Earthquakes in London

Last night I went to the theatre. On my own. 

It was an amateur production of a play called Earthquakes in London and I knew two of the people appearing in it. It was a last minute decision to go: I'd been dithering but wanted to support them, so I checked the start time on their Facebook page and went.

And arrived just after it had started - 15 minutes before Facebook had said.

I slid into a seat, which happened to be on the front row. It's one of those trendy small theatre areas that don't have a raised stage and you're eyeball to eyeball with the performers. And then I noticed it. The strange smell. No, not strange, downright horrible. Rather like stinky fish but worse. It was so bad it distracted me from the play.

I tried to sniff my neighbours - subtly of course - but couldn't work out from where the smell emanated so I was greatly relieved when it came time for the interval. It happened that I knew three women sitting in the row behind. One of them said she'd noticed the smell and thought it came from the little woman on my right.

There was a spare seat in their row so for the second half I joined them and, apart from the odd whiff, it was happily pong-free. I can only assume the poor woman had a problem - in university there was a boy who although always scrupulously clean and smartly dressed had a strange odour that was alleged to be hormone related - and I do feel sorry for her, but, oh, I still had the smell in my nose when I got home and went to bed.

As for the play, well, it was long and quite depressing but very well done.