Damey

We are back.

It has been splendid.

We are sitting on the taxi rank in a state of exhaustion. We are all wagged out.

Even the dogs are wagged out. They have had a long day and night terrorising Elspeth’s dog, whose basket they commandeered, and also her son, who complained anxiously that Rosie had bared her teeth at him when he was trying to get in, and it made him feel quite uncomfortable.

He is a student. They expect you to be sympathetic when they are suffering from discomfort, although I suspect he was disappointed.

Elspeth said, correctly, that Rosie is a complete villain, despite being only about nine inches tall at the shoulder. There is a strong possibility that she is going to be spending her next holiday in kennels.

Despite all their excitement, they are glad that we are home now. I am glad as well, because I like our house, although it has been the most magnificent adventure.

It has been magnificent in a lot of ways. We have eaten well, drunk too much, and been lavishly entertained at the theatre. We were served wonderful cocktails made with Salford rum and maple syrup, both of which ingredients we have at home, so we might have a go for ourselves next time we have a night off. We stayed in the Midland, obviously, and actually had the same bedroom that Oliver and Lucy have had the last few times we have stayed, so when Oliver is rich and famous they can call it after him, like the Rolls and Royce suites downstairs.

Sister Act was splendid, so glittery and lightweight that it was almost a pantomime. Indeed, one of the lead characters was played by a chap called Clive Rowe, who I knew in my theatrical studenty teens, and who has since gone on to be described as the very best pantomime dame in the country. He has actually been given an MBE for doing it.

I did not believe this, because in my estimation, the very best pantomime dame in the country was an amateur acting schoolteacher called Nigel Marland, regrettably no longer with us, who was so utterly brilliant that he has made me grudging about every pantomime dame I have seen ever since.

To my joy, I read an interview with Clive not long ago, in which he was being quizzed about his pantomime dameyness. He said, emphatically, that he was good only because he had copied an old chap of whom nobody has ever heard, called Nigel Marland, who was the best pantomime dame in the world ever, and that much of Clive’s subsequent pantomime triumph was thanks to copying him.

One day I will go and watch Clive in pantomime as well, although he is far away in London these days: but I would like to remember Nigel. There has never been a pantomime dame to match him.

Anyway, Sister Act was jolly good, and apart from that and the cocktails, we bought some new trousers for Oliver, who has grown an inch or two since our last trouser-purchase, and joy of joys, a new iPad, complete even with keyboard, for me.

We have been saving up for this since before Christmas. In fact we have just discovered that it would be discounted because of my student status, which was what made us realise that it would be possible so soon.

I am so excited about it that I dare not open it. It can stay in its box until I have a lengthy Computer Examining Moment.

I will be able to write beautifully without needing to stop so often because some letters don’t work, or because sometimes you have to wait for a little while before the letters appear on the page.

I will probably be able to be JK Rowling now.