Puns and punctuality

Austentatious cast

What better way to enjoy the hottest day of the year than by cramming into a sweltering airless tent, knees jostling for space with those of the sweaty middle-aged man sat next to me? (I should point out that the middle-aged man was not my date for the evening; my date, BN, was closer to my own age, though I couldn’t say for sure how his sweat levels were doing.)

I’d turned up late, of course, blaming the District line but actually held up by struggling to find an outfit which was skimpy enough that I wouldn’t melt from the hottest July since thermometers were invented but not so skimpy that it looked like lingerie or children’s clothing. I’d texted en route to request a non-alcoholic drink, which anyone who knows me would recognise as a signal that I’m desperate for some booze, but sadly BN followed my instructions to the letter and handed me a lemonade when I arrived.

After our strange mixers-without-spirits, we strolled over to Udderbelly on the South Bank to see a Jane Austen-themed improv act, the delightfully-named Austentatious. My date had briefed me beforehand – in fact, he’d forwarded me a surprising amount of background information and supporting resources, which I had of course merrily ignored – but it wasn’t really until we were queuing to enter the huge purple Udderbelly cow that I realised just how little familiarity I have with Austen’s works. Hardcore Austen fans, avert your eyes now…

If under pressure, I’m not entirely confident that I could distinguish between genuine Austen novels and episode titles from Blackadder III. Ink & Incapability? Could go either way. I read PD James’s Death Comes to Pemberley before I tackled Pride and Prejudice. I know, sacrilege. Pride & Prejudice is in fact the only Austen book I’ve read – at the insistence of my aunt, which seems fitting somehow. From what I remember it’s mainly about dancing and moping and sitting in carriages and finding out that a scandal probably wasn’t as big as you thought it was. So, I think we’ve established I’m not an expert as such.

Luckily for me, this didn’t hamper my enjoyment of Dastardly Darcy and the Curious Code/Toad (depending on whether you had your hearing aid switched on). Though naturally disappointed that Colin Firth didn’t make a special appearance, I thought everything else was brilliant. Darcy (played by one of the QI Elves who I recognised from his Only Connect appearances because yes, I am that cool) was suitably dastardly, when he wasn’t giggling at his half-witted ward, Howard, who was quite overwhelmed by his amorous feelings for Miss Mildred Zoo, daughter of the late Dr Attenborough Zoo, the inventor of – yep – zoos. Mildred’s friend and confidante, Susan, meanwhile was heroic in the face of the unfair (and disturbingly sexual) behaviour of zoo-owners Dr and Mrs Fraser.

I don’t think I’ve ever been to see an improvised show before and I was pleasantly surprised at how much laughing out loud I did. For some reason I was expecting more audience participation; I now think the heat had addled my brain and I was confusing improv with pantomime. The one form of audience participation came while we were queuing to get in, when we were each asked to write down a suggestion for the show’s title on a piece of paper. BN had some suggestions ready – he had apparently been planning the whole thing for weeks if not months, even posting in a chat room at work to garner Austen-inspired puns. At this point, I started to suspect that my date might be something of a neurotic… A selection of the suggested titles were read out at the beginning and end of the show and I have to say the one that made me laugh hardest came from someone who, astonishingly, seemed to know even less about Austen than me, since they’d come up with… wait for it… The Old Clock. You have to admire someone with that level of cluelessness being determined to participate regardless.

After the show, we retreated to one of the National Theatre’s bars for a couple of martinis. It was quite late when we emerged. We crossed the bridge to Embankment together, the London skyline shimmering above the river in the sultry heat, as BN turned to me and said “Wanna come back to mine?”

I could hardly doubt the purport of his discourse; however my natural delicacy led me to dissemble – and I caught the last Tube home.

Reproductive strategies vary wildly

“But I still don’t know why there aren’t any marsupial whales!”

This was the reaction of my date – let’s call him WR – to our most recent liaison. We’d gone to hear a lecture by Dr Anjali Goswami at UCL’s Grant Museum of Zoology, a lecture titled (you’ve guessed it) ‘Why aren’t there any marsupial whales?’. Interesting in parts, but we both left with no idea what the answer to that question was, though we did have a better knowledge of the gestation period of a joey and the stupidity level of your average raccoon.

I felt sure that a talk with a blurb beginning ‘Reproductive strategies vary wildly across vertebrates…’ couldn’t fail to create an erotically-charged atmosphere for our encounter. And if somehow sitting in a lecture theatre watching a video clip of a blind kangaroo embryo attempting to claw its way out of its mother’s hooha and into her pouch failed to get him going, then there was a free wine reception in the museum itself to help things along afterwards.

Having helped ourselves to a couple of glasses of merlot, we started to explore the collection. I’d read that the Grant Museum housed 67,000 specimens (we all know men love numbers, so I’d been boning up, if you’ll excuse the pun) and was slightly surprised to find myself in a space not that much bigger than my bedroom. The similarity to my bedroom ended there, however, since my bedroom isn’t full of animal skeletons. (Actually, I’ve not tidied my room in so long that I can’t entirely rule out the possibility of there being some small creature slowly decomposing in a neglected corner. Yes, I know, I can’t understand why I’m still single either.)

Highlights of the collection included a whole jar of pickled moles (the Animals of Farthing Wood kind, as opposed to the “Oh god, sorry, I thought you had a bit of chocolate on your chin” kind). And we’re not talking a diddy little jam jar here, this was a large vat of dead critters. I also very much enjoyed the walrus’s penis bone (or ‘baculum’ if you want to get all Ecce Romani about it) which, at 66cm long, risked making my date, or indeed any human male, feel decidedly inadequate.

If my relationship with WR were at a more advanced stage, I could think of no better way to cement our love than for us to ‘adopt a specimen’ together. Who in their right mind wouldn’t want to see their name in small printed letters next to a Cornish sucker fish or an ocelot’s mandible?? Actually, if you’re interested, you can find a list of ‘orphans’ here: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/zoology/support/orphan-list. I’ve already put the dissected pigeon, the squat lobster and the glass model of a sea cucumber on my Christmas list. And just imagine how much luck you’d have if you adopted a whole box of rabbit legs.

The only slight awkwardness of the evening came when I spotted another guy I’d recently been on a date with, clearly on his own, hovering by a cabinet full of glass jellyfish. I couldn’t for the life of me remember his name, so spent the next ten minutes staring intently at the remains of a dodo just to avoid making eye contact, for fear that I might find myself forced to introduce two guys I barely knew to each other.

When we were satisfied that we’d examined pretty much all the specimens on display – a point in the evening which, entirely by chance, coincided with the draining of the last bottle of free wine – we decamped to a nearby cocktail bar which WR insisted was fantastic, a claim slightly undermined by the fact that it was completely empty. Still, the cocktails were impressive – one of mine arrived on its own wooden board with accompanying olives and cornichons, along with a short briefing from the bartender on the order in which I should consume the various components. (Who knew getting drunk could be so complicated?) The complimentary popcorn was also delish. Actually, I’m assuming it was complimentary, but WR picked up the bill… Hmm.

So, how did it end? Well, a lady really shouldn’t kiss and tell, but… Yes, I ended up going back to his. I guess that walrus baculum wasn’t so off-putting after all.