After the Ordeal / The Cinema Show

Gotta have a nice bit of relaxing music after the Battle of Epping Forest, and "After the Ordeal" provides it in two parts, as the dust settles on dead comedy gangsters and Harold Demure, still clinging to the branches of his tree. Five talented musicians putting together a really nice, really intricate and yet remarkably high-tempo instrumental.

And then on into The Cinema Show. Taking in a little pre-romance. We don't have the background - is it a first date? Are they "going steady" as they used to say back in the day? Will his chocolate surprise be sufficiently romantic to ensure that Romeo does indeed make his bed with Juliet? After all, it works for Paratrechalea ornate spiders. And judging by the words of old Tiresias, maybe that should be a warning to our Romeo. TS Eliot gazes on at the world he foretold. Living in a basement flat in the 70s - in the underworld where Tiresias walks - Romeo is going to need more than a floral tie and upright stature to gain his prize.

The chorus has another reference to the eroding effects of water on earth (harking back to Firth of Fifth). Is that a Tyresian prophecy of the effect of Romeo nagging for sex later? "Raging" isn't really an attractive prospect is it? Is this going to be a nice encounter later on - or is he a git? Will she be glad it's over, as she puts on her new Genesis LP as he leaves? We never find out.

Take a little trip back with father Tiresias,
Listen to the old one speak of all he has lived through.
I have crossed between the poles, for me there's no mystery.
Once a man, like the sea I raged,
Once a woman, like the earth I gave.
But there is in fact more earth than sea.

There is far more earth than sea, of course. You were just thinking about dry land at the surface, weren't you? And Tiresias - seer of Thebes, adviser to Ulysses, part-time woman - he should know. Maybe Juliet got a happy ending after all.