The State That I Am In

It's been a funny couple of days. The weather has been utterly insane (/hyperbole), and a glance at the BBC news website will indicate that it is causing "chaos" etc. and as a result I've been released from the clutches of work early for the last two nights, allowing me to engage in what is apparently known as "socialisation". This included visiting Klute, in Durham, a place which was allegedly voted the second worst club in Europe at some point. It's certainly harsh to say it lived up to this; it was dingy, the draught coke machine was broken, they only had cold water in the toilets, the drink was kinda expensive (and erratic - 2 quid for a gin and cranberry [no draught lemonade either], £2.90 for a bottle of Tuborg!) and the music was awful beyond belief (I mean, the music in most clubs is bad, but at least it's chosen to allow dancing; this is not the case in Klute), but the staff were nice, and didn't seem to be brain dead, unlike the staff in Fat Sam's for example (the cloak room guy was reading The Selfish Gene!). I even came across a nice bouncer - which I'm pretty sure means I have to call whatever agency he was working for and make a complaint.

Anyway, I've been in worse places.

I also went and saw Travesties at the DST, which was pretty good. I mean, the writing was excellent, being Tom Stoppard and all, and the acting was decent (although it did seem to take the actors 10 minutes or so of being on stage before acting properly), but I wasn't massively keen on some of the stage direction. However, what really annoyed me, as usual, was "other people". The problem with going to see student theatre is that the audience have a vested interest in appearing to enjoy themselves - that is to say, they want to support their friends, and they obviously take some genuine extra enjoyment out of seeing someone they know act like someone else. However, this leads to all sorts of overacting in the audience - for example, the dude sitting in front of me laughed in the most affected way imaginable, at the most inappropriate times, which was pretty irritating.

Tonight Heather and I are going to see Belle and Sebastian, with full orchestra. I'm really excited - I think I've only ever been to one sit down gig before, which was one of the first gigs I ever attended (RHCP), and it was completely lame (which may have had something to do with it being RHCP). However, I think sitting down will really suit the music and the experience, plus years of going to gigs has somewhat jaded me to the appeal of standing for hours and jumping up and down.

Portrait of Tristan Tzara (one of the characters in Travesties and a founder of Dada) by Lajos Tihanyi, 1927: