Wednesday 13th February – The Trouble with young people today

Another late one, hence my time lapse entries.  Went to See Henry VI part III and didn’t get home until 11.45 p.m.  Despite Andrea and I having to dose ourselves with caffeine several times in order to stay awake, it was worth all the wide eyed jitters and sleeplessness when I got home.  For anyone who thinks Shakespeare isn’t exciting and/or relevant, someone should take you in hand and buy you tickets to see the History Cycle.  I would be unavoidably detained for Henry IV part II, but stick around for all the others because they’re some of the most brilliant theatre I’ve seen in years.  It was one of those moments where I was itching to see it to the end, but sad when it ended.  Having said that, it hasn’t really ended, because we’re up for Dick III on Saturday, but I’ve seen that one before, so it’s not got quite the same lure as the others.

It was a very noisy audience though, and frankly I didn’t approve.  I did check with Andrea at the interval that it was indeed Wednesday and not Saturday, as it was turning out to be a very Saturday type audience (i.e. people who’ve come to Stratford on a bus and feel that while they’re here they ought to see a play even though they don’t like Shakespeare). There was an extraordinary amount of coughing and sniffing, and several people having ‘chats’ during some of the soliloquies, which is incredibly rude and made me long for the death penalty to be re-introduced.

Andrea and I did think about setting up a vigilante usherette society where we would be equipped with night vision goggles and tasers.  It would be excellent.  I had at least half a dozen people on my hit list last night.  To get on to my old lady soap box (very carefully, you have to watch your hips), I think it’s outrageous that someone would pay thirty quid to go to the theatre to have a chat.  Apart from the fact that it’s wildly disrespectful of the rest of the audience and the poor actors, it’s much cheaper to stay at home and have a chat in your kitchen, and you’re less likely to get tasered by me.  That’s got to be a bonus.

There were lots of young people.  I also wondered if they were, dare I say it, ’students’, which they might have been, judging from their interesting clothing choices and some fantastically improbable hair don’ts.  The white person’s afro seems to be having a bit of resurgence.  It’s a shame really as I wasn’t  a huge fan of it the first time round.  I don’t mind black people’s afros, like dread locks, they just seem to work so much better that way.  But white dreadlocks and ’fro’s just look ridiculous.  They seem to grow rather like out of control box hedges.  It made me long to get out a big pair of shears and set about me.  No doubt there would have been a few ears lost in the mix along the way, but as it was a very bloody play anyway, nobody would have noticed too much.

Having said that, there aren’t many schools that can be teaching Henry VI, surely?  It’s not known as one of the big show stoppers in the Shakespearean canon.  If my education was anything to go by you invariably get saddled with Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice and Hamlet, whether you like it or not.  Mostly not, I might add.  Hamlet I can just about live with.  I really can’t stomach R&J, not even with Leonardo Di Caprio.  He mumbles too much, and he looks like he needs a good wash.  His mother really ought to take him in hand.  I dread to think what a state his bedroom is in.  Lots of clumps of tissues and an interestingly fetid aroma no doubt…

I think I’ve mentioned my aversion to Leo before, so we’d better move swiftly on to pastures new before I start waxing lyrical once more.

I must add here that I am in no way critical of student clothing habits, as this is one area where I have no sartorial leg to stand on.  My dress habits as a teenager and student were strange, bordering on the bizarre, and it is a wonder that my parents ever went anywhere with me in public.  It can be chalked up as a plus point on their score sheet and brought out in their defence when the therapy bills are finally tallied up.  I’ve mentioned this before too, but it’s late, and I’m tired and I’m beginning to show off…

I was a stupendously unattractive young woman, and decided very early on that there was no way that I was ever going to compete with flocks of lithe and lissom beauties (indeed my only saving grace being that I was as skinny as a stick), so I would go the other way.  For a number of years I dressed in cast off men’s clothing from charity shops including a surprising number of cravats, sports jackets and pyjamas.  In the case of the pyjamas I used to sew up the flies and wear them around town with doc martens, a DJ jacket and a hat.  I also had large, Christopher Biggins style glasses, not as an affectation, but because I was blind without them and my parents wouldn’t let me have contact lenses until I was seventeen. 

I looked like a cross between Marty Feldman and Su Pollard.  It was not a look guaranteed to bring young men flocking to my door.  Perhaps that’s why my parents encouraged it.  I was hardly likely to fall victim to teenage pregnancy, although if the Clothes Show had ever come our way I would have been taken in hand by Geoff Banks no doubt.

When I got to University I gave up the menswear for the most part.  Instead I used to visit a decrepit old charity shop which dedicated their profits to cat rescue.  As you would expect, it was run by batty old ladies with giant moustaches who smelled of cats, Yardley Lavender and death.  Because of this, most people wouldn’t go in, and everything in the shop cost about fifty pence.  It meant that I had a very large and eclectic wardrobe to which I added items at an alarming rate.  I chose things based on how I was feeling and whether I liked the material.  I never really bothered with issues like whether it fit or not, or indeed whether it was appropriate to turn up to lectures in a moth eaten ball gown with a lumberjack shirt on top.

Generally nobody cared what you wore as long as you did wear clothes.  Really, my clothes were very conservative compared to what a lot of people wore.  As I have explained before, it was a very odd university and they would let pretty much anyone in.  As a result, pretty much everyone did arrive at one time or another.  One guy used to dress in Prussian Army uniform.  Another bloke, who lived near me thought he was a Lancaster Bomber, and a chap who lived in the room below me didn’t approve of the modern world at all.  He stopped being interested in anything after nineteen twenty.  He dressed in plus fours and a lot of tweed and still wrote with an ink pen.  His room looked like a museum.  He was nineteen.  Another bloke I knew would wear horns and green and gold dresses for special occasions, and someone else looked like Jesus.  It was all go.

One item in my wardrobe was a constant, and that was Doc Martens.  I pine for a good pair of Docs every now and again, it has to be said.  Jason hates them, so I have resisted the temptation, although I might take them up again when I get to be a pensioner.  They are rather heavy and your ankles get calluses where the lace holes rub, so I will probably have to get an orthopaedic pair so my ankles don’t snap in two.

 I spent about ten years of my life wearing very little else in the line of shoe wear mainly because they are just so comfortable and practical.  I even wore a pair for my graduation.  It was the only thing that pleased me about the whole day actually.  My mortar board kept slipping over my eye (I had measured my head with a bit of string and a ruler, and surprisingly, got the measurements way out), the speeches were all in Welsh, and the honourary degree went to a man who wrote a very boring bit of the Maastricht Treaty.  It was a terrible day…

I used to have several pair of Docs.  I had my sturdy, all purpose black ones, and then I had my purple ones for best.  I also had some green ones at one time, which were also lovely.  In my third year they brought out some in red or green velvet.  We all coveted those, but none of us bought them, even at that tender age we realised they would have been completely trashed in less than a week.  You’d feel like a king for a day and then look like a dog’s dinner for the rest of time.  Not a good balance.  My friend used to customise hers with beads and paint and stuff, but I wasn’t very good at art and knew that if I ventured that way I would end up with something that looked like cat sick on the end of my toe, so I stuck to the unadorned variety.

So, having a horrible queasy feeling that I have told you all this before, again, and again, and we are now revolving on the horrible hamster wheel of time, we should move on.  I am also feeling that this is good limbering up for my old age when I will just continually repeat my stories of the war (despite never having been in one.  Looks like my ninety three viewings of ‘The Longest Day’ might come in handy after all) and tell everyone how old I am until they want to kill me.  I shall probably be single handedly responsible for the legalisation of euthanasia.

Did some baking with the kids this afternoon.  We raided Nigella Express for ideas and ended up making triple chocolate cookies, which I cooked a tad too long, and which are a little too crispy for my liking, but which we have forced down anyway.  We also made her no cook cheesecake, which she covered in cherries, but knowing my fear of fruit based desserts, you will be unsurprised to find that we substituted crumbled up Flakes for the cherries.

I knew the cheesecake was a hit when Andrea, who swapped a seat at the dinner table for a ride to the theatre, had two helpings.  This is a good sign.  Nigella we salute you…