Brown

I have been having such difficulties getting on to my website – it has taken me almost an hour – that the night is definitely run out and Mark will be out of the shower any minute now. Hence I am tired and cross and not feeling at all witty, so what follows will be uninspiring. You can go away until tomorrow if you like.

Despite such small trials, we have had a splendid day. We are in Kettering, parked outside Lucy’s flat. She has tottered in, on her unsuitable heels, and we are all feeling entirely happy with the splendid evening we have had.

We have been to watch a chap called Derren Brown at the theatre in Northampton. We had an ace Indian meal, if you are ever in Northampton I can highly recommend a restaurant called Saffron, where the waiters are polite and funny and the food is ace.

Of course the show was truly splendid. Derren Brown describes himself as a Mentalist, by which I think he means Oddball.

He does hypnosis and illusion and all sorts of bizarre activities, and I could not work out how he did a single one of them. He is a truly astounding showman, clever and funny and a bit peculiar and made me laugh very much. He is astutely observant, and really good at working things out just from looking at people. I am quite good at that but he left me on the starting blocks, he is amazing. He asked all of the audience not to tell anybody what was in the show, so I won’t, but I can jolly well tell you that it was astonishing, and either half of the audience were planted stooges sworn to secrecy and paid a fortune, or he is really very good at what he does. I am a rubbish subject for hypnosis, being far too cynical and mistrustful to allow anybody to encourage me to put me into a willing trance, but there was certainly a moment when I wondered.

It was ace. We clapped until our hands were sore at the end, and thought that perhaps there is such a thing as magic after all. Then we took the dogs for a quick amble and trundled back to Lucy’s, where Oliver was too tired even for a goodnight drink.

They are all asleep now, and I am only still awake because of writing to you. I am going to stop now because my eyes are closing even as I write, but it has been magnificent. Even the journey down was pretty good. We stopped to get our money back for the filter-that-wasn’t, and after that we did not stop again all the way here. That is a huge joy, I can tell you, any journey in the camper van where it gets all the way there without needing to stop to hunt for a spanner is a good day.

We listened to Vanity Fair and I got on with my knitting.

Oliver slept all the way here as well. I think he must be growing again, which will be a nuisance, he has still got another year at school and I really do not want to have to invest in more uniform.

I am not going to worry about it now.

I am going to go to bed.

Honestly, Derren Brown is ace.