Boo!

It’s official... I’m lonely. It’s a Saturday, and once again I’ve been in Costa all day working. I left it rather too late to organise something sociable to do and called Nathan just now to see if he fancied a bite to eat in town between his box office shift and performing in his show. He warned me off. It’s Gay Pride, and apparently the whole of central London is chock-a-block with homos. I’m sure they all smell lovely, but they’re rammed into Soho like sardines, which is, in fairness, my idea of hell.

It’s a lovely evening and I can smell barbecues. I might just go and introduce myself to one of the neighbours, or maybe I'll just sit and watch telly instead.

I wish there was something more interesting to write, but there’s not.

Tuesday July 2nd 1661, and Pepys went to Westminster Hall. It was term time, which meant the place was rammed with MPs and various hangers on. He met his cousin Roger, who enquired about their mutual Uncle Robert, who was unwell. Pepys had received a letter from his father, the previous day, which said the poor man was “by fits stupid, and like a man that is drunk, and sometimes speechless.” It doesn’t sound like he was long for the world.

Pepys had yet another singing lesson with his teacher, Theodore Goodgroome, and then went off to the theatre, but not just any theatre; Sir William Davenant’s “Opera” house in Lincoln’s Inn. It had only been open four days, and was built in a converted real tennis court. It featured the first movable scenery and the first proscenium arch in the world, and Pepys was thrilled. It was a royal command performance and as the audience waited patiently for the King’s arrival, one of the boards in the roof broke, and sent a huge amount of dust cascading onto the audience below, which fortunately was taken with a good dose of humour. The play was acted well, but for one character, who sadly got hissed off stage.

I was once bood off stage... at secondary school. I was asked to introduce the acts in an end of term show, and couldn’t have been very popular at the time. I was only about twelve or so, and the whole school was there. I think the older kids kicked things off, and every time I came on to introduce someone else, the booing got louder and louder until no one could hear a word that I was saying. I remember trying to laugh it off, like I was somehow in on the joke, and finding it all hysterically funny, but it was mortified. I was looking across the audience, and even seeing my close friends shouting, hissing and laughing with the best of them. I was eventually hauled off by my form tutor. The next year I wanted to perform in a little skit, but was so worried the same thing would happen again, that I said I’d only appear behind a staging block, pretending to be George from Rainbow, using a pink rubber glove because we didn’t have a fury hippo. Speaking of Rainbow, didn't the bloke who did the voices for George and Zippy recently die? Yes, he did. I've just googled it. His name was Roy Skelton, and he was a genius.

Which is which?