We have had a day out in Manchester.
We have been milling about the shops.
Number One Daughter had sent me a voucher for Lucy and Yak some time ago, so today we went tootling across to their Manchester store and investigated their dungarees.
I bought some.
They are a size ten.
I was extremely surprised.
Actually I didn’t believe it and had to double check the label. Then I felt immediately guilty about the colossal quantities of pizza and garlic bread consumed at Matt and Phred’s jazz club last night, in case it was going to make me too fat to wear them.
I don’t care. It was a magnificent night out and their Greek pizzas were superb. I could not have eaten two of them but I would have liked to very much.
I would never have imagined that the avoidance of chocolate buttons would make such a huge difference to a waistline.
I have started to write this at the end of the afternoon, because we are going out again tonight, and I do not want to find myself in an intoxicated state at midnight, desperately trying to compose intelligible prose whilst nodding off in my dressing gown. I have no idea if last night’s was sensible or not, so if you found yourselves at the breakfast table this morning trying to make sense of seven hundred words of joyous but incomprehensible rabbiting, I apologise.
I might be mildly intoxicated even now, because when we came back from the shops, the hotel kindly gave us another free glass of wine. I suppose we could have refused, but you will not be surprised to hear that we didn’t.
Tonight we are going to the theatre. I do not know if it is a real theatre or not. It is to a place called Aviva Studios, where we are going to see something called Hamlet, Hail To The Thief, about which I know almost nothing. We are here because Mark wanted to see it, and it sounds rather good. Certainly the reviews have been splendid, although you can’t ever quite trust reviews of that sort of production. They tend to be written by Guardian journalists who think that Waiting for Godot is art.
You will be in a better position than me to judge, however, because I am going to write more about it before the end of this diary entry. Another paragraph or two and you will know all about it.
I will let you know.
I am letting you know right now.
It was splendid.
The theatre was built out of old scaffolding, which explain s why I hadn’t known about it. Everything was very modern, with dance and loud music, smoke and peculiar lighting effects, and it was all in black and white. Costumes, light, set, everything, and it was about as cheerful as Hamlet always is. I hope it isn’t a spoiler to tell you that there were some impressive graves in it, holes in the stage which disappeared and then reappeared for corpses to be dumped at opportune moments.
I was not sure who the thief was, unless it meant the bit where Yorick got dug up and his skull passed around. It was never exactly explained, it must have been some intellectual bit that bypassed me.
Of course we were spellbound. It was utterly brilliant, in a grim and unrelenting sort of way. If you want a cheery evening at the theatre then probably I would think first about Mary Poppins, but if you are a Guardian journalist you will probably enjoy it.
We staggered out, breathless and horrified and thrilled, and then went to The Ivy for dinner.
Dinner was also splendid.
It was The Ivy Asia, so there were chopsticks and peculiar little plates of things to eat, appearing one after another on the table. We were ravenous by then, and so shovelled it in even despite the chopsticks.
It was marvellous. I did not want to think that it was better than the Magic Wok in Windermere, but it was really, lots better.
We even had pudding. It was lemon cheesecake with sesame meringues.
I do not think I am going to be a Size Ten for very long at this rate.
It will be worth it.
