Lunacy

Shortly after we came back to Epsom from the west country, to the National Theatre to see their version of Friel's 'Dancing at Lughnasa', having seen the Old Vic version way back in 2009, as noticed at reference 1. I remember it including several members of the Cusack tribe, but investigation suggests it was just the one, Niamh Cusack. Failed again.

We had gone for a Wednesday matinée towards the end of the run and it being a fine day we opted for a picnic beforehand, in some location to be determined on the spot.

The outing started with two indigents at Epsom Station, the usual gentleman with a beard having been joined by a rather large & loud lady of middle years in a state of considerable undress. Hopefully she had been scooped up and found suitable accommodation by the end of the day: in any event, she was not there on our return - and I have not seen her since.

Having got to Waterloo, BH spotted a garden by the side of St. John's church, the one that now does street food in their front yard. Which as well as a scattering of people taking lunch, included a lot of twittering and lot of young starlings, keen on crumbs. Not a bird we see much of in our garden at Epsom, but we do get them in some of the trees alongside the stream running down Longmead Road and in some of the trees at the bottom of Long Grove Park.

The starlings might have lived in the tree back right.

We also had quite a good display of echiums, steadily spreading north from their landfall at Ventnor in the Isle of Wight, for which see, for example, reference 3. Altogether a fine spot for a picnic on such a day.

On into the theatre to be amused by a grumpy older gent. banging on about all these dreadful actors picked up from somewhere on television who haven't got a clue about how to speak or behave on a real stage. We were reminded of a theatrical whom we used to know rather well.

On into the Olivier. We had forgotten what a big and comfortable theatre is was, pretty much full on this occasion - and not all pensioners either. Plenty of people of working age there, despite it being a working day. Plenty of people from the US, some of them pretty big.

As is usual these days, the cast proper occupied just the top left hand corner of the long list snapped above. Looking at the expanded version further into the programme, after some brain work, I worked out that the first two sections, the cast and the understudies came first, alphabetic by surname, followed by the rest of the left hand column, in the same order as in the snap above. While all the people in the right hand column did not make the cut.

Which was perhaps a little unfair as the set was rather good, and had clearly absorbed a huge amount of creative talent, despite it reminding me of that of a previous show at the same establishment, noticed at reference 5. As it happens, another play by Brian Friel. Talent even running to a continuity girl who checked that all the movables were in the right place in the interval. She may even have gone so far as to check the contents of the drawers, which I believe used to be standard BBC procedure in the days when they could still afford to produce quality costume drama.

The show was adequate, not as good as I remember the Old Vic production having been. Somehow, it did not quite take off, at least not for me. And I nodded a bit during the middle third, that is to say the second half of the long first half. But this was probably me more than the production, perhaps a warning that we are getting on a bit for the theatre, even in the afternoon, even when it is a good play, which you can read all about at reference 6.

A little early to eat when we came out - we had booked into the Green Room adjacent - for which see reference 5 - so we took a beverage in the theatre. I was rather surprised to be given what looked like half a pint of white wine - and it took me a few seconds to work out that a large glass at 250ml was fairly close to being a half pint. Perhaps being served in a soft, see-through plastic cup made it look bigger than it does in a wine glass, even a big one.

That sorted out, I was able to concentrate on the rather classy shuttered concrete, an architectural fad which started in the mid 1960's and which I have been keen on ever since.

Onto the Green Room, where the outdoor eating and drinking had massively expanded since we were last there. There is a queue. We think perhaps that the queue is to get a place outside, while our booking is for inside. We go inside and collar a waitress who seems a bit annoyed that we have jumped the queue, but who shows us to our table, at the far end of the restaurant, nonetheless. Pretty busy, but not full inside at this point.

We get our waitress fast enough, not the one who showed us to our table, and our wine and starter turn up fast enough. The wine being a vinho verde from the Azevedo brand from the Sogrape family of reference 7, a large family with a strong international presence in more than 120 markets. The people who (now) own the Sandeman (port from Portugal) and Mateus (rosé) brands. Furthermore 'our purpose is to bring friendship and happiness to everyone we touch through our wonderful wines...'. Strong stuff.

But despite all the international friendship, the company is still headquartered in Avintes in Portugal, right next to the local zoo/wildlife park, left in the snap above. Not lost their roots completely. Not that I could actually find this particular bottle at reference 7, although I did get warm.

Starter quite satisfactory, if a little mean with the bread. But then we had the long wait. Tables around us were getting their meals. Lots of drinks were being delivered to the table just outside. Eventually we summon the waitress who makes apologetic noises and offers a complimentary beverage - an offer which evaporates by the time we accept it a little while later. BH gets progressively crosser, even resorting to getting the remains of her picnic out to keep her going. She threatens to walk out.

Just about an hour after we got our starter, our main courses turn up - and I know because of the time stamps on the snaps. At least BH was happy enough with her salad, while I was not very happy with my pizza, which was nicely made, but which turned out not to involve any cheese. I had noticed that some of their pizzas did not involve any tomato and managed to avoid that elephant trap, while neatly falling into another one! Filling but not very flavourful. Not like the cheese on toast (foreign format) that I was expecting at all. More like the very cheap pizzas I once bought from a Turkish café in the not terribly salubrious area to the east of Swindon railway station, probably on the way to a large house in Manchester Road which now seems to be called the 'Tap and Barrel'.

We dispensed with desserts, solid or liquid, while the waitress told us of her 11 hour shift, not leaving until the place closed. It all sounded a bit grim. We decided that, not being conspicuously luvvie, we were far too old for what this establishment had become since our last visit, possibly that noticed at reference 8, before the plague years.

Two items of interest on the way home. First, it seemed that aeroplanes at Heathrow were both landing and taking-off west-to-east, rather than the usual east-to-west. Something must have happened to the wind. Second, for once in a while, we spotted a goods train at Raynes Park. They still exist!

PS 1: another memory failing in that I had connected the narrow boat story at the end of reference 8 with the Vinoteca pub-diner in what used to be the back yard of Kings Cross Station, not Waterloo at all. While today I associate with the custom of waitresses in the US to dish out a version of their life story at the least provocation, a usually successful device for increasing their tip.

PS 2: I have just tested BH over breakfast, and she had attached the waitress story about peripatetic narrow boats to the canal-side restaurant attached to Kings Place, a few hundred yards away from Vinoteca. Not that unreasonable that both brains saw fit to attach the story to a location with a canal, rather than to Waterloo, miles away from any such thing.

PS 3: and I now associate to a lady in the Tap and Barrel mentioned above, who was keen on horses and kept one maybe ten miles from where she lived. She alleged that from that distance she still knew when her horse was ill or otherwise uncomfortable. I didn't know what to think about this either then or now: the brains of both horses and humans are complicated bits of electrical and chemical machinery - so can we be so sure that there are no emanations of some sort, to be detected by some scanner of the future?

References

Reference 1: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2009/03/lunacy.html.

Reference 2: https://stjohnswaterloo.org/.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/07/echium-pininana.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/12/translations.html.

Reference 5: https://www.grlondon.co.uk/.

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_at_Lughnasa.

Reference 7: https://sogrape.com/.

Reference 8: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/03/artemis.html.