Highbrow and classy

A vibrant, thrilling programme of theatre, art and contemporary dance events are scheduled for this year. Here’s why you’ll miss them:

Sunday in the Park with George, starring Jake Gyllenhaal
Much-anticipated Sondheim revival that there is no way in hell you will get tickets for, even if you’re up at 6am when they’re released poised on six laptops with the necessary £800 to hand. It won’t happen so don’t try.

Francis Bacon at the Royal Academy
You will definitely mean to see this whenever you see the posters. But when you turn up two days before it closes you’ll discover there are no tickets left, which is bollocks because who ever heard of an art gallery selling out? They’re hardly Jake Gyllenhaal.

Julien Baker at the Electric Ballroom, Camden
Your mate’s got a spare ticket for this and you enthusiastically agree when offered, even though you’ve not really heard of Julien whatever. But that was before you found out it was on a Wednesday night. A gig on a school night? What’s the point? You ghost your mate’s texts.

Petite Maman
Award-winning French film about coping with loss that you’ll invite a date to, in order to look highbrow and classy. However the date goes so well that you both admit you’d much rather watch Legally Blonde 3 while eating nachos, so you do that instead.

Any events in Coventry, City of Culture 2022
Who do they think is going all the way to bloody Coventry for some cultural crap? Nobody.

The Overstory on Netflix
Now this is at least possible. A cultural event that you can take in while making no effort whatsoever from the comfort of your own bed. You’re definitely up for this one. Until you hear it’s an eco-epic about nine Americans who have unique experiences with trees, and don’t bother.

A massive fight on your road between three different sets of neighbours
The arts event of the year kicks off at 8pm on June 3rd when a three-way love triangle that began in a hot tub on New Year’s Eve is revealed. Paint is poured over cars, windows broken, women held back from gouging each other and the police are called. The best night’s entertainment of the year. And do arts critics mention it? No. Snobs.

The Daily Mash

Of course.

Heaven and Hull

From Crap Towns, in which Hull was named #1 in 2003:

“The silent threat of violence hangs in the air, along with the smell from the chocolate factory. Chocolate factories, by the way, don’t smell of chocolate, they smell of death. If the wind comes from the southeast, the smell of Grimsby docks adds a fishy staleness to the odour. If it comes from the other direction it brings the smell of the tanning factory ... rotting carcasses and rancid flesh.”

From an article by George Marshall in BMX magazine:

Let’s get one thing straight – people hate Hull. It’s understandable. The city’s bleak reputation precedes itself. An ageing fish town on the Yorkshire coast, Hull is widely laughed off as isolated and cut off, a dead end, void of opportunity and appeal, where teenage pregnancies outnumber jobs and the best source of income is salvaging copper pipes from the abandoned homes of laid off dock workers. Once the beating heart of British shipping, a vast industrial port and whaling goldmine, the nautical trades on which the city was built have long since rusted away, only to be replaced by drug trafficking from Holland and import of STDs. With a list of grim accolades as long as the queue outside the post office on dole collection day, it’s no wonder the town has such a bad reputation. It’s claimed the city boasts the highest drug related death rate, lowest GCSE pass rate, highest suicide rate, lowest wages, highest unemployment rate, suffered the worst bombing of any UK city in WW2, was described by the Observer as ‘Britain’s drug capital’, it ranked No.1 in the book “Crap Towns” and one in three residents has Chlamydia. Get the picture?

From the BBC today:

Hull has been named the UK's next City of Culture, beating Leicester, Dundee and Swansea Bay to the right to hold the title in 2017.

Hull, known for being the home of poet Philip Larkin, the Ferens gallery and the Truck theatre, will follow the 2013 City of Culture, Londonderry.

The UK government chooses a new destination every four years, with the aim of helping tourism and the economy.

I have visited Hull, as a friend from Wales now lives there. Of its relative merits, all I can say is that the bits the Luftwaffe did not bomb to smithereens (and there aren't a lot) were OK. It left little other impression.

Here's an aptly bleak poem (read by another of Hull's famous sons Tom Courtenay) by Philip Larkin himself, who no doubt would have raised a wry smile at the news:

Philip Larkin - Bridge for the Living (read by Tom Courtenay)

Philip Arthur Larkin, CH, CBE, FRSL (9th August 1922 – 2nd December 1985)