Hello/Goodbye

Another play at Hampstead and another absolute corker.

What was particularly odd for me was that I went home from seeing this on Monday night and before going to bed tried to catch up with the culture section from the Sunday Times. And lo and behold I found there a review of the play I had just seen. And a review so totally at odds with what we had just enjoyed that I struggled to recognise it. How did this bloke see the same play I had seen? You can tell how much an audience likes something from the applause. Not the standing ovations that tend to come with very famous stars. But you just notice a sharper pitch to applause where an audience hads liked something more than they expected. And we got that for this play.

A flatlining romcom was the summary. NO. This was full of delightful cracking dialogue. The time flew by. The neat conceit of the play is that the first act is the first 45 minutes of a couple's relationship, and the second act appears to be the last 45 minutes, 10 years on as they split up their possessions on divorce.

The opening act is really laugh a minute banter between the odd couple, him border-line autistic obsessive, she nymphomaniac extrovert, fresh from having done the groom at a wedding. "We might have got away with it if we had made it all the way up the stairs first."

The second is rather more poignant. She has been unfaithful with him too, feeling that he gave more attention to his little collections of McDonalds toys, bugs and cigarette cards than to her. But that's what you get with an obsessive geek (albeit here an unfeasibly hunky one). But it still had great lines. As she sought to open an old trunk they had bought years ago with a newly-found key she said "You told me that this couldn't be opened". "Well no, actually I think I said you couldn't open it. Which you couldn't."

It was a great, fun night. Exactly what the theatre should be. And no, it wasn't a 100% realistic view of what a relationship is like. Instead it was a comedy. You know, funny. And clever.

Andrew Maxwell, Gary Delaney and Caimh McDonell

Another triple bill at my local comedy club. Work commitments whittled down my party to jst 4 of us and ther was dissension in the ranks after first act Gary Delaney. Gareth made it very clear he didn't like one-liner comics, and Gary Delaney fell into that category. Squarely. So even though he went down well with the crowd generally he didn't in our little corner.

Of course whether you like one line gags and puns is a matter of taste. But what I did notice about Gary, on stylistic grounds, is his tendency to look down at his feet more than the audience, and to laugh at his own jokes.

We recovered with middle-act Caimh McDonell. There are an astonishing number of Irish comics performing in London, and you can't ask for a much more Irish name than that. He was back in the story-telling tradition, And very good too, although had never come across him before. Another one for my list.

Headliner was Andrew Maxwell, also very Irish and whom I had seen twice in the last year or so. I was expecting to hear some familiar material, but actually only recognized a couple of lines. In part that was because he did almost no material at all, no gags to speak of. He just talked to the audience - the exact opposite to Gary Delaney. And he was brilliant. He lives locally so some of the stuff is pretty unusable anywhere else. The chat about the giant fibre-glass gorilla at a local garden centre is, well, only of local interest. Which of course made it feel all the more special.

One of my mates persuaded me afterwards to come back to his place to watch the rugby. And then a lesbian couple popped round and we stayed up all night drinking. As you do. And you wonder why I love London so much as 52 year old bloke? Because you don't have nights like that in the provinces.

Tiger Country

This has nothing to do with the Far East.  Tiger Country is a play about working in an NHS Hospital. The best I can say for is that one of my companions does do that and said how realistic it was. And another whose mother had recently died noted exactly the same speech that had been given to her was given to the patient dying of cancer in the play.Of course there is more to a play than just being realistic - it has to offer a story that keeps you interested, otherwise you might as well sit on a ward and watch a day unfolding.

But the realism is important. Sometimes a play is better at reality than the real thing, and this was a good example. Because it encapsulates what its like in a couple of hours, and thereby compresses and concentrates the experience. Sometimes one can learn more from fiction than fact.

Also nice was that this was not a preaching piece about how difficult it is to work in the NHS due to funding cuts. Rather the theme was how difficult it is to care, or stop caring, in a caring business. It was brilliant. Loved it.

North Borneo Steam Railway

I am by no means a railway buff, but there is something quite nice about the idea of steam railway travel with full service. So I splashed out on a trip from Tanjung Aru up to Papar.

Now two things about this steam locomotive. First it is comparatively new, or put another way, it was from the very end of the era of steam travel. 1954. But the oddity compared to anything you would travel on in the UK,  is that its not coal-fired, its a wood-burner.

I can't say the carriages were exactly luxurious, but nice enough. This never was a luxury travel route. Although they are trying to recreate the romance of British North Borneo, this was a working route - built to bring goods from inland plantations to the coast for export.

So, the catch? Well the catch is that although the service and travel is nice enough, the journey isn't. Sabah is beautiful, but this trip doesn't showcase the beauty very much. Lots of it is through Kota Kinabalu's suburbs, so unless you are very partial to construction work in ribbon development, this isn't the place for you.

I tried to catch a few of the best bits...

 Then we made a stop Kinarut to visit the Tsim Shen Tsui Chinese Temple. As you can see, not a major station.

 The Temple, although in the middle of restoration work, was quite a pleasant stopping point. The 18 golden statues of Buddhist monks around the entrance were particularly striking.

 I especially liked this one - "monk after seeing his favourite team score a goal on the telly"?

All aboard again and we chugged back up country. And now some rather nicer country.

 

 And finally to our destination, Papar. Rarely can the concept of better having travelled than arrived be better exemplified than here. To call Papar a one-horse town would be to greatly exaggerate its horse capacity.

Across the road is a rather dilapidated little park, quickly filled by passengers looking for somewhere to go in the 30 minute turnaround time. Note the concrete cattle.

 And as for the town well I did my best to show off its shops and colonial charm...

 But to be honest it was good to get back to the train.

 And be back in time for tiffin. Lunch was served in these successions of cans. Food was pretty nice. Best, as it was new to me, were the stir-fried fern shoots. Really tasty and juicy. You heard it here first.