OMG!!

Whatever next??? Pretty in Pink the musical?

It still remains with me

Bad blogger. I think - not much of note happened last week - or did it? It all seems to be work at the moment. I'm trying hard to figure out who's on the side of the forces of good in the new office and trying to keep everyone one side. I'm not entirely sure how if it's working at all, but I seem to be keeping my new boss happy, and he's the one who hands out pay rises, so here's hoping.

Last week seemed to be full of emails exhanging photos from Iz's birthday weekend. Mine are here. It was a lovely weekend, full of good food, lots of beer and wine, and nice people. Sperlonga was an excellent choice. The old town is closed to traffic, and the hotel was right in the centre of it all. Paul and I hadn't seen Harold and Sophie and Jean for ages, so we had a good catch up and we finally got to see Steve's house in Gaeta. I seemed to spend a large proportion of the weekend playing beach tennis with H and Sophie's boys, which was good fun. They are really nice kids, no tantrums or whining at all.

Iz and I went shopping in the Rome's Centro Storico Monday morning , ostensibly to find me a birthday present from the Romans. I had decided on a man-bag, so we spent the morning checking out stores around the Spanish Steps and Via Condotti. We didn't have much luck though, as I wasn't able to find the bag I wanted. I was a bit worried that Iz might have thought I was the world's fussiest shopper, but she probably knew that already. And it was nice to have her all to myself for the morning.

A few observations about Rome (or things I'd forgotten since living there):

• Unfeasibly attractive shop assistants!! But I still didn't buy anything.


• They've cleaned the turtle fountain - it used to be so grotty and grey!!


• If we ever go back to live, I'd stack on the weight again - the food is just too good.


• I'd forgotten that heat and how nice it is to be able to go to the beach.


• It's just so beautiful

The rest of the week was spent freezing in the cold snap - my winter coat even made a reappearance. Mitch and Susie arrived back from Scotland and Amsterdam on Saturday. Paul and I went shopping and managed to find a manbag that met all criteria in Selfridges. We then caught up with Damien and Mark to see Jindabyne. I love Laura Linney. And she and Gabriel Byrne were outstanding. And the movie was very good (as you asked, 8.8/10). But it made me (and Damien) homesick. The birdsong. The bush. The laconic humour. It was very haunting and beautiful.

While we were watching that Mitch and Susie were watching 'The Lady from Dubuque', with Dame Maggie Smith (insert comment about national treasure/living legend here). Paul and I had seen it couple of months ago. I found it difficult to engage with, but Maggie Smith was excellent. Mitch and Susie really enjoyed it and then met us afterwards for a drink at The Edge. Which now has gogo boys on a Saturday night. How embarassment. We also saw our first fight (well - a bit of agressiveness and pushing, that's a fight for gay men) in a gay bar ever. Imagine.

Sunday I pumped up the bike tyres (Paul had to go to the shop to do his) and we cycled over to the ponds at Highgate for swim. It was lovely lying in the sun, but I believe it gave me a mild dose of hayfever. And I still hate swimming in that brackish water. I always think I'm going to get some weird stomach bug and die from internal bleeding.

Monday night Michael and Susie took us around the corner for dinner. It was so much fun seeing them again. Michael is such a nice guy.

Spending my Inheritance

"It won't be easy, you'll think it strange......."

'Are you having another of your queer spells?'

That was one of the questions asked of Old Vic Theatre Artistic Director and late-night dog-walker Kevin Spacey, in Moon for the Misbegotten, in Sarf London last night. The play was excellent, but pretty intense. The subject matter of alcoholism, poverty and unrealised love was a nice way to kick off the Christmas season, too.

And the Bishop of Southwark kicked off his Christmas in a big way this week too, glad to see someone’s enjoying themselves.

We’re going to be spending Christmas a few miles from the ‘Ipswich Ripper'. Looks like I picked a good week to stop turning tricks.

And what planet is John Lethlean on? £7 for a loaf of bread? Was it supposed to have been posted from Paris?

Her Hands Were Very Cold

After a quick, affordable (£10.95 for two courses, what’s not to like about that?), pre-theatre meal at Browns ( and you all know, when at London Pride, Alistair Appleton chooses to eat at Browns), Paul, Mark, Damien, Claire and I trotted off up Long Acre to the Royal Opera House to see Puccini’s ‘La Boheme’.

After the initial disappointment of hearing that Katie Van Kooten (oops that should be Nuccia Focile ) was unwell and was to be replaced by the Kiwi Anna Leese as Musetta, we settled in for the emotional roller-coaster ride that is ‘La Boheme’. And it was a cracker. Poverty, love, deception, self-medication and billiards, it had the lot.

Incidentally, there’s nothing like being typecast, the kiwi’s role (Musetta) was a tart in act one, then a drunken tart in act two. You can take the girl out of New Zealand……

We didn’t know when we booked (Or even up until last week, we’re not opera buffs), that one of the world's top tenors, Marcelo Alvarez, was to sing the role of Rodolfo. He was superb, even from the more affordable seats at top of the upper amphitheatre. In the heat of the moment after the performance, I gave it a 9.5, but now in the sober, cold light of day, I’d give it a 9.2.

Going to the Royal Opera House is a pretty amazing experience – the floral hall is breathtakingly beautiful, and as there were two intervals, we braved the plumes of passive smoke and took in the amazing view from the garrett terrace over the roofs of Covent Garden and to London beyond.




The crowd was very middle class and a bit snooty, with the odd theatre gay standing around – every now and then some 50-yo man in a tight (designer) t-shirt would walk past with a 30-something and I’d say to Damien ‘Do you think he’s gay?’. ‘Who can say?’ would be his reply.

I’ve been meaning to post some other ‘reviews’ of a couple of things we’ve been to see recently:

‘Bent’ starring Alan Cumming at the Trafalgar Studios theatre in Whitehall. Paul, Mark from London, Mark from Amsterdam, Marcus (any more Marks/Marcs?) and I decided on the spur of the moment to see this, as Mark was over from Amsterdam, and wanted some cultcha. It was pretty grim stuff, about a gay man in a concentration camp during the WWII. I enjoyed it and there were some very powerful scenes, but I felt the second half suffered from a certain mawkishness (more a result of the writing than the acting). Alan Cumming and Chris New(!) were excellent in the lead roles. I’d give it 7.4/10

Movies: ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ - It was hard not to be seduced by the glamour and glossiness of TDWP. Meryl Streep was excellent (no surprise there then) and Anne Hathaway is very beautiful in it. Our excitement level rose because our friend Cressida is an editor at the New Yorker and so we visited the Conde Nast building and ate in the $30 million Gehry-designed canteen last year. And funnily enough, Paris looked beautiful - they even showed Maxims (rolls eyes). Fine as a piece of light entertainment, 7.5/10.

‘Little Miss Sunshine’ – this was ok, but I never managed to shrug off the feeling that the move was trying too hard to be quirky. I don’t like movies that spend the whole night saying ‘Look at me, aren’t I a quirky little movie?’. Toni Collete was good, the other performances were good, but as Damien said ‘it lacked teeth’. 7.7/10

Things to be excited about

Holding a Almodovar retrospective in your lounge-room

Indian Summers

Fast Laptops

Madrid - clubs, food and facial hair trends (October)

Culture in London in Autumn (ongoing)

Drinking in refined locations

10th Anniversary Dinners (soon)

The stunning beauty of Rome (December)

Good friends coming to visit (November)

Portuguese Egg Tarts (November)

Rediscovering stuff with someone you love

Indescribable

Last night Mark, the very broad-shouldered Chris, the lovely Bernadette, Paul and I went to see Fuerzabruta at the newly redeveloped Roundhouse in Camden. It was fantastic. Honestly. One of the best theatrical nights out I've ever had. It was jaw-dropping in the real sense. At one stage I looked around at the pure looks of joy and wonderment on grown adult's faces and thought this must really give the performers a buzz - seeing people looking deliriously happy and amazed. Expat Aussie Pam Ann was there. And Bernie couldn't stop making sauna references all night.


Bernie making references to saunas.

At this point the stage was moving towards us and we were walking backwards......

Very Bondesque.

London in Summer is Beautiful

Mark, Paul and I went for a beer in Hammersmith after 'The Exonorated' (8.5/10 - 10/10 for leftwing liberal bias (not that I'm complaining!)).

Takeovers and Tapas

It's been quite an eventful week.

My company was bought out on Monday, but my job is safe - it may mean I end up working in London again, with a day commuting out to Theale. If the London option comes through (and I am so desperate for it to), I'll be about 15 minutes from work, or about a 30 min walk through Regents Park.

Everyone was talking about (and watching) Arsenal playing Barcelona in the Champions League Final. I didn't understand the fuss - didn't people realise that we were less than a week away from Eurovision? We missed the game as we were at the theatre watching Embers. Embers was basically a one-man show, with a great performance by Jeremy Irons. I gave it 7.75/10.

I was pleased to see that one the same day Paul and Heather McCartney-Mills split, Nicole Kidman announced she is engaged again. See, who said only bad things happen in the world?

Friday was one the worst days I've had at work here. I had to stay until 19:30,
which is pretty crap considering I normally leave at 16:30.

Saturday we met Damien, Kirsten and Sharna for lunch at Fino in Charlotte St. We've been meaning to go there for ages, so when Kirsten and Sharna said they wanted to go out for a big lunch before they return to Melbourne, we jumped at the opportunity. The Spanish tapas-style food was excellent, and the wine list was pretty good too. There was nothing wrong with the service either, but the staff weren't particularly friendly, which tends to detract from the whole experience for me. It wasn't that there was any attitude, but there was only minimal interaction between us and them. I loved the vedelho we had with lunch. Must make a mental note to buy more vedelho.

Saturday night we traipsed over to Damien's, in chi-chi Islington to watch the performances in Eurovision. Damien's favourite was the mulleted Russian entry (primarily because of his youth), I thought the Swedish entry was best - pure eurovision - and Germany's country-style entry was pretty good too. Most disappointing was the French entry - some god-awful ballad sung by some crappy chanteuse.

After a couple of hours of pyrotechnics, big hair and eastern european fashion, we headed out to Oscar's birthday party in Limehouse. It was good fun, then those of us with no sense went to 'Beyond' for a dance. It was pretty empty (only two rooms were open instead of the usual three), but there were a couple of groups of our friends there, so we had a pretty good night.

Catch it if you can

Despite the fact we saw 'The Crucible' 2 weeks ago and are going to see 'Embers' next week, and last night we saw 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?'(8.7/10), we aren't often at the theatre. Kathleen Turner was great as Martha, even if I did have flashbacks to 'Julia & Julia' and kept remembering how long her nipples were in that film. The Guardian had an interesting interview with KT a while back, where she laments the lack of decent roles for older women in Hollywood and how that has meant she has had to focus on stage roles (and move to Europe). The play finishes this weekend.

And how angry does that woman in the photo look? Scary.

Happy Birthday to me

The lovely Kirsten and Sharna , accompanied by Damien, took Paul and I out for our birthdays last night. We washed down some very good Chinese with some beer, and then were taken to see the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of ‘The Crucible’. It was excellent (8.8/10), with some great performances. It has to be a pretty good play to still be relevant some 50(?) years after it was written. Danforth’s line "a person is either with this court or he must be counted against it" resonated in particular.

In other Birthday news – my day got off to a great start with a special birthday breakfast from Paul and my ipod treated me to a very good selection of tunes:

Sorry (Petshop Boys remix)- Madonna
Girls on Film – Duran Duran
Careless – Paul Kelly
What You Need – INXS
I go to Rio – Peter Allen
Da Hype – Junior Jack with Robert Smith
L’il Love – Little Love
Dare – Gorillaz
Love Action – Human League

My day was going so well I expected to see the headline on page 23 of the Guardian 'Aussie PM resigns in animal-sex scandal', but alas it was not to be.

Blenheim Botox

• We were out at Rosmarino in St John's Wood on Saturday night,
  with the pony's mum, Julie and Stuie. The food was excellent,
  if pricey, but the real entertainment was the old dear (complete with diamond the size of a doorknob!) on the table next to us. She was at least 80 and the skin on her face was tighter than mine.
  
  
• Friday night we went to the Victoria Palace to see ‘Billy Elliot’. It was very
  entertaining, but I still think there were probably only two memorable songs in it. I'd still recommend it though (8.2/10), one of the best musicals I've seen (nowhere near as good as 'Guys and Dolls' with Euan Mcgregor (swoon!) though, possibly a (9.4/10) (the show, not Euan)).
  
  
• I bought a bike! (or the pony did - for my fast-approaching birthday – Thankyou!) It’s only 3 years old, but pretty solid. Now we'll be able to spend summer cycling everywhere, instead of having to rely on buses.