LRB
Popped round to Clapham today to pick up a whole year's back issues of the London Review of Books from a kind Freecycler. I took the precaution beforehand of telling LSS the address, just in case it turned out NOT to be a kind Freecycler, but rather a psychopath bent on luring innocent book-loving females to their destruction, using free LRBs as bait.
It turned out, of course, not to be a psychopath, but just a wild-haired middle-class bloke with a meek tenor voice, in a house that smelled strongly of English curry, who rather spoiled the effect of his undoubted generosity by saying, as I left, "You'll either love it [the LRBs], or it'll go straight over your head, [you poor dim Chinese woman who probably thinks that the LRB is some kind of upmarket Grazia]." It constantly amazes me how rude people are, without even realising or intending it. Mind you, I am exactly the same. If I had a pound for every time I have accidentally insulted someone - well, I wouldn't still have to be working for a living.
Went to Swan Lake last week. Word to the wise - don't get the standing "seats", you can't see anything that happens on the side of the stage. Otherwise it was lovely, just the Swan Lake-iest Swan Lake imaginable. You know how when you're a kid you imagine how something will be and when you eventually grow up and see it, it turns out to be a miserable naff vulgar commercial letdown? Not this. Nor had the director decided to try to make his mark by having all the swans as men or setting it in a crackhouse in Brixton.
It turned out, of course, not to be a psychopath, but just a wild-haired middle-class bloke with a meek tenor voice, in a house that smelled strongly of English curry, who rather spoiled the effect of his undoubted generosity by saying, as I left, "You'll either love it [the LRBs], or it'll go straight over your head, [you poor dim Chinese woman who probably thinks that the LRB is some kind of upmarket Grazia]." It constantly amazes me how rude people are, without even realising or intending it. Mind you, I am exactly the same. If I had a pound for every time I have accidentally insulted someone - well, I wouldn't still have to be working for a living.
Went to Swan Lake last week. Word to the wise - don't get the standing "seats", you can't see anything that happens on the side of the stage. Otherwise it was lovely, just the Swan Lake-iest Swan Lake imaginable. You know how when you're a kid you imagine how something will be and when you eventually grow up and see it, it turns out to be a miserable naff vulgar commercial letdown? Not this. Nor had the director decided to try to make his mark by having all the swans as men or setting it in a crackhouse in Brixton.
posted by FBT at 9:09 pm
6 Comments:
Some performances really are best left in the original setting. Nutcracker would have to be another - can you imagine that set in an Essex council estate?
A little imagination and you have a startling performance, starring Fumier as the Major-domo and Jade Goody as the shade of the Sugar Plum Fairy.
Don't you think the Phiz would make a good Essex Girl, Ulie?
DOn't think she's the type to dance around her handbag. Or wasn't that what you meant?
You're on the right track, SM. Do you think she would drop her chips?
nothing makes me drop my chips
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