Life Is A Cabaret Old Chum?

I went to the strangest thing last night, this cabaret that was part of the Leith festival. Now, I'm not entirely sure what cabaret involves but I've seen the film and it wasn't quite like what we saw! Admittedly they started with a burlesque stripper, but she wasn't very good. Give the girl her due though, she did get up in front of a room full of people and strip to "In the Navy" by the Village People. That's gonna take some balls surely - though not literally thank goodness!

Then there was a couple of African dudes that came on. One did a couple of poems but he lost me on the second one, my mind wandered and suddenly I had no idea what he was on about. Poetry's not really my bag baby and I get on with it even less when it's being spoken. I don't know why, I just do. Anyway, then they played "Music of the Ancestors" on some plinky-plonky instrument that looked like it was made out of a gourd. Um, very nice but it's not exactly the Weimar Republic is it?

After those fellows they brought out a Bavarian lady with an accordion. She taught us how Bavarians drink and sang a song about a pig. I think it was something to do with cutting up the pig. A song about making sausages perhaps? Eurovision hopefuls take note! Then she sang a song about a guy who tried to climb up a ladder into his sweetheart's bedroom but his rival knocked the ladder over and he drowned in the cess pool. Charming! She finished off by bringing out a buxom Bavarian maiden to teach us the drinking song that involves rocking back and forth and side to side. I suspect the Bavarians do this in order to get even more drunk even more quickly but I'm not going to knock them for that! I'm sure the songs sound a lot better through the ol' beer ears for a start.

After the fun of Bavarian drinking they calmed us all down again with a chap who does... I don't know what you'd call it. He played with balls I guess. Right, you've seen Labyrinth? Ok, pull your attention away from memories of David Bowie in those leggings... That's it, move your gaze upwards... He's the troll king and he's sort of juggling bubbles. See it? Clear glass globes that he's rolling around and running over his hands. Ok, the guy in the Leith cabaret did this as well, only he wasn't David Bowie in tight tights and he did drop them a couple of times. Give him his due though, he picked them back up, made a joke of it and carried on. The show must go on!

Just when I wasn't sure how much more I could take they brought out some Annie DeFranco/KT Tunstall wannabe with a guitar who sang about how rubbish it was to work for Standard Life. Bless her, no that's not what you went to university for. We went to university in order to avoid getting a proper job for a few more years, drink ourselves silly and hopefully get laid. However, when you come out the other end and realise everyone and their bloody dog has a degree you curse Maggie Thatcher (because that's what you've been doing your whole life so why stop now?), get a job and continue trying to get laid. Whiny guitar songs that use typewriters as percussion don't usually factor into it. And while I'm on the subject, the typewriter was completely out of place for that song because it was obsolete by the time I got to uni and I must have been a good 5 years older than that girl. I guess a laptop wouldn't give the same timbre though. God grief, I'm getting very bitter and cynical in my old age! Ah well.

By this point we weighed up the pros of staying and seeing what else they could wheel out against the cons of missing the last bus and being stuck in Leith. We were so near the docks you could smell the brine in the air - it smelled a bit like poo actually. The older and wiser side of us won the argument and we legged it during the interval. I guess life might be more like a cabaret than I realised - you expect it to be full of excitement and sex and really wild things and it turns out to be a Bavarian lady singing about a pig!!