Absent Friends

Monday being my day off, but with a theatre visit booked for the evening, I spent the afternoon at the British Museum.

I finally got round to going to the long-running Hajj exhibition. Now I have to say the quality of the British Museum's big exhibitions has been sliding. And this one is the nadir. Its extremely dull. The problem with an exhibition on a pilgrimage is there isn't very much to show, at least not in the way of exhibits, as opposed to text and photos. Many of the exhibits they did have had pretty tenuous connections to to the pilgrimage to Mecca eg a couple of early atlases opened at the page which had Mecca marked on them.

I can't help feeling that its main raison d'etre is a bit of political correctness combined with it being cheap to put on. The only thought I was left with was how similar all religions are in requiring mindless repetitive rituals, rather like square bashing in the army (or at Mecca tripping round the Kaaba 7 times), presumably for the same reasons, to instill discipline and blind obedience. And they all come with horrid tacky souvenir trades. Well, who could resist making a quick buck from the suckers?

Much more interesting, but obscure, was a little exhibition on the relative values of money in Roman and modern Britain. Not quite clear how they came up with this estimate, but they reckon a Roman soldier earned about £12,000 a year in today's money. And interesting the comparative values of things. Salt was cheap, while pepper imported from India was very expensive. Hence elaborate and expensive Roman silver pepper pots, while we think of salt and pepper pots as almost identical, reflecting the similar value of the contents. Clothes would have been far more expensive then, and of course would have been endlessly patched.

Anyway, to Absent Friends, an Alan Ayckbourn play set in the Seventies, my teenage years. A great set - my companion (of the same vintage as myself) and I started by just noting how well the set reminded us of seventies tastes.

The play is funny, but in an acutely embarrassing way. The premise is that three couples, advancing towards middle-age, have invited around an old friend whose partner had recently drowned in an accident. It transpires that none of them much like him actually and never did. There is a great part where absolutely everyone escapes to the kitchen to avoid him. Some wonderful embarrassed silences where one watches, through body language and facial expressions alone, the protagonists straining to find something to say, but just can't. But what Colin's presence does highlight is just how awful everyone else's relationships are, with his relationship with the sadly departed Carol being the only good one amongst the lot. Perhaps therefore the playwright's message was, if you want a happy marriage, one of you should drown early on.