Today was not April 2011, and anyone who says otherwise is a liar.
Rather some indeterminable point in the summer, I’d say, with both the smell of barbecues and the sound of Spotify-enabled garden parties working their way into the back garden as I sat outside (outside!), having lunch with Grace, reading Emma and generally feeling rather sunny and cheery. (Later on it was early 1981 instead, as I decided it had been ages since I’d watched some classic Doctor Who so forced dad and Katie through The Keeper of Traken, rekindling (false) memories of a time when TV drama was all about standing in one room together until you all decided to stand in another room together before realising that, no, maybe standing in the first room together was a better bet after all, and so on ad infinitum. We were also highly critical of Traken’s political structure.)
But enough about today: there are things in the past just waiting to be remembered! (Sorry – watching old Doctor Who does odd things to speech patterns.) First of all, a return visit to see The Room last Friday with Grace, Charlotte and newbies Tash and Alex. Good news: it’s still awesome. Even better news: it’s easier to heckle when you aren’t paralysed with first-time shock at how awesome it is. Hurray for The Room! And also hurray for Pizza Express the next night with Tash K, Emily, Grace, Saoirse and Joshua, because it was a lovely evening which concluded with personalised Saoirse-cards for us all being scribbled out over the table of a rather trendy bar in West Hampstead. (We know how to live.)
On Sunday night too many cool people to list gathered for a special screening of Strictly Ballroom, part of the Lexi cinema’s ‘Nomad’ season of pop-up cinemas. (Well worth checking out to see if there’s one coming round your way, incidentally, and like everything the Lexi does it’s all for a charitable cause.) Meanwhile, on Wednesday night I saw West Side Story at QPCS – an almost embarrassingly good school production, it must be said, and a sad reminder that younger generations have a terrifying habit of making everything you ever did seem rather rubbish by comparison. (And I’m not even talking about a decade here! Just think how jealous I’m going to be in the future…) Finally, because I know these kind of posts can be tedious to read, Tash K hosted a little birthday gathering last night. Out came the Pimms, if you were still doubting that we’ve skipped straight to summer, and very nice it was too…
For anyone still with me, I have a couple of things to enthuse about if you haven’t heard me yapping about them on Twitter already. Firstly: the brilliant Irkafirka illustrated one of my tweets the other day – this is definitely going up on my wall sometime. Secondly, I thought I would make some more noise about the long-running microfinance charity Kiva, which enables you to make small loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries. If you have a little bit of money spare to invest in international development (the minimum is only $25 – less than 20 quid) it’s a very well-designed and rewarding place to start. Finally, I’ve managed to go a whole day without having a substantive conversation with anyone about the merits and drawbacks of AV, which is a bit of a relief… 
(Referendum status: currently vaguely leaning towards Yes, although probably not for the reasons that lots of other people are. I fluctuate rather a bit, through. Your thoughts on a postcard to the usual address.)
