Rio stories
The flight was fairly awful, I found myself sandwiched between an enormous and combative Frenchman, and a Brazilian complete with infant, who had already staked her claim to my seat by means of competitive luggage. To add to the general misery there was already a used and soggy nappy in the magazine holder. Eventually, Mrs Brazilian was persuaded to move her encampment to two seats elsewhere, and I had a little more room. My companion was fairly mute, his English wasn’t good, my French wasn’t any better and we had little to say, he did snore quite melodically though.No matter, despite not having a visa (an oversight by our administrator) I was allowed into the country without having to play my joker (a letter from the British council). Now I am sitting in my Copacabana beach front hotel, watching the Atlantic waves crash on the beach, ignoring the six-lane highway, beach volleyball players and the diggers making an enormous hole in the sand just outside my window. It’s 9.00 am local time (1.00 pm UK time), my plane landed at 5.30 am and outside the temperature is climbing past 26 degrees. I breakfasted on papaya and fresh pineapple, a bit of a contrast to the tub of tinned fruit salad that Air France offered at about 3.00 am. Not a lot else to report, I had a bit of a wander before breakfast, but as everything was closed cannot report great success. We have our own liaison person, whose name sounded like a sneeze when he introduced himself at the airport, but subsequent deduction suggests is probably Raphael, we are being taken to lunch apparently, I know that touring revolves around meals, but this is getting serious.
One of our cast decided to see if he could eke out his meagre per diems (daily food allowance) in Newcastle, by eating everything on the breakfast menu at least twice. As he is stick thin, you could actually see his breakfast gradually reducing. I’m not sure that it worked that well as a theory, as he still went to the pub and went for meals with the rest of the company. There has been a general theory about going to a football match tonight, apparently there is some sort of local derby, and Brazilian football matches are supposedly unlike any other. For a brief minute I had a flicker of interest, maybe I would finally get the point… When I was doing a show at Southampton FC for some petrol company earlier this year I briefly wandered into the auditorium, and was quite taken with the atmosphere, even when it was empty. The absolute clincher for me was the size of the stadium here, it seats about 200.000 apparently, as I don’t like crowds that makes it a definite no-no as far as I am concerned.
Rather boringly, it is 6.30 local time (10.30 UK), quite dark outside, although this doesn’t seem to bother the beach volleyball players, who have floodlights. I have walked most of the way up and down Copacabana beach today, and whilst it is much nicer, say, than Cannes, I’m not entirely sure what all the fuss is about. Oh, and I went to Ipanema for lunch, and there was no-one long and tall and lean and lovely there at all, I feel a little cheated. Oh well, for sure tomorrow will bring its own excitements, when we attempt to put the show into the venue, all the arrangements have been done by e-mail with a great deal of mystification on both side, wish me luck.
posted by Lampy @ 10/04/2006 09:50:00 pm
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