Recently Seen:

Walk In The Woods at the Tricycle for my dad’s birthday, an updated production of the 1988 play about the power play between two US and Soviet arms negotiators. Despite its depressing poignancy in capturing the futility of most international diplomacy, I was still bathed in warm nostalgia for the Cold War, and enjoyed it as much as I always enjoy the Tricycle: lots. (Yeah yeah, I was two years old at most at the end of the Cold War, but I can still induce faux-nostalgia in the same way that I can ‘miss’ British Rail sandwiches.)

This month I also went back to News Revue with Grace and saw In Time with Simon – a silly film which is not even particularly well made but entertaining all the same. We even laughed at the ending, where the characters actually go to the trouble of explaining to the audience why their plan wouldn’t work and then proceed to carry it out anyway.

Recently Been:

Abbi’s birthday lunch a couple of weeks back was a very happy haze of wine, cheese boards and wrapping paper going up in smoke. (Top tip: candles are made of fire!) We also had ‘Team Awesome Pizza Night’ after work – ‘Team Awesome’ being my not-very-creative name for one of our regional teams which has stuck through the lack of a more creative alternative emerging – which moved seamlessly and very pleasantly from the ‘pizza’ stage to the ‘secret underground cocktail bar entered through a fake fridge door’ stage. And let’s not forget the evening that Lucy, Grace and I went out for numerous jugs of sangria – a set-up which, admittedly, sounds worthy of a sitcom but was actually entirely lovely. Apart from the discussion of variable rents across the country, which made me weep inside.

We also had our Editorial Party on Wednesday night, which was lots of fun but introduced me to the odd spectacle of a lot of colleagues saying “I should probably go home, I’ve got work tomorrow…” to each other. And – last but definitely not least – I spent last weekend in Warwick! Well, I say ‘Warwick’ when actually I mean Warwick University campus, which (as everyone knows) is essentially Coventry. But never mind that, because I got to meet the legendary Block 14, enjoy multiple pub brunches, visit Leamington, sample the student union bar and enjoy a moving rekindling of my relationship with Network West Midland’s buses. (They still don’t tell you where you are. They still come on an ‘occasional-to-never’ basis. They still charge you an exact fare only in coins and print a paper ticket. They are still home to tinny phone music from bored youngsters and to be honest I’m not even sure they’ve been cleaned since the last time I was on one. But I won’t deny we have a bond.)

I won’t pretend there was a linking thread through this post, but at least I used full sentences

Other cool things this month: playing Plants vs. Zombies, finally finishing The Scramble For Africa, upgrading to Spotify Premium and many, many burritos.

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