Calling Card

I was surprised in Muay Thai last night when Kru Jonny revealed that he was aware of, and had read, what I write here; pleased also that he liked it.

Similarly, a week or so ago when I emailed Matt Polly, to let him know that his memoir of China had triumphed in our reading group, I was amazed when he replied saying, 'It's so good to finally hear from the the "Welsh Born Icon." I've been following your blog nominating process over the months and saw last week to my amazement that "American Shaolin" beat out "Slaughterhouse Five."'

It really is intriguing to discover blogs expanding to fill all sorts of nooks and crannies.

The phenomenum though, is perhaps not as unique or modern as we may sometimes think:

I have entered upon a performance which is without example, whose accomplishment will have no imitator. I mean to present my fellow-mortals with a man in all the integrity of nature; and this man shall be myself.

Spider Pig

Spider Pig, Spider Pig
Does whatever a Spider Pig does.
Can he swing from a web?
No he can't because he's a pig.

Look Out!
Here comes the Spider Pig

I did my bit at the Rainbow Trust Painting Marathon 2007, and produced a masterpiece inspired by the Simpsons movie. Amazingly I also managed to purchase it for posterity in the auction at 4pm.

Further Research Particle Man, "They Might Be Giants", Flood (1990):

Universe Man, Universe Man
Size of the entire universe man
Usually kind to smaller men
Universe Man

He's got a watch with a minute hand
Millennium hand and an eon hand
And when they meet it's a happy land
Powerful man, Universe Man

Person Man, Person Man
Hit on the head with a frying pan
Lives his life in a garbage can
Person Man

Is he depressed or is he a mess?
Does he feel totally worthless?
Who came up with Person Man?
Degraded man, Person Man

Gooner

My six year old and I went - along with a school friend and his Dad - to the inaugral Emirates Cup yesterday to see Valencia beat Inter Milan 2-0, and Arsenal come through 2-1 against Paris Saint Germain.

It was a fine old day. The new stadium is a slick operation, and although it is in North London we got to Finsbury Park on the tube in under 40 minutes.

The New Ninja Bomber is now a confirmed gooner.

I can remember my Dad taking me to see a Wales England football game at Ninian Park at a similar sort of age and I've a very clear memory of seeing Bobby Charlton score. Apart from that details are hazy, but I've still got a real and warm feeling for the texture of the day. Fingers crossed, Ben will preserve something similar from our jaunt.

R.B.FUNKESTRA

The ingredients of this infectious ensemble are one American, one English, one Israeli and one German of Indian origin, under the leadership of an Austrian, to serve up what is cheekily known amongst them as 'Strudelfunk'!

I bowled up at Abbey Fest last night prepared to be underwhelmed by the R.B.Funkestra's Strudelfunk, but let me be the first to put my hand up and say that they were fantastic. Let's be honest if you can get the peeps up and dancing in the rain at an outdoor evening gig in London then you gots to have the funk and perhaps the fonk as well, even if you need to improve the copy on the promo material you cheekily serve up.

Here, for your further edification is the website of the strudelmeister.

(P.S. If anyone caught the name of the singer with the band last night, please let me know so that I can try and catch him perform again.)

Celebrity Blogs

I'm rushed from pillar to no time to post today, so you will have to entertain yourselves with The 20 Best and Worst Celebrity Blogs "because there's nothing's better than uncensored access to the dark recesses of the celebrity mind, we grade the online musings of Pam, Rosie, Britney, and other diarists held dear by fans".

Off Off Broadway

I've set up a Facebook group for AbbeyFest, and associated some of the shows that are being put on as part of it as Facebook events, as I'm trying to get the hang of how the system might be used to help promote the Colour House Theatre.

I went to see "James Dean is Dead" earlier this week. It was pretty good, but it is difficult to be objective about it because Peter introduced me to Jackie Skarvellis and James Weisz (the writer/director, and the performer) and I had a chat with them before the show. Go figure.

When I googled the title, I found a listing of the Abbey Mills performance on the New York Times website! The link went here, it is blank now as the show has closed but that is one of the weirdest things I've ever seen on the 'net.

Speaking of weirdness, "The Scriptless Wonder" is on next week. When it played last year it was the Sunday Times's number one recommendation, while Sir Michael Gambon in a play by the Nobel Laureate Samuel Beckett cam in fifth. Again, go figure.

A Resounding Tinkle

I have seldom, if ever, been as enchanted as I was reading "In fearless pursuit of absurdity - the hunt for NF Simpson" in the Telegraph this morning. This is my kind of playwright. How is it possible I seem never to have heard of him?

He came to fame with A Resounding Tinkle in 1958, which concerned a suburban couple who had been delivered the wrong-sized elephant. ("If it goes berserk in the night I'm not getting up for it.")
Among other plays, he produced his masterpiece, One Way Pendulum, which again featured a suburban family - this time training 500 Speak Your Weight machines to sing the Hallelujah Chorus.
...........
Simpson is a philosopher with an inventive comic brain who commits his aphorisms to theatre, but he is not a natural playwright: he has little interest in character and none at all in plot.
"I live in the present, always have done. I don't know what happens next, and I don't want to. That may be why I cannot handle narrative. I hear the dialogue."
..........
A new play entitled If So, Then Yes ........ is set in an old people's home where a resident dictates his memoirs despite constant interruptions from visitors and an invasion of downmarket pensioners from the Cairngorms.
The script contains shafts of pure Simpsonian comedy: it argues that Sartre won the Nobel Prize largely because of his teeth, for example, and that it was not actually a serpent in the Garden of Eden but an unusually long sausage dog.
Already the National Theatre has baulked at its lack of structure and large cast, which includes "5,000 Red Indians - optional".

Count me in at the Donmar and the National, though I'm a little concerned I can't find any relevant details on the NT's website.

Language is a Virus

Ever stuck for something to say? From the dinner party to the bus queue, questions guaranteed to break the ice:

Do women, on average, have a different profile of aptitudes and emotions than men?

Were the events in the Bible fictitious -- not just the miracles, but those involving kings and empires?

Has the state of the environment improved in the last 50 years?

Do men have an innate tendency to rape?

Did the crime rate go down in the 1990s because two decades earlier poor women aborted children who would have been prone to violence?

Are suicide terrorists well-educated, mentally healthy and morally driven?

Would the incidence of rape go down if prostitution were legalized?

Do African-American men have higher levels of testosterone, on average, than white men?

Is morality just a product of the evolution of our brains, with no inherent reality?

Would society be better off if heroin and cocaine were legalized?

Is homosexuality the symptom of an infectious disease?

Would it be consistent with our moral principles to give parents the option of euthanizing newborns with birth defects that would consign them to a life of
pain and disability?

Do parents have any effect on the character or intelligence of their children?

Have religions killed a greater proportion of people than Nazism?

Would damage from terrorism be reduced if the police could torture suspects in special circumstances?

Would Africa have a better chance of rising out of poverty if it hosted more polluting industries or accepted Europe's nuclear waste?

Is the average intelligence of Western nations declining because duller people are having more children than smarter people?

Would unwanted children be better off if there were a market in adoption rights, with babies going to the highest bidder?

Would lives be saved if we instituted a free market in organs for transplantation?

Should people have the right to clone themselves, or enhance the genetic traits of their children?

(Actually there is a serious point.)

Exterminate!

The New Ninja Bomber having garbed himself in a Dalek t-shirt this morning for the first day of the summer holidays, I was reminded that Terry Nation, Dalek creator and snappy dresser, originally hailed from Cardiff and is long over due elevation to Welsh Born Iconhood.

His first writing gig came when Spike Milligan commissioned him to help with the Goon Show; he ended his days working on MacGuyver in LA; and in between alighted on The Saint, The Avengers, Z Cars, The Baron, The Champions, Department S and The Persuaders, as well as creating Survivors and Blake's 7.

Now that is a fun CV.

Enzo

There was a great night for Welsh boxing yesterday, as Enzo Maccarinelli successfully defended his cruiserweight title against Wayne Braithwaite, and Gavin Rees beat Frenchman Souleymane M'baye to win the World Boxing Association light welterweight belt.

So Enzo Calzaghe now trains three world champions (the two above and his son Joe) at the famously unplush Newbridge Boxing Club. (It was also a great pleasure to see stablemate Bradley Pryce beat the unlovable Anthony Small to retain his Commonwealth title last week.)

The Enzo Calzaghe story is - if anything - more amazing than Joe's in that he didn't really have any involvement in boxing himself before he walked into the club with his nine year old son a quarter of a century ago.

From bass player to arguably the world's best boxing trainer. What a trip. Hats off to him, as far as I am concerned.

See you at Cardiff in November. Strange to think that I was also at the Lewis/Bruno promotion in '93 where Joe Calzaghe made his pro debut.

Lenny The Giant

Hundreds are expected to attend the funeral of a colourful Merton man who was greatly loved in the showbiz world and beyond.
Dwarf Lenny Fowler, known as Lenny the Giant, most recently lived in Marlborough Road, Colliers Wood.
He died unexpectedly after collapsing last month at the age of 51.
A born performer, Lenny decided to pursue his dream when he grew miserable as a teenager working on a factory floor in New Malden.
He went on to enjoy a varied career in entertainment, and his CV includes stints as a clown, an Elvis impersonator, and a missile in the sport of dwarf throwing.

I was on nodding terms with Lenny Fowler, just from passing in the street as we lived so near to each other, but I had no idea he was such a colourful character, or indeed that he was in show business at all. I'm sorry to hear that he is gone.

Speaking of colouful characters, who are those twin girls that I keep seeing all around Colliers Wood who are always dressed (a) identically, and (b) as if there are off for an audition to be in a Eurovision Song Contest band? They're starting to scare me.

Good Enough for Punch

"Just listen", said Harry impatiently, "I'm the one who'se seen Lord Voldermort and I'm telling you he's got no nose".

Hermione sighed and laid down her quill. "No nose? How does he smell?"

"Bloody awful," snorted Ron.

A small contribution from me to keep you going until midnight.

Curate's Egg

And so off to the theatrical wing of AbbeyFest last night for a:

Double bill of darkly comic tales. Intimacy by Michael Almaz is freely adapted from a story by John Paul Sartre. Kissing It Better by Liz Tait takes a darkly witty look into the dramatic impact a baby makes on a relationship.

They are swapping the order in which the plays are presented through the short run, and last night we kicked off with "Kissing it Better". I didn't have any great expectations of this. I'm not sure why, maybe the grainy photo on the poster put me off, but it was great. Liz Tait is a writer to watch; snappy exposition, sharp dialogue, and believable characters.

As for "Intimacy", when you get a flyer thrust into your hand that says....

IMPOTENCE. What a beautiful word that is. My friend Rirette thinks the most beautiful word in the language is HAPPINESS. Rubbish. For my money, its im-po-tence.

....... alarm bells should start to ring about the prospective entertainment value.

It opened with a woman lying on top of an upright piano. She writhed around for a bit whining about her existential angst then hid behind the Old Joanna, only to be replaced in our view by another woman who had been hiding there as well. The new character wormed to the front of the stage and then (you'll never guess) writhed around for a bit whining about her existential angst.

At a juncture where they were both hidden behind the piano I made my escape, Sartre's own La Nausée providing a handy two word review.

Second Wind

The next youngest guy in his class was half his age. They must have thought he was some far-out old man humping it over that course. I did it when I was 19 and it damn near wasted me.

Words from Apocalypse Now came unbidden to my mind when I woke up on Tuesday morning after a hard session of Muay Thai on Monday night. My hamstrings in particular were on fire after a lot of stretching, kicking and conditioning.

I still went to the gym at lunchtime for a quick run and some SMR, and met Mark - one of the trainers - in the changing rooms. I've seen him around, and nodded, but I haven't had a chat with him for a while so I was surprised and pleased that he remembered when he asked me how I had got on in my triathlon from a few months back.

Speaking of triathlons, I'm not going to do the Afan Forest Park Off Road in August after all. Maturin can't do it because of family commitments, and my brother John has pulled out because he's going to a wedding. It seems a long way to travel (and travel back from) to do the event on my own, but it is a measure of how much exercise is simply part of my life now that I will carry on training as if I was going to do it, do a virtual version of the course in Virgin on August 11, and then swap to preparing for September's 10k road race in Swansea.

If your going to get obsessive about something, I guess working out is one of the least harmful.

Smoove P

I listened to the new Prince album on Sunday driving back from Wales to London, having picked it up free - like so many others - as a cover mount with the Mail on Sunday.

There is something inherently funny about The Mail (known as the premier supplier of hot and cold running prejudice confirmation to the hangers and floggers of middle England) distributing the latest work of the author of Darling Nikki.

I've written of my regard for the purple funkmeister of Minneapolis before, and I've got my tickets for a show at the O2 in September, but even I have a blind spot. As soon as I hear a slow 6/8 groove I know that it is going to be one for the laydeez in the lyrical style of Smoove B and I reach instinctively for the button that will bring up the next track. Last year, on 3121 this moment didn't come until track 7, "Satisfied", and before that on Musicology we were spared until track 10, "On the Couch".

This time we have to take our punishment early on track 3 "Somewhere Here on Earth", which, in spite of some rather nice Miles Davis Harmon-muted trumpet stylings, must be cast into the outer darkness.

In a better ordered world this type of thing would be left to Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes.

Drinking Bitter

We gathered at The Castle on Friday to discuss our latest batch of books. The Castle has only just reopened after a refurb, and the ubiquity of blogs is proved by the availability of a "'warts & all' account of the transformation of a run-down pub in Bradford-On-Avon into a 'proper' Inn" at http://thecastle-boa.blogspot.com/.

Rob raised the bar early on by coming up with the idea that the aristocratic nurse who shares a flat briefly with Barbara in "Winter in Madrid", is intended to be Cordelia, sister of Sebastian, Julia, and Bridey from Brideshead Revisited. I think that he must be right, so I'm reasonably put out that I didn't notice it first.

I was also surprised when American Shaolin - my suggested read - came out ahead of Slaughterhouse Five as our overall favourite book. Dave's antipathy to Vonnegut's Tralfamadorians, playing no small part in the decision.

We've introduced a new rule for the next meeting; the obligatory nomination of one stone cold classic.

The next set of books, which will be discussed while sailing the Solent (details to follow) later this year comprises:

• Crime and Punishment - nominated by me as the classic
• The Testament of Gideon Mack - put forward by Dave
• A Thousand Acres - Lear in Iowa from Chris
• Constantinople: The Last Great Siege, 1453 - courtesy of Rob's interest in Asia Minor

Hello World

Let it be known that I have today purchased four tickets for the Calzaghe/Kessler World Title Reunification bout in Cardiff on November 3rd. I'll be going with my Dad and my two brothers, so life is good.

The last time we went to anything remotely similar was the Lewis/Bruno bout at what was then the National Stadium in '93.

Search Box Widget

A Search Box widget for Blogger, built using the AJAX Search API, and powered by a Linked Custom Search Engine (CSE) is now available on Blogger in Draft, Blogger's experimental site, so I've implemented it on the left in place of my own attempt to add search to the blog from earlier this week.

Have a play about with it. It offers results from the blog and from the web, but also - and most interestingly - from pages to which I have linked.

Mixed Kicks

I stumbled on this link to the Roger Gracie Brazilian Jui Jitsu Academy, and found that Kru Jonny - who has been training my little boy since last August, and me since April - teaches Muay Thai there as well as at Jackapong. The Muay Thai/Gracie Jui Jitsu juxtaposition is interesting, because from what I have read it seems that Muay Thai on your feet and Gracie Jui Jitsu on the floor is - with a certain amount of simplification - the combination of styles that is proving the most effective in Mixed Martial Arts.

Now that I know what I'm doing, Kru Jonny often asks me to come into the gym when he has the kids practicing techniques in circuits and I hold a Thai pad for them to throw a punch, kick, elbow or knee at. The crisp thwack that cracks the air when a blow is delivered correctly is quite different from the muffled sound that a beginner's effort landing produces, and I find it quite rewarding to be there when one of youngsters suddenly gets the hang of it.

My little one and some of the others are going to do a display at a Thai community charity fund raising event next week. I feel proud of that as it means that Jonny must be confident enough of their skill and language (they count off and name forms in Thai) not to be afraid that they might embarrass him.

Blunt Force Trauma

Mark of "Bouncy Castles in the Air" is a good friend to me, to The Profit Burglar, and to our company. He's an antiques expert as well as an inflatable entertainment entrepreneur and helped us a lot when we worked with the police on several linked operations late last year.

He was disappointed yesterday when the Mills preemptively cancelled his agreement to run the side shows (that my little boy enjoyed so much last Saturday) every weekend for the summer, so we took him down the pub at the end of the working day for some consolation.

Everything is running a little late today.

Nice Pear

The New Ninja Bomber is a great fan of pears, so I've usually got a bag of them on the go in the house at any particular time. The trouble with pears though, is that they only seem to stay ripe for about five minutes before they start to go off. Here's the solution:

Peel the pears
slice in half length ways
remove the pips
lob in slow cooker
cover in red wine
add sugar, cinnamon, and cloves
cook on low over night.
remove the pears, allow them to cool and refrigerate.
sieve the poaching liquid, reduce over a high heat, and reserve.

They'll be quite happy in the fridge for a few days. Ideally, serve glazed with the sauce, plus whipped cream piped from that aerosol can you got in for your last sleepover, you saucy beast.

Chronicles of Wasted Time

I've just added search to my template. You can - and will be able for a while - to see it to the left of this text.

To the right you can see how simple this was to do in the new Blogger by adding a new page element.

Unfortunately, now I've done it I've realised that I can't get rid of the NavBar (which contains the exact same feature) at the top of the page while I'm hosted on blogspot servers even though I'm using a custom domain, so it is redundant.

I'll leave it here for a while as tribute to Google/Blogger's contumely as well as my own.

At least it helps to emphasize that the HTML/JavaScript page element is powerful enough for us to be able to leave raw templates alone in future,which should improve code portability.

Only Connect

I went to see Medea at AbbeyFest last night. It was a loose - to say the least - adaptation of Euripides performed by two Greek girls; a narrator out front, and chorus at the piano. According to the programme:

Medea is a play consisted mainly by huge monologues. Using Medea's monologues as vertebrae of support, I put on writing ideas, phrases and images after studying the works of Anouilh Jean, Seneca, Ovid, Heiner, Muller, Augustus Strindberg and Lorka.

Not exactly idiomatic English, though better than my Greek, and I do admit to dozing off during some "huge monologues". One dramatic episode was performed against the background of the Chopin prelude that - to British ears - will always be "Could it be Magic" by Take That, which rather undercut the pathos. Here's an audio interview from London Greek radio, and the director, adapter and star has also made this film on the same subject.


If you look up Medea in Wikipedia, the first illustration is a painting by Evelyn De Morgan - a well known pre-Raphealite painter in her own right - who was also married to William De Morgan. William De De Morgan (the ceramicist if there is such a word) had a studio near here, and also accompanied his life long friend William Morris when he first came to look at Merton Abbey Mills with a view to taking it on as a work place. William and Evelyn's work has a permanent home just up the road. I love it when a plan comes together.

Bouncy Castles in the Air

The New Ninja Bomber and I bowled up at Abbey Mills early yesterday while Mark and his people were still setting up their various inflatable attractions, which meant that my little boy and a couple of comrades got to see the rides inflate to their full glory from flat packed and to try them out before they were open to the public.


Recorded for posterity above on my lo res camera phone, but recorded none the less. Life for a six year old could not be better.

Vulnerability

The blog disappeared off the face of the earth for a while yesterday (in fact all of coraider.com, though not - thank God - coraider.co.uk, stopped resolving) when one of the service providers that we use changed the DNS Name Server settings for a domain that we have lodged with another.

You can only read this today because of the fact that the looming weekend deadline gave The Profit Burglar the impetus to get to the bottom of the problem himself rather than relying on third parties to sort it out.

We were entirely at sea there for a while. If I was going to try and take down the internet, DNS is certainly what I would target.

Link Blogging Theatre

I'm supposed to have a chat with Mark Marlowe of The Wheelhouse Theatre Company about helping them out online, so I had a bit of a noodle around to find examples I could use to explain my ideas. I was surprised - and my vanity not a little pricked - to find most of them already up and running elsewhere.

The Royal National Theatre - for example - publishes RSS feeds, puts out podcasts, has a Facebook presence (registration required), and a YouTube channel.

That is pretty much a clean sweep of relevant examples of Web 2.0 conduits for reaching the public.

I also think that it is vital in the 21st Century to be the curator of your own online archives. This will become increasingly important as developments like the semantic web spread their tendrils through bodies of knowledge, but at the moment it is enough to understand that the more that you publish about your corporate endeavours the more likely it is that relevant Google searches will find you.

Much to my astonishment Sir Ian McKellen has got the drop on this at www.mckellen.com in a project that is already a decade old.

Odds and Ends

The Profit Burglar and I went to the launch of Dave Saxby's book in the Chapter House after work yesterday, an event which - with Gatsbyesque elan - he didn't actually attend himself.

Thence, fortified with a take away from the reliable Colliers Wood Tandoori, back to my gaff to set up a Media Center PC under the TV. The main reason for this is that Paul has finished a first pass at the program to play "backed up" DVDs that I trailed here, but it has also struck me that it will be no bad idea to have a computer in that slot domestically with the BBC due to launch its Interactive Media Player later this month.

Though we could fine tune the interface, Paul's software works a treat for navigating and viewing content. It struck me this morning as I was walking to work, that if I set up a version of it that catalogued only the New Ninja Bomber's DVDs, and moved the XBOX 360 to his room he could have pushbotton access to all his favourites with the XBOX talking to the PC via Microsoft's Media Extender technology. This will require a network upgrade of some sort. Probably best to get a gigabit hub and run a Cat 5 cable between the ground and first floor.

I also took the opportunity once we were set up to navigate the Media Center Guide to More4 at 8pm on Sunday and set it to record The West Wing, now and for the rest of the run. I missed "Ways and Means" in series 3 a couple of weeks ago to add to these omissions, but with any luck I shouldn't miss any more.

Wii the people

I learned from the BBC yesterday that Nintendo's Wii console outsold Sony's PlayStation 3 in Japan last month by six to one.

My little boy had a friend around to tea after school yesterday, and when we walked him home a little after seven, his dad (it was this dad and friend to be precise) offered me a social glass of red and broke out - by a happy chance - the controllers for the Wii that they had just bought.

The four of us played bowling and golf matches on WiiSports. It was great. The motion sensitive controller is a marvelous thing. I imagine that WiiSports boxing after a few drinks would be carnage. I'm not surprised that it is taking the world by storm.

The New Ninja Bomber has now issued an official request for a Nintendo Wii, also stipulating that I am not to drop it on his foot as I did when unveiling the XBOX 360 at his last birthday.

Slow Train Coming

Jane's first son, and my boy's half brother, is well over six feet tall now. I clearly remember that at the Notting Hill Carnival years ago, the first time that the three of us went out together, he was still small enough for me to swing up onto my shoulders so he could get a better view of the parade.

I took him to school every day for years, so having him (effectively my stepson) disappear from my life was just one among many wrenching dislocations of the domestic meltdown.

I bumped into him last week. He was fishing on the Wandle with a friend as I was taking a lunchtime stroll.

As we were chatting I told him that I had been taking Muay Thai classes on Monday since April and we remembered that the initial impetus for that had been his. Regular writing here providing the documentary evidence.

To cut a long story short, he came along last night; trained, had fun, and said that he would come regularly in future. It will be good to see him.

The Kids are Alright

I attended a concert at the New Ninja Bomber's primary school last week to see - among other acts - his first ever public performance on guitar. Needless to say, I was very proud of him.

There is something irresistably heart-warming about seeing very young children murder great tunes be it on guitar, keyboard, recorder or violin. Spirits soar. I think it should be prescribed to the jaded on the NHS.


Did I tell you that he has written his first song? It goes like this:

Kids know how to rock and roll
They’re too cool to rock and roll
... repeat ad infinitum

I promise you that he came up with this himself, and it is so artfully dumb that I can easily imagine it sitting happily between Teenage Lobotomy and Blitzkrieg Bop in The Ramones set list circa 1977. ("End of the Century" is on at 10:30 tonight on the increasingly invaluable More4.)


I like the tension between the first and second line. It is, is it not, Wilde's "youth is wasted on the young" transplanted from fin de siecle 19th century London to the shoe gazing 21st?


OK, I may be over egging the pudding, but I'm always going to put the best possible interpretation on anything he does.


This just in. Hold the presses. "Stairway to Heaven" is Welsh!

Sunday Sanctuary

Londoners defy bombers with weekend of fun.

As time goes by, the more that I write in this 'blog, the more valuable a resource it becomes for me. Thus with one of my brothers and his good lady up for a visit this weekend, I was inspired to take them to The Ramble Inn and Rick's Cafe on Friday night, by my notes from June 2005, and to Bankside and Borough Market on Saturday afternoon by my recollection of May that year.

Yesterday evening we went to the Colour House theatre for the launch party to celebrate - and raise funds for - the Wheelhouse Theatre Company's first full season. I've got high hopes for that and will try and see what there is that I can do to help. It is invigorating to be in the company of folk who are willing to get up off their backsides and try and do something rather than just sit around moaning. It'll be interesting to look back in a year or so and see what they've accomplished.

This morning I read the papers over a Rehab big breakfast, and - as I'm in the mood for spreading the love - I can announce that it was good enough to make my hangover seem almost worthwhile.