satyrica

Food Not Bombs Monday then after work on Tuesday I hopped on the train down to Southampton to meet up with a couple of school friends to go and see The Levellers playing at the Guildhall: I think the London gig had either sold out or clashed with something so when J mentioned he wanted to go to the Southampton one, it seemed an appropriate solution: the Levellers were my first major gig, a massive group of us all piling down to the BIC, and it was suitably resonant to be back in Southampton and with school friends to see them. They were playing Levelling the Land all the way through (20 years since its release, so it must have been around longer than I realised when I started listening to them) although in reality they broke it up into two halves and played some of its B-sides in the middle, which did slightly detract from the intensity of the experience but also allowed its audience, who perhaps lack the agility they once had, if not the enthusiasm, the chance to get its breath back. Anyway, it didn't disappoint and was a lot of energetic fun.

I came back up to London and into work for about lunchtime on Wednesday then afterwards went along to see The Heretic at The Royal Court (shamefully, I think the first time I've been there whilst I've been working in Chelsea, despite the string of award-winning productions its staged.) It was very well-performed and, much as I love my Elizabethans and Jacobeans, great to see something contemporary in the theatre for the first time in ages: it was at its best when it was being funny, there were a lot of laughs, and although some of its barbs about the erosion of scientific impartiality by the introduction of the market into academia and the refusal of the liberal consensus to allow scepticism of its dogma hit home, the minor characters surrounding Juliet Stevenson's excellent central performance veered far too close to caricature and the events to wild improbability for it to really have the intellectual or emotional impact it seemed to be aiming for.

Since then it's mostly been work: at the shelters Thursday evening (only four more weeks now,) Danny's last day and drinks to say goodbye to him Friday night and then back in for a Trustee Away Day yesterday morning. I'll miss him but the guy taking over has been one of the shelter managers this season and I'm pretty sure will be just as good. Since I's in West London I headed over to my friends in Olympia to watch the rest of Evangelion- now to look it up on the intenet and try to work out what the hell was going on!