Summer of '69

Dinner and theatrical pursuits were the order of last night.

We went out to see The Sins Of The Father by Tom Murray at The Wynd Theatre in Melrose and decided to go for a bistro dinner before. We chose Marmions because it was round the corner to the theatre and the menu looked good. The place itself was lovely, but the food was just ok. Good to be out together though, as Mountain Man and I have hardly had time to be a deux for what seems like quite a while.

The Wynd Theatre was something else. It reminded me of The Electric Cinema in Portobello Road, Notting Hill in the late 60's, where we would congregate to watch all kinds of films, with 24 hours of Batman and Robin, and Flash Gordon I remember as being favourites. The thing about The Electric was that you could imbibe, smoke or chew any substance of your choice while, prior to the films beginning, sitting back and relaxing to Simeon's light show, which consisted of him putting coloured oil on slides. He was so out of it most of the time that it was lucky if anything actually moved, though one night he went to sleep and the slide started burning. There was a bit of a 'fire' outcry, but no harm was done. All part of the ambience in my hippy days.

When we got to the Wynd, the receptionist wasn't concerned with our electronic tickets, she just wanted our names, which were on a very low tech sheet of paper and after having been ticked it was 'The show tonight lasts 1 hour 10 minutes with no interval, therefore, if you want a drink then you are allowed to take it into the theatre.' So there we were in the back row complete with wine (me) and coffee (MM), with all those around us in very chatty mood. When I say back row there are only 6 rows, so it wasn't like we were far from the stage or anything, and the place was full apart from one seat.

The play itself was very intense and thought provoking. It's about what happens to two people whose lives have been affected by one of them's father having murdered the other one's mother. I shall say no more in case you go and see it for yourselves. But if it comes your way, then I can recommend going to see it, especially if you're in the kind of theatre that likes it's patrons to be happy campers. The wine went down a treat, and although it wasn't an all-nighter, MM and I had a really enjoyable night out.