Hide and Seek, Blue Elephant, 1^st May 2008

Hide and Seek is a short piece, oddly beautiful, and quite touching. I usually keep most of my opinions about the performance to myself, but I just had to say something up-front about this one.

Anyway, the first problem was how to get to Camberwell? The TfL planner needs a bit of twisting to get it to cough up what it knows, but it finally confessed that a train to Denmark Hill was the way. And so it was. Getting on the train, the first performer of the evening was the two-time loser. First, she dropped something black and skimpy at her feet just in front of me. I had difficulty getting her to look down. I, of course, didn’t look, just in case. But I did notice the fancy high-heels. I tried to see if she had her best frock on, but when her coat opened slightly as she sat down, it looked as though she might not have a frock on at all! Then she gets off just three stops up the line and leaves her handbag behind. Now that’s something you notice these days. Just as I was considering whether a small, controlled explosion would be a better bet than evacuating the train, she reappeared, grabbed it, and rushed off. Her mind must really have been on something else: fancy losing two things in three stops.

Pausing only for a quick pint of Young’s at the Phoenix (that’s the pub in Denmark Hill Station), I caught a 176 to the Walworth Road. Buses are getting quite fancy nowadays. This one chattered away for the whole journey, telling us where she was going, where she was stopping next. I even recognised the name of my stop from the TfL planner advice. Pity she couldn’t advise the chap beside me on his personal hygiene failings.

I strolled down Blethwin Road feeling very pleased with myself on how smooth the journey had gone when the penny suddenly dropped: trains don’t go back from Denmark Hill after half-seven: the return journey was going to take some thinking about.

The address of the Blue Elephant is 59A Blethwin Road. There’s something oddly precise about that, don’t you think? Particularly since it’s actually in Thompson’s Avenue, where the lampposts, appropriately, have blue elephants on top of them. It looks like an old pub: I wonder what it could have been called?

It has a bar upstairs well-stocked with the sort of things that impress young people: wine, foreign beer, and celebrity. The barman judged me to be such an old fogey he offered me a glass to go with the beer. So the evening started with a glass of beer and an eyeful of Joanna Lumley. Can life get better than that?

Hide and Seek is not really a play, or even a ballet. I suppose I would be forced to choose mime, if I had to, since the story unfolded without words (if you ignore the fragment of song, which you should). Well, there was actually one word spoken, but it could (and should) have been mimed. The whole thing brought tears to my eyes and a lump to my throat, something that can usually only be achieved by particularly mawkish country and western songs.

Then I had to get my mind back in gear and find my way home. Bustops in Camberwell are very well-signposted, so I straightaway found a bus to New Cross. Then I realised that getting to Camberwell Green would much increase the chances of finding buses going east. I used to live just off Camberwell Green, so it was nice to see it again. It used to be a roundabout, but now it’s a crossroads and you can get onto the green easily. And the great London Plane tree in the middle is now laced with fairy lights. And there are lots of buses going to New Cross, where I knew I could get the 321.

During the journey to New Cross, the man in the seat in front of me suddenly turned round and gave the man next to me a packet of biscuits. “As soon as he opens those”, I thought, “ I’ll embarrass or nag him into giving me one”. But he just slipped them into his bag. And they never said a word to each other. What could that have been about?

And tonight’s educational titbit? Well, buses are definitely smellier than trains.