A day of Adrian Mole aged thirteen and three quarters

Sue Townsend was a Leicester girl through and through. She was funny, feisty, a brilliant writer whose book "The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged thirteen and three quarters" oh so rightly thrust her into the spotlight.

I didn't see Sue very often, but one of the last times I had a really good chat with her was at the opening of a new eating place in Leicester. It was hot in there....Sue was in a wheelchair by this time and she asked me to take her outside for a breath of fresh air and a fag. " Oh, and bring us a glass of something. "I can't remember whether it was prosecco or champagne I swept off the waiter's tray  , but I brought out two glasses, and we sat outside gossiping.

Adrian Mole wasn't mentioned once.

My initial reaction to the announcement of a musical about Adrian Mole's wasn't one of absolute delight. Rather a groan, wondering how on earth this would turn out. I hadn't enjoyed the television series as much as I thought I would, and I was seriously wondering whether this new musical at Curve would work.

So, press night at the Curve, and I was sitting with friends on the second row ...feeling oddly slightly nervous. A familiar voice rang out in my ears as  someone sat down behind me..Christopher Biggins was there....oh, he is a love. So friendly and ready to enjoy himself.

So the curtain opened  and Adrian aka Joel Fossard-Jones was right there in front of us. making us smile immediately - getting Sue's lines out with naievity, self righteousness, and pompousness .

Sue's story, set in Thatcherite Britain on a Leicester council estate , unfolded on stage with a vim and a verve which swept us  engagingly on waves of laughter again and again.

Cameron Blakely playing the creepy Mr Lucas with a lusty laviousness and brio made me howl, Amy Booth Steel had me in fits of giggles as the gormless Miss Elf, (her comic timing was wonderful) and Elise Tiam Bugeja is excellent as Pandora, a bossier, more passionate Hermoine Grainger. No wonder Adrian was bamboozled. And no wonder Christopher Biggins in the seat behind me was chortling loudly throughout.

But as  Adrian's small world increasingly becomes a foreign country, through first love ,"Oh Pandora , I adore ya" and the very gradual realisation that his parents are getting divorced, there were tears too with some touching scenes between Adrian and his mum played by Kirsty Hoiles.

Rosemary Ashe , as the sniffy, ascerbic grandma performed the stand out song of the night with a pathos and a fury which was mesmerising, and made my eyes fill up with tears. I don't know whether Christopher Biggins was shedding a tear too, because he'd gone awfully and uncharacteristically quiet.

 

But not for long though, Sue's wit, soon had us all laughing and cheering, and as the final curtain came down, there was a standing ovation plus whoops and a hollering from a rapturous audience. I've not seen something like that for a while. Do yourself a favour, and go...it's perfect for intellectuals like Adrian and others. 

 

 

 





So how many stars would I give it out of ten? Nine and three quarters...and the only reason I've knocked off a quarter , is the fact that the notoriously difficult to nail Leicester accent  was constantly veering along  the M6 to the West Midlands  by some of the cast.

 

 The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged Thirteen and three quarters , The Musical  is at Curve Theatre in Leicester until April 4th.

The first few days of a holiday

The week before going off somewhere flashes past in a blur of washing, packing, finishing work, feeling stressed. Have I got everything? Have I remembered the passports?

And then on a cold and miserable night in mid January, there's hours to be spent hanging around an airport, waiting for the first of three flights which will take us to paradise. To Thailand to be precise. Birmingham to Dubai, Dubai to Bangkok and then Bangkok Airways to the island of Koh Samui.

I always think that the first few days of a holiday have a slightly surreal quality to them, and this year was no exception. There's something so magical about seeing the sun and feeling warm. Within a day we go from being wrapped up in woollen jumpers, thick tights and boots (well I did...Mr Thinking of the Days doesn't wear tights...) to lying on a beach revelling in the sunshine.

There's a delicious laziness, realising that I don't have to go to work, I don't have to do this or that. Routine goes out of the window. I have choices. If I turn right from our bungalow on the beach at the Maenam resort, within sixty paces, I am here.

A lovely little spot within the shade of the coconut palms just in front of the hotel restaurant. A place to sit by the sea, and choose what I would like for breakfast. Fresh fruit, oh yes mango, perhaps pineapple, or bacon? Why not, and perhaps an egg?

Or if I turn left, and move ten paces, I'm here. Time to go for an early morning walk before breakfast.





If I turn left onto the beach, I walk along this way

 

 

If I turn right....

 

 

 

Or I can choose to sit with another cup of coffee and do nothing at all for a short while, greedily drink in the beautiful view or read in the shade.

Anything is possible....and that's the delight of those first few days of any holiday. That sense of liberation, laziness, being open to the moment, and wallowing in the newness and beauty of where we are.

It's difficult not to smile.....

 

Days of planes, trains and boats

I've been away for a while..for  twenty three days to be precise. In the middle of January, on a cold and rainy winter's night, I escaped  to a beautiful country thousands of miles away. To a country I first came to last year,  a land I've learned to love...Thailand.

Mr Thinking of the Days and I have not been just lazing around on a beach for all of this time though....so far, we've taken three flights in different sizes of planes, three ferry rides from Koh Samui to Kho Phangan, from there to Koh Tao, and then onto the mainland at Chumpon.

We came on the train from Chumpon to where we are now - on Suanlong  beach near Bangsaphan. And along the way , we've used so many tuks tuks to count, we've spent a day on an old Chinese junk, and yesterday we hired a speedboat to visit the small island of Koh Talou to go snorkelling.

There have been so many nice people and beautiful  places on this journey with so
many stories to tell. In the meantime, there's just one more train trip, a long coach ride and two plane journeys to go.

Days of thinking ahead....

A frosty morning and now a foggy afternoon.

The weather is mirroring how I feel....full of cold, and woolly headed . I've got a real head cold with a scratchy sore throat and my ribs ache when I cough. Just the sort of time to sit by the fire and doze.

Boo and Eric have decided to join me....and are being very quiet and calm as if they know I'm not well.

In fact the silence is perfect, just the lick, spit and crack of the fire can be heard as I re read Anna
Pavord's excellent book, The Curious Gardener . Originally published in 2010, I've not looked at it again for a while. The lively, engaging pieces chronicling the gardening year have me smiling and nodding, and they're mercifully short which is just what you need when your head is feeling as thick and heavy as a huge felled log.

Of course my thoughts are now darting, or perhaps sluggishly meandering+ to what I shall plant this year, plus the huge amount of work to be done on the allotment. I'm also thinking about the New Year resolutions I am refusing to make this year.

You can learn so much from gardening, and every year there's the chance to start again, to sow and plant, to try something new and to learn from last year's mistakes.

And in my utility room next to the old scales and the seed tins,  I have this sampler, which I bought a few years back....

 

 

with the words taken from a poem from the American writer Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Those words may be seem somewhat trite, but I reckon, that with kind hearts, thoughts ,deeds and words, then 2015 could be a lovely year . As soon as I get rid of this cold of course.....

 

 

Wordless Wednesday : The last walk on the last day of the year

 

 

 

The day when I got in the mood for Christmas

It may have taken longer than usual, but last week I finally found my festive spirit. I shouldn't have worried, because there's always one event which never fails to lift my spirits and that's the very special BBC Radio Leicester carol service, held each year on  Sunday afternoon in mid December.


But this year on that day, I went to not one but two carol services.

The first was in the tiny 12th century church in my village. This was a break from tradition ...instead of nine lessons and carols,  Willie's band played and the wonderful Emmanu'-EL Apostolic Gospel Academy came to sing for us, their voices soaring up to the rafters, and we all joined in clapping, singing and smiling.

No matter what our age is.

I left the church feeling buoyed up, and then it was onto another , much grander church  in Leicester, the Church of St James the Greater for the annual BBC Carol Service. Tickets for this service are snapped up within a few days....all 650 of them.

It's a wonderful occasion. My friends and colleagues and I perform poems, prose  and bible readings accompanied by the excellent choir, the New Parks handbell ringers and the Enderby Brass Band play with aplomb. Just not all at the same time you understand.

And the audience join in .....

And in those two services I found the Christmas spirit  I thought I'd lost this year, came flooding back. Love, goodwill ,and the age old stories of the true meaning of Christmas had worked their magic once again.

Happy Christmas!

Days of Bah Humbug

I've always loved Christmas. As a schoolchild I adored the rituals of early December...rehearsals for the school nativity play, the sheer agony of wondering what part I would get, singing at the top of our voices, and been given and allowed to eat a few sweets in our classroom.

When my own children were tiny, I'll never forget seeing my daughter as an angel in the playgroup production of the nativity...and my sons as shepherds.  Of making Christmas biscuits  with them on late dark December afternoons...and getting all of them around the tree to help decorate it. I loved those Christmases...and this special time of year has always filled me with an inner glow, if not panic about forgetting someone's present.

But I don't know what's going on this year. For the first time I've been feeling decidedly "bah humbug" about Christmas. I've become increasingly annoyed with the early and constant bombardment of adverts on TV...and nothing would induce me to do some early Christmas shopping. I couldn't even think of any presents to buy.

 On the first day of December, all the Christmas songs came on the radiom and I seriously thought if I heard Slade's Merry Christmas again I would scream. By now, I was worried...had my seasonal spark disappeared for ever?

Then last week I went to Wistow, a lovely rural centre not far away

.My eyes lit up at all the Christmas plants and gardening gifts ,

and I even bought a few presents from here....

And as I drove home on a late December afternoon...I thought my Christmas mojo had made a comeback

But then, the spark stopped glimmering...and I felt quite out of sorts that I was turning into one of those people who had stopped loving Christmas, even though I'd organised the works Christmas party which was rather jolly.

I kept trying to find my inner Christmas glow without success, and I began to wonder whether it would ever return......