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I got my bike out of the shed for the first time in a long while. I used to use it quite a lot to get around the local area, but the shed we had built for it is a bit inaccessible and I guess I have been favouring running and walking. The tyres had gone flat and it was covered in cobwebs and mildew and even a little bit of rust. But with the tyres pumped up it worked just fine and I cycled up to the gym where I sat on an exercise bike for 45 minutes before cycling home again. The modern world certainly leads us to some insane behaviour, sometimes without it even striking us. "Why not just cycle on your bike for 45 minutes for free?” my grandad would no doubt ask. “Why would you cycle somewhere on a real bike, only to cycle on a pretend bike?” It certainly seems at the very least eccentric when viewed like that. I suppose it’s safer to cycle on a static bike in the gym, certainly less interrupted by rain and cold or affected by pollution, but mainly I can distract myself from the fact I am exercising by watching TV (alas I wasn’t there at the right time to do my Pointless exercise routine -
http://www.richardherring.com/warmingup/11/12/2014/index.html - when will the BBC put this on 24 hours a day and help get the nation healthy?) and playing Monopoly on my iPhone (another great way to distract oneself from the physical aspect of what you’re doing, plus you’re not allowed to stop until the game ends- usually 20-40 minutes, thought the other day it took 65 minutes of cycling to defeat the evil penguin). I guess on the roads you’re distracting yourself from the exercise because of the sheer terror of watching out for terrible drivers, pot holes and kamikaze pedestrians, but not sure that that works quite as well.
Anyway, it’s a positive step that I have rescued my bike from the black hole of Shepherd’s Bush. So far, so healthy for the new year.
Tonight I went to the Old Vic to see Daniel Kitson and Tim Key in “Tree”. Of course, everyone knows that when comedians write plays it’s usually a disaster (this was certainly the opinion of the reviewer who gave my play its best write-up in Edinburgh, though to be honest I am struggling to think of plays by comedians that haven’t done incredibly well - apart from my plays). This is a terrifically engaging and funny play (though any play with three laughs in it it funny for a play) with terrific performances by both Key and Kitson, even though Kitson is in a tree for the entire thing and you can’t really see him. My wife heard two posh theatre going women in the loo afterwards saying, “If they knew anything about theatre they would know how important it is that you can see the actors”, as if this whole thing had been a thoughtless accident, rather than a deliberate decision. Theatre goers are fucking idiots. For me, having an almost bare stage, with (essentially) a massive talking tree and one man below was a terrific conceit, like Waiting for Godot with more leaves and where one of the tramps has gone (more) insane and is hiding in the tree. Or a Jesus hiding out before anyone can nail him up. It made you focus on Key, whilst occasionally straining for a glimpse of Kitson amongst the foliage.
It made me wish that I had chosen a smaller cast and a “smaller” idea for my latest play. Perhaps I could have done my play with just two men talking. It certainly made me wish that I could put my plays on at the Old Vic, but my plays are not as good as this and Kitson has certainly earned the right and the audience to do this. There’s lots of stuff to think about and discuss afterwards and ambiguity about what has been going on, but you leave the theatre feeling entertained, which is something you worry about not happening when you go to the theatre. Two superbly funny and clever men, some idealism, some fractured romance, some surprises. A tree. Of course it’s highly recommended. But one suspects that a bare stage with Kitson’s disembodied voice saying the first thing that came into his disembodied head would be better than most stuff you’d see at the theatre.
I had assumed it would be sold out, but we managed to pick up tickets yesterday (admittedly quite high up in the big theatre) and there were empty seats around us, so don’t make the mistake I nearly made and book now.
