“Whynaa?” I replied groggily, partly because it wasn’t my birthday and partly because it was 9am on a Saturday.
“We’re going to see a play. And some coffins. Meet me at the Southbank at 10. Oh, and wear a shirt”.
There goes my weekend lie-in.
As fräulein is perpetually late for her life in general (this time she had fallen asleep between calling me and getting up herself), I had to negotiate collecting the tickets on my own, armed only with the time the performance was starting and a vague knowledge of where it was being held. After interrogating a pimply youth for several minutes, I was told that the only play at that time was called Goodbye Mr Muffin.
“That’s a kids’ play, though,” he warned me.
This somehow confirmed it in my head.
Fraülein turned up a flurry of second-hand-shop fleece (I suspect an old woman may have died in it while waiting for her winter fuel allowance cheque to cash) and boyish shirts. Standing in the queue it was conspicuous that we were the only ones who hadn’t been either in, or pushing a pram in the past 4 years. We considered standing next to one of the stray kids but decided that, on balance, this made the whole thing even creepier. Despite my wishes, we avoided the low benches at the front, and instead attempted to mingle inconspicuously with the adults at the back.
As the lights went down and the front row stopped wriggling, the woman on stage started plucking a cello in a sweet child-like melody and I started worrying that this was going to be one of those patronizing Tweenies-esque affairs. Thankfully, it was nothing of the sort. The man with the charming Danish accent and the 1960s children’s presenter manner started off by calling Mr Muffin (guinea pig, puppet) out of his house and reading him a letter.
“Dear Mr Muffin. I am so sad because my dad says that when a guinea pig gets old, it can suddenly die”
Within 20 minutes I was telling myself that it was probably inappropriate for a 23-year-old well up at a kids play, and that I would pull myself together an start watching this academically. Three minutes later, the nice Danish man was burying the puppet in a hole in the AstroTurf scenery and with the sole cellist bowing back and forth on my heartstrings. I’m not a rock, damnit.
Of course, when the lights went up and fraülein and I sat in a sombre silence, all the kids ran forward to take an almond (Mr Muffin’s favourite, sniff). I heard one of them say, quite casually, “That was quite sad, wasn’t it Mum?” Curse you kids and your carefree understanding of the ways of the world.
* * *
Thankfully to brighten our spirits, next on the agenda was an exhibition of coffins, ranging from the weird (an egg, to house an adult in foetal position, symbolizing rebirth or a deep love for kinder eggs) to the downright creepy (a custom made coffin in the shape of a train, along with the (living) gent for whom it was built). I made a mental note to ask (demand) to be buried in a ship-in-a-bottle arrangement. The real joy of that would be the circular nature of having my friends standing in front of my coffin asking the same question that my father must have asked standing before my newly pregnant mother’s stomach. How the fuck did he get in there?
— Dusk
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