Gone With the Wind

Saturday afternoon was theatre time. For her 30th birthday, a group of us bought my friend Liz a ticket to see the new musical adaptation of Gone With the Wind in the West End - and of course, we went along too!

Featuring none other than Scotland's very own Darius Danesh (!), it was quite a treat! Thankfully by the time we saw it, they'd cut the running time down from 4 hrs to 3 hrs 15. We were all wondering how we'd last but it was actually fairly pacy and we were definitely helped by having excellent seats. The way the set works involves various cast members running round a circular walkway and our seats were in the row directly behind the walkway. This meant we had loads of legroom - but also meant we had to be careful not to trip the actors up as they bustled past! Sadly Darius seemed to be the only cast member not to go past - perhaps fearful of being grabbed on the way past by an over-exuberant fan!

The theatre set was very well done, the cast was mostly excellent, Darius was surprisingly good (although just a bit too young for the part) - all in all, a very pleasant way to spend a Saturday afternoon. One of my pals knows someone in the show, so we met her at the stage door afterwards - she had about half an hour before the whole thing started again for the evening performance - I felt exhausted for her!

Then it was back to ours for a curry extravaganza, courtesy of Kevin. He conjured up 5 different curries, for 7 of us and the consensus was that it was all fabulous - what a star!

Boujis

In a surreal development, I ended up in one of London's most 'notorious' private members clubs last week. I think that means it gets featured regularly in the Metro via lots of pictures of celebs falling out of it drunk!

A friend of mine is raising funds for a charity she supports through a collective of women called the Sisterhood - anyway, they managed to persuade "Boujis" to let them have access once a month. You pay a tenner to get in, and that gets you free drinks from 7.30 - 9pm before the real members turn up later on.

It was good fun to go along, if only for the comedy of being looked up and down by the bouncer as if I really wasn't a) blonde enough or b) showing enough flesh to possibly be wanting to enter his club! The free drinks were limited to whatever cocktail they had surplus of, which was fine - I'm not fussy!

Most amusing of all was being kicked off our table at 11pm when a big group of Prince William & Harry lookalikes came along and commandeered our table, which apparently was reserved for them. Sometimes it's fun to cross paths with people you wouldn't normally encounter, but it was good to leave them all to it - at £9.50 for a G & T, it wasn't that much fun!

How the other half lives...

Summertime and the living is easy

It's been scorching in London for about the past week. Our flat has turned into a sauna and the windows are now wide open at every given opportunity. I'm not complaining at all - it's gorgeous. I even managed to do a bit of work sitting on the bench in the little square outside our flat this week, which was fabulous.

This week I've finally managed to get back into my running, after the Paris marathon exploits - I hadn't realised quite how much that had taken out of me physically until I started trying to run again and couldn't manage more than a couple of miles without having to stop - my feet felt like blocks of lead. But this week has been better and today I managed about 4-4.5 miles, in what must have been 28 degrees, without too much difficulty. I did wonder why I was getting strange looks from people - then I got home and saw my face, which had turned a nice shade of purple!

Still, it has to be done - although yesterday was a nicer way to soak up the sunshine as we headed out to Richmond and spent a lazy afternoon by the side of the Thames, interspersed with an amble up to Richmond Park, an ice cream and a couple of drinks. Very, very pleasant. Picture is of strange ducks/geese in Richmond Park.

Friday night was also fun although in a different way. We finished up working promptly at 5pm and went up to Islington for a pre-theatre meal (steak and chips, mmmm) followed by "The Last Days of Judas Escariot" at the Almeida Theatre. I'm not sure what I made of the play itself - it was probably an hour too long at 3hrs including an interval and there was a bit too much method-type acting for me, but it was an interesting concept - a court in Purgatory was hearing Judas's case - a plea for salvation and a move upstairs from Hell. My favourite character/actor was Satan - there's no hope for me! There was no actual decision in the end, just lots of different characters from history giving their views and perspectives on betrayal, Jesus and the rightness or wrongness of Judas' actions (Mother Theresa, Ponchus Pilot, Mary Magdalene etc).

Comments Part 2

Hi again

I've changed this again so that you can now leave comments - but please be wary of older comments as at least one of them is a virus. Don't bother reading them! New ones should be ok as I now have 'screening power'!

Em

Comments

Hi folks

Just to let you know that I've changed settings on this so that it is now a bit harder to leave comments (was getting a few virus/spam types). Apologies if this causes any problems for the genuine amongst you!

Em

Random ramblings

Weeks are flying past a bit quickly for my liking at the moment...Here's what I've been up to over the past few days...

Friday

Busy week of work for Aspire, a network of social enterprises creating jobs for people who are or have been homeless. I’m helping them with various projects and spent Friday at their offices, in various meetings. The end result was that I had a proper “Friday feeling” by the end of the day, which I don’t get so much when I’m working from home.

Luckily I had someone to share it with as I met my friend Emily for a few post-work drinks and, sensibly, some food. We parted company about 8pm as she left to get her train back to Hove (approx 1 hr!) and I walked home along the Thames from pub to flat (approx 7 mins!) Sometimes I really have to pinch myself!!

Kevin was out with his work, watching “Bremner, Bird and Fortune” being filmed out at Wembley, so I passed some time flopped in front of TV watching gems like Question of Sport (!). He returned about 9.30 and we popped out for a quick drink just before closing time.

Saturday

Up relatively early for a Saturday, breakfasted etc, then out to the pub (again!) for Chelsea v Man Utd – a veritable six pointer. We have lots of local pubs – there must be around 20 within 5-10 mins walk from us. For footie watching and reasonably priced pints, the Lord Clyde is where we usually end up and unlike most of the places near the river, it’s much more of a proper London boozer. Kevin was just about the only Man U fan there but everyone was very friendly (although maybe only because Chelsea won!)

It was a gorgeous sunny day here on Saturday, so we ended up wandering around for a few hours, soaking up the Borough Market atmosphere and ambling along the river to St Paul’s. We went inside and as always, I had that feeling of ‘if you’ve seen one cathedral, you’ve seen them all’ – they always look better from the outside!

Then, in the evening, it was down to Wimbledon for a trip to the greyhounds - a ‘propah saaf Landan’ night out (according to Time Out’s London for Londoners guide, that is).

I realise there are big animal rights concerns about the greyhound racing industry – and for all I know, they may be totally legitimate – but the dogs we saw looked really healthy and happy and the owners and trainers seemed to be very affectionate towards them. It was disconcerting and uncomfortable to think about what we’d heard goes on behind the scenes and I was aware that by supporting the racing, we were supporting potentially dodgy stuff under the surface, but putting those concerns to one side, I have to say it was a really good night out.



We had the full ‘dinner & race card” package, which was a 3 course meal at a table looking out onto the tracks. There were 13 races in total, one every 15 mins, and we didn’t even have to leave our seats to bet – someone came round and kindly took our money for us! We’d set ourselves a limit of £30 each (about £2 a race) but happily we didn’t reach this limit. The first few races were a write-off but then we hit a purple patch and won something on just about every race from 5 – 12. Overall we were down about £25 between us, which didn’t feel too painful. I think our luck turned when we stopped trying to work out form and just went for whichever dogs we felt like!


The night finished early enough to get a tube home and I fell asleep on the couch while watching taped ER. Too much excitement you see!

Sunday

A day of pottering, relaxing and generally not doing much at all. Our water supply was off in the morning thanks to a massive burst water main which has also flooded City Hall! Went shopping in the afternoon on a quest for lightbulbs (all our lights have gone at the same time) and ended up purchasing a bit of a new wardrobe (amazing how quickly you can buy 2 pairs of shoes, new jeans, a couple of vest tops and several other tops!).

Monday

Work, work, work. Good day, got quite a bit done. Also did a ‘mind map’ of everything I’ve got to do over the next few months which made me feel slightly better about getting it done and will at least stop me perpetually scribbling yet more to do lists on random bits of paper as I remember them! Yet another sign of me turning into my mum though!

Excitement building...

On a completely different note...

Have just booked a diving holiday in Malaysia, where we're stopping en route to our new life in Australia.

Topped and tailed by a couple of nights in Kuala Lumpur, we will be spending 7 days and 6 nights at the Sipadan-Mabul resort. Just the very thought of warm water, amazing marine life and endless sun is enough to put a smile on my face - I can't wait!