It was DVD record day today, a slightly nerve wracking thing to do, especially when only one performance is being filmed. You only get one shot and every time a line passes and you don't do it the best you've ever done it a tiny bit of your soul dies. I'd had four nights off from the show and it seemed weirdly unfamiliar in places. After having done it so many times and having found the right way to say most of the lines I was surprised about how many of them came out in a new and different and not necessarily better way tonight. But I don't think they were errors that anyone but myself would notice and it seemed to go well. You'll be able to judge for yourselves in a few months.
The theatre staff who had enjoyed my Ferrero Rocher routine at Robin Ince's Christmas gigs had left a little gift in the green room - four rows of the hazelnut chocolates, one for each of my four gigs here, the first with one Ferrero Rocher, the next with two, the third with four and the last with eight. A very kind and funny gesture, that made me wish I was doing 20 nights here instead of four, just to see how far they would take the gag (and save me some money for upcoming Valentine's Days).
Before the gig I decided to have a Nandos (if it's not extra hot, then you're a twot - it's not an official advertising slogan, but if you could all start saying that when you order food there then it might become one). I took it to a small park near the theatre so I could eat it in the evening sunshine.
The Bloomsbury is part of the University of London and so lots of young people were milling around making me feel old (and in some cases perverted). I can't believe a quarter of a century has passed since I was in my first year at University. I have odd mixed feelings when I am amongst people of this age: I envy them a little bit, but also feel a bit sorry for them too. I have a delicious bitter-sweet feeling of nostalgia, thinking about how little I knew back then, how much stuff I messed up, but also what a brilliant time it was. It's amazing to pity and envy people at the same time, but ultimately I am glad I am not 19 anymore, even though some part of me wishes that I was.
In the park a handsome young couple had set up a low training tightrope between two trees and were taking it in turns to practice what looked like quite a new skill that they were acquiring. It made me laugh a little bit as it seemed typically poseurish and attention-seeking to be doing this in a park and their slightly mannered nonchalance was familiar to me. I have seen many actory types like this before and if I am honest I have been one of them too. They smoked cigarettes on their haunches and occasionally broke off to practice juggling. Part of me wanted to sneer, but part of me was wishing that I was 20 years old and their friend and was joining them, before heading off to our digs for a care free orgy and sex and drugs (all things I managed to fail to do when I was actually that age). I loved them and hated them at the same time, not because some of their behaviour was cute and some of it disdainful - I loved and hated everything they were doing. What a wonderful and terrible thing to be 20, in a park at sunset, falling off a low tight-rope and affecting cool indifference(even when juggling).
But I was just as fascinated with trying to work out whether my reaction to these youngsters revealed more about me than about them.
And just as I was ready to start dismissing them as young and wonderful idiots, looking to make an impression on the world, whilst desperately trying to look like they cared about nothing, a woman approached them shouting. She was not being aggressive and was in fact quite happy, but her face was ravaged by alcohol and from spending a lot of time outdoors and I worried that she might be crazy or aggressive or disrupt this pleasant evening. There was the frisson of danger in the air and I wondered how these cool youngsters would deal with it.
The woman was enthusiastic about the tight-rope walking, asking questions, telling the young people how brilliant she thought they were and then asked if she could have a go herself. My own prejudices were firing off in all directions and I don't know how I would have responded to this if I had been them - letting a probably drunk woman on to a tightrope was maybe not the greatest of ideas. But I have to say these "cool" students turned out to be genuinely cool, because they were unphased and unperturbed and answered the lady's questions and enthusiastically agreed that she could have a go on the rope. The interloper was maybe surprised, but delighted to have this acceptance when I suspect that others are not as friendly to her. She said she wasn't sure how she'd even begin, but the young man leapt up to show her, offering advice and the young woman said that she'd only been doing this herself for two weeks and that it wasn't too hard. They got the woman up on to the rope and let her rest her hands on their shoulders and helped her achieve her desire. She loved it, "It's harder than it looks," she squealed, "Not that it looks easy. It looks really hard." It had made her day, but once she'd been given the opportunity she didn't hang around and make her nuisance of herself, she just merrily went on her way, fill of gratitude. It was a properly lovely London moment, made all the better by my own cynicism to all the parties involved.
A part of me wished that I could walk up to them next and ask to have a go as well, but I worried they'd say, "Sorry, you're obviously a drunk, old, homeless man. Leave us alone." And I couldn't risk falling off the rope and breaking my leg.
Young people get a hard time, mainly because old people envy them their youth and their freedom and all the sex that we are imagining they are having. But these students, though seemingly easy to stereotype, had done something properly lovely, without a second's thought. Well done then. Shame on me and all the other curmudgeons who both wish they are 20, but are delighted they're not.
