Having finished Ed's Christmas present books I turned to my own, and have just finished Marina Lewycka's brilliant story about a dysfunctional Ukrainian family in Peterborough. I loved it, and recommend it if you haven't already come across it. Funny, tragic, thought provoking and moving, multi-layered but yet an easy read! Narrated by middle aged Nadia, it relates the family response to her 84 year old eccentric father's second marriage to Valentina, a rapacious busty recent immigree to England. Much of it told in the fractured English misused by the main characters (the author gives us pronunciation clues where appropriate!) I really felt like a fly on the wall in an actual family home. Go and read it!

We went with Ed's sister and his two nieces to see "The King and I" at the Reading Hexagon (as an alternative to our usual pantomime - we felt we couldn't face yet another "Aladdin").
It was a "non-professional production" by Masquerade Theatre Company and Masquerade School of Dance.
The production was strictly traditional - although the programme notes informed us that the original King Mongkut (1804 - 1868) retained his hair for most of his life, Tony Slevin remained faithful to the Yul Brynner model and appeared shiny pated. Maria Lukeman as Mrs Anna also did a fine impersonation of Deborah Kerr.
But despite any lack of originality, the singing was excellent - Sophie Juge's Lady Thiang and Jennifer Bird's Tuptim brought tears to the eye - and the costumes colourful. (The ladies' crinolines failed to display their nether regions when they bowed, but that was a minor glitch!)
Stacey, aged 13 and suffering from a nasty cold, went to sleep in the second half, but the rest of the party laughed and clapped and surreptitiously sang along, in a very pleasant evening.

We had another cultural weekend, with Peter and Jackie. They came up on Friday for a couple of days. We spent Saturday in London. We went to the Natural History Museum during the day. What an incredible building that is! We particularly enjoyed sections on the evolution of humans; stones and minerals, including gemstones and meteorites; and the section on mammals. We whistle-stopped through birds and a couple of other sections, and had to give the rest a miss, due to numbing of the brains.
We went for a meal to All Bar One in Covent Garden, which was delicious, and not too wildly expensive, considering, before going to the Adelphi to see "Evita!"
Elena Roger, who played Evita, was only tiny but dominated the stage whenever she was on it - she was excellent and really well supported by Matt Rawle as Che. Philip Quast's Peron wasn't quite strong enough for me, but the ensemble and staging were brilliant.
Compared to the film, I thought the second half faded off a bit - the story makes it difficult to keep up the high tempo, of course, but the end was a definite anti-climax. Perhaps if they hadn't already put the end at the beginning it would have been better, I don't know. Anyway, we spent a very enjoyable evening and were glad we'd been and weren't disappointed overall.
Next up - "The King and I" at the Reading Hexagon next weekend!

Went to see our firstlive performance this year, which was "Memoire de la Nuit" by Philipp Boe at the Croydon Clocktower. It wasn't at all what I was expecting, mainly because I thought we were going to see "Dylan Thomas: Return Journey"! But apparently that's next month, Ed says.
Anyway, having realised this was nothing to do with Dylan Thomas, this was still rather unexpected. "Have you come for the mime?" enquired the ticket collector. Er, yes, then.
So, it was "A magical and original piece of theatre, which blurs the borders between reality and imagination ... both surreal and completely gripping."
And it was. A one man show, where a detective is called on the phone (which keeps materialising in his hand at the appropriate moments by a clever sleight of hand trick which startled every time) to investigate the disappearance of a woman. With special lighting effects, magnetic props on a chest of drawers and more sleight of hand, the detective finds clues, ponders and comes to a solution before disappearing into his furniture.
A little pretentious in places - why keep the original French title and word clues which keep appearing and disappearing? But saved by humour in other places, and at all times moving quickly enough to keep the audience guessing about what would come next and only an hour long.
Swiss creator Philipp Boe won the Central European Stage Arts Award 2005 for this show. I recommend it.

Finally got to see The Queen - or rather Helen Mirren's celluloid recreation of her. We enjoyed it very much, especially Mirren's performance which seemed very plausible, and Michael Sheen's as Tony Blair. The film cleverly intercuts real archive footage and the actual speeches with the invented part, but it didn't quite ring true in the end.
Tony Blair came off looking quite good - but then I expect the political PR system had some say in the end product - and so did the Queen, but in the end who knows what was in her mind at the time?
The peripheral royal characters are only caricatures - more like comedy impersonations than real people, especially Prince Charles, who was shown as a real twit, in spite of all his actual actions being very dignified.
And I must say I kept getting distracted by Helen Mirren's very stumpy legs, trying to work out if they'd been padded to help her look 10 years older, or whether they were entirely her own!

You know how those "Nightmare on Elm St" type films run into a whole series? I'm wondering if our Revolting Digestion will be the same.
First Liz at work started us off with Revolting Digestion Part 1: The Vomitting - which she and Sandy suffered very badly and I had in a milder form with dire dental consequences.
This week, Liz announced suddenly on Monday lunchtime that she was sorry but she had to go home, and was subsequently seen running down the road by a pupil. Yes, it was Revolting Digestion Part 2: The Purging. Liz re-appeared, pale and shaken, on Thursday morning; then I spent most of Friday enthroned. I'm already quite better and it's only Sunday, but I'm wondering what next? Revolting Digestion Part 3: the Birthing - when like Sigourney Weaver an alien will burst forth squelchily from our abdomens?
Just to prove how fine I am now, we decided to walk to "The Fox" for Sunday lunch, as the sun is shining brightly after a grey and dismal week. At over 3 miles each way, it was a good appetite raising leg stretch there, and a decent post prandial stroll back. We went out through the woods and back over the airfield. Lovely.

After my unforeseen extra two days holiday, I'm back to work tomorrow. I'm looking forward to being gently awoken by our new clock-radio, showering with some new toiletries and wearing one of my three new jumpers. I've spent this evening munching (carefully) on dried cherries from Michigan and will read a chapter of one of Ed's new books (!) - Bill Bryson's "The Thunderbolt Kid" - before I go to bed. I've had some lovely Christmas gifts this year!

I first became aware of the works of Beatrix Potter on an early family holiday to the Yorkshire Dales. We stayed in a lovely old stone B&B in Grassington where, in my brother Peter's bedroom, on the window sill was a set of the little books. During the course of the holiday, he and I devoured as many as we had time to read, and fell in love with the captivating illustrations. My favourite was Mrs. Tiggywinkle - I just loved those spines poking through her clothes.
When Richard was born, one of his first story books was "The Fierce Bad Rabbit" which became one of those dreaded tales we had to have every night before bedtime, until the book almost fell apart and we could all recite it by heart. We went on to Tom Kitten, Peter Rabbit et al, but none was so loved as the first - a perfect boys' tale, being short, about someone naughty, and both violent and funny.
Today we went to see "Miss Potter" at the cinema. It was lovely. Renee Zellweger made a very believable Beatrix, if rather more slender than the original. The story was a little sentimentalised by the occasional slight animation of her pictures - possibly to appeal to any watching children, as otherwise this is really not a children's film - but told a convincing story, beautifully filmed on location. If you like Beatrix Potter, Zellweger, Ewan McGregor (who in an interview assured viewers he is no relation of the Mr. McGregor who put Peter's father in a pie) or nice gentle scenic films, this is one for you.

Here I am having an unscheduled extra day's holiday. It's all because of me teeth. Having got used to cutting everything up small and chewing at the side of my mouth, doing my best not to dribble, over Christmas, I went to see the dentist again yesterday. He was quite pleased with the way everything had healed and went ahead with root filling the broken tooth and putting in a temporary post, and putting a temporary bridge across 4 front teeth, instead of the original three, incorporating the other tooth that got loosened in the fall, to add strength to it and the others.
When I tried to eat last night however, my bottom teeth closed against a huge lump of plastic behind the bridge, preventing me from chewing as my back teeth couldn't make contact and worse still jarring the root canal work at every turn.
The upshot was raging toothache through the night - I didn't get to sleep until after 2am when I took more ibuprofen despite having taken the day's allowance already, and was awake before 6, waiting for a reasonable time to take more paracetamol and codeine. So I texted school colleagues with my excuses, and phoned the dentist for another emergency appointment.
It was my usual lady dentist. She said the pain was to be expected to a degree, but agreed that constantly jarring the sore tooth wasn't a good idea, so she drilled the plastic back so I can bite together properly, and gave me some anti-biotics in case of infection. I'm feeling much better already as I can now close my mouth properly, without pain, for the first time in a fortnight and can look forward to the wound getting better.
The temporary bridge doesn't bear too close inspection, it being just a lump of hastily shaped plastic to fill the gap, and my dentist warns me not to eat coloured food, as it will stain easily, apparently, but I can live with it. I've to go back for the next steps in 6 weeks. What joy.

We had a lovely Christmas, in spite of me knocking my front teeth out and Rick not being home this year. We went out for Christmas dinner with Mum and Dad.

Here we all are at "The Grosvenor". The food was excellent.

After Christmas with my family, we went to see Ed's family for New Year.

Jake and Georgia took family photos!

We also saw Ed's brother Gareth and his wife. Here are the two brothers.

And here's another of Rick and Kris - busy getting hitched on new Year's Eve.

Here is our lovely new daughter, just that minute wed to our dear son. We were only with them in spirit, and are looking forward to The Wedding, Part 2, in Michigan, to which we ARE invited! It's a long story, which friends will know - suffice it to say we are delighted that Kristin has become part of our family, and can't wait to meet the rest of her family as soon as possible.
PS. The handsome dude in the centre is Meki, Kris's official Fijian Warrior.