Michele is here! And after a week of English breakfasts, a magical everlasting Indian takeaway, Russian books in Waterstones Piccadilly, pubbing with Vlad south of the river and the British Library’s exhibition on the Georgians (spoiler: they were like us but wrote in longer sentences and with fewer emoticons) we escaped the city for Valentine’s Day weekend and headed first to Salisbury.
In Salisbury
The next morning, we took the train down into the New Forest and began our hike from Brockenhurst to Burley. It turns out that the advisable, direct, ‘sane’ route between these two villages is a pretty boring trek by the side of the road, so we made a detour off into the woods and were soon embroiled in an adventure of mud, slippery logs over flooded rivers, fallen trees and wonderfully helpful fellow travellers. By the time we arrived it was almost sundown, but it was with a great sense of achievement that we collapsed into the wonderful deer room, revived ourselves with pub food and watched Robin Hood. Y’know, Disney’s Robin Hood – the awesome one with the music from the Hampster* Dance.
Obstacle #1: Water
Obstacle #2: Trees
(*Yes, it was spelled this way.)
Tree climbing: we didn’t get very high
There’s been a whole load of flat fun over the last few days. With Monday safely booked off work, we laughed our way through Drag Me To Hell on Sunday night… an unscary horror film packed with unsubtle acting, unnecessary animal sacrifice and distressingly unsound business practices. It was great, of course, and the perfect prelude to 2013’s Flat Day sequel.
This is basically the day when we eat lots of greasy spoon breakfast before mixing uncool cool things (in this case, Hampstead Heath) with alcohol. Braving mud, thorns and the occasional child who actually wanted to use the children’s playgrounds, we walked approximately 7000 km before collapsing into Camembert and Fraiser.
Because, as previously noted, we are very cool.
Nabbing the private room at The Spaniards Inn
Tree-hugging
Proud of ourselves
And then tonight, Josh had gotten tickets for us and Matt to the musical version of Roddy Doyle’s The Commitments. (Rather extraordinarily well-seated tickets, too.) Not having seen the film, I had brushed up on the book in preparation, and my subsequent excitement for all the amazing music was more than justified. Lots of fun, with great performances and a standing, swaying, swinging audience by the end. Go see!
The other week our flat saw Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense (Stephen Mangan, Matthew Macfadyen, Mark Hadfield), as part of my continuing mission to buy theatre-based Christmas presents which are also strongly to my own benefit 😉 I was the only existing fan of P.G. Wodehouse of the group, which made me slightly nervous, but the others enjoyed it well enough. Possibly more, in fact, as they weren’t scanning through the novel in their head to work out the differences on stage, or wishing for large chunks of Bertie’s missing inner monologues which make the books so good. Still, it was an enjoyable Englishy night-at-the-theatre, and confirms my desire to visit the 1920s for a few days (as a rich toff, but one cool enough to visit jazz clubs) on my long-awaited time-travelling tour of the world.
Gordon’s Wine Bar
For lazy Sunday decadence that doesn’t require the use of a flux capacitor, Gordon’s Wine Bar is a good shout. The prime advantage of sitting in a darkened cave – other than the easy availability of wine and cheese and good company – is that you don’t really know what time it is outside. Or whether it’s raining.
Oh, and last night I drunk out of a boot at Alix’s birthday (happy birthday!) at Steam and Rye, which is all 1920s Americana. (I don’t know whether the boot part was specifically part of the scene back then, but I’m happy to add the US onto my 1920s tour.)
Recklings
There was a very nice gathering on Wednesday night to see Cat, Paul, Liz and Steven’s band Recklings (who I just realised are on Spotify!) sandwiched inbetween two other, rather different acts. The first was a sort-of male Kate Nash whose every song contained the line “young and dumb and [something about fun]” which was swiftly upgraded to a bawdier version by Abbi, greatly enhancing the experience. The last were techno-electronic-something, which I appreciated mostly as a prompt for drunken robot dancing. But Recklings, yes, they were good! And I also saw Jen before she leaves, which was an unexpected bonus.
Dancing to a 56k modem tribute band
Work’s New Year party followed on Friday night, but as I have few photos or stories I’ll move on swiftly to Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom at the Lexi, which I saw with the family and our cousin Nancy. (I’ve been taught that ‘cousin’ is vague enough to cover most complicated family ties.) Agreed with Tash that it tries to pack an awful lot in early on, but improved as it went, and Idris Elba was excellent. It’s hard to know what to say about Nelson Mandela’s life story, given the unusual feeling that mass adoration is basically deserved this time. I mean, turning anyone into a saint is usually a bad idea, but if you’re going to have one you’ll struggle to find a better man than Mandela.
Which just leaves Sherlock – the final episode of which, at least for now, is on tonight. I was reading an interview with Ted Sarando of Netflix recently, who claimed television was all about the ‘managed dissatisfaction’ of waiting for the next instalment, when instead you could get it all in one go. I believe this is popularly known as ‘anticipation’ and, actually, is part of the pleasure 😉
Linda Moffitt on Colombia: “Such a sweet memory of the four of you meeting up in Colombia!” Dec 2, 07:42
