Smoke

Dylan Thomas can get lost, I am going to begin at the end.

I have no words for the utterly shattering magnificence of the theatre we have just seen.

It was one of the best pieces of theatre I have ever watched, which is saying something, because we do not do badly for theatre, given that we are complete country hicks.

The Playhouse theatre has been done out like a nightclub, in every possible way. You queue outside, and come in down some shabby and mildly troubling steps, like a real nightclub. Indeed, I was instantly taken back to some exceedingly dodgy evenings of my youth, spent on Manchester’s Canal Street, in the days when its very existence was illegal.

I think the designer must have been to the same nightclub.

Inside the theatre there were young men in corsets dancing actually on the bar, whilst young women with saxophones played for them.

It was theatre in the round, and they had removed the stalls and inserted tables, so that the performance took place on a revolving stage in the middle, and we were swept away into Berlin as the Nazis began to ascend.

I cried and laughed and gasped and jumped to my feet to cheer more enthusiastically at the end.

Eddie Redmayne is the most brilliant actor. Some of the time I cried just because it was so perfect.

They were all brilliant actors. Brilliant actors and dancers and singers. It was wonderful and shocking and terrible and heartbreaking and if you get a chance you should go. I have never, ever seen anything so splendid.

Lucy and Oliver are dancing around the hotel room now even as I write.

Of course this came at the end of a long day of flapping about.

We left Lucy’s in the middle of the night and woke up on Number One Daughter’s driveway.

It is ace visiting Number One Daughter and Number One Son-In-Law, because their lives are so brilliantly organised and calm.

They managed to feed all seven of us on bacon and sourdough bread for breakfast without seeming to flap in the least. By contrast I flapped so much that after we had finished breakfast Number One Son-In-Law opened a bottle of wine and suggested that I become more chilled. This worked depressingly well.

The dogs knew that they were being dumped.

We will not think about their anxious little faces.

We had so many bags that it took both Number One Daughter and Number One Son-in-Law to drive us to the station, which they did, uncomplainingly. At least, if they did complain, they waited until we had gone.

It was almost too exciting for words.

Even the train journey was an adventure, full of new sights and sounds and smells. After you have been living in the Lake District, London is quite an excitement.

There are a very lot of advertisements. Even after reading some of them carefully I am not quite sure what it is that people are trying to sell to me.

We are staying in a very nice hotel not far from Marylebone Station, which is very convenient. We can go everywhere on the Tube. The Tube has become very modern. To get on it you just wave your credit card at the ticket machine. You do not even need to purchase a ticket. I expect that this is so that the Government can find out exactly where you have been if they want to know. You have got to have a credit card each.You cannot use the same one between you. This is going to take some unravelling later when we are trying to work out what we have spent.

We dumped our bags and ventured out for some dinner before the theatre.

We ate at a French restaurant on the South Bank, having crossed the Thames on what Mark explained was the Millennium Bridge. We could not see any stars even though the sky was perfectly clear, but there are so many beautiful lights that it did not matter, we will see them again when we get home.

We are in bed now.We have had a lot to drink. We had champagne in the theatre and cocktails afterwards.

I am full of rich food and fizzy alcohol and thrilling experiences.

I do not feel the smallest need to go home.

London is the most exciting place in the world.