aqua incognita

It's nice when a normal grey is-it-going-to-rain day is suddenly transformed into a bright grey oh-it-is-raining-but-only-in-Fife day when the seafront is achieved. The sky was a little yellow and threatening off to the north but nice and peaceful to the east and sea was nice and calm and calming and provided a nice gentle fresh breeze to counteract the bicycling-exertion. Although it's obviously a dangerous enough place when it wants to be in a way it's a shame that the sea isn't populated with strange monsterish boat-hassling creatures as implied by an ancient map my parents had on the wall when I was small. I wasn't aware of Where the Wild Things Are until a couple of years ago but this map and the style of drawings on it provided a similar aha-that's-what-monsters-would-look-like-if-they-weren't-really-scary along with the fake plastic dinosaurs at Dan yr Ogof to which we would occasionally go when visiting my grandmother in Brecon. Both the sea-monsters and ersatz dinosaurs had a peculiarly un-threatening awkwardness about them, the sea-creatures looked particularly un-hydrodynamic and the dinosaurs looked like they'd still look like they were made of lumpy fibreglass even if they were real. Real sea-beasties would be quite manageable as long as they didn't pester the land too much and didn't interfere with freight-shipping to keep it off the roads and out of the air and stopped short of actually capsizing boats and devouring their passengers, merely scaring them a little instead and giving the vessels a little bit of damage to prove it happened. As it is we just have to settle for the occasional beaching of the decayed innards of sperm whales on Chilean beaches and the occasional colossal squid discovery.

***

Last EIF show this year was the Batsheva Dance Company's Deca Dance 2008 at the Playhouse... reasonable and reasonably varied though with a few bits of filler and a longish way from being the best I've seen but still worth watching. Slightly marred by the venue, though... the oddly-dressed tickety-checking people at the front door spotted the camera bag and demanded that I let it be searched. Opened it, showed the camera and was informed that the bag would have to be cloakroomed for the performance. Nicky's handbag was not checked. I pointedly removed the lens not attached to the camera (and would have taken the other one if I'd had a spare lens and body cap) and asked a couple of times if it would be secure then seethed as a few other people in the auditorium were blithely taking pictures with mobiles and compacts whilst ushers and more security people stood by motionlessly. One complete feckwit was even taking pictures WITH FLASH during the performance and was hopefully swiftly removed by the staff though I didn't notice if they did; the people on the door didn't mention mobile phones and should realise that at least the possession of an SLR might signify a certain degree of camera-using common-sense such as knowing that a flash isn't going to do much good when the stage is forty metres away. There was also an awful lot of seat-creaking and shuffling from idiots, packet-rustling from other idiots and TALKING from some absolute bastards in the row behind though none of this was helped by the audience-participation section of the performance (some poor buggers dragged onto the stage) which seemed to give the inexperienced sections of the audience the idea that they were free to mutter and giggle as much as they liked for the rest of the show. A few bits sounded like they'd been sound-checked by someone already suffering from noise-induced hearing loss and my earplugs were in my camera bag. Might email them and gripe. Might not. Shall sit on it.