Saturday night at the Steamie.

Tonight I went out with friends and we saw Tony Roper's marvellous comedy "The Steamie". I've seen it on TV but live on stage it was truly excellent. I haven't laughed out loud so often for ages at the antics of 4 Glesca wimmin doing their washing at an old public washouse in Glasgow in the 50's. It was dated by references to Tony Curtis being good looking and the brave new all mod cons housing estate in the country to which the youngester aspired - Drumchapel!!! (For non Weegies, Billy Connoly famously described the "Drum" as "a desert wi windaes") It was great fun and 1st class.

Splendidly, the Blue Brazil beat Stenhousemuir 2-0 which sneaks them nicely up the league table. I am well chuffed as we tended not to do well against them last year. Quite an enjoyable Saturday really.

The daily waffle!

Went off last night with a group from church to support a local amateur dramatic group by attending their performance. It was enjoyable enough, although the play was a classic pot-boiler from the 1920's called T"he Ghost Train". You knew it was the 1920's when the baddies were revealed as Juan from Barcelona (Manuel's dad I think!) and Herr Otto Sitz and were decried by the juvenile lead as "Bolshies"!! Also, the paper being read was"The British Gazette", which was only produced during the General Strike of 1926 and was edited by Winston Churchill! (Nice one, props department!) Monocles, hip flasks, stiff upper lips, strong men and dependent women. They don't write 'em like that any more! Thank Gawd! It was an enjoyable hoot! But for me the fun bit was discovering who the playwright was. Arnold Ridley. Name means nothing - unless you are a fan of "Dad's Army", in which case you will recognise him as Private Godfrey! Fascinating, eh?

Back to court this am, but it was called off after 45 mins due to a missing bit of paper! Try again on Friday. However, when i went to the shop for my baccy and paper, I mused on why there is such a lousy selection of pipe tobaccos these days. When I were a lad, you could get St Bruno (as smoked by Dom Gregory Dix who wrote "The Shape of the Liturgy"), Gold Block, Clan and Condor (be very careful when purchasing this - when a curate I went into our local wee Asian shop in my dog collar and asked for a packet of this and the wee wifie put a packet of "Mates" on the counter. It was pointed out later by my Rector that when burnt, they smelled much the same as what I usually smoked!). But you also got some great other blends: 3 Nun's Ready Rubbed (ooh-er, missus!), Parson's Pleasure, Presbyterian Mixture. Whatever happened to those? Nostalgia!

High Dunsinane, Birnam Wood and all that.

Last night was a wee trip to Falkirk Town Hall to see the Mull Little Theatre doing Macbeth by Wullie Shakespeare. With 6 actors. It may be over 25 years since I did the Scotch play at school but even I can recall that there were more than 6 roles in it! Very inventive, minimal set decoration, clever use of mirrors which made the 3 witches possible and the actress doing the witches did all sorts of other bits, like the porter, so was onstage virtually all the time - an amazing feat of memory if nothing else. Very gifted woman indeed. The witches were portrayed as a truly screwy schizoid young woman who in this day and age would be parked safely in the Royal Ed under heavy medication. Excellent production.

And my next cultural outing? Saturday night, same place to watch a Dusty Springfield impersonator!

The leisure continues!

After a gallop to Shaftesbury Avenue to get a ticket for Hairspray (the musical, rather than the L'Oreal product - although I'm worth it!), it was off to the British Museum to see the Hadrian Exhibition. Then the show which was Faaaabulous!!! I will really have to put musicals on my list of interests. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?