Beer, skittles and composers who begin with an M
OK, confession time again. I'm an idiot. There, I've said it and we can move on. It does a body good to get these kind of things out in the open, no point hiding them from you, I mean it must have been obvious by now.
Long-term readers may recall the classic example of my idiocy, when I completely forgot to attend a concert I'd been looking forward to for months. It was several days later that I woke up in a cold sweat with the horrible realisation, and then blogged this. The unused ticket still sits here on my desk, mocking me.
It would appear that the venue for that concert, the Royal Albert Hall, is destined to appear and re-appear in the chronicles of my stupidity. I'm going to let you work this one out for yourself. Take a look at the previous entry on this page. What day is the Mahler concert? Saturday. OK, now look at the right sidebar and scroll down the page until you reach a list of dates. What date is the Mahler concert? The 11th. OK, now look at the calendar and see if... OK, you've got it now. You're obviously far cleverer than I am.
A little after mid-day I turned up to join the Arena day prommers queue outside the Royal Albert Hall. To my surprise there were only five other people already there. Seemed odd, I thought, surely Mahler's Eighth should be more popular than this? Oh well, I settled in to the queue.
Prommers chat.
"You know, I'm surprised there aren't more people here by now. I thought this concert was going to be more popular."
"I think you'll find the big queuers are saving their strength for the Mahler tomorrow."
"Oh, real-LY?"
I think my voice may have squeaked a little, but I played it cool. OK, so I was a day early for Mahler's Eighth, but what the hell, I was already there. I'd stick it out. There was no need for anyone to know what a fool I was (except for you, of course). Whatever concert was on, I'm sure it would be fine. I could always come back the next day.
One thing I learnt yesterday, there is no subtle way to ask people what concert you are queuing for. There is no right combination of words. So I settled down to play Travel Scrabble with my neighbours in the queue. I had not played in years, but I used to do pretty well, except when I played my father. Dad cheated, or at least he refused to allow me to cheat, which amounted to the same thing.
Another thing I learnt yesterday, there is no easy way to be whipped by a fifteen year old girl in Scrabble.
After a couple of hours, a pair of hardcore prommers announced their intention to abandon their place in the very slowly forming queue and nip off to the Great British Beer Festival. Ah, Real Ale, my salvation! So we hopped on a number 10 bus and zipped over to Olympia.
Since arriving in the UK, I have attended the Beer Festival almost every year. You go in, you get yourself a glass and you wander around a huge hall sampling any one of a thousand odd Beers, Ciders and Perries; You get to choose from a wide variety of traditional, and not so traditional, Pub food; And, if you're lucky, win a prizes playing one of the many old-fashioned English Pub Games on offer.
It's just about the most fun you can have standing up, although if you don't pace yourself, you won't stay standing for long. A couple of years ago, on returning from a drink-sodden evening at the festival, I (very drunk) had the genius idea of placing Adam (much, much, much, much drunker) on a train heading back into London. For a joke, you understand. I'd let him off before the train departed.
So, we got off the train at Gatwick (for reasons too complicated to explain), I walked him across the platform, opened the door of another train, helped him inside and closed it behind him. Even Adam, in his barely aware state, could figure out that something was amiss. He tried to open the door, but I had no trouble holding the door handle shut from the outside.
He raced down the carriage to the next door; I beat him there easily. Next carriage, I was there too, grinning. He began to have that sick puppy look, and as he ran off I decided I'd let him out at the next door. I also noticed it was getting close to the time for the train's departure, so when we got to the next door, I stood back.
"Let me out."
"I'm not holding this one."
The door wasn't opening; I decided to help him out. Just one problem, the door was locked.
At this point our friends stopped laughing and the train guard yelled at me to move away from the train. I motioned to Adam for him to race back to the last door, but it was too late.
I could go into the horrible guilt as Adam's sad face at the window disappeared into the distance, the desperate efforts to get station staff down the line to rescue him, the general hilarity of the whole situation, but I think I've moved a little off topic. The long and the short of it was that Adam was home in bed asleep while Justin, Emma and myself were still at Gatwick in the wee hours of the morning, trying figure out what had happened to him.
Back to the present -- Got back in the queue at the Royal Albert Hall around 4:30pm, ever so slightly the worse for wear. The concert turned out to be a fairly blah collection of pop classics (Mozart, Rossini and the like) with the English Chamber Orchestra. The problem with that kind of concert is that a many in the audience are tourists who have never been to a concert before, and are just pleased to recognize the tunes from some car commercial. It all got kind of surreal when half the audience clapped in between movements of the Haydn Piano Concerto. The pianist/conductor Ralf Gothóni would peer around, grin and make the Shhh sign, but they didn't seem to notice.
Anyhow, so that was my day.
