Update

Apologies, oh beloved blog readers (all three of you). It's been a busy couple of weeks, starting with performance week of the play I was in. It went fairly well on the whole, despite such minor hitches as the failure of my gun to actually make a gun-like noise at the appropriate time (I'm told by the director that I should have shouted 'bang!'. Really? How naff would that be? Besides, I was too busy laughing to shout anything) and the five minute long blackout that turned the show into a radio play. Funnily enough I was laughing through most of that too, but I like to think that the audience attributed the quaver in my voice to the psychopathic rage of a gun-toting madwoman. Anyway, I'm assured I was mahvellous dahling, mwah! mwah! As if anybody at an amateur dramatics group would say anything else to your face. Your reputation is safe, so long as you never leave the pub while there are still others there to talk about you. The highlight of the performance week was the lovely kitty who came and joined us in the dressing room; coming up the back stairs and then curling up under the dressing tables. Sweeeeet! I bet the tale of a theatre cat would make a lovely children's book.

After the run of the play ended, I took a trip up to Derbyshire to visit my parents. During this trip I was taken still further North to see my grandparents, who took us out for lunch. We drove for miles, past endless lovely looking country pubs, with pretty views over the fields, in order to reach...a Toby Carvery on a busy roundabout. Yum. The rest of my time up there was spent in turning into an old lady. I helped make chutney, started learning to knit socks, and spent an afternoon pottering around the gardens at Chatsworth. It was all very lovely and restful. Less restful, I found, is driving anywhere with my mother. As soon as she folds herself into her little convertible Toyota rollerskate she gets a terrifying gleam in her eye, and any long stretch of straight road seemingly irresistibly draws her foot to the floor of the car. She becomes the veriest picture of a midlife crisis, zipping along narrow country roads, laughing at my strangled entreaties that she please keep at least one hand on the wheel.

On my return to London I was accosted by a charming man, who told me I was the most beautiful woman in the world, before walking into a bench and falling over in a drunken heap. Classy.