This Is A Post About Me

This week has been a week, not a terrible week but not a great week either. Seems like sometimes That Break Up feels so much more raw than it has any right to be really, this far down the line, and it’s hard to get past the fact that my heart just hurts. I’ve totally self medicated though, with OItNB and new bedding and San Pellegrino. It’s been a week of being in bed by 8 pretty much every day, but whatever.

Soooooo, the week might have been pretty miserable but I will not be defeated because now? Well, first of all there’s THAT HARRY POTTER NEWS. You’ve all heard that by now right? That JK Rowling has confirmed that a new Harry Potter play will be coming to the London stage next year? It’s called Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and whilst she’s keeping all her cards v close to her chest like she does, she has said it’s not a prequel. I have all the feelings. I am simultaneously excited and nervy (I am not so good with the unknown. The unknown makes me very anxious) and you just know that I (along with oh, the rest of the world) will spend some time in London Town next year. Ha. 

So, there’s that. There’s also the weekend. Hurrah. It’s going to be a good one. LEMME TELL YOU AAAAAALLL ABOUT IT.

I’m meeting Helen for lunch any minute. Helen’s baby is due in August (I AM VERY EXCITED ABOUT THIS FACT YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW) and she’s easing herself into her mat leave; last Friday marked her last Friday at work and we’re celebrating that fact today with lunch just because we can. Hurrah. Sometimes all you need is a bit of QT with your BFF you know?

Time with Helen is different to time with anyone else and it’s my best. Last week we met up and visited her nephew before we went to Maccies and then just huddled under blankets on her sofa to watch Before I Go To Sleep which mostly meant we talked shit to each other the whole way through, renamed the characters, got very angry at Mr Darcy being a badass, criticised Kidman’s hair, and generally took the film nowhere near as seriously as we should have done thus missing a few important plot points. I can’t do that stuff with anyone but her.

This evening my pal Jane and I are headed to Hoyster’s for dinner. 

Look how lush it is. You wanna come, right?

Prosecco on tap, this is not a drill.

Prosecco. On. Tap.

For some reason I see lots of prosecco in my future. Also tapas. Oh, all the tapas.  Jane and I often have these grand plans of big nights out and cocktails and living the high life. The truth though? We’re eating at 6.30 so do not be surprised if we’re tucked up in bed for 11. Ha. We’re the most rock and roll. I’m excited because I haven’t been out since Before the Break-Up so you know, it’ll be fun to dress up and drink bubbles and let my hair down a while.

Tomorrow I’m getting my culture on with a matinee performance of Dreamers at Oldham Coliseum. It's a new comedy musical about a group of girls in 90's Manchester: small town nights out, friendship and 90's Indie classics. I am all over that. I’m going with my friend Natalie – the show was co-written by her sister in law, which is super cool. Then, we’re heading back to Natalie’s for takeaway food (I hope Chinese. Nat, if you’re reading this, shall we have Chinese?) and a film – we’ve mentioned Selma as we missed it at the cinema. It will be a delightful day of delightfulness and will probably involve us making plans for when we go to London in October to see Cumberbatch as Hamlet. Nat was all Cumberbatch crazy until I gently pointed her in the direction of Elementary. She’s seen the (Jonny Lee Miller shaped) light, naturally because how could you not when he’s that sexy, but she still has a soft spot for old BC and me? Well I just like London and the theatre and cocktails so you know, fun times. We’re going to do Hamlet and hit up some of the galleries and find some awesome cocktail bars and generally just spend a weekend being super sophisticated. I’ll follow Natalie’s lead on that then, I know: I am the least sophisticated of them all...

On Sunday I have a blissful ZERO PLANS, but whatever I end up doing it will not involve food. [& next week will involve a lot of gym time. That cross trainer and I will become very well acquainted] I might just drive home, and watch the rest of the first season of Grimm in bed. Yep. That sounds like it could be a plan. I’m still on the fence about Grimm. Ems and I watched six episodes the other Sunday which means I have to finish it, because I’m too far into it not to, but I’m not sure that I love it, yet. I might also finish my book.  I’m reading The Beach Hut at the moment, which is brill and marv. I love the way Cassandra Parkin writes. I also love that the beach in the book is based around Perranporth. I love Perranporth. Anyway, I’ll talk about it properly when I’m done but in the meantime, you can (and should) get a copy here. Next on the list is the new Rosamund Lupton The Quality of Silence which is out next week and which as a lover of Sister I am super excited about.

I’ve also been house-hunting which is both exciting and terrible. I have a lot of emotions about it, and if I let me think about it properly then I get rather weepy but, well, the actual ‘let’s find a cool place to live,’ that’s sort of fun. I feel like I’ve found the perfect place, actually. . It’s at the upper end of my budget, as in the very most I would be prepared to pay right now, which is obviously not ideal: the higher my living costs the lower my savings/book money, but it’s beautiful, so beautiful. I’ve even been furnishing it in my head this week which is perhaps not sensible. So, I made a deal with myself: it’s not even available til August, so, if it’s still on the market this time next month I’m going to go and view it. If it’s not, well, then it was never meant to be and I shall find somewhere less beautiful and less expensive. This is my plan.

On Saturday night I saw an open air production of Alice in Wonderland, staged by Off The Ground Theatre Company.

Oh dear.

Now, whilst I like the theatre, I am by no means an expert on all things theatrical so please don't think that this little review is backed up by any knowledge because it's not. It's based purely on my own opinion and my opinion is this: the show was disappointing.

I am willing to admit that my love of all things Alice might mean my expectations were unrealistically high but I think it was more than that. The play failed to hold my interest: it kicked off at 6.30pm and by 7pm I was checking my watch and being surprised at how little time had passed.
It felt disjointed and even knowing the book back to front and inside out like I do I found it very hard to follow - my friend Helen said afterwards that it would have benefitted from some kind of narrator and she is exactly right; without the glue that a narrator would have provided things seem to flounder; they jumped from scene to scene with no explanation as to how or why meaning that a lot of the genius there is in the text was just lost and you just had no idea what was happening. Several times I had to really try to figure out just exactly which point of the story we were at. The Caucus Race just seemed like 16 people running around and the scene where the White Rabbit thinks Alice is Mary Ann was just a blur. They stuck in 'The Walrus and the Carpenter' recited by a VERY random TweedleDee and TweedleDum who appeared from nowhere and served no purpose, which was odd considering that's not even from the same book (although, yes, I know it's in the Disney film) and the whole thing just felt a little bit like everybody was trying too hard to be a bit quirky when if they'd let it the story could have done the work for them. The use of modern jokes (the weakest link; CCTV; points mean prizes etc) just grated on me - if their production had been stronger then they wouldn't have needed those. Alice has stood the test of time for long enough to not need to be feebly dragged into 2011. All that combined with the poor staging and the less than great acting meant that the audience (mostly small children) grew bored well before the interval so the second half was peppered with under 5's running on and off the 'set' (a fact the cast dealt with remarkably well, to give them their dues.)

All of that said, I know it can't have been easy: trying to put on a show such as Alice with no stage, little scenery and very few props must have been a challenge, and there were elements that I thought were very clever. The way they used members of the cast dressed in black to form the rabbit hole for example was very well done, parts of it did make me laugh and it was by no means a terrible production. I just feel it didn't reach it's potential, and I wish I'd had some wine.