My Wonderful Day by Alan Ayckbourn
Review by Gaz

The premise of the play is a child’s view of an adult world, where she is an often ignored bystander to events. Within this, Winnie, the child, is writing an essay for her homework. It is a piece called My Wonderful Day. Because of this, we see her madly scribbling away whenever anything happens. A LOT happens!

Winnie’s mother, Laverne, is a cleaner and is heavily pregnant (about 10 days to go, she says). On this particular day, she brings Winnie to work with her on the condition she just sits quietly and doesn’t get in anyone’s way. At the same time, the people who live in the house are going through something of a crisis. Naturally this is all grist to Winnie’s mill as she takes it all down with gusto.

One of the funniest devices I’ve come across for a long time is the fact that Winnie and her mother have this deal. They are learning French together and, in order to achieve fluency for when they jet off to Martinique in the future of Laverne’s dreams, they speak only in French on Tuesdays. This means that the visitors to the house, and the owner, are convinced she only speaks French. This device has two functions. It’s clearly hilarious from the audience’s point of view because we know the truth and it gives the adults more freedom to speak in front of Winnie. It’s also just funny!

Anyway, the production was excellent, as most Ayckbourn productions are but the absolute stand-out is Winnie herself. She is 9 years old and played by Ayesha Antoine who is 28! And utterly convincing. I didn’t know how old she was during the play and was convinced she was a little girl with exceptional talent. Instead, it seems, she is a fully grown woman with exceptional talent. The play depends on you believing she is a little girl and it worked completely. A wonderful performance that I’m very glad I saw.

Of the rest of the cast, the mother (Petra Letang) and Paula (Alexandra Mathie) were both excellent. Paul Kemp, as Josh was a typical Ayckbourn downcast, set upon, Tom type character and managed it very well. Sadly, the other two didn’t particularly thrill me. I figured I could have managed the male lead a lot better and the young, bulimic girl just grated on my nerves. This sort of thing is fine in small doses but she just kept it up. When Paula threw her out, I felt like cheering.

So, all round, a wonderful night out. Plenty of laughs, some great performances and we have discovered some excellent seats which we will be trying for each time we go in the future.

As a side note, we have a theory that for a play to be good, it needs a cast which features a majority of actors who have appeared in The Bill. I have never kept particularly good records of this (sad given how much theatre we used to see) but I shall attempt to record the facts as we attend other performances. For this there were six actors and five of them have appeared in The Bill. I am calling this The Bill Factor. Therefore, My Wonderful Day has a Bill Factor of 6/5.

Although we live in a town and therefore suffer from light pollution, on a clear night we can still see stars and constellations – though never that sparkling haze of the milky way that can be seen at Angledool. 

This month we saw an astronomical event known as The Opposition of Mars which is where Mars lines up in opposition to the sun, and also comes very close to Earth.  On January 27 at 9pm it was at its closest in this orbit – although not that close.  2003 for example saw an Opposition that was 4x brighter.  So an Opposition may be an Opposition – but not all Oppositions are equal.  Nonetheless from our point of view it looked fab.  It was a clear cold evening, the moon dazzlingly bright and full, Mars red and vivid and located just to the left of the Moon making her a grand dancing partner.

I looked for Mars again the next night but it had vanished – how puzzling.

Apparently an Opposition is usually used by NASA and co to launch probes to Mars and Mars missions have been launched at every Opposition since 1994.  This time though, Mars was allowed to pass by without Earth hurling stuff at it.  There were 2 missions scheduled originally (Curiosity and Phobos-Grunt – don’t ask, don’t know) but both have been put off till 2011.  Another recession cut?

We didn’t last long outside at 9pm as it was already below freezing and the cars and the grass beginning to sparkle with ice.  This has been the coldest winter we have had in England, with more snow fall than we have ever experienced in our lives.  The snow has all gone from Farnham now and this week we saw the very first snow drops appear in our garden.  They haven’t opened fully yet, and are having to push their way past the dead leaves, but they are delightful.  We planted these last year and were assured that in time they would spread to make a big clump if they were happy.  We did not know if they would be happy– not all our plants survive and that part of the garden is quite mossy and damp, but here they are shiny white and indicating spring is not that far away.

Our first snowdrops

A regular feature of our English calendar is the Big Garden Bird Watch.  This is held on the last weekend of January every year.  The RSPB basically harnesses the power of the consumer to become scientists.   Everyone who participates has to count the number of birds that appear in their garden in a one hour period.  The RSPB then collates all the data and uses it to keep an eye on bird numbers.  Mob science as it were.

Now it is quite a tricky exercise.  You have to be able to identify all the birds you see accurately – I have learnt all my birds but it has taken a while and I still am not confident telling a chiff chaff from a female sparrow or a female chaffinch.  Trickier still is that you have to count them.  You can only count those that actually land in your garden, not just fly over it, and you have to count the maximum number of each species you see at the same time.  One bird can revisit the garden many times within an hour, so you can’t just recount the same bird over and over.  But the birds move so quickly this is difficult, a bit like counting sheep in a paddock.  Plus from far away the smaller ones look like leaves fluttering about so you get mixed up with the leaves.

But armed with binoculars, a cup of tea and a pen I identified the following within one hour:

6 Blackbirds
3 Robins
4 Starlings
3 Great Tits
5 Green Finches
1 Black Cap
4 Blue Tits
1 Gold Finch
5 Chaffinches
4 Sparrows
1 Long-tailed Tit
1 Dunnock
2 Magpies
1 Thrush
1 Coal Tit
9 Collared Doves

Not bad considering that the first month we moved here I was quite depressed because we seemed to attract no birds – the wonders of fat balls, sunflower seeds, peanuts and soft bill mix with extra worms!

Plus
1 squirrel

I include the squirrel as it eats lots of the bird food.  Now I have no objection to this but we seem to have a bit of a super squirrel.  I don’t mind her munching away with the birds, but I do mind when she nicks an entire fat ball and makes off with it across the garden.  This was becoming a daily event and the poor bird brains weren’t getting a look in.  So G started tying the fat balls to the container – but no good!  After a bit the squirrel worked out how to untie it, unwrap it from its green netting, and still run off with it!  Eventually G had to buy a special fat ball holder and lock the fat balls safely away in it.  This now seems to be working.

Fat balls locked in a squirrel proof cage

John Terry, allegedly, had an affair with the ex-girlfriend of Wayne Bridge, his Chelsea & England team mate. It made the front page of all the national UK papers today. And, apparently, having an extra-marital affair will hamper your ability to play football for your country. Also, there are things called super injunctions. So, if you want to keep things out of the media, you get an injunction. If you want to keep that injunction out of the media you get a super injunction. This means, you not only can’t talk about something but you can’t talk about the thing that has stopped you talking about it either.

I heard an interview on Football Focus. Three ex-footballers were asked about John Terry’s future as English captain since his affair has come to light. All three, very grave and concerned, were convinced that Capello (the England manager), known for being strict and moral, would strip him of his captain’s armband and demote him to…well, not being captain, I guess. Of course, all three spoke of it all in just emotive terms.

And then, following them, came the sports writer from the Financial Times. I much prefer his level-headed approach. Basically, he said, these are professionals. They are paid to play football and to win. When they are on the pitch, that’s what they do. They have to in order to justify their wages. Capello, too, is paid a lot of money to get England to, and maybe win, the World Cup this year. It is up to him to gauge how the team will be affected by the news story but really, Capello would have to think hard about removing one of the best players in the team.

And then Chelsea went to Burnley this afternoon and Terry showed his worth on the pitch. He scored the goal that won Chelsea the game.

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Anyway, today the sun was glorious hot, though the wind was frigidly cold. The two evened out somewhat to make a lovely day, full of blue skies. It seemed the perfect day to go to Frensham for a walk across the sandy hills and through the spiky gorse.

All was lovely and peaceful (I didn’t let the noisy trail bike riders upset me to much). The gorse that lines the path that follows the bronze age barrows on the top of the ridge has been bent over by the snow and is now growing across the path. This can be quite painful in shorts as gorse is covered in prickles, but when the temperature is just above freezing, this is not really an issue. We just brushed on through.

We passed a chap who said that ‘they’ had made a big path through the heather because of the snow. I couldn’t work out what he meant so I just nodded and smiled and said something inane so he’d think I had. He walked off smiling so I can only guess it worked. I’m pretty sure he didn’t tell me who ‘they’ were.

We have two options when we reach the top of the ridge. We can go straight back down and then around the pond or we can continue on, through the conifer woods then sweep down behind the pond. We hadn’t been round the back for ages so I voted for this. I was soon regretting it as we wound up sloshing through semi-frozen puddles of mud, half of which adhered to the puppies. Still, it was a lovely and long walk.

Mirinda & Puppies at Frensham

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Tonight we went to the Yvonne Arnaud theatre and saw the new Alan Ayckbourn play, My Wonderful Day. It’s been a while since we went to the theatre together (I went to the opera in November and Mirinda went to the ballet a couple of weeks ago) and we always try to get to Ayckbourn’s latest as it always tours to Guildford.

Well, as usual, it was excellent. Maybe I’ll give it a proper write up tomorrow. It’s late and I’m half watching Match of the Day.

As I sat here wondering what to post for today, listening to Norah Jones lightly singing her own brand of smokey-voiced tunes, the following thought occurred to me. I wonder if Norah has to sing at Christmas while the Jones family are busy trimming the tree. Or do they give her a break? I could hear her singing Silent Night and Away In a Manger but that’s about it.

I told Mirinda, if I could be any famous singer, it would be Norah Jones. Her voice is amazing. That’s surprising because I do love so many raw, screechy voiced singers. And there’s always Frank (Zappa). But, no, Norah’s it! Of course, she has the advantage of being alive.

And the poodles seem to love her too. They are asleep down the back of the lounge, as usual. Day-z is all a-twitching while Carmen is making these strange exhaling noises. I guess they are just SO chilled by her singing. Which reminds me, for no reason at all, except that it popped into my head as I typed that last bit…

It was a red letter day for Dawn today. She graduated with her MA! She is now Dawn C BSc MA. I’ve told her I’ll not be able to associate with her in public until I get mine. Interestingly, the Chancellor at her university is Sanjeev Bhaskar, the actor/comic/writer guy from The Kumars at No 42 – he plays the son. He hands out the degrees so she shook his hand. She reports that his speech was very funny. He grew up around Southall and his dad worked at Nestles!

I’ve now moved upstairs and have changed from Norah to Florence from Florence and the Machine. Very different but still very enjoyable. And so, I read my weather station data and find that today we had 6.7mm of rain and the temperature tonight is down to -1.6 with little cloud and a promise of sun tomorrow (the last bit is from the BBC, the rest comes direct from the weather station).

Actually, we went out tonight and looked at Mars (and the grass was crunchy with frost). It’s the closest it will be for many years. It was sparkly and red and right next to the biggest, brightest moon I think I’ve ever seen! And for this reason, Mars just looked like any other star, even through the binoculars.

Apologies. I just realised I’d already written about the Talking Newspaper stuff! Though I’ve written in a bit more detail and I can’t write another 700 words tonight! So, sorry.

Today was a Farnham and Alton Talking Newspaper day. For those that don’t know, about once a month I go and read newspapers for the blind, partially sighted and anyone who has difficulty holding a newspaper. And, no, I do not sit opposite them and read out loud! It’s recorded and delivered on CD or flash drive or downloaded from their website.

I came across them in the local paper (of course). They were mentioned in an article about local charities. I was intrigued so Googled them and filled out a volunteer form. It wasn’t just philanthropic, I feel like I want to be a part of Farnham (I do love it here) and figured this was a good way to get to know people. Naturally, most of them are a good deal older than I am…but not all! Today I was reading with Lindsay and she is clearly not yet 50.

It also reminds me of my grandmother and her talking book device from the Blind Society. It was HUGE and certainly not portable. But it made such a difference when she was no longer able to read.

The place I go to is the other side of Farnham, in an estate called The Chantrys and an awful estate it is! Typical of the sort of estate thing they have here in the UK. Also typical is how they thought it good to build such an awful place in such a lovely spot! For Bob & Claire; it’s opposite the cemetery, not far from the farm you stayed at many years ago.

FATN has one of the places (maybe it was given to them by the council…I don’t know) and it’s here that all the work goes on. Having once been a house, it’s handy because it has a kitchen and a toilet.

Each group of 4 readers (one of whom is a presenter) arrive at their designated time and are given a selection of pages out of the local paper. We have to cut them out, stick them to recycled paper and then edit them down to around 90 seconds each. This bit is fun. I was always very fond of the red pen when I was a director.

Another fun thing is that most of the other readers (I’ve been doing it since September and I’ve not read with the same people twice) sit and complain about the grammar, spelling and general illiteracy of the newspaper editor. When I do this at home, Mirinda gets annoyed and tells me to shut up. At last! My spiritual home. My favourite so far was a retired English teacher. Boy, did she pick up on errors. And she hated it. The errors, I mean. Like me, she’s particularly fond of the mis- or non- use of apostrophes.

Actually, this slackness really amazes me at uni…but I’ll get in trouble if I go on, so I won’t.

Anyway, once the editing has finished, we move into the studio where the engineer tests our sound levels and microphone placement. The presenter then starts it all off and we read one after the other. I really enjoy it. We are expected to have a bit of a laugh with some of the lighter stories which is where I lap up the glee I produce. According to Mirinda, this isn’t the point. What can I say? I’m an entertainer first, a philanthropist second…

Once we’ve finished we all say goodbye (today the presenter actually said “It’s goodbye from me.” but sadly the next reader didn’t reply “And it’s goodbye from him.“), pack up and go home. A few days later we receive a copy of the CD in the post. I drop it into iTunes and we listen to it on Sunday mornings in bed. Though it makes me cringe a bit.

If anyone would like to read about the FATN, their site is here.

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I should also mention that this morning, at 9.27, I received the very first readings from my weather station. I went outside at 8 this morning and started work immediately. On returning from FATN, I set up the PC to receive the information and now I no longer have to go outside to find out what the weather’s like. This is my first collection of information:

My Very First Weather Data Set

It shows that the wind rather swirls around! It’s supposed to rain tonight. My fingers are crossed!

I’ve seen the building called The Gherkin (there’s someone else’s photo here) from afar many, many times but, until today, I had never been near it. I was to meet Mirinda there for lunch. Well, outside rather than in it. I wish I’d taken my camera – though it was a lousy day for pictures.

I was walking from uni so figured I’d just use it as a landmark and head in its general direction. I’m REALLY glad I remembered my A-Z. From the uni, all the way to St Mary Axe, there was no sign of it. Granted I walked through the Barbican and was generally under cover but I figured when I reached London Wall I’d catch a glimpse. But, no. And then I turned into St Mary Axe.

I wandered what St Mary Axe means too. Apparently it was the name of the medieval parish. The parish church was called St Mary’s and opposite it was a pub, the sign of which was a big axe. And that’s it. No street, road, alley, or anything like that. Just St Mary Axe. And like most things London, the church and the pub have long since disappeared.

Anyway…The gherkin is amazing! That first sight of it is close to perfection. Being so close, it’s difficult to see it all at once, but not so much you don’t appreciate the size and shape. It is cocooned in black and white metallic webbing-like diagonal stripes. Mirinda tells me that when the trees are in leaf, the green is reflected from the windows in a marvellous fashion.

Lunch was lovely – we ate at Eat – and then we walked back to the flat where I left her to make the looooong journey home to two frantic poodles. My class on Wednesday finishes at 12:50 so we’re going to try and make this a weekly lunch date. Next week I’ll remember my camera.

Today I finished my fourth assignment for my masters and the last one from last semester. It was with a great relief that I clicked the ‘are you sure you want to submit this assignment’ button on the uni website. And now, having completed a Domain Analysis of the archaeological museum sector, I feel replete. Now to concentrate on THIS semester.

And yet more news…for a break this afternoon, I dug a hole and planted the weather station pole in it. With another bag of instant cement, I tamped it down. Voila, there’s another pole in the garden. What with the obelisks and the two upright structures, our back garden is starting to look a little like the New York skyline! I’ll now have to wait for Thursday to set up the weather station.

I have an early start tomorrow so it’s only a short entry tonight.

Up at 6am this morning and on the train up to the big smoke. Had a wonderful experience at Waterloo. A number 4 bus was waiting at the stop so I quickly joined the queue and flashed my Oyster card at the machine, ready to sprint for a seat. Unfortunately the machine wasn’t happy with me and gave the sort of sound you expect on Family Fortunes when the word the family has picked was NOT one that the 200 people surveyed came up with.

I immediately realised my Oyster card was devoid of cash and did a quick 360° and left the bus. I had to find somewhere to recharge my card. Quick! And then I realised I had a pocket full of cash, having forgotten to hand over Mirinda’s money. I walked up to the next bus stop (where she should be) but, though the queue was very long, she was nowhere to be seen. I gave that up as a lost cause and went down to the Tube to put some dosh on my card.

Returning to the bus stop, another number 4 bus was waiting so I hopped straight on. The bus then proceeded very slowly to uni.

Call me odd, but I like a nice calm arrival followed by a coffee and maybe a visit to the loo before a leisurely stroll to class. Never happened! It was all rush and tear about, particularly as it was the first class in a new room and I had to find it as well. I did manage a quick loo stop but otherwise arrived, huffing and puffing in class.

Class went reasonably well and I was very surprised when the lecturer called me by name (I’m always certain I’m pretty invisible but clearly not today). At lunch I decided I could sprint down to Charterhouse and drop Mirinda’s money off and this I did. The uni is about 20 minutes round trip (walking very quickly) so I knew I could make it. I did but was pretty warmed up by the time I sat in the park outside the uni to drink a hastily purchased coffee. Ten minutes later is back to class for the second half of the day’s learnin’.

I HATE RUSHING!

At least going home was all easy going. I managed to get one of the good seats and worked on my essay all the way to Farnham. The poodles were VERY happy to see me.

I just want to say how much I love the Oyster card…except when it’s empty. Clearly.

I left the office at about 7pm today and headed back to Charterhouse Square – a delicious 20 minutes walk away.

As I walked across the uneven cobbles of the square I looked up at my building and felt an intense pleasure at being back again after a weekend away.

This fondness for my central London pad has taken me completely by surprise. I expected to hate it – and was only driven to it by extreme stress at work and the fear I would become seriously ill (OK die) if I didn’t do something about it immediately. And it worked – after we made the decision that I would rent a flat and stay there during the week, I went out and found one the very next day, and my life was transformed.

But it is not simply because the flat is so convenient – though I can walk to both the Law School and the Business School in about 20 minutes – I simply love the flat and the building. It is a 1930’s block, in the art deco style which is one of my absolutely favourite time periods for architecture. It has a curved symmetry at the front, big windows, and lots of lovely details like curved ironwork on the banisters, art deco font on all the signs and lovely steps. I even love the way it smells – especially my corridor.

The flat itself is seriously tiny – about 12 foot by 9 foot and even that has a chunk out of it – though it does have a separate kitchen, bathroom and hallway. I have no doubt Dad would think it unliveable. But it has a big window, a black and white tiled 1930s looking bathroom (full size bath and decent shower pressure), it overlooks a quiet courtyard and not a busy street, and it is on the first floor so it is both safe and I don’t have to take the lift.

And then there are the facilities – there is a very well maintained laundry – but far more exciting is the roof terrace – 10 floors up, full of plants and tables and chairs and a wonderful view over London. I can see the Gherkin, the London Eye and St Paul’s from there. And best of all in the basement there is a small but adequate gym, a sauna, a spa bath and a beautiful pool with a good size seating area full of wicker tables and chairs. The pool room is gorgeous – all art deco with moulded ceilings and lovely stone and marble in soft pinks and yellows.

Best of all – it is the building in which Hercules Poirot lives in the Agatha Christie movies starring David Suchet (exterior shots only, his flat is far too big to fit into this building!!). Not that I knew this when I moved in – honest.

So during the week this is where I now come – walking to and from work, sometimes spending part of the work day here as it is so peaceful, catching no public transport, talking to G in the evenings, playing my guitar or going for a swim, listening to radio 4 (I have decided not to have a TV) and reading.

And that feeling of intense pleasure – almost as intense as the feeling when I return home to Farnham on a Friday night.

The weather station is another step closer to being in place. Yesterday we popped over to Forest Lodge garden centre where I grabbed a post and a support for it to sit on. And then today, before taking the poodles to Hankley, we popped into Homebase for a bit of wood, a packet of nuts, bolts and washers and, most important, a bag of quick drying, post fixing, cement.

Hankley was lovely, as usual, with lots of other people dotted around the heather. Annoying but not so bad we didn’t have long stretches without having to say “Hello“.

The weekend has been rather grey (the sky looked a lot like the side of a naval vessel) with no rain, it should be noted, but Hankley still looks beautiful. I’m pretty sure, it doesn’t matter what the weather is like, Hankley is always beautiful. If we moved away, it is somewhere that would be seriously missed. By all four of us!

I noticed an old canister on the path. There are signs everywhere warning people not to pick things up. Hankley is used by the army for training purposes and it’s not difficult to find empty bullet cartridges (.303 they look like). This canister was a grenade smoke screen simulator. Odd that it was just sitting in the path. Ignoring things like bullets, the army usually leaves nothing. Clearly this was an accident. But it was very obvious.

Also very obvious was the horizontal porta-loo. We noticed this last weekend and it hasn’t been righted! What that means is that the one that remains vertical, has not been emptied because, I assume, if the truck had been, the driver would have fixed the inclination of the other one.

The porta-loo thing is interesting. As the soldiers are wandering all over the heathland, they must sometimes feel the call of nature. Naturally in a real war situation, they’d just go anywhere but here in the English countryside, a tree or a bush just isn’t good enough and so they get a porta-loo. How British is that. And they move them. I guess that depends on where they are wandering around.

Anyway, having walked around large swathes of heather laiden hills and sandy paths, we returned to the house. Mirinda proceeded to plant some tulips she’s been promising to do since 1999 and I started the construction of the weather station pole.

All was going well until I realised the bolts I’d purchased were too short…by about 10mm! Annoying. The sun had set and the light was almost completely gone as I switched bolts from one part to another. And finally, in the pitch, I spilled the packet of nuts, bolts and washers all over the ground, just before finishing. And a little strong language did pass my lips.

I managed to finish stage two of the weather station construction (stage one was testing the wi-fi with the base station on Boxing day) and packed everything away – I’m pretty sure I managed to pick up all the nuts, bolts and washers but I cannot be certain.

We have had a lovely weekend but tomorrow I am back at uni for a new semester and I have an essay to finish (STILL) by next Friday. And, of course, football with Nicktor on Tuesday…

By the way, I was joking about Mirinda waiting since 1999 to plant the tulips. It was 2005…