Last night, we travelled to Cardiff for a performance art exposition under the umbrella title of "The Future of Love". In 3 parts, the first 2 were so awful that I found myself thinking, if this is the future of love, give me the cyanide capsule now. The first section was a french artist demonstrating "state of the art" robotic sex toys, which was a bit like flipping channels and coming across "Tomorrow's world, live from Nantes" and the 2nd, a Korean dancer's offering which involved her hugging a tripod with a male bust screwed into the top, the whole tableau remaining motionless for minutes at a time. It may have been "deep", "meaningful" or whatever, but I kept wanting to jump up and cry- "excuse me! But isn't this utter bullshit?"
It was saved by the final section, a quirky but highly original dance by Anushia Yarnell, ably assisted by her brother Swaran, she almost literally tearing her soul open for our inspection. This at least was moving and powerful theatre.
This morning, we made the lengthy drive to the Forest of Dean to undertake a 9 mile walk in the woods. On arriving, however, we found hundreds of cars parked, and even more spectators lining the forest tracks for the annual Forest of Dean motor rally. We struggled on manfully, but at one point we found ourselves having to walk down a straightish track where the cars (according to the marshals), "got into 6th gear", meaning getting to over 100 miles per hour. The noise, the speed, the flying pebbles thrown up by the cars in their furious progress, made my wife say she was "about to cry with terror" and I myself was genuinely concerned for our safety. After an hour of this , realising that the tortuous route through the forest gave us no respite throughout the length of our proposed path, led us to give up in despair and return home to the safety of our sofa. Bollocks!
COMMENT
What wonderful events last night in Egypt! This is the best bit of world news for many years; every time the people rise up to overthrow an autocratic dictatorship (Philippines, South Africa, the communist bloc) I always experience a tremendous surge of pure, life-affirming joy. We can only hope that the Egyptian people will now obtain the democratic setup they so richly deserve. And I wonder, which autocratic state in the Arab world will be the next to fall. Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Jordan, Syria; there's a long, if not very distinguished, list of suitable candidates...
Saturday, 12 February 2011
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