I’ll start with the obvious first: as others have blogged it was the Secret Vegetarian Festive Dinner on Saturday night – and what an amazing party it was! The fairly recent tradition of holding ‘dinner parties’ during the holidays continues to snowball in scale and a full thirteen people made it to Abbi’s house including her Aussie friend (the lovely Jen) and Saoirse’s boyfriend, otherDominic, who deserves much credit for jumping into a perhaps ever so slightly intimidating situation. (I distinctly remember a group of us gathering on the sofa after they had left to discuss how cool he was, so it clearly paid off.) We also played Secret Tikoloshe, a South African Secret Santa-esque game but with more stealing of presents, from which I emerged with a beautiful goose (?) from Joshua: thank you! And loads of thanks to Abbi (for the house) and Saoirse (fort the food) and everyone (for the company) too 
Cheesecake mistake on the way: don’t worry, the photo was priceless
Me and my toy!
Alice, Saoirse, Tash, Abbi, Robert, Jakov, Dom, Joshua, Lucy, Jen, Emily and me!
I love this: Lucy with Rosie the Riveter
(There was some recovery needed, on the other hand. Lucy and I both managed to avoid actually being sick that night – although it was a close-run thing – but were clearly tired enough to spend much of Sunday playing Monopoly…)
Right, the plays!
- Hamlet – Wednesday afternoon – Yes, I was lucky enough to bag a ticket at the last moment to go and see (not) David Tennant in Hamlet. I wasn’t disappointed in the slightest, though: it brought out plenty of Shakespeare’s wit and depth (aw, Shakespeare!) plus had Patrick Stewart being awesomely evil as the villainous Claudius. And it’s interesting how having studied the play – and thus knowing exactly what’s going on despite the slight language barrier – really did add enjoyment rather than boredom.
- August: Osage County – Thursday night – We saw this as a family and were all struck by the incredible emotional journeys undergone by the actors each night in a play that’s almost as long as Hamlet. There isn’t any family that isn’t somewhat messed up but this Oklahoma clan have their problems distilled and concentrated: great fun to watch and well worth seeing if you can.
- Loot – Friday night – So finally, Lucy and I saw this at the venerable Tricycle Theatre and it’s probably the hardest play to pin down, although discovering afterwards that it originated in 1965 explained a few things. A darkly comic farce, I wasn’t sure about it until the introduction of Inspector Truscott (David Haig): a character who stands head and shoulders above the others in both writing and performance and totally stole the show. Of course, no modern audience is going to be shocked by a satire against the British police and indeed there was one very funny moment when a man sitting behind us jokingly stood up as the national anthem was played before the curtain opened: much mirth all around, but it does rather demonstrate that Loot is no longer going to quite have the same sting as it once did. Still, a great show!
There is way too much of my bum in that photo. Secret Tikoloshe is not actually a South African tradition. A Tikoloshe is a bad spirit that chews off people’s toes and steals their babies in the night. It was the only South African mythological creature I could think of and so I substituted it for Santa. Although the way we do Secret Santa with the gift swap I think is a South African thing… god all this cultural mixing makes one’s head hurt!
I’ve seen loot and Hamlet too!
That photo is shameful. I virtually smack you for posting it.