It was a high price to pay for a night at the theatre for Steve Canavan

I went to the theatre.

After so long isolating, wearing a mask, sneering disapprovingly at anyone who dared sneeze in public, and generally keeping the hell away from everybody (I’ve not touched Mrs Canavan since last March), it was a very odd sensation to be suddenly squeezed into a big city-centre building with 1,500 other folk, sat side-by-side, and presumably breathing in enough Covid bugs to last a lifetime.

A stern email sent by the out-of-town theatre in the days before the show advised that everyone would be required to wear a mask (especially ugly people – which I thought a bit harsh but I suppose a sensible policy).

But in the Circle, where we were sat, I spotted just two others – TWO - wearing a mask. It was as if Covid was over, a thing of the past … which of course is madness; on the day prior to writing this, for instance, there were 31,900 new cases and 40 deaths.

Covid-concerns aside, though, one thing I found refreshingly consistent was the price of drinks. As I’ve not been out for a long time I’d forgotten about such things, so as I waited patiently at the bar to be served by a flustered-looking girl randomly jabbing at the buttons on her till and repeatedly saying, ‘I’m sorry, it’s my first day’, I had no inkling of what was to come.

When she finally reached me, she asked – as bar staff tend to do – what I wanted to drink.

A pint, I said. They didn’t do pints.

“What beer have you got?” I asked.

She stared at me as if I’d asked for a brief summation of the merits or otherwise of quantum physics.

‘Erm,’ she replied, looking behind her in openly panicked fashion, ‘we’ve, erm … I’m not sure actually, I’ll go and ask’.

I don’t know what I was most surprised at - the fact she didn’t know or that I was clearly the first person to order a beer all evening (I mean I know theatres are posh, but surely even some upper class people drink beer now and again?)

It turned out they had a terrible selection – either Heineken or Budvar. I’d never before tried the latter but went for it on the basis it had a slightly exotic-sounding name and, the deciding factor, it was in a bigger bottle.

Mrs Canavan ordered a glass of Prosecco. They didn’t do glasses, she was told. Instead one had to purchase a small bottle.

‘That’ll be fine,’ said Mrs Canavan.

The bar girl reached into a fridge and pulled out a bottle the size of a particularly small thimble.

She then poked and prodded the till and said, with absolutely no shame at all, ‘that’ll be £18.50 please’.

I kind of staggered backward, as if I’d been hit hard in the stomach by an invisible assailant.

‘Are you OK?’ asked the girl.

“Yes,” I managed, weakly, then added, just in case there’d been a mistake, “Did you say EIGHTEEN pounds fifty?”

‘Yes,’ she replied, apparently unconcerned she’d just ensured my children would be eating cheap fish-fingers for the remainder of the month.

“For two drinks?” I said.

‘Yes,’ she replied again, at this point beginning to look a little worried by the behaviour of the gentleman she was serving and perhaps manoeuvering her hand towards an alarm button under the counter which, if pressed, would see two burly security staff sprint into the bar area and sit on my head until back-up arrived.

I looked across at Mrs Canavan, who was staring at me in acute embarrassment but not embarrassed enough to get her purse out and pay.

“Just out of interest how much was that incredibly tiny bottle of Prosecco?” I asked, for no other reason than to delay payment just a little longer.

‘£12.50,’ replied the girl.

I’m not sure what happened next but Mrs Canavan later told me I emitted a sound she’d never heard before and my eyes rolled back and forth in their sockets several times.

With the reluctance of a Great War soldier being asked to go over the top and walk slowly towards the German machine guns, I tapped my debit card on the machine and stood in misery at the thought of the money departing my bank account.

It put me in a slightly bad mood all evening to be honest and made me muse about the nature of relationships.

At the start of my courtship with Mrs Canavan, when we were briefly in love with one another, I’d have shelled out £12 for a drink for her and, despite some inward discomfort, smiled and pretended it was fine.

Now, some 15 years of being together later, as we walked away from the bar I snapped at her, “what the hell did you order Prosecco for?” and we spent the next 10 minutes drinking our extortionately-priced drinks in miserable near-silence.

That said, the show was good, it was an evening away from the kids (well worth £18.50 in itself), and it’s great to see theatres – an industry very hard-hit by the pandemic – back open and putting on shows.

Next time, though, I’ll order tap-water.

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