:
- Anti-stress device almost kills woman
- Sending text messages may damage your health
- DIY police to fight rural crime
Oh yes, and the three men killed when a crane toppled over at Canary Wharf last year are to be commemorated with a -quote- rural boulder - unquote.
Are you working in an office? Are you sitting in a chair? Does your chair have wheels?
I can't find it on-line, but I distinctly remember reading a recent story about a woman who worked in a car showroom, whose life was saved when a truck crashed through the window - because her chair had wheels.
I thought about that at about 2am this morning, somewhere between G.A.Y. and Bloomsbury Square, as I watched a destitute woman wheeling all her wordly goods down the middle of the road - piled onto an office chair.
(I hope she didn't get the one that always pulls to the left.)
º Monday 28th May 2001
Things rather caught up with me yesterday, so I didn't get to the birthday picnic on the grassy knoll outside the Vauzhall Tavern in time to drink much champagne. (Got some of the chocolate fudge cake though, oops.) Don't know if anyone kept count but there must have been at least thirty people there, overcast weather notwithstanding.
Great show from Dame Edna, though the room was so rammed that Jonce and I watched most of it standing on the pavement outside. Lots and lots of familiar faces and at least one unfamiliar one, yum.
Then, later, to 333 for a great late night at LA3 with .... err .... oh quite a few people. Probably.
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