Just before I saw War Horse the other day, I dropped into the Royal Festival Hall to see how it had been spiffed up. It was a great deal more successful than the miserable St. Pancras which has been turned into a garish Essex Shopping Village, the visual equivalent of a gated estate of executive housing, presided over by a dreadful gargantuan statue of snoggers. Gone are the shadows, the diffused light of the old station, the dinginess and the pigeons, gone the lovely melancholy of the old place.
Anyway, sitting at the table at the Festival Hall was a man who I immediately recognised. He was with two young girls, presumably his children. He rose as I approached, and I went towards him, my arms held out in affectionate greeting. We embraced warmly.
“How are you?” he said.
“I’m fine,” I said. “How lovely to see you! Are you here for War Horse?”
“No, we’re for the Barenboim,” he said.
“Well, have a lovely time and I do hope you enjoy it. Lovely to see you again,” I added, as we kissed goodbye.
Later the person I was with said: “Who was that?” and I had to admit that I hadn’t the foggiest. And I still can’t place him. I only hope that he’s tossing and turning at night wondering who the hell I was, as well.
As for War Horse – well. For the first ten minutes, I was spellbound. The horse was constructed from a skeleton of wood, a giant puppet worked by three men. I was pretty amazed for the next ten minutes at the way the horse twitched its ears and shook it’s tail. Then another horse came on and actually reared up. Astonishing. After another ten minutes, however, I thought: “I’ve got the hang of this. It’s wonderful. But I don’t want to see any more” – and walked out.
It’s the first time I’ve walked out of anything because of it was actually good. Normally, I appear to be suffering from a kind of elderly Attention Deficit Disorder. I find it very hard not to walk out of everything I see, and have to be superglued to my seat by social pressures in order to last out nearly every performance that isn’t more than about an hour long.
I’ve started, so convinced I am that I’ll walk out, not to go to anything at all, particularly movies. I managed to wriggle out of No Country for Old Men, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, There will be Blood, and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, and can even expound quite plausibly on how dreadful the are on the basis of one-minute trailers on You Tube.
When I returned home, I passed a group of youths in my street, all of whom were wearing striped tee-shirts, which meant, according some scare story I’d read in the Evening Standard, that they were members of a terrifying gang called the MDPs - short for Murder Dem Pussies. Hurried home, wondering if, when they’re old and meet someone at a gig, they’ll be giving each other high fives and saying “Man, you’re sure cool” or whatever they say to each other, and go home wondering who the hell they were.
So embarrassing not understanding the Language of Youth. I remember when I wrote a rock column for the Mail in the ‘sixties, having to do a Young Person’s Vocabulary for the old geezers who read the paper, which gave explanations for words like Square, Cool, Fab, Trendy and so on. Now I’m in the old geezer position myself, unable to comprehend the language of rap. Though I was rather amused in a shop, when a very young person, to whom I gave the right change to, replied “Fab”. I stared at her, wondering if she wasn’t actually someone of my age who’d had several face-lifts, but no. She was twenty. Apparently it’s coming back.
Cool.
******
Do all grandparents find their own grandchildren’s remarks and actions irresistible – and everyone else’s crashingly boring? I had to crank my mouth into a very unconvincing smile the other day while a woman told me how amused she was when her granddaughter placed her potty on her head and walked around saying it was her new hat. However, sadly, she was just as straight-faced when I told her that my grandson, who is learning the alphabet, told me that “A is for ant, B is for bird, C is for cat…” and so until we got to W. “W” he said, slowly, “is for wabbit.”