a lit­tle more the­atre before we go

But before I tell you about the great­ly improved sec­ond go at “The Pain and the Itch” on Sat­ur­day (plus some great celebri­ty sight­ing), I must con­fess: we just broke a fun­da­men­tal school rule: a par­ty on Sun­day night. AND the Sun­day night before the Mon­day per­for­mance of the school play, “Peter Pan.” It was like this. I invit­ed sev­er­al fam­i­lies, FAM­I­LIES mind you, to our house for a nice end-of-year get togeth­er. A lit­tle cham­pagne, a lit­tle din­ner, the gulls could play togeth­er, it begins at 5 and ends at 8. Done. No problem.

Into this hap­py sce­nario comes a last-minute birth­day par­ty from one of the gulls in Form Five, in Not­ting Hill-ish, to throw a wrench into every­one’s plans. Oy veh. In the mean­time, of course, it occurred to Becky and me that Avery and one of her girls would be rid­ing at the sta­bles all after­noon. Becky gal­lant­ly offered to pick them up ear­ly, take them home to hose them off, and take them to the par­ty, where­upon she and her two oth­er gulls and hus­band would come to us for din­ner. Except.

The school head­mistress actu­al­ly tele­phoned the Birth­day Par­ty Mum and told her in no uncer­tain terms to end the par­ty ear­ly! As in, short­ly after our din­ner was to begin. Grrr. So what was to be a lazy evening of Moroc­can meat­balls, Lebanese cucum­bers from Green Val­ley in sour cream, fresh dill and lemon juice, and steamed new pota­toes with pars­ley and olive oil, turned into a race against time. How fast can you chew? In fact, is chew­ing real­ly nec­es­sary when you can just… swal­low? Ah well, every­one came pre­pared to have a good time, and we did. The enor­mous mound of straw­ber­ries I’d pre­pared, accom­pa­nied by fresh­ly whipped dou­ble Devon­shire cream with vanil­la, dis­ap­peared in record time. It was three fam­i­lies plus ours, and the con­ver­sa­tion ranged between the school play and next year’s tests, which top­ics I must say can keep most par­ents busy for hours. But we did­n’t have hours. Before we knew it, we were rip­ping forks from peo­ples’ mouths as one lit­tle sis­ter mur­mured, “it’s 7 o’clock,” whilst simul­ta­ne­ous­ly ask­ing for more straw­ber­ries. Just an end-of-year frus­tra­tion, but bet­ter than eat­ing alone! Next autumn we will plan a much more exten­sive debauch­ery, I promise. Four cours­es, at least.

But I digress. The play! As you know, my friend 6point7 and I had been to see “The Pain and the Itch” last week, as an extra for the the­atre Open House day. But the tick­et I had for this Sat­ur­day had been burn­ing a hole in my cal­en­dar since I booked it in March, so I was quite excit­ed. And it was worth the wait. Due to unpleas­ant­ness on Park Lane on Fri­day (a bit daunt­ing, a block from our flat), the traf­fic was such that I end­ed up walk­ing to the the­atre, and can I just say: the humid­i­ty was like walk­ing through a wet paper tow­el. By the time I got to the Roy­al Court I was feel­ing like I’d been steam-cleaned, only not clean. 6point7 (oth­er­wise known as Sue!) and I met up with fel­low Matthew Mac­fadyen fans Caz and JoAnn in the bar before the play. How can I describe Caz as a “fan”? In fact she is THE fan, ini­tia­tor of the won­der­ful fan­site that was, for me, such a great dis­trac­tion last year dur­ing our move. It was just love­ly to meet her in per­son, and JoAnn is a trans­plant­ed New Jer­sey girl who will be liv­ing in Oxford for the fore­see­able future, so we have plans to meet again in the autumn. And sit­ting next to JoAnn, per­fect­ly friend­ly and socia­ble? Trevor Eve and Sharon Maugh­an, live and in per­son! Very excit­ing indeed. It is hard to believe they’re old enough to be par­ents of the gor­geous Alice Eve, so impres­sive in Starter For Ten. Did she actu­al­ly get to kiss James McAvoy, lucky girl?

The com­ic tim­ing of the play was much improved, Matthew bet­ter than ever, and even the slight­ly irri­tat­ing lit­tle girl in the cast was not quite so irri­tat­ing. And after the play we sat down for a drink at a table just adja­cent to… Kee­ley Hawes, Matthew’s wife, and her fam­i­ly. And in just a moment, there he was, ready to relax. I thought Caz would faint. Can’t wait to read her account on the boards.

But for now I’m off to my last “Cre­ative Non­fic­tion” class. It’s been such fun. The assign­ments are real­ly mind-bend­ing: “choose a small object that has sig­nif­i­cance in your life and write an essay about it.” “Choose a pho­to­graph from your his­to­ry and write a sto­ry about it.” And today, “Choose a per­son in your life that you knew up until that per­son­’s death, and describe your rela­tion­ship in an essay with a begin­ning, a mid­dle and an end.” I shall be sor­ry when the class is over, but the tutor, Amy Pri­or, thinks she will teach a con­tin­u­a­tion next term. It’s good just for the feed­back and the dis­ci­pline. This morn­ing at break­fast John asked, “Did you fin­ish your home­work?” and Avery start­ed and said, “I did­n’t have any!” “Not you,” he laughed, “I was talk­ing to Mummy.”