Feb blog 2010 All damp and grey and the house in a mobile phone network free vortex, after all my I phone showing off last month, karma came and bit me on the arse. For no reason at all, me and the old man suddenly lost our 02 signal, what followed was two and a half weeks of utter torment, too boring to go into detail, but it’s hard to convince anyone there is anything wrong with your phone when you take it back to the shop and they can hear it ringing in your bag. It was just in our house and the immediate neighbourhood, other 02 users would come in saying, ‘well mine works’ only to see their signal slide into ‘no service’. Anyway after umpteen phone calls and a silly number of emails, I managed to find the number for head office - and they admitted to there being an ‘unplanned outage’ and are letting us swap networks without penalty - good … and breathe. It was one of those situations when I was all geared up for a fight and they went all reasonable on me, which has left me feeling a bit dazed. Anyway, soon it will be Spring and no-one will know what to wear, but you can buy daffodils for a quid a bunch from M and S - which means everything is going to be Ok. Have been roped into Grumpy Old Women do ‘Lets Dance’ for Sports relief this year, me, Susie Blake, Linda Robson and Lesley Joseph will be throwing shapes for charity in a months time - no idea of the song or dance yet, but it’s obvious I’m the biggest liability - so I’ll be at the back. This month is a writing month, got a gig in Leicester on 13th of Feb – but am mostly concentrating on finishing Chin Up Britain – the book and starting the new Radio 4 series of Twilight Baby with Julie Balloo. I’m also still debating whether to do Edinburgh, bit tricky as the girl child wants to go up with her uni production of The Magic Toyshop and the last thing she wants is to bump into me on the cobbles of the Old Town. Hmmmmmmmmm. Talking of theatre, we continue to be very cultured – since I last blogged… HAVE SEEN: The Magic Toyshop at The Playhouse theatre Oxford, this is an Angela Carter piece, a student production and a fantastic job, visually stunning, live music, and the daughter playing a five year old, rather convincingly it has to be said and her father and I ended up staying at the creaky old Randolph hotel and having drinks in the Inspector Morse bar! We also popped in the ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM which you have to do in bite sized chunks or you get confused, we did the paintings, some lovely mid 20th century stuff. Stuck around for preshow dinner, which was nice, I had roast suckling pig because I was feeling greedy, somehow during the billion pound re-vamp they managed to forget to design somewhere to hang coats in the restaurant and the lift is the size of a coffin. Huff. ALSO SAW - CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF - which I didn’t really want to see as I was a bit theatre’d out – but it was great, too long (nearly three hours) but some really fantastic acting (not as good as the girl playing the five yr old at The Playhouse - but still good) Enjoyed it lots more than flipping Godot. AND THE INDIAN ART at the Saatchi - not great to be honest, the old man raved about the floorboards - what was nice was seeing the old Richard Wilson oil installation down in the basement, this has been around for over twenty years and is the third time I’ve seen it. Hard to describe, basically a lake of oil - how deep, who knows? Google it, or better still go and see it READING Juliet Naked by Nick Hornby - only on page ten - will deliver verdict next time Lovexxx 08-02-2010

 

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