Smiley High Culture

Mrs O and I went to see The Nutcracker yesterday afternoon.  Great Scot! it was fine.  Really wonderful.  Old Chai Kovski knew how to set down a choon, didn't he?  The second act in particular is an absolutely smörgåsbord of hits.

We didn't actually see it in the flesh, as t'were.  It was a live, high-definition broadcast from the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow and was screened at the Greenwich Picturehouse.  The Bolshoi Ballet are renowned for their lavish and traditional productions of ballets like this one.  No searing social commentary or transposition of the action from 19th century bourgeois Russia to a housing estate in 1960s Bradford for them.  And thank God for it.  The Nutcracker is a festive treat for classical lightweights, like myself.  It's the equivalent of The Wizard Of Oz - beautifully done and timeless, but not there to challenge and/or upset the prevailing social order.  It doesn't do to fcuk about with it.  And I believe I speak for the cognoscenti there.

You know how to whistle, don't you?

As it wasn't freezing cold and/or p1ssing down with rain yesterday, I thought I'd treat the wife to a walk.  It's important to keep the magic alive like this when you've been married since the last hurrah of britpop, as we have.

Sometimes we jolly down to the coast of Essex or Kent on our Sunday constitutionals as Mrs O grew up on the coast and gets the yips if she can't dip her trotters in the briny once a calendar month.  But we decided to give the Thames Estuary a swerve yesterday as when the weather is half decent, the less-agreeable denizens of the capital head off there en masse and make a holy show of themselves and generally despoil the environment.  I know one isn't supposed to kowtow and amend one's plans to accommodate ruffians like this, but to tough it out and go for a stroll down there anyways would have constituted a massive Pyrrhic victory.

So it was then that we stayed in town and walked up the Thames path from Greenwich to town.  Clearly all of this walk was conducted on Her Majesty's highways, so we set off with scant equipment: a pair of flips-flops each, a loaf of bread and a block of Gruyere.  And this proved to be ample.  We are rather unusual in this regard, Mrs O and I, as most walkers tend to pack tonnes of gear before leaving base camp.

I've never understood people's obsession with kit for walking.  I mean, all you've got to do is place one foot in front of the other until you've reached your goal.  I do all my walking in civvies.  The only concession I make to "kit" is that I'll wear trainers if the mileage means the walk might exceed four hours.  Other than this though, specialist equipment brings nothing to the table.

I suppose people buy this stuff in order to protect themselves against mishap somehow, a kind of secular GORE-TEX amulet, if you like.  But most wouldn't recognise this as the reason; they'd probably explain to you at heart-breaking length why you simply must pull on a pair of £400 trousers to walk across wheat field in zone 6 of a Sunday.

Part of the Thames Path in south east London also doubles-up as a cycle path.  Cycling is particularly poorly served by "technology" (by which I mean injection-molded plastics plus marketing).  This is due to its perceived status as a sport.  And sport requires kit.  That's why people (i.e. men) put on lycra onesies and irridescent goggles to ride to Oddbins.  But utility cycling is walking to bike racing's running.  If you're not racing, you don't need a carbon fibre bike.  Honestly...would I lie to you?  I would, but not about this.

equipment overload

Because it's there...

I decided today that the life of the jobbing office-Johnnie-about-town needed spicing up, so at lunchtime instead of wandering aimlessly around the environs of Canary Wharf with my snout buried in a Graham Greene, comme d'habitude,  I thought I'd jump on the DLR, and take him to Greenwich for an hour.

Okay, it's not exactly white knuckle stuff in terms of distance and culture shock, but a cee is as good as an ar, as they say.  And so it proved to be.  

The weather, when I reached my destination, was shithouse (what rotten luck, 'eh?), but I was determined to make the best of it.  I ducked into the Waterstone's there, found a comfy chair and ploughed through a couple of chapters.  And very convivial it all was too.

My wife and I chunter down to Greenwich at the weekends now and then.  It's usually rammed to the gunwales at times like this, and can be a bit of a chore to be honest.  It's like being at a festival, but without bands and tempura - i.e. diabolical.  

The absence of my best girl by my side also added a tinge of sadness to proceedings, but that's the quintessential point of travel, isn't it, to challenge oneself?  Generally, we scoot straight home apres-G and dig out the sherry, and I did rather miss the ritual when the time came to head back to the office.  I had to make do with the half truckle of brie and bottle of port that I'd hidden in the stationary cupboard instead.