cultured swine

Being the social fearty that I am I have eschewed (or, indeed, "avoided like the plague") the traditional male-person approaching-marriage boisterous-drinking-shouty fest in favour of quietly popping to the dance at the festival theatre which just happened to be on on the same night Nicky is having her hen night. The original idea was to have a joint non-boisterous non-shouty civilised affair featuring both genders of guest and a non-threatening social occasion such as a large meal but it quickly degenerated into a hen night though will hopefully not degenerate too much into the distasteful world of L-plates and pink glittery plastic Stetsons due to Nicky's emplacement of my sister as arbiter of taste and discretion to counteract any funny ideas Nicky's sister might get regarding the wearing of faux-veils and the recruitment of embarrassing cabaret performers.

I've only been on one stag do (one of Nicky's school pals who seemed to be the only one of her pals who asked if I was doing anything for mine) but it was the fifth most excruciatingly embarrassing experience of my life to date. This had nothing to do with the venues attended (or the nature of the performances taking place therein) but was entirely due to the behaviour of various of the attendees and others of my general species, gender and nationality present in the same city behaving absolutely fucking appallingly towards the locals whom I happened to walk past on my way back to the hotel several hours before everyone else even finished drinking. Brrr. Definitely not my scene and at least on this occasion I can say I've tried it before disapproving of it; at least having experienced one I can now safely say that no matter how horrible they look from the outside when they're shouting their drunken way along the street they're much worse to be a part of.

Luckily the same night Nicky picked for her hen night was the same night the Nederlands Dans Theater were in town at the Festival Theatre. Father Wingpig was popping up alongside the hen-attending Mother Wingpig and was glad to accompany me and luckily announced he was coming up in good time to be able to get an adjacent seat in the front row. There was a small amount of confusion when I picked the tickets up and the front row originally booked was no longer available due to the performance involving a little bit of use of the orchestra pit but they'd stuck us in the new front row one row further back and slightly more in the middle than the original seating-choice. The only issue with the seats was the extreme proximity to the pretentious waffle-woman immediately behind us. I can't quite remember exactly the phrasing she used but it was an amusing contrast to the "aye ye cunt, fitba's the language ae Edinburgh" I heard in the queue in front of me in the shop this morning. I'm often wary of getting snobby when in the presence of alcoholic swearing but simply sitting in front of someone waffling on in exactly the same sort of phrasing employed by the exhibit-information-notices in the wordier galleries is enough to make my vowels start to broaden and my swear-count rise.

At least they were quiet during the performance.

Hopefully the lateness of the showing of the film I'm about to finish the evening off with will mean that it will be unlikely to suffer from the usual crisp-packet-based noise-disruption which can often plague cinémas but which is conspicuously absent from dance, opera and theatre performances.

Anyone know anywhere good for Sunday Lunch-style sunday lunch in or around Stockbridge at Sunday lunchtime?