Literatea

…and when you do that, you frighten people.” Ronnie James Dio

Courage. I have drummed up a little in order to tell of my exciting trip to the Infinity Club in Mayfair. The courage bit comes in when a) some speed metal fan googles and hits my site and then wants to spike me for what I’ve written or b) my friend Rob sees this entry and then wants to spike me for what I’ve written. Having said that he’s a dear chap really who likes to pretend he’s all lefty-leathertrousers-blackhair-bikery but really is a big softy (his blog chronicling preparations for his impending nuptials is an excellent and entertaining read by the way).

The venue: Excellent little place (it was tiny). Very cool and intimate resulting in face-melting sound. Or maybe their foldbacks were a bit too high and the house was a bit too even higher and after all no-one could seriously tell one instrument from another so a few whiney monitor sounds don’t really matter…
The crowd: Surprisingly small. Maybe about 50 or 60?

Theme of just about everything: Black. I was the only person with a)blondey sort of hair b)undyed hair in the entire venue.
The muzak: This was good ole chuggin-at-the-back-of-the-throat stuff i.e. Lots of shouty goodness involving swearywords and “DIEEEEEEE!!!”
and long hair flying about without regard to people’s eyeballs. It was certainly not my cup of brown sloshy stuff with milk and no sugar but worth the experience (and one of the bands, Needleye, was actually very good).

…cold coffee, lukewarm champagne, and overexcited women.” Orson Welles

The place: my local cinema. The film: Bridget Jones’s Diary:The Edge of Reason.

This isn’t so much a review of the film as a review of Femaledom. We’ve all been waiting for years for the next installment of mayhem in our cherished 30-something singleton’s life. Finally the day arrived and so did the entire female population (well it sounded like it anyway) of England. They came bescarfed, behatted and unfettered by domestic calling. They nattered. They chatted. They forgot to give their ticket stubs to the poor lad on the door. They pushed to the front to ensure they would receive the Best Cinematic Experience Possible (well you would too if you were our on your single cinema trip with your girlfriends this year). They gasped as one when Paul Nichols (Jed), the popular fella, arrived on the scene. They cried when Bridge and…oops- almost gave away the ending there.

I think my favourite People Watching Moment of the evening came when, as if choreographed, every single mother, wife, grandmother and girlfriend drew out their mobile phones and called home frantically to check that husbands/elderly parents/children hadn’t burnt the house down. Unfortunately I was among the frantic (desperately hoping for a message from my beloved who surely must have missed me since we hadn’t been in contact since, oh, the previous day).

The irony hurts.