About twenty-five years ago I was going through a phase. It was called chronic self-consciousness. There was a play on in Andrew’s Lane theatre that I wanted to see. I’ve racked my brains to remember the title but can’t. However, I do remember certain particulars of the night I went. I had no girlfriend at the time and was extremely bashful about the idea of going to see a play on my own. Oddly enough I had no problem attending the cinema unaccompanied but for some reason (perhaps it’s of a higher cultural and aesthetic grade) a play was a completely different story. So off I popped to the box office a few days beforehand and, incredible as it seems to me now, I bought two tickets! The sad aspect is that I knew I had nobody to attend the play with me but I didn't want the person I was buying the tickets from to see that I was only purchasing one ticket. I had no desire to elicit looks of pitying sympathy from the box office staff. Duly, the night o...