The Theatre of Other People

I went to the theatre again, (!!!!). I was staying in Kent and my younger daughter and I took a train from Tunbridge Wells up to London. The play I went to see was called Bach and Sons and if you want to know what I thought about it, I wrote about it here. 

On the train home, I witnessed a slice of the other kind of theatre that I missed during the months of lockdown - the theatre of other people. 

On the seat opposite me was a worn woman in her mid thirties with blonde hair growing out at the roots. She spent the whole journey on her telephone. Her voice was what used to be described as Sloane, and, after explaining that her work has said that from October she has to come in two days a week and so she has made sure to arrange things so that hers are the days when they often go straight to drinks and don't do any work (!?!), she settled down to listening to the person at the other end of the line, who I gathered was called Laura. 

I made this deduction, because the woman opposite me spent the rest of the journey saying the same thing, over and over and over and over again, and it was this: 

"Oh my god, Laura."

"Oh my god, Laura, oh my god, Laura, oh my god, Laura, oh my god." 

It was quite soothing after a bit. 

It was the bass line, or the counterpoint, to the bellowing - I think it’s called banter now? - of a group of young men across the aisle. 

In my childhood, the majority of male English youth had somehow been made to understand that in packs they can be frightening to women, that their loud boasting can sound alarmingly like aggressive shouting, that guffawing about degrading drunken episodes and tales about having been, (almost constantly for the last few days apparently), on the turps, as they described it, are unpleasant to hear and should not be proudly broadcast at top volume in a train carriage full of strangers, especially female strangers. 

But we are all equal now, thank you, feminism. Women don’t need to be respected, nor their sensibilities spared.

“There's nothing worse than when you get to a restaurant and you're so pissed you're not hungry,” boomed one, adding with a mixture of romance and chivalry, (hem hem), “It was worth it later though, because she was, like, gagging for it.”

Fnarr, fnarr. 

He isn’t going to call her again, by the way, because she’s well-annoying.

Then one of them began to tell a story of something that had happened that had made him angry - and clearly was still making him angry. It concerned a woman who had had the audacity to suggest that he and his mate Mikey ought not to be playing on the equipment in a children's playground. 

The man telling this story was tall. He had an air of arrogant, barely controlled irritability. In other words, he was like many, many young English men just now. 

I was impressed at the bravery of the woman in his story. I am very scared of violence and scuttle away from the merest hint of it; I am much too cowardly to confront a potentially violent man. 

The furious scorn he expressed as he told his story alarmed me. This young man was still in a state of affronted rage days after the incident. This is how his story went:

'When we were in Cardiff, there was this playground, and there was a climbing frame in it that wasn't that high. We, like, started to climb it, and I said to Mikey, "I'll race you to the top".

And then there's this woman that's there with a kid, and she goes, "You do realise this is for kids", and Mikie goes, like, "We're big kids anyway, so let it be", and she starts getting vexed and says, "No, I won't let it be. You could hurt my son", and we're, like, "What?" and she's, like, "My son - you could fall on him and then what?", and we're, like, "Yeah but we didn't", and she was, like, "Yeah, but you shouldn't go on it, because it's for kids", and we were, like, "Where does it say that it's forbidden for adults to go on it?", and we're literally, like, "What - like, what are you on about?", and she starts screaming at us, and I burst out laughing. 

I'm literally, like, crying with laughter, and I literally went, like, "Get your nose out of our business," and her son's standing there, like, "Mum, stop, please, stop." I mean, realistically, like, teach your kids not to go under someone who's climbing, and then they won't get hurt. She just started to go off, when all she had to say to her son was, "Don't go under anyone climbing, and then you won't get hurt."'

This still makes me seethe, days afterwards. The entitlement, the refusal to admit he was in the wrong, the lack of respect, the rudeness, the insistence that everything should be arranged exactly as this man wanted it, the lack of courtesy or empathy or thoughtfulness or kindness. 

What are we coming to?

A little further away sat two young men and a stunningly beautiful, unsmiling girl whose face was made up so exquisitely that she looked like a Kabuki actor or a china doll. They all remained silent throughout the journey, except when the girl made an effort and, raising her very heavily lashed eyelids, asked, "Shall we order some Nando's when we get back?" When she received no response, she tried again: "What about a little dinner?" she suggested, "It would be nice to do a little dinner. Shall we go out for a little dinner?" There was no reply. 

Anomie seems to be spreading as fast as any virus in our decadent, post-Christian world, and there seems to be no obvious vaccine, since Christian virtues seem to be despised by the majority of young people. 

Still, I suppose we haven't yet reached the depths that this video seems to suggest are being plumbed in Philadelphia. When I first looked at the clip, I thought I was watching some kind of theatrical performance, and I'm still uncertain if it's real. I hope it isn't.