Blog: A Whole Lot Of Culture

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I've had a VERY cultured few days of it this weekend. It started on Friday with a trip to the THEATRE - a couple of weeks ago when I was PANICKING about the fact that I was starting a course in Playwriting and hadn't actually SEEN a play for decades, my delightful sister-in-law invited me along to see a play at the Royal Court Theatre. "It's twenty minutes long" she said. SOLD!

Imagine then my DELIGHT when, last week at SCHOOL, our tutor said "What has anyone seen this week?" (SILENCE) "I'm going to see Ding Dong at the Royal Court." ME: (inwardly) "BINGO!" (outwardly) "Oh yes yes, I'm going to see that too." HA!

The play itself was ALL RIGHT - the first half was a family group who had a son going to war, then they swapped the furniture around, changed the flag on the wall for one very similar, then had another family group with a son also going to war for, we assume, the other side. BUT! the big thing was that they re-used exactly the same dialogue as in the first half, but in a different order. It was Quite Clever, but I couldn't help feeling that we were being told that - HEY! - people on both sides of a conflict are fundamentally the same.

Next day I was off to POSH Blackheath - it's like Lewisham, but POSH - to play an Oxjam gig at the local Oxfam shop. It too was SUPER POSH (some of the SHOES cost SIXTY QUID!!) but also similar to how i remember going to charity shops when I was a student i.e. it had stuff in it you might actually WANT. Someone appeared to have been in and DUMPED a GRATE comics collection, so i bought some of them, and also a Ronald Searle book. I had plenty of browsing time, as we waited for people to roll in, but after a while I was introduced by compere Mr Phil Knoxville, who is a MAGICIAN. He did MAGIC - i was just stood next to him and he produced a REAL ACTUAL WINE BOTTLE from NOWHERE! He just DID it and I had NO idea how - i have never seen the like!

Anyway, then it was me and I did THIS:

The Peterborough All-Saints Wide Game Team (group B)

My Boss Was In An Indie Band Once

Theme From Dinosaur Planet

Strangely Attractive

Being Happy Doesn't Make You Stupid

It Only Works Because You're here

The Lesson Of The Smiths

Boom Shake The Room

It all seemed to go pretty darn well - I was in a small room with about twenty people, which is pretty much PERFECT for me, and though there wasn't much Singing Along (it WAS about 3pm in a venue with NO BOOZE tho!) but otherwise it was THOROUGHLY lovely. It felt like AGES since I last did an actual gig, and i really really enjoyed it. There was a LOT of CHAT!

Soon it was time for me to fly off again, heading to The BBC where I met The People In My Audience for a final slice of CULTURE, as we had tickets to see The Best Of The Fringe, a compilation of new acts from this year's Edinburgh. We had a FAB time - most of the acts were pretty good (the two musical ones being the least so, but even they were OK) and i LARFED a GRATE deal. Best of all it was LIKE stomping around Edinburgh seeing people you'd never heard of but a) FREE b) without the RAIN. MUCH easier this way!

The only major DOWN side of this method of doing Edinburgh is that we didn't get to have CHIPS or a CURRY between the acts... or so we thought, until we got home to find that The Landlady had left us tea platters of CHIPS and CURRY sauce for tea! HOORAH! The perfect way to end a day or so of EXTREME CULTURE!

posted 15/10/2012 by MJ Hibbett

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