Groove is in Den Haag

For the second time in two weeks I found myself in a foreign city that I'd been aware of since I was a kid but still know next to nothing about. This time it was the turn of Den Haag, The Hague, a city with no discernible centre that seems to exist purely as a very trendy Dutch Lakeside.

Given that The Hague is so very trendy it was a bit of a surprise that it was attached to Scheveningen, an especially tacky sea-side resort.  I thought down-at-hill seaside chintz was a purely British thing, but evidently not.

I ate me some raw herring - that's pretty Dutch, right? It had a tail and everything. Raw herring = good.

Rounded off my Dutch weekend with a visit to the newly opened Stedelijk gallery in Amsterdam. All the other galleries around were closed so it was full to its overflow pipe and, being a scathing cynic as I often am, there just didn't seem to be the art to justify the crowds or for that matter the shiny new building.

Right in the Gulags

Warsaw is one of those cities that I've known of for about as long as I can remember, yet I know almost nothing about it.  Turns out, having spent a weekend bimbling around it, I still know pretty much nothing about it - still, it was a most pleasant place to bimble.  I genuinely would like to say more than that about it - I feel like its stature in my mind deserves more - but there's just not much more to say that's in anyway interesting.

I try not to comment too much on current affairs - mainly because I don't really understand anything, ever - but Pussy Riot have been sent to the gulags and that doesn't sound like a fun day out.  I don't really know what a gulag is but I'm fairly sure that they don't have ferrero rocher there. And that was just for singing a song in a church, I went to a wedding the other week - I sang three songs in a church - in your face Putin.

But really, between that and those Italian geologists who have been convicted of manslaughter for not being able to do the impossible I can't help but think that the world is somewhat unreasonable.

Hiphop Karaoke

In my limited experience of hiphop karaoke one thing I've found is that I don't actually know the words to any raps.  I think I do but what I actually know is the sounds, consequently if you try to read said lyrics it will say something ridiculous, like "Muggs is a funk fest" which just confuses you.  In the end it's a straight choice between making sort-of-right sounds at the sort-of-right time and trying to recreate what's actually been written; I'd suggest that the second option is the first step on the path to karaoke disaster.

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.