creatures of the night

The last few days I've been involved with the show, which always involves becoming a creature of the night. The whole day shifts along by several hours with a later start and a much later finish.

Nowadays with intelligent phones and watches, it can be slightly alarming to get those Autosleep messages that say I'd only had around 4h15 sleep time.

After the Saturday show there was a party too, and then I'd already planned to head back home through the night.

Empty motorways are preferable, although my car has a driver alert beeper which will inevitably trip more than once in the wee small hours - showing a picture of a cup of coffee in the dashboard.

This time the Tracker security system didn't try to ring me to say that my car was being driven at an unusual time, so I think it has once again got used to my late night motorway routes.

And as for other creatures of the night, I'm drawn to remember the Science Fiction of Rocky Horror.

It was probably my first encounter with properly immersive theatre, back on the Kings Road, in the days when Tim Curry was Frank-n-furter.

Before the Rocky Horror show started, members of the cast used to slink around the theatre, climbing stealthily over the backs of the chairs. You knew it would be good, in a run-down and dilapidated theatre that nowadays would need to be specially designed to look that decadent.

The influence from shows like Rocky Horror and shows like Cruel Garden by Rambert at the Roundhouse set an inspirational agenda for theatre. We can celebrate the lineage from those days to the modern gig theatre that's just started its tour.

I mused on this on the drive back, to a soundtrack inspired by the last few days. As well as a stop-off in Sheffield, I started to think of Birmingham as 'past the middle' and Bristol as 'on the last leg', with just a further 80 or so miles to go.

There were a few other creatures out, and I decided they were mainly entertainers heading home. No tell-tale baggage of holidaymakers or pressed shirts of repsters.

As I reached home we'd still an ink dark sky sprinkled with stars. I looked up and can't be entirely certain, but I thought I saw a shooting star too, just for a brief moment.