Dramatic exit

Today was a day of theatre.  Actually, it's been something of a week of theatre, as I went to see the very good House of Games at the Almeida on Monday.

But today was all about Birdsong at the Comedy Theatre at Piccadilly.  I don't know whose bright idea it was to equate a gory war story with a theatre whose name conjures up images of laughter... but actually, unfortunately, they weren't far wrong.

By coincidence, I read Birdsong earlier this year, whilst I was in New York.  To be honest, I didn't really enjoy it.  Parts of it I found well-written, and the war scenes were so vividly horrific that I had to glance away from the page from time to time.  But it wasn't one of those books that held me captive.  Some of that may be New York's fault - vying for my attention in the way it does, the novel was never likely to win... but I found it had too many characters, none of whom I really liked, but I did like the twist at the end (which I shan't give away here).

So, off to see Birdsong with some friends.  To say that it reminded me of a sixth form play is perhaps to do injustice to most sixth formers.  A more literal interpretation would be hard to come by.  The narrator would "read" his diary, direct to the audience; in the background, actors would mime out what he was saying, and often the backdrop would display a photograph of whatever he was talking about, in case we were so stupid we hadn't quite worked it out for ourselves.  My favourite moment was this exchange:

Stephen:  Stretchers!  We need a stretcher!

Stretcher bearers: Stretchers coming through (carrying a stretcher)

Photographic backdrop: wartime stretcher bearers.  Genius.

Other favourite moments included Stephen saying to a nurse, "I'm alive!  I'm alive!  Do you know it?  I'm alive?"

She didn't, unfortunately, reply, "Yes, yes, I was aware of that.  I am a medical professional.  They kind of covered off these things on day one of nursing college."

My all time favourite moment though was when the French peasant (with a Bristolian accent - presumably to show she was a peasant) said, "War's a difficult thing".  All we needed was Baldrick adding his "ting a ling a ling", and we'd have had the full Blackadder experience.

At one point a young soldier, about to go and do battle with Germans, turns the gun on himself.  I couldn't help myself.  "Missed!" I said to my friend.  We got inappropriate giggles.

We couldn't bear it.  We left at the second interval - a list of Somme casualties slowly scrolling up the stage for 5 minutes.  A prissy couple of old ladies said to us, "It hasn't finished you know," as we exited.  "No," I said, "but I think we've had all we can take."

Uncle Trevor, you've let the family name down with this one.  Though it did give me a chance to storm out of the theatre.  Admittedly, storming is harder when you have a fit of the giggles.

Cost of living

I remember my first ever car - the K-reg Vauxhall Astra that lasted me the best part of a decade.  That's not to say that things didn't go wrong with it.  In fact - from memory, here are some of the expenses:

1998 - new immobiliser needed (because as we all know, the car thief's vehicle of choice is a K-reg Astra) £100

1998 - new spark plugs £50

1999 - new distributor cap £50

1999 - new rear windscreen wiper £40

2000 - new battery £100

2001 - new battery £100

2002 - new battery (not driving it much during the uni years wasn't great for it) £100

2003 - cam belt went at 85mph on the motorway (I mean 70 mph, officer) £400

2004 - new battery - £100

2005 - new radio - £50

2005 - cam belt went again £300

It finally retired in 2006, and I like to think went to a loving home where little girls fed it sugar lumps and polo mints.

The purpose of this, is there becomes a point when its existence becomes uneconomical.  But you're still anxious to get your money's worth, so, having spent £350 on it in 2005, it's even more galling to lay it to rest in 2006.

But essentially, it was becoming more expensive to run than a new car would cost. 

I think I may have reached that stage.  Not with my car; the Mini and me are still getting on very well indeed.  I mean me personally.  Between hair dressing appointments, new clothes, the costs of getting to and from work, house repairs, eyebrow waxes, mobile bills, mortgage, house repairs, TV subscriptions, income tax and national insurance, I've decided I'd be better off if I just paid some grease monkey from the garage £20 to take me away.

I wonder if I'm recyclable.

Singes capitulards bouffeurs de fromage

Ploggers, Ploggers, Ploggers.  I can only apologise for my protracted absence, and plead a recent cornucopia of overexcitement.

Sorry.

So, what have I been doing?  Well, TheBloke (TM), the romantic old fool, took me to Paris for the weekend for my birthday.  This lends itself to great jokes such as, "He took me up the Eiffel Tower", "We went on a boat trip: it was in Seine" and so on.  Paris was lovely.  Hot chocolates, croissants, snails, steak tartare, choux pastry and fondant chocolat all made it onto our Parisian palette...  But as ever, it's the mad bastards who stick in your mind the most.

So there we are, minding our own business on the Paris Metro, exiting at the station so we can go and see the Arc de Triomphe.  Apparently this was built to honour those who died in the Napoleonic wars.  Arc de Triomphe means "Triumph Arch", and unless my history is severely inaccurate, I think the French may want to investigate the naming of this.  It's generally not considered a triumph when you lose a war.  But maybe for the French it is.  In the words of The Simpsons, they are after all "cheese-eating surrender monkeys".  Triumph!  We have surrendered!  Break out the cheese!  Build an arch!

Anyway, we were exiting the Metro station through large metal doors that automatically open as you approach them.  Obviously these are one-way, to prevent people entering the system for free.  So they are pretty narrow - certainly only wide enough for one fairly slimline member to pass.  They are also opaque, so you can't see what's through them until they open.  My steel door opened as I approached.  I went through.  Unfortunately, at the same time, a mad, French, peasanty fare-dodger decided he was going to use my exit door to get a free ride.

There wasn't room for both of us.  I used my (let's face it) fantastic A-level French to say loudly, "Non!  Non!"  Of which, he obviously took absolutely no notice.  He pushed me.  I was forced up against the metal bars.  "Non!" I said fluently again.  But fat, ugly, stupid mad bastard French peasants will not be appeased.  And he ignored me.  Luckily at this point the doors closed behind me and he was thwarted.  Thwarted I say!

(Though I heard him say, "merci" to someone behind me, so clearly someone was more charitable than me.  "Merci" by the way, means "thank you".  This is why I got an A at A-level.)

There's always a story whenever I go to France.  Previous incidents have involved:

• Mrs Nunn almost getting arrested for (not) shoplifting at Carrefour
• Asking a supermarket employee if there were condoms in the organic jam
• Trying to buy peach wine and ending up with vin de peche (basically Tesco's "good with fish")

TheBloke (TM), a non-Francophone, learned three French words: "croissant", "oui" and "quoi".  These days, that's enough for an A* at GCSE so I'm thinking of entering him this summer.

Love hurts

This Plog is one which my more refined Ploggers may wish to skip.  Whilst you are considering if you are the sort of depraved individual who wants to expose themself to filth, we will talk about flowers and butterflies until you are gone...  OK.  Everyone still here?  Thought so...

Sexting.  Today we're talking about sexting.  For those of you who naive, innocent or backwards with technology, sexting is essentially texting sexual messages to each other.  Huge fun if you're 15, and have lightning speed thumbs (for a couple of reasons, actually)... less fun if you're over the age of 20 and in a long-term relationship.

To change the subject for a moment; iPhones are very clever.  You use its touch screen to input letters when you're texting, but if you're not accurate enough with the part of the screen you touch, and perhaps type "ans" instead of "and", or "kip" instead of "lip", it will guess what you meant (based on words you normally use) and automatically correct it for you.  Very clever indeed.

So, back to sexting.  Mostly because we were bored, TheBloke (TM) and I logged onto an iPhone app for anonymous naughty chat.  Well, OK then, I did.  TheBloke (TM) was watching Dexter on TV.

Straight away, a young lady (lady!) started sexting me.  Admittedly I have no evidence she was young... and plenty of evidence she was no lady.

"I am taking off your bra," she sexted.  (I was actually wearing a slightly manky sports bra, a bit clammy from the gym, but I didn't mention that to her.)

"OK," I replied.  This was apparently encouragement enough.

"Mmm," she tapped into her iPhone making extensive use of her "m" key.  "Your nipples are hard as I tub them against my face."

I thought to myself, "tub?".  She corrected herself: "*rub".

My sext partner continued.  "I'm pulling down you're panties."  I let the incorrect apostrophisation pass.  It would have seemed impolite to give her a lecture about the difference between the possessive "your" and the contracted "you are" at this stage.

"I flick my tongue against your throbbing clot."  By this point I was almost hysterical with laughter, and even TheBloke (TM) and torn himself away from Dexter.  She corrected herself again: "*clit".  It was this point she decided - clearly - she was going for her best move:

"I'm squeezing your breasts and kicking your clit."

Ouch.

Where the bi-polar things are

Recently I watched the film of Where the Wild Things Are.  Whilst I don't remember this myself as a young child, I do remember it being one of my little brother's favourite kids' books.  It was a nicely-drawn book of a little boy who gets sent to bed early without supper for being "wild", then travels to an island where he gets to be king of the wild things and gets rid of all his energy and anger.  Then, he wakes up, in his bed, and his supper is in his room waiting for him.  No massive metaphors from recollection, other than when you're a kid, everything seems so dramatic, but generally, your parents still love you and will make you dinner.  Job done.  Happy ending.

But the film, oh the film.  After a promising start with little Max getting angry at his sister, and an absent (or deceased) father and a mother who's having trouble at work, but who seems to be larging it on the dating scene, Max's story then takes a very troubling turn.

Christ on a unicycle, this film was like Pinter for children.  Despite some lovely visuals, straight from the book's illustrations, when Max arrives at the island of wild things, the wild things (monsters) were all chronically depressed.  The main male monster was called Carol (bad enough he gets a girl's name, and goes part-way to explain his inherent anger problems) but then appeared to have a really weird relationship with a monster character called KW, who might have been his mother, his sister or his girlfriend.  Whatever their relationship, it made me feel dirty.

(As an aside, KW has two new friends, who are two owls which she holds in each hand.  Obviously.  She gets their attention by throwing rocks at them to knock them out of the sky.  Which is a great thing to teach children about how to look after birds.)

The film was filled with lines like, "You know the sun is going to die", "everything turns to dust", "families are hard".  They then build a fort together (though there don't appear to be any enemies), and angry male Carol decides he's going to smash it up.

Max then leaves the island having improved it not at all, and if anything, has made things rather worse.

He runs back into his house, clearly some hours later, but his mother (now sans boyfriend), doesn't even appear to have called the police.  Though she does give him dinner.

The whole thing was disturbing.  If it can hold your child's attention through the meaningful pauses and the existential crises, you have a very special child.  Enrol it on a philosophy course immediately.  See if it can sit through all of Beckett's Endgame.  I couldn't.

Sick of travel

I have now lived in London for a long time. About nine years. And I have experienced many strange things on the tube in that time, which include, but are not limited to:

• A pigeon getting on at Gloucester Road tube station, and getting off again at South Kensington

• The announcement after a 15-minute wait on the Northern Line, "Ladies and gentlemen, I've finally spoken to the control room and apparently they didn't even know we were waiting." (Put your best sarcastic voice on), "Welcome to the Northern Line."

• A large number of people of indeterminate sex, which have provided me with endless internal games of "male or female?" Also, in a similar category, the favourite tube game of "fat or pregnant". Do you offer your seat to the preggos, or make the fatties stand as it's likely to be the most exercise they'll get that day.

I have also over the years, heard all the excuses for late-running trains, from the squishy, "person under a train" to the pathetic, "signal failure at North Greenwich". But today I think I heard my favourite.

On a train at Stratford this morning, an announcement came over the tannoy.

"Apologies for the delay, ladies and gentlemen. We are holding this train at the moment because of a suspected vomit in one of the carriages."

Suspected vomit? How hard is it to identify vomit? And what else could it possibly be? The mind boggles.