Life Imitating Art?

I went to the theatre at the weekend.  Yes, yes, I know “Get you, how cultured!” and so on.  I didn’t expect to be going, in all honesty, as a consequence of my own stupid actions, or inactions as it turned out.  I’ll explain.

There’s very little, these days, which makes me laugh out loud.  An awful lot of modern comedy, I find,  just leaves a wry smile on the face as you contemplate how clever it was, and that’s about it.  Even fewer things leave me giggling helplessly, with tears streaming down my face.  Therefore, when I had exactly that reaction to “A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong” on T.V. over the festive season, I was determined to repeat the experience.  I was delighted to note that our local theatre was going to be hosting the company’s touring production, “The Play That Goes Wrong”, later in the year and I made a mental note to make sure I got tickets for this. 

Making a mental note, when you have a memory like mine, is a pointless exercise, so although it was at the back of my mind that I really should do something about this, that’s as far as it got.  When I realised, to my horror, that it was going to be on last week, I went to the theatre’s site to see about tickets, only to find it was sold out for the whole week.  Being a mature adult, who recognises that the problem is entirely of his own making… I sulked! 

Without a great deal of optimism, I contacted the Box Office to see if they had a waiting list for returned tickets, and they had.  I didn’t hold out much hope, but I indicated that I would be happy with just one ticket if necessary, or even two but not sitting together.  My name went on the list and I expected to hear no more.  Then on Friday, came the phone call that said they had just one ticket returned for Saturday night and would I like it?  Which is why, on Saturday evening, I was squeezed in between two couples on Row E anticipating a performance I hadn’t hoped to ever see.

Apparently, with pornography, if you watch enough of it you begin to wonder why everyone isn’t ripping their clothes off at the slightest provocation in real life (or so I’m reliably informed, not that I’ve ever…) and there was something of this effect apparent with “The Play That Goes Wrong”.  

Without wishing to spoil the experience, from the moment you enter the auditorium, you’re immersed in the theme of the play because the ‘Director’ and one of the ‘Stage Hands’ are looking for a lost dog and quizzing the arriving audience about it.  This puts everyone on notice that things might not be as they seem which means, as a consequence, that everything could potentially be part of the production.  At one point, an audience member is dragged up on stage to help the ‘Stage Hands’ with a particularly tricky part of the set, and this is clearly part of the whole thing, but then, when everyone had settled down, two people arrived with a member of the front of house staff and the whole audience turned to watch what was going to happen.  There was a conflab between the front of house staff and a couple seated a row or two in front of me and this resulted in them blushingly getting up and moving back a couple of rows to the only remaining empty seats so that the two new arrivals could take theirs.  I’m sure this wouldn’t have been noticed in any other production but, because the whole audience was  on alert for the next thing to go wrong, the couple who had been in the wrong seats actually got a round of applause!  I don’t think it was part of the production, but then, who knows?

The play itself was as good as I’d hoped and I can’t recommend it strongly enough.  When I came out I discovered that I’d almost lost my voice because I had been laughing that heartily, and that takes some doing when you’re on your own and not necessarily in your comfort zone.

After the show, you’re left in this frame of mind in which you’re still anticipating the next thing to go wrong and real life seemed to go out of its way to make this happen.  I joined a small crowd who were trying to get to the Intu centre’s upper car parking floors.  Unfortunately, as we headed time and again for the lifts that would take us there, we found the floor cordoned off by the cleaning staff and we were politely but firmly redirected back on ourselves to find an alternative access.  This happened so many times, I think we were all beginning to despair of ever seeing our loved ones again, but there was this overwhelming sense that this somehow fitted perfectly with the theme of the evening.

When I eventually did get to the correct floor, despite having made a careful note of my parking zone, I had a heck of a job to find it (everywhere looks the same, like something out of a dystopian science fiction movie).  Then I couldn’t find the right exit.  But it was the exit from the car park that finally convinced me that I should be looking out for the hidden cameras which would confirm I was still part of the production.

I pulled up to the ticket machine, wound down my window to insert my ticket and get the barrier to raise, when the machine made a noise like an android being sick and vomited a pile of tickets out and into my car.  I sat there in disbelief, confidently awaiting a manic laugh from stage left.

I’m definitely coming to the conclusion that I’m living out one of their scripts.  Perhaps they could find a place for me in their next production, I’ve a feeling it would be a home from home!

You can find a lot more about Philip's life going wrong, both yesterday and today, in his 'nostalgedy' series of books.  Try "The Things You See...", the latest collection available in print and as a Kindle e-book.

The Green, Green Grass of Home

"Spring is sprung, the grass is riz…" and 'riz' it most certainly is, and will be until the nights start drawing in and the first frosts put a stop to it all.  The grass being 'riz' wouldn't be an issue if we could just smile benignly and watch it wave gently in the breeze, but we can't.  We feel compelled to hack it to within an inch of its life, on at least a weekly basis, and grass, being of a hardy and sporting nature, just keeps on coming right back for more of the same treatment.

I once read some research which indicated that the reason we feel compelled to reduce grass to verdant stubble, in this manner, is because of our prehistoric forebears.  Back on the savannahs in Africa, they relished the closely cropped grassland all around them as it meant that they could spot a predator from miles away, thus making popping down for a swift one at the waterhole less of a fraught exercise.  Actually, saying that 'I read some research' makes it sound as if I spend my leisure time poring over academic reports when, in all likelihood, I probably got it from the back of a cereal packet, but it does have the ring of truth to it.  Why else would we insist on surrounding ourselves with swathes of the green stuff which have no practical purpose?  You might argue that a back lawn gives somewhere for the children and grandchildren to play, in the unlikely event of clement weather, and for dogs to do that which dogs must do, but what about those corner plots on the leafier estates which are cursed with large lawns, to the front and sides, with which nothing can be done at all other than to mow the stuff?

You may have gathered that I am not one of life's gardeners.  Lawn mowing is, in fact, about the limit of my horticultural ability.  When, years ago, I owned a flat, the lawn that came with it was more of a curse than a blessing.  I used to put off the evil day of going to mow until I couldn't see my cat any more when he traversed the patch.  With a heavy heart I would then attack it (the lawn, not the cat) with a strimmer (I didn't possess a mower) and reduce the patch to a series of stubbly hillocks for another month or so.

The strimmer, the electric rotary, the hover and all the rest of the motorised mowing paraphernalia are another reason why I dislike grass-cutting.  There used to be something soporific and quintessentially British about the sound of a manual cylinder mower whirring along on a Sunday morning.  It didn't intrude; in fact it enhanced the stillness of a summer's day.  Now, in our neck of the woods, Sundays sound more like an industrial estate on piece-work.  I'm sure you would get more tranquillity in a blast furnace. 

Of course, it is easy to be hopelessly romantic about the old-fashioned mower.  In reality, it had an unpleasant habit of stopping dead in its tracks, for no apparent reason, thus catching the unwary with a rather nasty blow from the handle to the solar plexus.  This could have resulted in the shattering of the Sabbath stillness with a string of obscenities, if the breath hadn't been knocked completely out of the operator.

I'm not advocating concreting over our green and pleasant land.  Well, not any more that we already seem to be doing.  But wouldn't it be good if we could develop a strain of grass that grew to half an inch in height and then packed up?  Perhaps we could genetically modify it with whichever gene is responsible for male pattern baldness, so that we could at least see some benefit from that?  Alternatively, couldn't we, just for once, let the grass grow under our feet?

You can find this and a whole lot more in the new collection of stories available in both print and Kindle editions - 'The Things You See...'