50 not out, Callow and a Chorus of Disapproval

Last weekend I had my 50th birthday party. There is something particularly pleasurable about being congratulated on merely staying alive for half a century. Anyway, it all went ever so well. The weather held up fine, which was my main concern, most expected guests turned up, even if not all at once, and it was great having so many friends over so many generations all around me, friends from work and university, some around the 50 mark too, some of my younger colleagues and mates under 30 and the kids of my friends, from babies to over 20 themselves. My only regret was that I couldn't get to spend as much time chatting to the as I had wanted to. And given some had come in from as far afield as Edinburgh, Newcastle, Manchester, Exeter and Bath, I did feel I wanted to spend time with them all. It went passed in a blur really, albeit a pleasant blur.

I managed to acquire a pretty impressive cake. More grey icing than you will ever see in your life. Only managed to consume one "turntable" on the day, but the rest went into the office for later consumption.

Luckily I had friends down who kindly helped with the catering, and one who stayed on for a bit longer, enabling me to spend my actual birthday, on the Monday with her.

Most of the day we spent at the British Museum. We went to the Shakespeare exhibition, and indeed I caught all the exhibitions going. I am a member of the British Museum so not only can I take a guest to any exhibition for free, but I can also use the Members' room. Which is rather nice. Big comfy sofas, coffee and cakes (which according to A were very good although I didn't partake myself) and one can look down across the Great Court at the riff raff below!

The Shakespeare exhibition was a little disappointing really. A lot of it you felt was eked out. As an example, and I paraphrase only a little, one exhibit's tag ran "Shakespeare liked gardening. Here is an old spade." A lot of it was rather like that. Objects not necessarily connected with Shakespeare but of his time. But then that should be an Elizabethan exhibition.

The courtyard display of North American plants from the Prairies woodlands and Everglades was, shall we just say, a trifle over ambitious in a space little bigger than my back garden.

But overall you can never really be disappointed by a visit to one of the greatest collections in the world. Especially nice on this visit was seeing this statue of a charioteer. It normally resides in some obscure museum in Western Sicily (which is fair enough given that was where it was found), but it really is a terrific piece of sculpture. Eventually I dragged A away from admiring the muscular buttocks under his cloak, and saw some other stuff too.

We were going to the Simon Callow one-man Dickens play in the evening. So I took A for a leisurely Chinese in Chinatown, contemplating a 15 minute stroll to the theatre with enough time for a gin and tonic beforehand. So as I was waiting for her to come out of the ladies room I happened to glance at my tickets to see that - AAARGH! - it was a 7pm start, and not 7:30pm like every other production I have ever been to. And it was now 7:02pm. And A, who had torn knee ligaments, was beginning to limp. Well we missed the first quarter of an hour (along with quite a few other folk), and we were all shuffled into the back row of the circle. Ah well. But then at the interval we went down to the front of the circle, to find our real seats, only to find they were taken, and then realised we were supposed to be in the upper circle. So off we went in search of the Upper Circle, poor A really struggling now, only to fail, because they had closed the Upper Circle and put everyone in the Dress Circle, where we were. So, many stairs later, we ended up just where we started! And then found that the reason it had started at 7 rather than 7:30 was that it was the press night, so it was to give the hacks an early start to get their copy in. Bloody journalists.

Not a bad evening's entertainment. It helped if you don't know Dickens TOO well. Simon Callow was very much the man for the part.

My second theatre experience of the week was to see A Chorus of Disapproval, with Rob Brydon making his stage debut. My companion and I loved it - very funny, although perhaps not quite funny enough. My only criticism, and this is really of Ayckbourn altogether, is that there is no poignancy in the play, so the story line that isn't funny is really just wasted. But Rob is superb in his role as the cuckolded obsessive amateur dramatics director, and Nigel Harmon surprisingly good as the the leading man in the production. I think I might have seen it on a previous run 25 years ago, but luckily I have the memory of a goldfish with Alzheimer's.