I know I say everything at the Tricycle is amazing, but Red Velvet (starring Adrian Lester) on Friday night really was exceptional. Based on the real-life Ira Aldridge, a pioneering black American actor who took the lead role in Othello in Covent Garden in 1833, the play is a sometimes funny, often deeply moving exploration of racial prejudice and changing attitudes to theatre itself. It helps that Othello is my favourite Shakespeare play (thank you, A Level English Lit!) and so those scenes were a wonderful bonus. I wanted to give a standing ovation at the end but felt so completely immersed that I couldn’t really move. If you haven’t seen this and you get a chance, you just must.

Happy birthday Josh

Meanwhile we’ve had a pretty social week: drinks with Abi and Oliver along with Michele’s friend Misha, dinner at my parents, another pub outing with Susannah, Josh’s 25th birthday (suitably illustrated, right) and then tea with grandparents plus Carolyn, Alix and Adam. All lovely, but missing something… transporty. Like, say, the London Transport Museum this morning along with Josh, Cat and Matt?

Yes, once again I cursed the enthusiasm of small children to sit in the bus driver’s seat (“but I want to sit in the bus driver’s seat!”) at TfL’s always glorious museum of… well, allegedly transport, but to be honest it’s usually the beautiful (yet utterly absurd) posters of Metroland which do it for me. And the tragic Northern line maps which still have Drayton Park on them, before it got hived off to the hellish cavern of despair that is First Capital Connect. Can you imagine a museum devoted to First Capital Connect? No. There’s a reason for that.

Commutes never change

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