From High Culture to Hedonism

Saturday was largely a domestic day; the plumber showed up mid-morning and managed to stem the leak, but recommended we get in a corgi-registered engineer to fix it properly and said we should keep the water turned off when we don’t need it until then. Then there was laundry to load and dishes to wash and shopping to do.

Once that was all done though, we headed up to Waterloo and the National Theatre to see The History Boys; an Alan Bennett play about a school class applying to the Oxbridge universities in the 1980s.

I have mixed feelings about it to be honest; make no mistake it was an excellent, engrossing, intelligent piece (actually I think some of it went over my head) and very well staged. However it didn’t remind me in any way of a class of sixth formers in a northern grammar school in the 1980s; far too few pupils in the class, far too erudite and far too cosmopolitan. Because of the number of pupils in a class, you just didn’t get that level of tuition or interaction. Also, my recollection is that gay kids weren’t out at school and those that were suspected of being gay were ostracised, not embraced. Even so, it’s a damn good play; if you get a chance to go see it before it heads off to Broadway, do!

From the theatre we headed straight up to Camden to join the Chorus at our Christmas Party. (It’s never held at Christmas because we are always too busy performing and having Christmas to actually find time to organise a party!) We had missed the cabaret and Annual Chorus Awards by the time we got there, which was a shame because the awards are always so much fun; hopefully Steve B will post the nominees and winners (and commentary) to the email list in due course. We did gather though that John W & Rich C had won Cutest Couple (again!) (We wuz robbed!) and Scott L had won Chorus Slapper (he declared himself mortified - and innocent!) Apparently my website had been mentioned as a nominee for best online presence too which was nice. However since the alternative title for the award is ‘Best Gaydar Profile’ usually it boils down to the Chorus member who has the most explicit or erotic online personal ad! As a result I got several people asking me for the URL so they could check out the hot pictures of me and/or Brett… Hmm.

We had a thoroughly good time though; we had a bit to drink, Brett danced a while, we both caught up with pretty much everyone we know in the Chorus and even got chatting to some of the newer members for the first time. In conversation I picked up a fair amount of juicy gossip and, later on, even saw some more of it developing before my eyes!

The journey home was fairly straightforward, considering it was about 2am and all the Tubes had finished. We popped into a Chipper for a portion of Fish & Chips and then hopped onto a Night Bus down to Trafalgar Square (the hub) where we almost immediately found another one which took us all the way home: Good timing! Finally got to bed around 3am.

Today though, I was suffering a bit. I’m pretty sure I only drank five pints (on top of the G&T at the theatre), but I had a bit of a bad head when I woke up. After an hour or so of trying to function this morning, I went back to bed for a few hours. Since then, we’ve watched a selection of TV and I am putting off the packing I need to do for next week. (I am on a three-day course somewhere near Bedford, so I have to be up early tomorrow to drive sixty miles north of London before about 08:30… Joy!)