I Suspect I Must Be Middlebrow

You see it's like this - on Friday we went to the Symphony Hall (a piece of civic architecture I love - am I wrong to like the fact that the weight-lifting is set to be held there when Birmingham hosts the Commonwealth Games?) but not for one of your full-on classical concerts. No this was the CBSO playing film music with an announcer introducing each piece to the assembled masses. I'm searching for the right words - yes I know, it was bloody brilliant. And to prove the point was the sight of the happy throng of fellow middlebrows at the conclusion. We had been for a McDonald's before the concert - I can't decide whether we were being ironic in doing this. I enjoyed it.

civic architecture

More culture on Saturday evening: this time to the King Edward's School/King Edward's High School joint production of Oh What A Lovely War. This was held in the rather magnificent Ruddock Performing Arts Centre, a building which serves to remind you of the privileges that can be attached to private education. A good production even if some of the dialogue was inaudible. As for the piece itself, which I had only previously witnessed in its filmed version, it retains its power to affect. A good programme note by the Head of History at KES which quite properly posed questions about the way the conflict has been culturally appropriated. Just as the British perhaps learn their middle history (unwarrantedly) from Shakespeare, so they also tend to rely a tad too heavily on Blackadder and Oh What A Lovely War (I make no denial of the brilliance of both texts) for their understanding of the Great War.

Two hundred and forty-five KES boys died in the Great War. Their names were projected above the darkened stage at the conclusion of the drama. Chilling.

more civic architecture

Talking of civic architecture (which I was three paragraphs ago) Lord Digby Jones was sitting two seats in front of me at the Symphony Hall. In my cynical middle-age I'm afraid I used to regard Jones as something of a charlatan (something to do with my own self-loathing attitude to the profession that spawned us both and the fact that he went to UCL) but I've grown out of that phase. His oft-repeated defence of business as the principal engine for societal wealth, is a tune far too few are singing.