I am over being cross now.
I think it helps that it is Tuesday. Monday is now behind me, even though it’s only 11 minutes behind me.
That’s far enough for me.
Jason made it to Tilly’s eye test, which is good as even with his help the small children were like locusts. Locusts wearing many pairs of glasses. Oscar put on a set of sunglasses and hogged the new video yourself in your glasses machine doing Pete Townshend air guitar solos, much to the amusement of a middle aged man who had just wandered in to check out the frames.
Tallulah found a pair of glasses that made her look like Edna from The Incredibles and wandered around saying: ‘So dahlink, do you like this? Do you? Do you?’ in her Edna voice, before getting bored of that and putting on three sets of glasses simultaneously and then lying on the floor.
While one of us was fending off the wild beasts, the other was shepherding Tilly round as she chose her frames. She has gone for some nice ones with black rims and funky green arms that were comfortable and which look good. It was hard for her to choose the right pair and she got a bit overwhelmed and tearful at one point. I hate choosing frames. It is so exhausting, so I totally got where she was coming from, bless her.
Still, she is happy with her choice and goes back next Monday to have them fitted.
After the eye test Jason took them all home to eat my stew, which went down rather like a fire in an orphanage as far as the small people were concerned, but which made my husband very happy. He needed fortifying after a day buying a car. He found one. No blood was shed. He picks it up on Thursday. It is a Renault Megane estate. He is underwhelmed.
As long as it is warm, reasonably reliable and drives from a) to b) it will be fine.
Andrea and I went to see Journey’s End at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry this evening. It was my first time driving there. I have driven in Coventry before, but in the day. This time it was dark and raining and we were going to a part that the sat nav doesn’t really like. I managed it with no more repeat trips round the one way system than Andrea does, so I felt this merited some kind of award.
I loathe the Belgrade theatre. The seats are uncomfortable. The theatre is old fashioned and has a very high stage which means that unless you are at least three rows back you have to crane your neck, and the acoustics are not of the best.
The audience in Coventry can also be quite troubling at times, and tonight was no exception. One person’s phone went off. Several people seemed to be dying of bronchial flu, and the woman two seats to the left of me did some high level texting right at the denouement of the play which I could see out of the corner of my eye, due to the fact that her screen lit up like a christmas tree. It was most annoying.
The play was very powerful. It is a claustrophobic little number, set in a dugout in a trench towards the end of World War One. The action focuses around a small band of officers who share the dugout, and takes place over a few days before the final push which they know they are not coming back from.
It should be tense and atmospheric and absolutely grinding to watch.
It wasn’t. This was partly due to the audience. It was also partly due to the cast. They were not bad, but they were patchy, and there were times when I found myself not being able to believe in the peculiar closeness of their relationship. There was also quite a bit of ‘shouting’ going on instead of emoting. At times like these I found myself dispasssionately assessing how much Rowan Atkinson and Ben Elton had pinched for the making of Black Adder Goes Forth.
The answer was ‘quite a lot.’
What I would really have loved to have seen was the cast of Black Watch that we saw earlier in the year, doing this play. They had the perfect camaraderie on stage and were amazing at emoting that ice thin peace that erupts at any moment into violence that comes when men of war spend too long living together.
I did enjoy the play though. It was one I have been waiting to see for a very long time, and the last time it was on, starring Ray Winstone, many years ago, I missed out on a ticket by a whisker. I still regret not seeing that production. I have the feeling it would have been amazing.
If you get the chance to see it (it is a touring production), I would go. It is a powerful play with themes that are still relevant today and which does not fail to send a shiver down your spine as the inevitable end comes. The finale is also rather wonderful.
I’m staggered that any set of actors couldn’t make this play the powerful piece of theatre it so obviously is – Journey’s End, along with Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance, was one of my A level texts. It sounds as if we got a better result doing a read-through in class…I still remember poor old Trotter musing on his garden plants, amid all the violence.
Glad Tilly managed to choose her glasses, and you let her have the frames of her choice – I look forward to seeing the new Tilly! I remember when I first had glasses I had frames of my father’s choice which I loathed; I only really enjoyed wearing glasses when I started buying my own frames as a student. And also well done for not insisting Tilly has lenses. Why can’t all parents be so thoughtful?
PS. Love the image of Tallulah’s impersonation!
Noreen
I do think the physical annoyingness of the theatre had a lot to do with it.
Keith
I think she looks really pretty in them. She is excited about picking them up.
Tallulah was a hoot
i’m with tilly on wearing glasses v. contacts. i’ve never had a comfortable pair of contacts, partly due to my severe astigmatism, and party due to the fact that i’ve been wearing glasses since i was 6 (the sheer variety and number of frames i’ve gone through! and the improvement in lenses since i was a kid would make a dry, but fascinating book of opthomology in our time. well, *my* time anyway). at one point, when i was on stage, i decided, after years of just going on blind, to wear contacts, since i wouldn’t be reading, how much of a problem could it be? major problem. for one thing, i felt like my nose was *enormous* – but of course, this was the first time i had seen it without something on it in about 25 years. (and frankly, i *do* have a rather prominent nose). but also, being able to *see* everything on stage was quite distracting. i gave them up and have been happily wearing my glasses ever since; and there are some lovely, funky fashionable frames out there. tilly will be adorable. all the cool girls wear them now… i never cared about that… i just liked being able to see. still do.
I was, honestly, quite jealous of Tilly’s experience. It was so much nicer than my own at her age, mainly because of the variety of frames available.
oh, and i thought Blackadder Goes Forth was just about the most heart-wrenching comedy ever made.
Yes. It was heart wrenching but so amazingly true to Journey’s End it probably made Journey’s End funny where it shouldn’t have been if you see what I mean.
I’m with bronxbee; I’ve been wearing glasses for 45 years so I’m comfortable with them. I’ve never tried contact lenses; I’ve never wanted to especially given my hayfever. Glasses are now just a part of me. And yes, girls do generally look cool in glasses; for me most glasses make most girls look prettier — which doubtless says something strange and worrying about me.
Keith
I think they do these days. I can’t say that wearing blue plastic national health specs did a lot for my prettiness quotient when I was a child.