A trip this weekend to Bury St Edmunds, where I grew up, yielded two very different anecdotes in one evening.
First; a prophet is not without honour, save in his home town. I've been running Big Brother Watch for six weeks now, an organisation that does what it says on the tin, but the first time I had a genuine "why on earth do you need to know this information about me?" moment personally came last night, when I was refused a pair of tickets to a play unless I yielded up my name and address. If one were to pay the £12 in cash then there would be no need at all, one would think, and if one paid with a card, then the PIN system offers all the protection any retailer would need, so - pourqoi? My mother and brother were both in the show, and She Who Must Be Obeyed was tapping her foot impatiently as I made my fuss with the no doubt personally blameless chap on the desk, so of course I paid up. But as I have documented elsewhere, this "it's not worth the hassle" factor is a vital part of our constant little defeats in the fight against the accrual and use of information about us. Yet the question still remains - for what possible reason might such information be required to permit one to attend a regional theatre?
But once the play was underway, a delightful evening of entertainment from the Irving Stage Company, with a tale of macabre melodrama, the Murder in the Red Barn, playing to a packed house. A local story told at a local theatre, by local people, to local people, filled with local jokes and anecdotes. [Although the biggest laugh of the night was reserved for the topical playing-up of the originally uncomedic "I'm just off to the post office to see if there are any letters"]. Beyond being enjoyable, it felt to me to be almost an advertisement for the cultural possibilities of Carswellian localism theories. The pay-off came at the conclusion, when after the curtain call the cast and very rapidly the entire audience sang our National Anthem with passion and vigour. I shall admit to having been only at about 60% on the third verse but I was delighted that it was done and I feel no shame in saying I was really rather moved by the moment. How far from the Haymarket I felt last night, and how much more at home.
