Day 52: Clowns and Sprouts

Boxing Day.  No boxes.  Russian clowns. Blizzards of bubbles and tickertape.  A blanket of webby filaments covering the whole of the Royal Festival Hall.  Huge multi-coloured globes unleashed and volleyballed around the giggling audience.  Floating moons and sparkling rain (magical).  Nooses and bullying (dark).  Brilliant hats like aeroplane wings. 

The main man is Slava (hint in the title - Slava's Snowshow), but my favourites are his green-coated underlings.  They are subversive and goonish and playful.  And although the dramatic beauty of the balls and the blizzards leave us open-mouthed, the greatest frisson comes when the green-coats invade the audience, clambering over chairs, demanding steadying hands to help, stealing water and poking people with shabby umbrellas.

The auditorium is covered in drifts of white paper snow - children cannot get over this, and much time is spent stockpiling supplies to hurl at unsuspecting parents.  You don't need to be a child to see the appeal.

Carpet

Onion

I haven't been to the Festival Hall in years (the actual concert hall).  Have spent many hours drinking coffee in the foyer, but no concerts.   That's something I associate with being a teenager (how un-rock and roll).  Going up the stairs to level 4, and I see that the carpets haven't changed.   Still the same seventies pattern, like cells with nuclei.   I remember thinking they were like the onion skin cells we scraped onto slides and put under the microscope in biology.  That dates the carpet.  It's been decades since I bothered a microscope.

Saw Caitlin Moran by the ticket office.  Pleased me very much, as her words have the power to make coffee come out of my nose.  I like her attitude.  And the fact that she finds it almost impossible to resist pulling a 'Muppet face' (her words - see left) when faced with a camera.

Home to leftovers (far more noble and excellent than they sound).  Tired by visual and nutritional feasting (clowns and sprouts - for many the stuff of nightmares, not for me), I sleep early, and dream I have a green coat and a hat with wings.   Sweet.

NB I am going to Kent to offer up the Cushion of Contrition.  Unless my mother has installed broadband since I last visited, I will be unable to update until Wednesday night.   Stay safe, people.  No going to Footlocker.   It's just not worth it.