back online!!!

Back online again after the house fire. Now working off a swish laptop loaned to me by mole. team points heading his way.

Have had a fab weekend in London.

Friday night we went to the Royal Albert Hall to see the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra play. Tres cool. It was called Filmharmonica and they played loads of scores from films. Wore posh frock and crippling heels bought last week for the annual conference. Lots of fun.

Saturday night we went to the National to see Fram - the new play by my hero Tony Harrison. It was pure brain food. Wonderful stuff. Amazing set, very clever script all in rhyming couplets, witty, thought-provoking and complex. It had so much packed in there - debate on Darwinianism, poetry as consolation, art v pragmatism, political and historical commentary. It was a stage drama but also included film, ballet and music. One particular speech blew me away where a woman (playing an actress) is defending art as a means of making the world better informed about a famine that is going on, her critics say art cannot produce results in the way action can. She then starts to play out a starving woman who speaks to the audience about her pain and self-loathing about having turned cannibal from hunger. It was played with pathos and brutality. She used her body in an amazing way to look weak and starved. It was electrifying. We talked for a long while afterwards about what the play was saying.

This afternoon we had a picnic in Crystal Palace park and sun bathing.