Or what you will ...

Last night I went to see a KADS performance of 'Twelfth Night'. I had only been expecting drama in the theatre, but it seems I was in for a little extra en-route. Just as I was driving up the lane where I live, a car was leaving the little garage. Nothing unusual in that. I carried on driving along, then I noticed it was reversing. I stopped with a good distance between me and him and then expected him to stop. Except he didn't. He continued to reverse until something would stop him; that something being my car! I don't think I would be a good person to have around in an emergency as I just froze like a rabbit in headlights. I got out of the car to see what he would say. He pointed to the bar with the fog lights in front of my car and said:

But madam, this is here to protect you when something hits you!

I explained that while it may indeed protect me in an emergency, my car is not a bumper car and that I would like it to be taken car of. Whilst in the middle of this debate, a traffic policeman, in his full white regalia, emerged from the same garage. I relayed the story to him and he laughed at me. By this point, several passers by were also laughing raucously. I suggested that the driver should be charged for driving without due care and attention and he said:

But madam, this is here to protect you when something hits you!

Clearly I was not going to get anywhere with this situation, even though I am sure that if I had made the same error I would have been presented with a hefty fine. I drove off with a slightly shaky right leg.


As for play, the local am dram group is most famous for the annual pantomime, and this wasn't far off it! The groundlings didn't quite heckle, but if they did, they would have shouted 'you're in the wrong play' when Antonio appeared as a perfect double of Jack Sparrow! Our thespian doctor played the permanently inebriated rascal Sir Toby Belch a little too well. Malvolio was suitably malevolent and Olivia got more and more flirtatious and French as the play went on.

I had gone in with the attitude that Shakespeare played by amateurs could be dreadful, so I was pleasantly surprised. I do think it was a wise choice to stick with a comedy. What a shame the venue was the stuffy old National Theatre though - it would have been lovely to watch the play outdoors with a pic-nic and a glass of wine!