Pat and I went to the Donmar Warehouse in Covent Garden last night to see John Mortimer's play A Voyage Round My Father. It was so fantastic that I made us buy the play text during the interval. I thought it might be rather depressing, given that it's Mortimer's autobiographical play about his father, a blind divorce lawyer, and growing up, but it ( Read more... )

I'm thrilled to be back in London. I liked Belgium, but I was incredibly eager to leave, especially after what happened on the train this afternoon. I have a couple of pictures here. Since a complete account of my trip would be quite boring, I'm going to try to make it less boring by just writing down scraps of things. So ( Read more... )

I think Bruges is far more relaxing than Paris was last year. Most people are extremely friendly, but yesterday I had a bad encounter with a driver on a local bus. He wouldn't stop the bus for me, even though he saw me pushing the button, and we ended up in the suburbs at the end of the line. It was only the two of us and a duck who wouldn't move ( Read more... )

Now here's a dramatic story for you ( Read more... )

At Andy's suggestion, I christened a new method of shopping today. Taking a camera into the dressing room must be the most fantastic way to assess clothing. Apparently other people think so as well, because I heard the girl in the room next to me at Oasis taking pictures, too.

I spent four hours shopping, partly in a quest to purchase a dress I've ( Read more... )

I must confess that I misjudged Pat's determination to go to Italy. When I telephoned her this afternoon, she asked, "How would you feel about going to Italy with me?" (One doesn't say no to a question like that.) As it turns out, she's already planning the trip. In June, we're flying from London to either Rome or Florence (she hasn't decided yet ( Read more... )

Speaking of elderly gentlemen (weren't we just...?), the man sitting in the armchair across from me at Barnes & Noble this afternoon spent about half an hour poring over OK! and undoubtedly soaking up the juicy and rather titillating circumstances behind the cover story: "David & Victoria: Why They Had To Leave Their Haunted Home." (I imagine the ( Read more... )

The highlight of my day was when one of the giant spiders on my patio doors caught a bug and spent thirty minutes spinning it into a ball. If I stood at the door, I could watch the drama unfold only an inch from my eyes, but instead I chose mostly to watch from my desk chair. Not long after the spider finished its handiwork, it darted into the door ( Read more... )

Andy and I celebrated six months together today. Last November, we had our first "official" date, so we planned all sorts of commemorative activities for this afternoon and evening ( Read more... )

After a long day of research and writing, I'm relaxing to a bit of the 1993 The Three Musketeers, my very favorite guilty-pleasures movie of all time. Andy likes it far more than he's ready to admit at this point. After five or six more viewings, he'll be prepared to embrace it for the masterpiece that it is. I don't know how many times Ann and I ( Read more... )