No Pleasing

I worked at the Snape Proms last night, a Billy Bragg gig. It was good, I enjoyed it. But the woman next to me decided she was allergic to me and I had to move. At first I thought she was taking photos - strictly forbidden by Billy - but it was not a camera but her nebuliser that she held dramatically in front of her. "Are you wearing an A & A?" I thought she whispered loudly at me. It took a few tries as I had no idea what she was talking about, but eventually I admitted I'd applied a small amount of Coco Chanel after my bath. "I'm allergic to perfume," she told me, sweet smile but eyes like flint, and so I swapped places with my colleague. We exchanged looks, raised eyebrows, wry smiles. What are these people like? She goes into a packed auditorium and expects that nobody around her will be wearing perfume? Now removed from her proximity, I saw her stand at various points to ease the discomfort in her back, stretch out her arms, glug from a bottle, shake some pills out into her hand, and bring out that nebuliser from time to time. She could hardly get out of her seat at the end, so firmly wedged was her bulk. How grateful I was to Chanel for my lucky escape.

Billy was funny about Snape. He wanted to know if Benjamin Button had deliberately chosen wicker seating when he designed the concert hall so that we'd all go home with numb bums and 'kettering', apparently the official term for those tiny marks you get on your thighs after sitting on wicker. Anyway, the Snape management sitting across the aisle from me thought it was hilarious and laughed uproariously with the rest of them. Walking out to the car afterwards with a "naice" Snape lady, I was surprised when she agreed with me that his left wing lyrics and comments could hardly be decried in all decency. Equality, fairness, respect - what's to object to? But who were all those people who voted that dreadful man in, she wondered aloud in her Knightsbridge accent. Nobody in the audience, that was for sure. We laughed in the soft dark night, and went our separate ways. It's been a long time since I was at a gig of protest songs, and it was good to be surrounded by politically aware people, just telling it how it is.