Live Sport

Now I appreciate that this isn't a very manly thing to say, but live sport?  What's all that about?

Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy playing sport - on the whole I'm rubbish, but I enjoy it.  Watching sport (well some sports) on the television is normally a satisfying way of wasting an hour or so, but sport, live, in a stadium - nope, just don't get it.

In the last couple of weeks I've been to both athletics and rugby and in both instances I've just come out a bit confused. If you're near enough to see anything up close, then you can't see what's happening anywhere else so have no real idea what's going on. If you're far enough away to see the entire event, then you're probably so far away that you may as well be looking at a formicary.

Don't get it.

It's almost like the sport is incidental and really the event is just an excuse to get drunk and holler noise at strangers as part of a mindless herd.  Which is nothing like a live music gig...

A Play of Two Halves

How good is the first half of Timon of Athens?  Answer: Really good. It's not like any other Shakespeare I've seen: often when you see Shakespeare in a contemporary setting it still feels very Elizabethan; this didn't, this felt like a contemporary play that the author had decided to put into blank verse. Great story, great characters, great acting - by the time the interval I couldn't understand why it's not really put on.

How bad is the second half of Timon of Athens? Answer: Pretty bad. Plot is dispensed with in favour of a series of the free-form jazz ramblings of an ADHD child. Nothing seemed in anyway credible - in a contemporary setting or anywhere.  By the time the end (if you can call it that) came round my eyes were sagging and I'd stopped caring.

Cork It

Ever since someone told me that Cork is "sort of like Venice" I've been curious to go there.  I assumed that it would be all canals and boats and hats and stuff.  I hadn't realised that the main similarity would be that there's a couple of shops selling over-priced pizza.

Still the town was nice enough, even if it wasn't all that Venetian.  The Victorian prison was pretty impressive and everybody loves a butter museum, right?

Good Things and Bad Things

Good thing #1.  Julius Caesar at Noel Coward Theatre and set in an unnamed African state was about the most accessible Shakespeare I've seen.

Good thing #2.  I've been to two Kate Tempest things in the last couple of weeks - both her book launch and her solo, erm, hiphopera at the BAC.  She's a talented mammal, that Tempest girl. I'd not been to the BAC before, what a great building.  It made me want to open an art centre in England's Newest City (TM) but I fear that it would be about as unsustainable as anything can get.

Bad thing #1. My bike got stolen.  Rubbish. I hadn't really realised how reliant on it I'd become.  I'd forgotten how annoying short haul driving is, and how long walking anywhere takes.

Bad thing #2.  Linked quite closely to Bad thing #1.  The act of buying a bike from Halfords was probably more frustrating than the act of having my bike stolen. Impressively incompetent. I'd heartily recommend not shopping there ever.

There's been other good things and bad things over the last couple of weeks, but the bad things are pretty boring to start with and the good things have been written about so much that they're teetering on the yawnsome precipice so could do without any nudging from me.