Toilets

We placed several small bets on The Grand National. As always, I bet on No.9, my gran's lucky number. No. 9 Stattler pulled up early this year, but I mistakenly thought Kitty's Light was No.9, so we bet on that, too. It was the only one of our bets to place. It was always a bit of fun, and I will not bet on horses until this time next year.

In the evening, we went to the Soho Theatre to see 'Boys on the Verge of Tears'. We met in The Queen's Head at Piccadilly and were pleased to discover available seating upstairs, which is quite remarkable for a Saturday night in the middle of The West End. While waiting for the others, PY and I were talking about the moon landings. We discovered the last person walked on the moon in late 1972. We were alive then, but some of our friends were born a little too late.

The play was very unusual. It is a one-act, almost two-hour performance with five actors playing all the parts, and it is entirely set in a men's toilet. It follows the 'life of man' from being a small boy learning to use a toilet through school and then adolescence and onwards to adulthood and older age. It's pretty uncomfortable to watch in places. In hindsight, that's a good thing. I am not sure that the level of male conversation in the toilets is realistic, but then again, perhaps, in those environments, the bathroom is the only place men talk (or not talk, as happens in one quite long scene towards the end). It must have worked as a piece of theatre because I kept thinking about other things it might be saying to the audience all the way home. Like All Of Us Strangers, I will process this for weeks. If the purpose of art, in whatever form, is to make you think, then his piece does. But, if the purpose is to convey a specific message, then that was lost on me.

Afterwards, we went to Prix Fixe Brasserie for a lovely dinner. My French onion soup with gruyere cheese croutons was everything I wanted: very thick and rich. The chargrilled Bavette steak with a sauce of shallots and mushrooms was perfect. The others all had a chicken schnitzel and avocado Caesar salad, which was also deemed delicious.