We made our final ‘mad after work dash’ of the summer season yesterday to catch the train up to London for the late-night Prom: Steve Reich. It was fantastic (check out the clapping piece, very smart), you can see the details and hear some snippets here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/whats-on/2011/august-10/41

The Royal Albert Hall was packed full of trendy young people (skinny jeans, square black-framed glasses, beards and short back and sides hair dos, lots of fixed-gear cycles tied up outside – you probably know the sort). Mainly (but not exclusively) men and unusually for a concert the queues were for the gent’s loos, but not the women’s.

The prevalence of men made Mike comment that he thought this kind of music, (it’s a musical style called minimalism) was attractive to a kind of ‘autistic men’ – of which he thought he was probably one!!! I was not in entire agreement, as I enjoyed it and don’t class myself in that category. My take on it was that from the look of the queues, this style of music simply attracts the prostately-challenged male!

After a very late finish (11.30am) we decided we’d stay over at the Hoxton Hotel and so we’ve got a day in London to enjoy. Will probably do some nice mooching around. Alas will have to catch up on some work emails at some point but given that there are now less than two weeks before our bicycling adventure begins, there is too much to be done before then.