All Go

 

Hello everyone. I hope that you are ok. We are fine. We have the Internet back at last. It's been really annoying. I haven't been able to read anyone else's blogs or see my comments. So apologies for that, everyone. We have been without Internet for about a month now - some of it when we weren't here, but I am still expecting compensation. Especially as Virgin took a month's payment halfway through the period when we had no service. It's been a real pain. I had visions of myself spending the evenings on a spinning wheel and reading Paradise Lost. In fact, I cannot communicate how glad I am that the telly is back on in time for the football.

I have had a very nice birthday week - thanks for asking. I had the week off, and we did a bit of gadding about, the details of which I am going to bore you with.  On Wednesday, we went to London for the day. We had a really good time, although on the way back, we agreed that our days of day trips to London (three hours there and three hours back) may well be coming to an end. We were shattered. We did a few bits and pieces in London, but we were mainly there to see the Tracey Emin exhibition. I am aware that Tracey is an acquired taste. I think she is probably a genius, but I wouldn't take my maiden aunt. Actually, I would take my aunt - even if she wasn't a maiden. In fact, I probably wouldn't take my aunt if she had spent her career running a drug den in Soho. The pictures are very explicit, but they are also brilliant at expressing the rage within. She is also very open about her life, including a brush with cancer, which left her with a stoma bag. I've never seen so many photos of someone's bright red stoma bobble sticking out of her stomach. 

We also went to the pictures for the first time in ages to see the new Spielberg. It is completely preposterous, and I loved it. Disclosure Day (for that is its name) is really good fun. In my humble opinion, Spielberg has created perhaps the two best science fiction films ever - Close Encounters and ET. (I will obviously take a vote for Star Wars because (a) the amount of sheer good fun and (b) Harrison Ford) This film is not as good, but it is a banger. 

Keeping up a steady pace - on Friday, we went to see a poet. That is because I am a dutiful and sacrificial wife. (Not as sacrificial as the women I saw online this week who feel that they would like to give up their vote so that their husband can make a Biblical choice on their behalf. You, my friend, are an idiot.) Poetry is not my thing, as I think I may have mentioned before - although I am trying. HOH really wanted to go and see this man. His name is Harry Baker - you may well have seen him performing online. His current book is called Tender  - a set of poems about the first 100 days of his baby son's life. They were so lovely, funny, and very accurate about what being a new parent is like. If you are thinking of something a bit different to buy for a new parent, this would be really good, I think.

AND THEN...it was Messy Church the next morning. Thankfully, because it was the last one before the long holiday, I was just shovelling ice cream into bowls for children to decorate (spoiler alert - The Skittles did a lot better than the raisins). The tenuous but quite brilliant link to the Bible was that they were making Rocky Road, which is where Jesus had met St Paul. What?

Some people live like this all the time, apparently. This is not the first time that I have been grateful that I am not Kim Kardashian. Have a great week.