Brown

Apart from my jeans, which I wear every day (not the same pair, obviously), all the clothes I wear fall into the brown/cream colour palette. I've been wearing these colours almost exclusively for a couple of years now, and when I'm out shopping I rarely even look at something if it's not in that part of the colour spectrum.

Until today. I'm going out this evening and I realised that I don't have any smart-ish trousers that I can wear with heels - a few pairs started out as dress trousers, but I managed to shrink most of them in the wash so they're now short length instead of medium length. So I went to Marks & Spencer this afternoon on the quest for a new outfit. I made three trips to the fitting rooms, trying on trousers and tops of all different colours and styles; I even took stuff into the fitting room that, on first glance, I wouldn't be seen dead in, because I know I'm not great at visualising how clothes will look on me as opposed to on the hanger. So after well over an hour and having tried on almost 30 pieces of clothing, this is what I came away with: -

Brown trousers
Cream blouse
Light brown sweater
Brown shoes

and, wait for it: -

Dark pink top

But now that I've got it home, I've changed my mind about the top so I'm going to take it back.

If you thought last week was boring

This week it's been more of the same (no headaches thankfully), except I didn't get to go out for dinner.

Ben, my personal trainer, has got me writing down everything I eat and drink so he can make suggestions on how to improve my nutrition. It has actually made me start to eat better - the stark reality of seeing 'half packet chocolate chip cookies' in black and white and knowing that someone else will judge me on it has made me more careful about what I eat. Or at least, what I admit to eating :).

It has also made me realise that for a vegetarian, I eat very little in the way of fruit and vegetables, particularly fruit. Must try harder there. I made up a batch of vegetable soup tonight that I can take into the office, so that's a start, and I'll try and remember to have a piece of fruit as a snack at least once a day. The trouble is, I can take or leave apples, and I don't like pears or bananas, so I find it hard to get excited about picking up a piece of fruit and eating it like everyone else does. Maybe a smoothie would do the trick.

Talking of blenders (almost), when I was making my vegetable soup this evening I spooned it into the blender and when I turned it on, the lid came off and splatted cabbage, onions and peppers all over my extractor fan and splashback. But the cleaner's coming tomorrow ;).

Go Tell Aunt Nancy

I taught my first piano lesson in about 13 years on Saturday morning. When I was a kid, I took recorder and piano lessons all the way through secondary school, and my recorder teacher, who was excellent, started to get more requests for lessons than she had time to give, so she asked if I wanted to teach some of the newbies. I did it for about 4 years altogether, from the age of about 14 to 18, and by the time I came to doing my A-levels I had quite a few pupils, learning recorder and piano - kids who were on the waiting list for my teacher, plus kids from the village, etc. I only gave lessons between 4pm and 5.30pm (after school and before meal time), but I did it most days after school and my earnings ended up paying for two trips to the USA, so I didn't do too badly out of it.

Then I went to university and all my pupils went to different teachers. Between then and last November, I didn't have a piano to be able to teach (it's still required for non-piano lessons), but I was asked recently to take on a relative newbie because her teacher is struggling so much with morning sickness that she had had to postpone all her morning teaching until she's past the sicky stage of her pregnancy.

So I have a temporary pupil. We're only at the very beginnings of learning to play the piano - thumb on middle C, fingers on the next four notes - and it's her first musical instrument so not only do I have to teach the piano, I also have to teach the basics of music, so there's lots of talk of treble and bass clefs, beats in the bar, minims and crotchets etc. But so far so good.

And the going rate for a half-hour lesson has almost doubled since I last did any teaching :).

Nothing to see here

Saturday: Unpack, gym, four loads of washing, tidy up the house, trip to supermarket, bed at 21:00;
Sunday: Gym, 3-foot tall pile of ironing, more tidying up, church in the evening then Chinese takeaway (diet starts tomorrow), bed at 22:00;
Monday: Work, gym, stir fry for dinner, catch up on two episodes of Ugly Betty, talk to Mum and Jen on the phone, bed at 21:30;
Tuesday: Gym, work, soup for dinner, catch up on two episodes of Desperate Housewives, bed at 21:30;
Wednesday: PT Session (circuits - half-dead afterwards), work, frittata for dinner, blinding headache so 2 painkillers and bed at 20:15;
Thursday: No gym today (arms don't function after yesterday), work, out for dinner with Ben and his parents, bed at 22:00;
Today: Off sick with another appalling headache, need to go to supermarket later today, then risotto for dinner and early to bed.

So apart from the dinner last night, not the most exciting of weeks. Things are looking up, though - I've got 3 more loads of washing and ironing to do and the freezer to defrost this weekend.

It really is an emergency, honest

I was surfing my way through the BBC website earlier and came across an article that said a police force in Scotland was again reminding people only to use the emergency 999 phone number to make emergency calls. Apparently this latest reminder stemmed from the fact that a woman who had bought a pet rabbit via an advert in the newspaper called 999 to say that the rabbit's ears weren't floppy.

The article goes on to say that another woman called 999 to complain that a car had driven through a puddle and soaked her, and when the call centre staff told her she shouldn't use 999 for that type of call, she hurled abuse at them.

I did some more research and found some other examples of inappropriate 999 calls:

• "Do you know a good stain remover?"
• "There's a rat in my kitchen"
• "I can't turn my tap off"
• "I think my neighbour is a spy"
• "My wife's gone out and there's no food in the house"
• "What year did the Internet start?"

I don't know whether to laugh or cry at my fellow human beings.

Welcome to the Sixties

The last call on the whistle-stop tour of the West End was Hairspray on Saturday night at the Shaftesbury Theatre. We deliberately picked Spamalot as the one we would see at the matinee performance because we knew that understudies tend to play the matinees, and out of the three shows, that was the one we would be least disappointed to see the understudy in one of the main parts. As it turned out, the only understudy we saw all weekend was Charlotte Riby in the role of Tracy Turnblad on Saturday night, in place of Leanne Jones, who won the Best Actress Olivier Award for this part earlier this year, but we needn't have worried - Charlotte was fantastic. And besides, the most important thing was seeing Michael Ball in the role of Edna, and he didn't disappoint. I guess you could say that Michael Ball is the British equivalent of someone like Donny Osmond - he has large fan club, mainly composed of middle-aged women, but I think seeing him in 3-inch heels and wearing a fat suit would probably take the edge off the attraction, even for die-hard fans :).

Although on the surface it's a 'bubblegum' musical full of feel-good music, it does deal very honestly with the issue of segregation in 1960s America. The show also challenged me on a level I never expected: the first song is 'Good Morning Baltimore', where Tracy sings about the fact that she wakes up every morning excited about the day ahead and eager to find out what might be in store for her. It made me wonder why I don't get up and say 'Good Morning Southampton', at least if not literally then metaphorically. There's loads in my life to be thankful for, and yet I invariably start the day cursing that I have to go to the gym, or complaining about the weather, or wishing I could stay in bed an hour longer. I should start looking at things more positively: half of the world's population has to make do with living on less than a dollar a day, but I'm part of the half that doesn't, and I don't stop and think often enough about how many good things I have in my life. Of course, I don't expect an opportunity as life-changing as helping to eradicate segregation will come along every day, but perhaps I could keep an eye out for the smaller opportunities and take advantage of them more often...

Back to the show. As I mentioned, the songs are all so uplifting that it's hard not to like it, even if you're not a fan of musicals. We thoroughly enjoyed the show and I would definitely pay to see it again.

I'm a vegetarian - not that keen on Spam

After a morning of looking round Camden Market and bridesmaid dress hunting on Oxford Street, Saturday afternoon saw us at the Palace Theatre for the matinee of Spamalot, which describes itself as 'lovingly ripped off from the motion picture; sets musical theatre back a thousand years'. The title comes from a line in one of the songs, where the knights sing 'we eat ham, and jam, and Spam a lot.'

It's the story of King Arthur (played by Sanjeev Bhaskar, who was excellent) and his Knights of the Round Table as they set out to find the Holy Grail - which turns out to be in a very interesting place, but I won't say where in case you go and see it. There are lots of laugh-out-loud moments in the show, like when King Arthur rides onto the stage with his servant Patsy, who's making clip-clip noises with two coconut halves because they don't have an actual horse, which gives rise to a discussion about where a Briton in the year 932 AD would get a coconut from (perhaps two swallows carried it from warmer climbs while migrating back to Britain for the summer), and there are some very blatant yet very funny digs at established Broadway/West End musicals, including 'The Song That Goes Like This', which includes all the elements of a Broadway song between the romantic leads - a sickly-sweet tune, lots of key changes and high notes, furtive looks and a kiss at the end.

I enjoyed this show, am glad I saw it and would recommend it if you're looking for the lighter side of West End musicals, but I wouldn't see it again. A musical has to move me in some way - either to tears, as in the case of shows like Blood Brothers, Les Miserables or Miss Saigon, or to a greater appreciation of someone or something, as Evita, Jersey Boys and Buddy do, or else it should uplift me, like The Lion King, Joseph and Hairspray (more on that one later) do. Spamalot did none of those things. It succeeded in its primary goal, which was to make me laugh, and it didn't pretend to do anything more than that, but for me, I'd need something else to make me see it again. But if you are looking for a less hardcore introduction to the West End, this is definitely right up your street.

Go, Go, Go, Joseph

Last weekend was Jen's birthday present from me - we met up in London for the weekend and saw three shows: Joseph on Friday night, Spamalot on Saturday afternoon and Hairspray on Saturday night.

I arrived in London about half an hour before Jen did, so I had just enough time to get to the hotel and check in before walking up to Leicester Square tube station to meet her. We had a quick meal at Bella Italia and walked over to the Adelphi theatre. When we were at school we had both been involved in a production of Joseph, and even 20 years later (yes, something else I just realised was 20 years ago already) I found that I could remember most of the words - including all the colours of the dreamcoat ;). This actually turned out to be quite a good thing for me, because in my opinion the orchestra was a bit too loud for the singers and the words were lost in places. This was particularly obvious in the second half when Pharaoh sang a song that wasn't in the original show, so I didn't know the words, and I barely caught any of them. I thought that was a real shame, particularly for the people in the audience who hadn't played Naphtali, one of the twelve brothers, in a school production (there weren't enough boys...) and didn't already know the words, but everyone seemed to enjoy themselves anyway.

Joseph was played by Lee Mead, who got the part through 'Any Dream Will Do', one of those awful 'reality TV' talent shows that seem to have permeated every echelon of society. I absolutely despise those shows - anything that involves people being eliminated or call-in phone numbers for people to vote does not go down well with me - and I felt that I was paying a premium for the tickets because the 'People's Joseph' was in it, so I would love to be able to say that he was only OK in the role, but in all honesty he was very good indeed (and of course, if I had wanted to protest my disgust at TV talent shows, I could always have boycotted Joseph and booked tickets for something else entirely, but the truth was I was looking forward to hearing all the songs again). But my favourite people in the show were the 30 or so school kids who sat at each side of the stage and sang all the chorus parts. The set was great - it looked a bit like a giant picture frame tilted slightly backwards. I would definitely recommend the show - although if you're not bothered for seeing Lee Mead, wait until he's finished his run and they have a less famous actor in the role; the ticket prices will probably go down...

The Joy of Air Travel

I'll blog this week about the fab weekend I've just had in London with Jen but I wanted to get this off my chest in the meantime...

I flew with Rob and Adrian from Southampton to Linz in Austria yesterday, via Frankfurt. Because our flights weren't with code-sharing airlines (SOU-FRA was with Flybe, and FRA-LNZ was with Lufthansa), we had to pick up our bags in Frankfurt as if we were ending our journey, then check them onto our Linz flight as if it were a new journey. We were happy to do this as there was a decent layover time between flights, and the only alternative was to go to Heathrow and fly to Frankfurt then on to Linz from there, which took exactly the same length of time as the Southampton option once you'd factored in 1.5 hours to get to Heathrow.

The flight from Southampton to Frankfurt was fairly uneventful - unless you count me being very thoroughly frisked at security; I swear the woman thought I was carrying explosives in my underwires. We arrived into Terminal 2 at Frankfurt and picked up our bags from the carousel. We knew we had to get to Terminal 1 for our next flight, so we followed the signs for the Air Train that runs between the terminals. When we got to the train stop at Terminal 1, we were immediately asked for our flight documentation, which we produced. Then straight after that we had to go through security, which I thought was a bit weird, because I still had my suitcase with me, but I didn't consider it altogether strange - when Jen and I had come back from Turkey in May, the airport at Bodrum scanned all luggage, including suitcases destined for the hold, at the front door of the airport, so I figured they were just doing the same thing here.

Until a woman behind the scanner looked at me and asked if this was my suitcase, to which I replied Yes. She opened it up, went straight for my toiletry bag, pulled out a 250ml bottle of conditioner and a very expensive aerosol can of heat-protecting spray for when I'm using my hair straighteners, and gave me the look. You know, the look that says 'the rules about liquids have been in place for over two years, what planet have you been on?'

'Yes,' I said.

She looked at me again. 'You can't take this onto the plane'.

'I don't intend to, I haven't even got to check-in yet,' I replied. 'I'm going to put my bag in the hold'.

'But this is the last line of security before you get on the plane,' she said, 'you should have checked in while you were in Terminal 2.'

I was getting quite annoyed now, and told her I had never in my life had to check in at a different terminal from the one I was leaving from, but nevertheless she told me that that was what I had to do if I wanted to get my over-sized bottles and illegal hand-luggage items past her and into the terminal. I asked her where the signs were that told me to check in before transferring terminals and she said, and I quote:

'There aren't any signs because this is is just a temporary measure. Normally you check in at Terminal 1.'

My patience was truly being tested at this point, to the extent that Rob (who, incidentally, had managed to make his way past the scanner while carrying a 250ml bottle of shampoo of his own) came back over to where I was standing and tried to get me to calm down. My protestations at my predicament and suggestions that temporary measures be accompanied by temporary signage seemed to fall on deaf ears, so in the end I admitted defeat and told the woman to throw away my toiletries, hoping that Eva would have some conditioner I could use. I was just about to ask the woman why it was that she would confiscate those two things, yet leave me with a razor and a pair of nail scissors in my luggage, but I figured that drawing her attention to those items could only end badly for me, so I decided to cut my losses and keep quiet.

Once in Terminal 1, every Lufthansa check-in desk we got to was completely deserted. Rob ended up asking two separate people wearing Lufthansa uniforms where we should check in. They both said that we could check in at our gate, so we went off upstairs to gate B7 and asked the man on the desk if we could check in here. He looked at us quizzically and said 'Yes, I suppose so... You haven't checked in downstairs already?'

Sigh.

Old

Is it just me, or is time passing more quickly these days? I just realised it's 20 years this week since I started secondary school. A couple of months ago I found it difficult enough to believe that it's 10 years since I got back from my year abroad in Italy, but 20 years since I started secondary school has hit me pretty hard. However, unlike my colleague Gary, I'm not old enough to remember what I was doing when Kennedy was shot...

Victoria

I went back to the bridal shops yesterday with Mum and Jen and tried on the 3 shortlisted dresses, Cilla, Beatrice and Annette. Then I tried on a different one, Victoria, that I hadn't even tried on on Saturday, and bought that one instead ;).

I fully expected to buy one of the Saturday dresses, but when I put them on again yesterday I didn't like them as much as I had at the weekend. I had a fairly fitful night's sleep last night, because I kept dreaming that I went back to look at the dress I'd bought and, as with the others, realised I didn't like it as much any more but there was nothing I could do about it because I'd bought it now. It was only a dream, though - I had a look at the photos of it this morning (they let us take photos once we'd decided we were going to buy it) and am really pleased with my choice.