the perils of haircuts and the rest

The perils of haircuts

Yesterday was H-day. Time for my bi-annual haircut. I really hate haircuts, I just can’t deal with paying someone money to cut bits off me, nor the conversation I’m expected to make while this happens. My desire for a steady-state situation with cars and houses extends into the realm of hair – I just want it to stay the same. Unfortunately the hair dresser had other ideas and tried to do something trendy: there were swept back bits and swept sideways bits. Ugh. Luckily by coming straight home, having a shower and then making no attempt to style it again it seems to have found its regular, lowest-energy, ground state. Phew.

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PJ has green shoes

Saw the marvellous Miss Harvey on Wednesday night. She had glowing green shoes. I wasn’t as excited by this as the third floor ladies, who all luurrrrve shoes, but it was fairly special. The gig was pretty decent too, although I couldn’t see that well for most of it, and there were (as per usual) a big load of twats comprising the ‘audience’.

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Hound of the Baskervilles

And last night, in an attempt to stuff myself full of culture, I saw the Hound of the Baskervilles at the Playhouse. It was great, a fairly experimental adaptation with 4 actors taking all of the roles, often at the same time. The production was really special, with a Swiss Army Knife of a set that managed to be just about anything despite featuring only some wood and some books. This was helped along by some beautiful animations, formed from pages of the novel, which were projected as a backdrop to the action.

The way it was done, with the actors swapping props as they swapped roles and the frequent occurrences of 3 synchronised Dr. Watsons all conversing with the singular Holmes, was fun and incredibly slick, not to mention the metaphorical level that this idea brought into play. It sounds like something a crazed drama teacher would dream up for a 5 minute improv, but somehow it worked wonderfully. There was loads of energy and they looked like they were having fun (especially when miming a carriage ride or jumping onto a moving train, the movement coming supplied by the actors, the projection and elements of the set), but, despite injecting a lot of humour into the performance, the story still came across magnificently, preserving much more of Conan-Doyle’s word play than TV or film adaptations which concentrate on the hound running around the moors. Go here for more.

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Hucknall

Driving home we also managed to catch some exciting sights. A crashed car (an old, white escort) in the middle of the roundabout between Bulwell and Hucknall. Somehow it had managed to take out a couple of bollards on the road leading to the roundabout, so must have been going at speed with a lack of control for sometime. Nice work there. And 3 lads with cans of Stella and tracksuits having a bit of a squabble with the security guard at Tesco, what larks for a Thursday night!

Coincidentally my brother sent this link to the Sonic Youth forum where a guy is talking about getting mugged in Nottingham. Ah, what a city.

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And now, to work.