Ways to see the sunrise, #435 *

As those of us in the northern hemisphere have recently been finding (to the detriment of our photography), the sunrise is now too early for sane people in civilised areas of the country to see it at all. But such a profusion of fiery colours, present only for a fleeting instant, deserve a little special effort, and I hereby present a foolproof method of ensuring one sees the early morning glory of the sky.

Step 1. Drive approximately 99 miles in a southerly direction during the afternoon rush hour, avoiding any obstacles (such as lorries, or roundabouts) that you happen to encounter.

Step 2. Stand aimlessly in a street, enjoying the pleasantly warm evening sunshine, until a shout of POTATO causes the untimely death from shock of a bystander whose only crime was to be chaining her bicycle up nearby.

Step 3. Attempt to hug Keppet. This may or may not work, depending on how much of a rush for cocktails she is in.

Step 4. Proceed directly to cocktail bar (do not get run over by bike, do not collect £200 unless you really think 57 cocktails would be a good idea). Establish which seats you sat in last year and which cocktails you ordered; then proceed to sit in same seats and place a somewhat similar order.

Step 5. Drink; talk; giggle. Scare entire clientele and indeed bar staff away. Take photos while nobody's looking.

(Step 5, cont). Have another drink each. Become psychic. Get surprised by own reflection in mirror. Exit bar when cocktails return to full price at 8pm.

Step 6. Take/get taken on nostalgic walking tour of Oxford city centre, complete with such gems of knowledge as "that cash machine used to give £5 notes."

Step 7. Walk towards train station in search of curry. Fail to find any, return towards town and settle for Thai. Restrain amusement at odd customers. Take seats, play with napkins and flowers, allow Keppet to choose your food (this works surprisingly well).

Step 8. Laugh at Keppet eating rice because you are by now in a mood to laugh at pretty much anything. Eat first portion of food voraciously. Then develop either stomach ache or sudden exhaustion and leave at least half of your meal.

Step 9. Declare yourself the Bubble Master. (Only one of you, however, may hold this title.)

Step 10. Determine success of entire meal on appearance of mint imperials with the bill. Take the only action possible in such circumstances.

Step 11. Remove to a location approximately 2 miles north-east, sit on bed or chair and chat. Be alert for possibilities to insert the word 'akimbo' into the conversation. Express self through restlessness of feet, higher brain functions having now shut down.

Step 12. Eventually realise the inexorable nature of time's onward progress, and occupy yourself with arranging a sleeping bag on the floor or complaining about how the duvet on the bed won’t stay tucked in. Converse a little through toothpaste.

Step 13. Sleep. Ahh, sleep.

Step 14. Continue sleeping through the alarm, since alarms are well known for making you do things you don't want to do. Surface to consciousness instead at the sound of Keppet’s voice telling you it's 5am, since this is an unusual inclusion in your early morning routine.

Step 15. Flood the en-suite through inexpert usage of the shower curtain.

Step 16. Pack bags, with audience watching. Let audience inform you how much she has in common with a giant fusion reaction in space, and nod sagely. Claim portion of bed on which to leave crumbs.

Step 17. Depart tearfully (but hiding it well). Admire the lightening of the eastern sky.

(Step 17, cont). Spend several minutes persuading the dew to stop settling on your windscreen. Drive north, out of town.

Step 18. Ta-da!

(Step 19. Perform return 99-mile journey and go to work.)

* I recognise that there are many rather simpler ways to achieve this goal.

Data!

Firstly, it's poor quality. "Train fault." Secondly, it's incomplete. "Uncoded." Thirdly, no ways of sorting it will reliably give you anything useful whatsoever. Fourthly, it comes from other companies' systems so we have no control over it. Fifthly, nothing agrees with itself, not even two sheets within the same spreadsheet, and I cannot produce the graphs I am supposed to be replicating, from what appears to be the exact same data.

And nobody ever tells you the same thing.

*pulls hair out*

Aaaaaaaaaargh.

Someone please tell me that, somewhere in the world, someone actually knows what they're doing?

He hath ever but slenderly known himself

(*copy/paste* Keppet may now play spot the difference, if she likes.)

Yesterday evening was rather fantastic. Hobblings and Shakespeare make for a superb time (when they are pretty much the best of both, anyway…I doubt that Willem and The Taming of The Shrew would have been quite such a grand mix. Although probably still preferable to seeing it with some real-life people I could think of).

So, my opinions come a day late - after a whole 5 hours' sleep, too - but I was way, way too tired to turn the computer on last night...although actually I was doing fine until the last ten minutes or so of driving, when it all suddenly ganged up on me and I could feeling myself falling asleep and losing the ability to care about...you know, white lines, the edge of the road, oncoming traffic...so when I got through the door I just went straight to bed (do not pass go, do not turn on your computer).

But back to yesterday. I got to Stratford at about ten to 6...and then drove around for ten minutes so I could get cheap evening car parking rates. Wandered over the picturesque Avon, feeling weirdly Oxfordy about the whole thing...slow river, old bridges, willows, barges, a boat club and a solitary rower.

I wandered over to the theatre (incidentally, have never been to Stratford before, but it's a very nice easy town to find your way around. Rivers are always helpful), found a toilet and picked up my ticket, looking out for anyone with a long-ish grey bob (hah, bob) as I did so. However, biped was the one that found me as I was stood at the box office (and considering we'd only thought we'd meet up at the interval, due to me assuming I wouldn't get there early, yay us for managing that). We then had about half an hour to kill, so stood around while I attempted to mush a chocolate brownie to death, chatting, passing salty liquorice and dvds over, and discussing how biped's ginormous red bag could possibly be made to look like a genteel handbag suitable for theatregoing (it couldn't). Then (after we armed ourselves with programmes) it was time for the play, and I was almost resentful because I was enjoying myself standing chatting so much...and also, let's be honest, because I didn't think I was going to find anything to particularly love in Lear. I knew nothing really of the storyline beyond "father disinherits his favourite daughter and comes to regret it" and nothing of the themes beyond age, insanity and warring over kingdoms (and the programme informed me there was some stuff about calling on the gods, too) – none of which sounded highly enthralling. Plus, knowing that something is a tragedy before I even start always puts me off it. I like hoping for the best even if it doesn't happen. So I was thinking I would appreciate a good production of it, add another Shakespeare play to the list of ones I'm familiar with, and enjoy seeing Ian McKellen act in person. No more than that, really.

Boy, was I wrong. It was...fantastic. Beyond fantastic. I need better words. Firstly, the play itself had themes and resonances which spoke extremely strongly to me (the frailty of age being something that has admittedly been on my mind a lot lately). Secondly, they managed to pull off a vast quantity of the stuff that tends to annoy me about Shakespeare (people running around in disguises all over the place, silly japery and fools' rhymes and nuncle-ing, and extremely over-Meaningful pronouncements) and make it believable, funny and subtle – an amazing trick, that. Thirdly, the entire company were unbelievably fantastic. Biped need not have worried about the understudy for Goneril – she was amazing, and I can't see that the real actress could have done much better. And everyone else, even the secondary good guy and villain, were stage-stealers. Great stuff. Ian McKellen himself was obviously...well, beyond even what I expected of him. Such a presence, and so commandingly powerful and frail by turns – and yet clearly having so much fun with it too. His comic timing on several lines (being that Lear goes just a touch mad) was simply brilliant. I can't hope to replicate, but eg on an old friend running into him when he's gone totally loopy and is walking round with ragged clothes and flowers in his hair (and oh, that was sweet)...

[old friend] O, let me kiss that hand!
[Lear] ...let me wipe it first.

Ah, it's nothing without the timing and inflection but...it was spot on. I really felt that they deserved a standing ovation (and a few members of the audience did) but I didn't quite have the courage myself and so clapped my hands to death instead. In aspects other than the cast...the stage design and usage (it projects out into the audience, so most of the action was actually between me and biped sat on the other side – when I got lost in the middle of a Shakespearean speech (which did happen a good few times) I entertained myself by watching her instead) was also awesome. The set was sparse, but evocative and very well used, going from a regal elegance at the start of the play to a scaffolded dilapidation by the end, and the space of the stage was extremely well used to make us really feel in the action (Edmund, minor baddie, was especially great in that he had a lot of enjoyably evil, clever and funny soliloquies which he directed at us as he strode around relishing his own ego).

Oh, and the guy who was playing the Earl of Kent was clearly (to my mind, anyway) doing an homage to Christopher Eccleston as Claude. It was even the same accent.

And yet it was good enough on its own that I didn't even feel (as I usually do) that making connections to other things diminished it (by my own count, one brain click to Heroes, one to VM, one to RH – well, there's a Fool. It was inevitable. But that was all).

And it made me cry absolute buckets at the end. Biped too, so hurray. I didn't want to leave...it just felt so special to stay with the stage and the feel of it all.

This is total fangirl babbling, isn't it? Well whatever. It really was that good. Even Ian McKellen stripping (yes, totally, apart from his top getting stuck over his head, which I think was a wise choice on his part – at least you don't have to see the audience staring) was done so it was touching and tragic and funny all in one.

And so, before I witter any further, onwards. The play finished at about 10.30 (having started at 7, and the interval was pretty short, but it felt nowhere near that long), by which point my root canal had un-numbed and I was absolutely starving. Biped, due to inability to get a train back to London at that time of night, had in fact taken yesterday and today off work and was staying at a hotel in Stratford last night (and planning to spend today walking by the Avon), so was available to go wandering in search of food. We found an Indian restaurant (called Thespian's – very ethnic) and plonked ourselves down in there at about quarter to 11. Due to the need to discuss the play at length, then proceeding on to questions of art and entertainment, a brief foray onto Willem, back to Lear, onto Veronica Mars, side excursion to Heroes...you get the gist...and also some eating of food, too...we exited at ten past midnight. It was just really good discussion, and quite yummy curry too. We then wandered back to my car (which was on the way to her hotel) via the Avon again – realising that we could in fact take the next day's photo legally, and so wasting time messing around (her camera has excellent night settings which pick up soooo much light. Jealous? Me? Maybe...) – and then had a brief chat in the car park, by my car, along the lines of "it's like a real car." Heh. She headed off to hotel bed and, at half past midnight, I hit the road but luckily nothing else. I did take a wrong turn in Tamworth but it was a happy wrong turn as it found me a petrol station, which I needed. Got through the door at 2am exactly and was asleep within about 5 minutes, I think.

So there is the history of my evening. I am feeling curiously forlorn that there are no official reviews of Lear yet - thanks to the understudy playing Goneril, they have postponed the official press night until the proper actress is back - which will probably be over a month away. I want to read other opinions...I cannot believe they would be poor ones.

But I don't know, I still don't feel I have conveyed how good an evening it was. I love having friends who I actually want to spend time with and discuss stuff with. There is just something unspeakably perfect about someone comparing McKellen in Lear to Patrick Stewart in The Tempest and then finishing with the sentiment of having now seen both Xavier and Magneto do Shakespeare. Heehee. And then the play itself being so perfect...ahh.

*still wanting to clap hands together in excitement at how great it was*