Still here

I am alive. Really.

I am even doing things. Occasionally I think these things would make good blog content. But then I get so busy doing other things that I never get around to the blogging. And then it’s all too old and there is too much and it has lost its flavour.

To assure you that there is life, however – that I am not just sitting in a darkened room working all day, although there is a fair amount of that – let’s have a quick run-down of the past couple of weeks.

Beloved had a birthday. We celebrated. We had a Very London Weekend – that was supposed to be a good thing, but turned out more mixed, as is itself a Very London Thing. Exciting events and entertainments got scuppered or spoiled by transport troubles, or turned out to not be quite as exciting as hoped. Viz:

Went to see Fuerzabruta*. Very fun. Planned night of dancing afterwards but everyone ended up doing the last train home thing instead. Plus, tube left us stranded three stops from home, grrrr.

Tried to go to the Electric Cinema. Foiled by slow bus. Tried to go to a West End cinema instead; foiled by unexpected show times (demonstrating the truism that one should never, never try to wing it in London; that way lies extreme frustration). Tried to have dinner by the river, but you already know how that turned out.

Tried to catch a ferry to an exciting outdoor film festival. Missed the ferry by minutes. Eventually got to the festival, to find it added up to rather less than the sum of its parts. (Or maybe the parts just weren’t that great to start with.) Still, watching Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in a big damn field on a warm and lovely summer evening was enjoyable. Two hours to get home. Less enjoyable.

Since then, I have been mostly fighting with my phone company, although that seems to be resolved now. And there is a happy outcome, which I will share with you tomorrow. Probably. Meanwhile, I would like to let the internet know that there is a very, very nice man in a call centre in Scotland who is going to a happy place when he dies. I hope he will go to some happy places before then too. Mwah!

I have also been booking a little mini holiday-ette for next week. Hooray for hiking in the Highlands! We hear there may be some midges, but we’re hard. We can handle it.

Oh, and I also attended strawberryfrog’s wedding reception, where I got to stand around in cute shoes on a waterfront balcony**, drink champagne, eat insanely delicious cake, be served by quite the most miraculously attentive catering staff I have ever encountered anywhere, discuss religion and cute shoes with the self-proclaimed Jewish Contingent of e2 (who were very lovely), and get a cab home because I complained loudly enough about the pain of the cute shoes and the great distance of the night bus stop. Hooray for being grown-up and having a (sort of) high earning husband!***

There was also a company away day in there somewhere. This involved fish and chips on Brighton pier (cue my usual plaintive cry: Why am I not living in Brighton? Whywhywhy?), not nearly enough funfair rides (damn wussy colleagues), and careful explanation to confused Polish bar wenches of how to make a rock shandy.****

Just one more news item: the pink leather sofas are a thing of the past. We convinced the landlady to get rid of them, because I need more space for knitting stuff. Heh. Who needs furniture when you can have knitting stuff, eh? (Not to worry, we still have something to sit on. Though Beloved complains that the futon isn’t nearly as comfy. Honestly, some people, never satisfied… first he hated the pink leather, now he misses it. Tut tut.)

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* With apologies to The Magnetic Fields, we bring you a peek inside the mind of Fuerzabruta’s creator/s:
“A pretty girl in her underwear
A pretty girl in her underwear
If there’s anything better in this world
Who cares…

"Ooooh! A pretty WET girl in her underwear! No – FOUR! Four pretty girls in wet underwear! Four pretty girls in underwear getting wet! In – in – in the sky! In mid-air! Four pretty girls in wet underwear splooshing around with each other in mid-air! COMING DOWN ON THE AUDIENCE! Four pretty wet girls in underwear in a big wet thing of water being lowered slowly onto the audience’s SEA OF GRABBING HANDS!

"I am a theatrical GEEENYUSS!”

Not to disparage the show, though. It is undoubtedly the most inventive performance I’ve ever seen. I love that they take the conceptual leap from theatre in the round to theatre EVERYWHERE – on a moving stage, on the walls, on the ceiling! So it’s a bunch of fun. But I would have preferred there to be something more behind the energy and adventurousness of the staging.

** It was quite like the old days, when we lived on the river, but with better shoes.

*** Who has just gotten a rather nice raise for being extremely cool and clever. Hooray Beloved!

**** Pint glass with half soda water, half lemonade, lots of ice and Angostura bitters. Quite the best alcohol substitute on a hot day. It’s a South African standard, but mysteriously no one in the UK has ever heard of it. Ditto Dom Pedros. This really needs to be fixed.