Hello, I am going to be very brief.
It is late.
We have been captivated and mystified at the theatre.
As usual with Derren Brown’s epics, the audience are exhorted not to tell anybody what happens, so I won’t. We must have seen a very great deal of this sort of production by now, because I am far better at working out how things are done, although I was entranced and enthralled even despite this, not least because of being astonished at how gullible I am. The magic works on me every time even though I can sometimes tell how it happened.
Derren Brown was not in this one, but it was written by him, which showed. He is very good at making me feel like an idiot.
We had a very good time.
In fact it has been a very good day.
We rushed round to get out, so much so that we were here by lunchtime, which was just as well because we had forgotten to get round to breakfast and were starving.
We had pizza in the sort of restaurant which looks as though somebody has started building it and then lost interest halfway through, with lots of unplastered brick walls, exposed ventilation ducts and unpainted woodwork. This is supposed to be fashionable, and I can understand why, because it is certainly a cheap effect to achieve, our house could have managed it for ages.
The menu was pizzas, with a choice of fashionable things on the tops of them. Mine included Wild Broccoli. I have never seen wild broccoli growing anywhere and was intrigued, but it tasted just like ordinary broccoli, so I will keep going to Booths for it and not bother hunting through the hedgerows. Also on offer was Wilted Spinach, which presumably was last week’s spinach that didn’t get used up in time. We ordered wine, which turned up in the sort of tumbler you get in the Gordonstoun canteen when you are being shown around and expected to behave humbly to show that you can be down with the kids.
We all stared at it, I was not sure what it was at first. They told Oliver that since he was a youth he could only drink beer, the logic of which utterly defeated me, but this is our modern world and I suppose I ought to get used to it. There were flags up all over the place, signalling that nobody minded whether you were committed to being a boy or a girl, which I thought was another odd thing to find with your lunch, since I had never imagined that it made any difference to one’s eating habits.
After that we went to purchase Oliver’s school shoes, which cost so much that we all went a bit pale at the till, but they are good shoes and will last until the next time he grows again. He liked them, and they are comfortable and shiny, so it was a happy ending.
In the end we trailed wearily back to the hotel, which is, of course, the lovely Midland, and collapsed into our bedrooms until it was time to go out and eat some more, which we did, at a bargain-buffet spot that was equally without middle-class credentials, but was jolly good anyway.
We have now eaten so much that I can hardly move. We rounded the day off with a hot chocolate and a tot of Bailey’s Irish Cream, and I am sitting in bed feeling very, very rotund.
I am going to have to consider exercise as a part of my future.
Fortunately that is a problem for another day.
