Mufti

Mufti is good. I had no idea what to wear this morning, so in the end I just picked stuff at random. I should do something about my lack of clothes. In fact, I should do something about my interest in clothes. I never thought they were a large part of my life, but it seems they are. I just like them. The bracelets are my favourite part. I could see Mrs Williams trying to stop herself from screaming at the sight of black-and-silver-steel spiked bracelets in her nice clean conventional lab that smells frighteningly like Ram Nagar in Delhi.
Wandered into cucharita and _vertigo who are talking about taking photographs of the graveyard of the Anglican cathedral. I'd like to see those photographs. The place is so beautiful, because it has been a graveyard for so long it has ceased to be one.
And I need to give Enid the money for the Bowling For Soup tickets. Also need to find out whether I can go. She wants me to wear the "M*A*S*H*E*D" thingy on Friday so she gets a chance to see it. I think I shall oblige.
One more lesson today, and that's Biology. Oh, yayness.

"Sardines!"

Noises Off rocked muchly.
First of all, I'd forgotten how beautiful the Lowry is. I have been there before, but I guess it didn't register on me last time. It's made of glass and steel and inside the theme is purple and orange... which sounds bizarre but is actually wonderful. It seems to me a lot of the new buildings in Manchester are based around the theme of glass and steel. Just an observation.

Anyway. Having arrived, we had forty-five minutes to kill, during which we explored. It wasn't very big, but the time went strangely quickly, and this was after we'd briefly visited the gallery, got our tickets, and Becca had threatened to buy Bev a pair of musical socks for her birthday. She didn't.
We'd bought drinks and sat down somewhere when I discovered I'd lost my ticket. Much panic. Hunting everywhere, I couldn't find it, and finally I lurked in the middle of the group when we went in to the actual theatre. Thankfully, the man checking tickets was old and sympathetic. When I told him convincingly what seat number I had, he let me in. I was never more relieved.

And then... the play. I expected it to be clever, sharp, and amusing. I didn't expect it to be howlingly, hysterically funny. The curtain came up to show us an old woman, delivering a monologue while she swept the floor. I was put off. And then a disembodied voice came out of nowhere, they had a conversation about the theme of the play being doors and sardines, and finally the disembodied voice said, "Do me a favour, Dolly."
"What?" said she.
"Get off the fucking stage."

After that, I got in the swing of it. The basic premise was of an inept theatre company trying to put on a show of a play called "Nothing On" to an audience in Weston-super-mare. A load of characters who are all sleeping with each other, a director who sometimes speaks as a disembodied voice from the back of the theatre, and sometimes joins the others on the stage, farcically opening and closing doors and a fixation with sardines all help contribute to the humour.

So, yes. It was beyond hilarious, and all the actors were brilliant, carrying off their dual-parts - the characters in Noises Off and the characters in Nothing On. The second act was even funnier than the first, as it showed us another rehearsal for the play, only from a backstage viewpoint. As the play is now going on, the characters backstage can't make any noise, and the slapstick, exaggerated gestures and weird goings-on were so quick and clever and hilarious that the real audience were rolling around, particularly when the characters' play started going wrong - one of them is an alcoholic old man, which causes problems, as does a guy who has a nosebleed at the slighest threat of violence and then faints at the sight of his own blood.

I think one of the most surprising things about the play was how dirty it was. For example, near the end of the first act, it was established that the director has something going on with every female member of the cast, and the characters have just realised what he and this girl called Poppy are really doing when they disappear together. Poppy then runs off saying she wants to be sick, and the director-guy says, "It must have been something she ate."
Becca and I were laughing hysterically by this point, but in the interval, it became clear that Bev didn't get the joke. In trying to explain it, Becca went through a series of ever-more-imaginative actions and gestures, but Bev didn't see. There was a slight silence the moment I said, "Fucking blowjob, Beverley!"

It got dirtier later on - a lot of the misunderstandings arise because characters walk in on other characters doing... stuff... and get the wrong idea completely, and one of the few pieces of dialogue in the second act is Poppy yelling at the director, "I'm having your baby!"

So, yes. Brilliant play. And everyone who saw it keeps saying "Not gone!" and bursting into giggles.

If this was a foretaste of our London trip, I can't wait.