1304-1306

Dear me, I have been slack since reaching my current ripe old age. All manner of not-very-interesting stuff has happened, and a certain amount of interesting-but-not-for-public-consumption stuff, and then there's what little is left over:

My birthday began in a less than stellar fashion, better left undescribed. Things improved markedly with good wishes from various people around the world, some of them even via this blog -- thank you all very much.

There followed a fine lunch with Kym and Ian. Kym wanted to take me somewhere nice, I countered with takeaway from the wonderful Pizzeria Malletti eaten in the sunshine in Soho Square, surrounded by the full spectrum of Soho homotrash/tourist/mediawhoredom, which was fun. By some random coincidence, Kym, fresh back from five weeks in South Africa and a week teaching yoga in Greece, gave me a very cute metalwork gecko -- I don't expect it to catch many flies, but it's certainly charming.

Then Ian and I shopped (rather successfully) for clothes, Ian went to the gym, I went home and fell asleep instead of (as I'd intended) going to Denise Page's fabulous step class at the Y, and later Ian took me out for dinner to the Oxo Tower Restaurant, where we sat out on the balcony beside the Thames and watched the dying sunset, planets and stars emerging from the hazy twilight, boats passing and lights glittering on the river. (There were also fireworks, which we couldn't really see; our best guess is that they were in some way celebrating London making the 2012 Olympics shortlist, but who knows?) A lot of people are very sniffy about the Oxo Tower, but I've never had anything but good food there, and this birthday dinner was thoroughly splendid.

Later, at home, not entirely sober, I got into stupid spats on not one but two Mornington Crescent servers, which I hope isn't going to set the tone for my 38th year.

Wednesday was a thoroughly unhappy day, partly because of the aforementioned spats, partly because of over-indulgence the night before, mostly I guess because the party was over. Nothing of any significance had changed, of course, but still. The unemployment thing was really biting that day and in consequence I felt useless and burdensome. It has to stop. (Oh, that's so easily said!)

The main event for both Thursday and Friday was The Cholmondeleys and The Featherstonehaughs in Double Take at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, first with Ian and Neil, then with Antonio, David, Ros, Larry and Alastair, with a special guest appearance by Max and (from afar) his mother (who looks extremely cool :P).

Double Take is the 20th Anniversary show from Lea Anderson's parallel companies (strictly, only The Cholmondeleys are actually that old) and it is basically a revival of long-unperformed early material, but with a transvestite twist: the formerly all-female Cholmondeleys are now men, while their all-male counterparts the Featherstonehaughs are women. The "chums" performed 1989's Flesh and Blood in long silver dresses; the "fans" a selection of dances from The Show (1989), Big Feature (1991) and Go Las Vegas (1995) in sharp pin-striped zoot suits.

It's pretty easy to argue that this is not their greatest show, but the gender-bending was a very neat trick to throw the two companies' distinct identities into sharp relief, and I had a bloody good time two nights in a row. Flesh and Blood works better on women, to my mind, though it was very interesting performed by men. But seeing the girls take on the laddish, casual, rock-and-roll character of The Featherstonehaughs was a hilarious treat. Foremost among the highlights, for me, was "Elvis Legs" (a segment from Go Las Vegas that also had a one-night outing on its own at Duckie a few years ago), a truly inspired piece of choreography.

After that, there was bit of entertaining. Alastair, bless his cotton socks, gave me the second season of Alias on DVD -- we share a penchant for high-grade trash TV -- and we watched the first four episodes together. (Don't worry, kiddo, I'll lend you the remainder the very instant I've finished watching them.)

Ian was away for the weekend at his firm's "company weekend" -- they take the staff away on holiday and seek their input into strategy and such, and when that fails everyone gets horribly drunk -- and seems to have returned brainwashed. There's a new project going on there, and his partners want me to come and develop it for them, and he seems to think I should at least give it a look. It wouldn't be directly connected with Ian (I wouldn't be working for him, we wouldn't be working together) and it would be a job, albeit in a field that I find monumentally boring (and also rather reprehensible), but still it does strike me as a recipe for, if not actual disaster, at least misfortune. Nevertheless, I have reluctantly agreed to go and talk to them about it, and consider a trial period of 3 months. So we'll see.

In the meantime, hopefully, I'm back in business here. Er, perhaps.
Posted by matt at May 24, 2004 12:05 AM