R's rue

I first met Nu way back in 1989 and for much of the early 1990s I socialised with her three physiotherapist friends in Sheffield and in Liverpool.  Tonight I was reunited with all three, Dymphna, Gráinne and Hillary as well as Hillary’s husband Brian and Nu’s Hubby Jim. over in Liverpool and 27 years after we first met nothing very much had changed at all. True , we all agreed , that most of us were now wearing non prescription reading glasses and all of us possessed more wrinkles  than we cared for having but the banter was as loud as it ever was. And the laughter was as raucous as it was in the ledmill circa 1991 where the girls referred to me with the bizarre and unlikely  nickname of cheese n’ chives and I felt joyfully tearful when they yelled it at me when I left them all, very squiffy in a lovely crowded Italian restaurant on Bold Street   from Going Gently https://ift.tt/3Cc8Mls

 The good thing about Gorgeous Dave is that he is up for most things socially and like me is keen to experience theatre which is out of his normal “ comfort box” . Last night it was his turn to choose a venue and so he bought tickets to the Greek tragedy Antigone followed by an eclectic performance by a mixed group of deaf stand up artists described as A Night Of Sign. All this was based at Chester’s Storyhouse theatre. Initially I thought it was all going to be a bit of a slog, as the ancient Greeks were all a bit serious what with Oedipus shagging his mother Jocaster and the like but director Natasha Rickman with the writer Hollie McNish have forged a new telling of a story with deaf actors as the two leads and with British sign language and written captions enhancing the script and plot. I didn’t know the story of Antigone and essentially it is a simple one. Antigone ‘s brothers, both kings of Thebes died fighting over their title . Their corrupt uncle Kreon becomes r...