I should be so lucky

I had an unexpected Sash-free evening in London last week, and discovered that 'Merry Wives' was on at the Globe, and had got a rave review in the Guardian. I checked the Globe's website the evening before, and there were at least seven tickets left for the yard (that's where you stand, in the middle: it only costs a fiver and gives a real taste of what it would have been like to be a groundling, I think - it's certainly a unique experience). Next morning I was at work and forgot to phone the damn box office until 1130. They had no tickets left except five for the Yard, which someone on the website was dithering over - call back in 20 minutes, they said. I thought it couldn't take that long, so I called back in five. Sorry, sold out, they said. What about the website, I said - any that anyone's dithering over? Ooh yes, they said. Two left. So I got the last-but-one ticket in the whole theatre. Remarkable luck.

Later that day, a old work colleague of mine came into the office. She had a baby about a year after I did. She had a tough pregnancy: swollen ankles from month one, that kind of thing. And she had terrible problems with her hips - has been in and out of hospital ever since. The kind of thing that's so gruesome you forget the details, deliberately. She was still limping six months later. And she must be at least ten years younger than I am. How on earth did I get off so easily?

So I'm lucky in the big things, and lucky in the small things. It freaks me out rather, if I think about it at all.

'The Merry Wives of Windsor' was really good, too. Aaaargh.

It was quite broad, but never descended into caricature, so when Ford found redemption, it was not only believable but very affecting. Well, I cried, anyway - as usual. One of the things I like most about A, you know - I do call him A, don't I? - is that he cries as often as I do. The scene in the Archers between Ed and Emma had us both wiping tears away afterwards. I don't really feel apologetic about it as I can't see any way in which it's a bad thing - it would be more worrying not to be affected by art, if I may call it that. The Archers is very well written these days.

I've just spent a lovely day with a woman who would be my sister-in-law, if I was married to A and she was married to his brother, and neither of us is. Should I eschew the labels that reflect such tired conventions, or adopt them, as another kind of rebellion? Answers on a postcard would only work if you had very small handwriting.

Proud mother

I'd forgotten to say that Sasha is now beginning to put words together, which is fascinating to hear. The sibs have been keen to teach Sash the word 'bum', causing much giggling in the back of the car. Then last week the child farted, looked at me, and said "Noise. Bum." What a prodigy. I thought that was quite conceptually sophisticated, but I may have suddenly morphed into Competitive Parent.

Timewasters

Much kudos to Russell T for resolving his cliffhanger in the first twenty seconds of the next episode. That man has style. The conclusion was a real stonker - A and I were both in tears as the doctor left an uncomprehending Donna behind. It all reminded me of a recent mailing list discussion -- probably on the Diana Wynne Jones list, which is by far the nicest list I've ever been on, consisting soley of intelligent, witty, people writing beautifully about relevant subjects and being nice to each other - on the nastiness of the device whereby everyone's memory is wiped at the end of the adventure. The consensus was that it renders the whole story pointless if the characters remember nothing, and it thereby insults the emotional investment you've made as a reader. We didn't agree with that chap in Susan Cooper's The Silver Tree who (SPOILER SPACE) has his memory wiped for him as an act of kindness, either. Anyway, I thought Russell T very adequately demonstrated why it's such a bad thing: the death of the character, in fact.

I've been wasting time online. I can't remember how, but I've stumbled on a lovely blog that dissects some of the very silly comic strips in US papers. Partly I just love his writing style; but the fascination is also in the sheer weirdness of the strips themselves. The blog is Comics Curmudgeon; to see the strips, you can build your own page at the Houston Chronicle's site. From Comics Curmudgeon, I found myself at Judge a book by its cover, a collection of truly dreadful cover art including my all-time favourite cock-up. From there I ended up wasting most of a day at Photoshop disasters: hynotically awful.

The stolen earth - and Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen

Oh no! Please don't let David Tennant regenerate... Russell, you bastard... I thought he'd signed up for three specials, anyway - and he's taking a year off to play Hamlet, so he doesn't need to regenerate. Aaargh.

We've been glued to iPlayer again. So cool. Thank you, kindly BBC.

Still recuperating from the music festival. It all went pretty well. Bit of a thin audience for our young artists on the Friday, and Saturday, which was meant to be our jazz picnic, was the one gloomy day this month so we had to picnic inside, but Sunday was all we could have wanted, apart from my mother tripping over the pushchair halfway through my big solo, which made Sasha shriek in sympathy - which made me wonder if I was an unnatural mother, trilling away on my semiquavers while my poor child was carried out screaming "Mummmeee! Mummmmeee!" But then lots of people were around to comfort the poor lamb, whereas only I could sing the cantata. In the event, it was my mum who needed the most care, having taken all the skin off her elbow and gathered some impressive bruises, stone floors being essentially unforgiving.

Gosh, I am tired. I'm going to bid you all goodnight and toddle off to bed. Remind me to tell you about New York some time.

Nothing important

Gosh, my mobile phone has returned to life. Sasha had it in the bath, and by the time I got to it it had been thoroughly dunked and was vibrating away in a panic. I took it to bits and left it out in the sun for a day (this was during the last heatwave). The screen dried out quite remarkably - you could see the water inside disappearing - and it ended up looking normal, but when I powered it up none of the buttons worked. I left it to live in the airing cupboard, and it's been there for a month or two. Turned it on again just for the hell of it, and ta-da! It lives!

In a way, it's a pity, as I hated the operating system so much I was quite glad to see the back of it. But of course as soon as I tried other phones I hated them more. And Windows Mobile - what can you say except Aaaaaarrrrgggghhhhh?

Did you know that the motto for the Boys' Brigade is 'Sure and Steadfast', but the motto for the Girls' Brigade (proud owners of one of the most hideous logos you will ever see) is 'Seek Serve & Follow'? The aims for the two sexes are polarised too. Remarkable.

I've been quiet since we came back from New York. Partly because there's been so much to do, with the music festival and work and The Voice (Cambridge NCT magazine) and all, and partly because I meant to write up New York before doing anything else, which was of course hopeless. But also because I've discovered iPlayer. And Doctor Who. It's so perfect for those who don't own televisions: your favourite programmes and no licence fee to pay! I started with the usual crush on David Tennant - sooo cute, and the lovely Scottish accent when he's off duty adds a frisson - but have transferred my affections to Russell T Davies (yes, I'm aware of the very obvious drawback here), who is of course the brains behind the revival but is also lots and lots of fun. A Welsh Joss Whedon. He shoots to the top of our dream dinner-party guest list, possibly even ousting Stephen Fry, who (whom?) I seriously believe to be vastly over-rated.

All this time and I don't have *anything* momentous to say?

The gesture of love

So, here's a question for you: which product has the tagline 'the gesture of love you can trust'? So many, many answers. But I'll bet any amount you won't guess.

I've been writing this dratted blog in my head for some time but not actually getting as far as typing it. Life has been hectic: lots of work on, switching days and pitching for new business, and the Cambridge NCT magazine to lay out again. Fifty-six pages, which takes a fair amount of time. It's quite fun, but I'm beginning to wonder...

A friend emailed to ask if I was going to review the BBC Ballet Shoes. Which was rather flattering, as is the fact that someone actually reads this stuff! There's glory for you. We're both Streatfeild fans - and Jill, I still have your copy of Saplings... I missed the broadcast but saw it all on iPlayer, which had launched shortly before. I also found an article by the person who'd written the adaptation, in which she avowed that she'd adored the book as a child and had been determined to secure the job so as not to change a thing and prevent anyone else changing it.

Given all that protestation, it was a bit of a shock to find Garnie apparently dying of TB and falling for a dashing Mr Simpson -- Mrs Simpson having been done away with. But then Mrs Simpson always gets written out, not having enough lines to make the actress worth the money.

The real problems, I thought, were actually the ones you get through knowing a book too well (and not being properly edited). Things didn't get properly explained: why is Sylvia called Garnie half the time, and what does GUM mean (I don't think he was ever referred to as Great Uncle Matthew)? (And by the way, does anyone believe that Richard Griffiths would be capable of walking any distance to find a fossil? He seems barely mobile these days.) On the larger scale, though, because the focus was on incident not on daily life, there was so sense of the Fossils actually practising: in the book, it's the relentless grind of their daily lives that's emphasised. 'The Fossils became some of the busiest children in London.' They work.

On the other hand, there was also the odd lapse of comprehension. I'm with everyone who thought Victoria Wood's wig was just ghastly, but part of the reason was that it was so unsuitable for the character. Nana is nothing if not pragmatic. Is she really going to have a hairstyle that requires her to thread clips all the way through the stuff every night, and then spend all day flicking the ends out of her eyes? I don't think so. The smart outfits seemed all wrong, too, especially those high-heeled lace-ups. Remember Pauline asking,
' "Have you pretty feet, Nana?" She looked down at Nana's square-toed black shoes which she always wore.' Nana is not glamorous.

The bit that made me really squawk, though, was Petrova washing Mr Simpson's car in her Mustard-seed costume. Remember the hoo-hah when Pauline gets above herself acting Alice in Wonderland? What precipitates the showdown is Pauline going off-stage without her wrap. The wrap is an overall that you wear so that your stage costume is protected every moment you're not on stage in it. My goodness, you wouldn't be allowed to go outdoors in it, let alone picking up an oily rag and polishing a car bonnet. That was a very odd lapse.

The biggest blank, I think, was that I didn't get any sense of the dedication of the girls: Pauline's vocation for acting, or Posy's virtuosity. Petrova's boredom and frustration they could do, but they really missed the commitment, the work, the gaining of professionalism: which is what made, and continues to make, the book special. It's not about daydreams and fantasies: it's about hard graft. All the Angelina Ballerina drivel that's about now entirely ignores the fact that nobody, nobody attains proficiency in this kind of thing without a lot of bloody hard work.

And finally.... bet you didn't guess. The picture showed someone in bed with a cat. The ad was for Frontline, which is a catflea repellent that's semi-permanent: you dot liquid of the back of the cat's neck. But the gesture of love you can trust? I can't think of any explanation except real, deranged weirdness.

Bath time

I've been spending every waking sunny hour in the garden, digging up nettles before they get going -- most years they're eight feet high before you can blink. We've managed to clear two squares of (potential) vegetable patch and our prospective asparagus bed, so that's rather fine. The sun has now gone in again, so I'm working on the Cambridge NCT magazine -- fifty pages every quarter, which I design in Quark XPress. It's been fun up till now, but just today feels a bit of a slog.

Anyway, I've been meaning for ages to write about our weekend in Bath, back in January. We booked the train tickets and the hotel online. Both sites gave confirmation screens; neither actually put through the purchase. Rotten usability. Luckily I was suspicious that thetrainline.com hadn't emailed me, so I phoned them. And fortuitously, the hotel had a small room that was obviously kept for emergencies, so we weren't thrown onto the streets.

We had a few interesting meals. First was lunch in the Hole in the Wall, which according to A has been around for ever. This was pretty good but not stunning. the service was odd: it seemed to be communal, with everyone in charge of everything, which in practice meant nobody noticed if you'd been sitting with the menu for twenty minutes. In contrast, the Olive Tree had a rigid hierarchy, with one person in charge of lots of powerless minions, some of whom didn't speak English. She was rushed off her feet, so the end effect was much the same. Fabulous food, though, even the trad Sunday roast -- and it's unusual to get a special Sunday lunch menu.

For dinner, we'd tried the trendy new Marlborough Arms but couldn't get in, though they were very nice about this: none of the nuances of tone that some people can get into the question "Have you booked?". So we ended up at Bistro Papillon, which was delightful. Very French, so the food was robustly lovely, the wine was excellent and the staff were completely charming: everyone with complete autonomy to be nice to you -- and they were really sweet to Sasha. I meant to write a glowing review of the food there but by now only have the haziest memories.

Oh -- and take no notice of the woman in Tourist Information who thinks it's only seven miles along the towpath to the next village. She is sooo wrong. We walked for hours, and it was lovely but eventually dark and cold. Still, we got that immensely smug feeling particular to an English climate that we'd made the most of a sunny day and didn't have to mind the next day being vile.