under another sun

Struggling for focus. Breakfast with Lorraine, then I did my duo-lingo French course, which I am doing every day now. But I'm feeling generally nervy. Down to The Warren to pick up some tickets. Currently the final night is already sold out, and the two others are selling well. Went to the gym again, and had a decent go in there, but decided that I would take tomorrow off to allow the Temple of the Kenny body repair itself. Home and a few bits and pieces done before Beth returned in Laura's new Mini Cooper, which we loaded up with theatrical things before Laura drove us to The Copperdollar Studios. A really good rehearsal today, perhaps something to do with Lorraine coming, hugging everyone and casting a fresh pair of eyes on it. Upstairs was a dance class and there was a faint background of dragging and sliding which I quite liked. Everyone much better today, and I got a shiver as it was unfolding that only comes from watching proper theatre. All three of them did well, Dyla...

Tea brought me by my lovely wife before she left for work. Off to the doctor's for me. He suggested a precautionary colonoscopy to check out my unsettled guts, given that there is a family history of intestinal nasties. This should happen quite soon apparently. I was hoping for this outcome, so I suppose I am pleased and hypochondria is under control. Thence to the Starbucks where I did a smidge of work a large cup of tea and a skinny blueberry muffin, before hefting off to the gym. I am very fat at the moment, but have been going to the gym with some determination. Had an excellent session in there, doing a bit of cross training, some rowing machine things, a few of the anxious boy arm exercises plus lats and pulling ropes with weights on the end of them. None of this done with the heavy weights you understand.  My enemy is cheese, and I returned home to Yarg cheese (wrapped in nettles) on toast. A gentle nap this afternoon with Calliope, before Beth and I set off to a new pla...

Deciding to get a grip this morning. Chased payment on my last invoice (somehow overlooked) learned what I have to do about preparing my tax, and sent off my new short story to a competition. I generally got a grip. This included going to the gym, which I did gingerly but it was better than nothing and I suffered no ill effects afterwards. A lovely day, as days after a bank holiday usually are. Home through the park in the sun. In the evening another read through rehearsal with Beth, Kitty and Dylan after pasta and salad which Beth and I prepared, and was ready for when Lorraine got home.  The show is two weeks away and it wasn't our best rehearsal. I'm trying not to twitch, but instead project calm and belief. I hope it's working. Calliope joining the process, and siting on Kitty, who ironically, likes cats but is allergic to them. Restarted my duo lingo French course, rebooting it so I could start afresh. Lorraine started it today, and sat on the sofa talking French t...

Lorraine and I up late, after I'd brought us breakfast in bed.  I like to spoil her at the weekend, partly because she brings me a cup of tea without fail every weekday. A treasure for which I count my lucky stars each morning. Duck eggs on toast for my lovely wife, who bought them from someone at school. After a time I noticed a sort of whiteness in the air of our room at the top of the house, and once I'd convinced myself that this wasn't cataracts, I simply went downstairs to see that I'd left the cooker on and had melted the spatula onto our prize frying pan. All okay in the end though, although it did make me wonder about my own sanity. When we eventually got up, we sauntered into town through the park and through the backstreets into the North Laine with Lorraine for a spot of shopping. The Laine full of people and Brighton's doing that thing of having music everywhere. Passed a pavement choir at one point,  and we had a sausage roll from the sausage shop by...

A last minute decision to travel up to the smoke this morning to arrive at ten. Dawn, who had stayed overnight, gave Lorraine and I a lift to the station and we travelled up to the Victoria & Albert museum, where there was a reading of Shakespeare's sonnets, and 154 responses to them by modern (i.e. alive) poets. Mine was sonnet 19. Lorraine and I were there from the start. They were performing the sonnets in numerical order and reading the responses to each one. To my surprise the poems were read badly, with regular stumbling and in a way that suggested the reader had no idea what they were about. Worse was to come for me, as my poem Locked in the Lines , was designed to be read by two voices, but although there were eight available actors this was missed. The same actor read the whole thing so as to render the poem incomprehensible. You would have thought an acting company devoted to reading poems might have seized the opportunity to do something in two voices, but obviousl...

Working on posters for the show on Pages on my iMac, unfortunately it doesn't do kerning, which my OCD side is balking against, so I may have to redo them Attended to various other bits and pieces, and even -- shock horror -- reading some philosophy for a bit. Lorraine working at home trying to finish everything off today. Sonia scowling because we were all at home. I made a quick scoot to the gym at lunchtime. Off in the afternoon to a pub The Duke of Wellington, near my old house in the Twitten, where I'd secured a room for rehearsals, and a brilliant little space it was, and the people there very friendly. Spent a good couple of hours upstairs rehearsing with Beth and Kitty. Dylan taking time out due to his bereavement. Must be very strange to lose a family member and have the TV do special shows about it, and it be all over all the national media. Despite this I am  feeling cautiously optimistic about our progress, and the more we work on the play the better it seems.

Up not too late for a Saturday, and Lorraine and I walked up in the pleasant spring sunshine to Fiveways, and had breakfast in a little Italian cafe, a toasted breakfast ciabatta, which was rather nice. Really nice to be spending time together. We talked about summer holidays but arrived at no conclusion. The Labour party had set up a stand nearby about staying in the EU and pointing up the unfairness of how the Government is funding Green and Red Brighton and Hove, compared to the Tory blue swathes of Surrey beyond. In the afternoon Lorraine and I bought flowers for her friend Jan who is seriously ill, and Lorraine went to visit her with Dawn there too. More cheerily I saw Jewel  for a back massage, as my back has been rigid for some time now. Most of my back a zone of evil and sore and rigid. The massage helped loads, but I will need another session. If I was a millionaire I would have Jewell massage Lorraine and I at least once a week. Then off to rehearsals, where Beth, K...

Hard drive An eye test first thing this morning. Nice optometrist who said he started off as an electrical engineer, but married to an optician who, he noticed, was earning a lot more money than him. No appreciable deterioration in my mince pies and their insides good too which, having written at length about eye injections, is pleasing. Dell helpline: call started at 11am and after four phone calls, the problem was diagnosed as being as a doomed hard drive at 4:15pm. Felt like Dante in Purgatorio with an Indian call centre Virgil. Cheekily having diagnosed a hardware problem, they tried to sell me software support for a year. An engineer will come to replace my hard drive, which of course means I will have to set up my computer from scratch again. The problem also prevents an automatic backup so I am forced to laboriously copy everything across to my external hard drive, file by file, email by email. Gah. While I sighed in my study, there was a huge end-of-the-world thunderstorm over ...