Fatigue is a feminist issue

Gawd 'elp us, I'm tired at the moment.  Since returning from the Cambridge Folk Festival, I've been unable to lasso any decent shut-eye.  I drop off okay, but then seem to slip into some kind of sleep limbo or purgatory.  In this wretched hinterland, one can see restful sleep but not quite reach it.  I spend the nights then like a bag-eyed Tantalus.  Not conducive to productive days, let me tell you.

But at least it's Thursday, which means the torment is nearly at an end.  And this weekend is one of those low pressure affairs that involves plenty of to-ing and fro-ing, but which cannot be said to be stressful.  On Saturday I'm spiriting the missus away for a night in a hotel somewhere in London.  I know where it is, obviously, but I'm keeping her on tenterhooks.  And from there on Sunday morning we're off to The Globe for a matinee of Richard II.

That'll be done by 4pm, which leaves us the evening for gadding and larks.  Thank the lord for that.  I need larks.

Not the bird.

Town and gown

Well, it's the cusp of another weekend.  I've got several items in the diary over the next couple of days, football tomorrow and off to the Globe on Sunday for a production of The Merchant Of Venice.  It's at times like this that the value of living in a city becomes apparent to one.  Yes, it can be frantic, but the diversions available to are huge.

I grew up in east London, and it was the received wisdom when I was a nipper, and probably still is, that as soon as one was able, you should up-sticks and move out to the country.  By country I mean west Essex of course.  Our faith in the desirability of Essex was blind.  None of us knew the place.  It was simply the closest "not-London" to where we lived, and therefore better.

I nearly gave into this fad myself a few years ago.  The wife and I were that close to buying a house out in the sticks.  It was a lovely house in a lovely university town nestling on the banks of picturesque river.  We took the precaution of visiting the place on a nondescript February weekend.  We stayed over in a B&B, and so were able to spend the evening in our soon-to-be home town.  And that's what derailed the whole project.  The pubs at night were a very different proposition from the same establishments during the day.  During the day the place was full of day trippers.  The pubs were convivial, packed with pleasant people and their gun dogs.  At night they were full of bored and drunk young locals.  I thought to myself then: if we lived here, we'd never go out after dark.  And we like going out after dark; it's "our thing".

So we pulled out and stayed in London.  And here we are still.  

 - Taxi!  Take me something stimulating and nearby, would you?  And don't spare the horses.

Zounds - call a constable. I think I'm going to faint

Mrs O and I were at The Globe on Saturday evening, as I think I've made mention of before.  Great Scott im Himmel but it was warm inside.  Real quick-get-his-feet-above-his-head warm.  And we were in the gods, in seats, where at least there was some respite from the oppressive temperatures and humidity.  The great unwashed who had to stand at stage level must have been evaporating.  It didn't help that the play, Julius Caesar, wasn't too big on belly-laughs either.  It was rather long-winded if I'm honest.  Can one say that about Shakie?

I'm sure we did this play at school.  I can't really remember too much about it, except for the bit where Julius has a, presumably epileptic, fit in front of a vulgar rabble.  To save face, it is later put about that the emperor was overcome by the bad breath of the pleb.  How we laughed when we heard this as 14-year-olds.  

Apart from this comic interlude, though, it's arid stuff.  Even as a reasonably sober and serious-minded 45-year-old, I was struggling and my eyes glazed over at least eight dozen time during act one.  Why on Earth did they choose this of all Shakespeare's play to inflict on a cohort of working-class cockney dunces like us?  It's guaranteed to put you off literature for life.  Luckily I'm a glutton for Elizabethan punishment, and so managed to rehabilitate myself.

Le weekend et le temps fera beau!

Well, well, who saw this coming?  The weather looks set fair for the weekend.  It's been a frustrating few weeks, meteorological speaking.  The working week has been absolutely lovely, but the weekends have been wet and miserable, like Geoffrey Howe (political reference for the teenagers, there!).

It's just as well it supposed to be nice because the (ie. my) wife and I are at The Globe on Saturday evening.  It's Julius Caesar this time, a play I'm not too familiar with.  Take it from me, friends, there is no more atmospheric place on God's green earth than the Globe on a summer's evening.  It exudes drama, from the oh-so-hard bench seats to the thatch.  I cannot wait.