Soccer, Shakespeare and Star Wars

What with one thing and another it's been a pretty intense week or so. Hard on the heels of the Colchester Cricket Week came the unexpected bonus of a local derby cup tie between Ipswich Town and Colchester United. Having missed the last four occurrences of this fixture for one reason or another (when - until this season - the two teams were in the same division), this time I made sure I wasn't going to miss out again.

The Carling Cup however, is not the sort of football competition nowadays to set alight the imagination of even the likes of comparatively humdrum clubs as Colchester or Ipswich, so it left me plenty of room to get in this time (with sister Catherine and her fiancee Michael - a Colchester fan), and I correctly guessed that the attendance was something in the region of 17,000.

Revenge was on my mind after Town's humiliating 2-0 defeat at the late, lamented Layer Road back in April, and honour was being restored a little hesitantly this evening, but Ipswich, as they have done so often before, complacently treated their nearby neighbours as "junior" opposition, and arrogantly substituted their two goalscorers. As a result they allowed Colchester back into the game with a goal, but hung on to win 2-1. It was the first time I'd been to Portman Road to see a match in nearly 5 years, and from the evidence of Tuesday evening, neither side I expect will be lighting the fires of promotion firmament this season.

Two days later came an evening of Shakespeare recitals at "The Love Bistro" in The Minories with myself and five friends, organised by local performing arts guru Dorian Kelly - a neighbour of mine. I confess I find reciting from a script occasionally annoying and frustrating, and tried to learn some of the lines (as too - contrary to his own instructions - did Dorian), but we all had fun doing some excerpts from the Bard's most famous - and not so famous - works, and I must say I didn't expect I'd be playing Romeo in my late thirties! Hamlet was fun to read too (with Jason Cattrell as the Ghost.) I fear I was enjoying it too much, as it's not a role I would necessarily like to essay in full, all five acts and four hours of it.

The day after that, my old mate Bob Cole came down to Colchester with his Mum for the weekend, and among the delights he savoured was the chance for him (and me) to be shown around the sights of the town on an open top bus. I never realised that Colchester was such a WIIINDYYYYY town, if the Sightseer vehicle we were sat on top of was anything to go by - enough to rival Chicago! Bob found the ride akin to riding on a rollercoaster.

Sharing a joke with Bob on the bus.

Finally, to round off an always eventful August and usher in autumnal September, there was a nostalgic chance to look at the original Star Wars trilogy (see link), with some interesting feature-length Super 8 versions. I confess I sighed at the prospect of seeing all three films in one go once again - I've seen all three of them (Episodes 4, 5 and 6) on four occasions now, the first being in 1994 (a memorable day at The Venue in Elstree when all three original films were shown for the last time), and then two further occasions when the "Special Editions" came out in 1997 (on General Election day), and again in 2000 as part of the Barbican Centre's Elstree Studios season - coincidentally the day after Alec Guinness died.

Fourth time round therefore, I think I could be forgiven for watching the films on auto pilot, but I find the experience is still an invigorating one - especially with such surprises as seeing the opening title crawl for The Empire Strikes Back in German - Das Imperium Schlagt Zuruck(!) As I grow older I enjoy Return of the Jedi all the more (because of its maturity), and conversely I adore Star Wars every time I watch it, because it reminds me of when I was younger.