Today was pencil-thin moustache day. As a gradual depressurization from the goatee I wore to the Vampire party on Saturday, I've been slowing removing bits of my facial hair. Sadly, I have no pictures of this most recent look. Just imagine me as Errol Flynn or David Niven. In particular, imagine me with the looks of Errol Flynn and the charm of David Niven.
It's quite a unique look these days. I didn't see a single other man with a pencil-thin moustache all day. It's a look that seems to bring joy to many people. I'm surprised it's not more popular. My wife, for instance, thought it was very amusing, and such an attractive look she insisted I shave it off tomorrow morning so I wouldn't be quite so gorgeous to all the young ladies who were smiling at me today.
Yesterday was droopy moustache down the sides day. Think Mexican bandit in spaghetti western or Derek Smalls from Spinal Tap. It wasn't a very cultured look which is too bad as yesterday evening was a day of great culture.
First, the spouse and I went to a reading of Helen Fielding's new book. Okay, maybe we're not talking high culture here, but still, book reading: kind of cultural. She was talking with some intellectual dude from BBC Four about here latest book which is basically about a 30ish PR woman in the States who falls in love with a guy who may or may not be Osama Bin Laden. It's a black comedy and some reviewers have said it is in incredibly bad taste. Me, I don't know. She was funny at the reading and charmed me a bit but I couldn't get past the first dozen pages of her first novel which was a black comedy about an African refugee camp and the London fashion scene. I suspect I'll have a similar reaction to this one.
Actually, I'm not a huge Helen Fielding fan, I just like going to readings every now and then. They're cheap and entertaining and I get to dream I might actually write something other than a blog some day.
After that we had a tasty dinner at perhaps my favourite restaurant in London, the Pollo Bar which has a great variety of incredibly cheap Italian food and is right in the heart of Soho. It's one of those anomalies that remind you that the universe is a very random place.
And then we went off to the cool bit: a performance piece by the Merce Cunningham dance group.
It was fantabuliferous and held in the turbine room of the Tate Modern. The turbine room is the enormous entry hall at the Tate. It's as high as about two dozen elephants all balanced on one foot on top of each other. Actually, I have no idea how high it is. Damn high, that's all.
The ceiling was covered in mirrors and there was a big sun like thing at one end. This is apparently an installation art piece which was just serendipitous to the dance performance but it's what made the whole thing work so well. The dancers wore bright fluorescent leotards and danced on three spaces along the floor of the room. You could wander around at will throughout the show. I spent most of the show lying on my back and watching via the mirror which made the performances look a bit like a human kaleidoscope.
You can see a review here.
But, even if you don't go for the dance you should check out the big mirror installation thing. That bit's free and the Tate is just down the road.
As always with these things, the crowd was another bonus to the performance. And because of the free roaming nature of the venue, it somehow felt more permissible to just hang back and watch the people watching rather than the performers from time to time. Artsy people tend to look like freaks sometimes. I looked a bit freakish myself due to the Derek Smalls effect, but I wish I'd had the pencil-thin thing going on. And soon it will be scraped from my face by a razor sharp wafer of metal. Oh well, hair today, gone tomorrow.