SPORTING QUESTIONS

My lack of interest in sport does tend to bring up a lot more questions that it answers, not least because, in a lot of cases, I really don’t have a clue who most of the people being talked about are, and what it is that they are supposed to have done to earn the respect, awe and high esteem with which many people seem to regard them.

“Do you regard me with dread…?”

“No… With astonishment…!”

Such matters can lead to all manner of awkward situations when I fail to recognise those faces who seem so familiar to almost everyone else and my own ignorance of such matters is exposed for what it is.

Obviously, if I wanted to, I could research all of this and find out more, but I really am no interested enough and, to be perfectly frank, would generally prefer not to “know who THAT is” when they’re right in front of me and getting “in my way…”

Of course, the whole world of sport is constantly and perhaps inadvertently conjuring up a whole wealth of profound and strangely fascinating questions which probably ought to be answered if we felt the need to.

Questions like “Is Manchester United…?”

“Is Oldham Athletic…?”

“Are there many Wolverhampton Wanderers…?”

“Is that Professor across the room a Hamilton Academical…?”

“Who exactly is the Queen of the South…?”

“Stanley, have you ever visited Accrington, Stanley…?”

Some of the many personalities also seem to bring with them a whole host of worrying questions, too…

“What gives Tiger Woods…?”

“Was Curtis Strange…?”

“Was Billie Jean King…?”

“Was Niki Lauda…?” (And what exactly was he louder than…?)

“Did Martina Never-rat-a-lover…?”

“Was Virginia Wade…?” (And how much did she weigh…?)

“Never mind his ability to drive, can that Nigel Mansell…?”

“Was Ricky Ponting?”

“Did Jimmy Connors?”

“How do I get to Graham Hill?”

“How highly polished is a Barry Sheene?”

“How secure are Gordon Banks?”

“Was George Best?”

“She is a nice girl, but can Eric Cantona?”

“Did you train weekly or Daley, Thomson?”

“Did Zola Budd?”

“As well as being a Cricketer, was Phil Tufn’all?”

“Was there ever a Geoffrey Boycott?”

Finally (you’ll no doubt be pleased to hear), my inner geek is almost duty bound to ask: “Was Bjorn Borg?” (“Resistance is futile!”)

This frivolous piece of nonsense was, of course, all inspired by my own ’umble contributions to a recent Twittergame, and why ever not…?

After all, you do have to take your inspiration from wherever you can find it and it does, of course, demonstrate once and for all the limits of my own (very) small spectrum of sporting knowledge…

THAT LIZARD THING

To be honest it gave me quite a fright at first.

Perhaps I’m just very stupid or perhaps (and I prefer to think this…) I was just very tired after a long day at work, but when I spotted the creature just lying there on its back right at the edge of the pavement and within a stone’s throw of my own front door I did let out an involuntary yelp of… astonishment perhaps…?

Not fear, oh no! I’m far too proud to admit it might have been actually scary, not now that I’ve had time to think about it.

“What the hell is THAT?” my mind may have been screaming at that precise moment, but I’m still astute enough to know that it’s probably best to look twice before ringing the church bells, rounding up the villagers, lighting up the torches and marching on the Town Hall demanding action be taken.

So I looked again.

It hadn’t moved in the full ten seconds I’d been palpitating, so it seemed safe enough to do so, so I did with all the bravery of the idiot in those films who you find yourself bellowing at exasperatedly to “Run away you idiot! Why do they never just run away…?”

On closer inspection, there was something artificial-looking about the feet and I managed to unclench various parts of my anatomy when I realised that it was just a lost or discarded toy.

I’m not sure what kind of child would come to love such a strange and bizarre creature as this is, but it takes all sorts and it is rather a comfort to know that even the oddest looking creatures can find unconditional love somewhere.

Mind you, they didn’t quite love it enough not to lose it and leave it lying there in the rain… Perhaps a blind eye was being turned here…?

“Uh-oh! She’s dropped the ghastly looking thing… Keep walking, keep walking…”

After a moment more of contemplating the thing in order to just convince myself that it really was a toy and not some strange infestation of bizarrely large lizards which seemed unlikely for the brink of Lesser Blogfordshire to be perfectly honest, I unholstered my telephone and grabbed just the sort of blurry evidence that was once so very much loved by the kind of publications which claimed to have compelling evidence of Bigfoot or UFOs.

Just as another local woman walked past and wondered what it was I was taking a picture of…

“What on Earth is it…?” she asked with that fleeting yet familiar look of terror on her face which I was now, of course, able to be quite blasé about, despite having been wearing a similar one myself mere moments before.

“It’s just a toy… just a toy!” I was able to reassure her as she went on her way.

Well, I say “reassure”, but perhaps, as she headed homewards, she was possibly wondering more alarming thoughts about the strange man bothering to take a picture of such a thing than about the giant, soggy, and quite dead looking lizard creature itself which had until recently seemed so alarming to her.

VERBAL DIARRHOEA

I do try and keep it brief you know…? Every time I start one of these I swear that I’m not going to ramble on and on like I usually do, but instead I will, I really will, keep it brief and to the point.

Not least because it would be so much easier to find the time to rattle out just a paragraph or three each morning, rather than the carefully honed essays that I try and persuade myself I’m creating for your delectation and delight.

Brevity is the source of wit, and all that…

Mind you, there’s a massively presumptive “your” in that paragraph anyway.

Obviously, I’m creating it for my own delectation and delight really. Anyone else reading these ramblings is usually just a happy accidental visitor at best, and a poor, lost soul who’s strayed far from their preferred path at worst.

There are exceptions of course.

Those poor, misguided creatures who deliberately venture into these dark corners each and every day, seeking out whatever it is that they are searching for in these (usually less than wise or especially erudite) words that I burble out for no very good reason every so often.

Of course you could argue that in order to make it worth anyone’s while to actually turn up and have a read, I do need to be giving them something that makes it worth the trip, and that I ought to be terribly nice to them for continually making the effort, and, of course, I am exceedingly grateful to them for doing so, even though I do have a slight tendency to be less than tactful in my dealings with them.

As you can see…

After all, if I keep on suggesting that it might not be the wisest of options to come here, they are patently likely to decide not to do so and, in all honesty, who could blame them…?

Perhaps we’ve all learned something profound today about the tortured nature of the resient wordsmith…?

Or perhaps we’ve not…

Oh well, if nothing else, at least I might finally be able to spell the word “diarrhoea” properly the next time I’m asked…

So that’s something to look forward to, isn’t it boys and girls…?

You see? Maybe your visit was worthwhile after all…

COFFIN

“It wasn’t the coughing that carried him off, it was the coffin they carried him off in…”

We’re well in to January now and the cold I started with on or about New Year’s Eve is still hanging on and making me feel miserable.

Well, to be honest, a LOT of things are making me feel pretty miserable at the moment, but the persistence of this cold, and the accompanying cough, is pretty much being the icing on that particular cake…

It comes… It goes… It comes back again…

I’m sure that I’m not the only one of course, just as I’m convinced that the minute this cold, damp, nasty little spell of weather goes away, and a ray or two of sunshine his my craggy, potato-like bonce, the memory of even having had a cough will miraculously fade away like a summer cloud and I will emerge blinking into the sunlight and wonder quite what I was making all the fuss about.

Of course, having such a thing does cause me to wonder, however, about the basic “common sense” of many of my fellow inhabitants of this great country of ours. There used to be national campaigns which had memorable slogans like:

“Coughs and sneezes spread diseases! Trap them in your handkerchief!”

Which managed to seep surreptitiously into the national subconscious but which we kind of listened too. Then it seems it was decided that we were all far too clever and sophisticated and didn’t need to be told such things because we all had basic common sense and it was all far too obvious.

Tell that to the bloke coughing all over me on the Tube last week…

While you’re at it, you should also try to drum some common sense into the silhouettes whom I drive past who never seem to have got that other little message that was drummed into us when we were younger…

“Wear something white… or carry a newspaper… Be seen… Be safe…”

Meanwhile, until the glorious day comes when the sunlight dapples upon my upturned face and the germs all scurry away back to where they came from, my conversations are likely to be interrupted by these hacking, grating, rasping bouts of coughing that simply refuse to stop as I try and get my words out, and, I have no doubt, sound delightful to whichever unfortunate happens to be within earshot or hanging around at the other end of a telephone line.

It’s an unusual ailment in that sometimes it seems as if we’ve forgotten about each other altogether, and veritable hours can go by without my making a single squeak.

At other times, it’s like there’s a demon lurking at the back of my throat and poking it with a stick or tickling it with a particularly annoying feather.

And then (and there’s no way of putting this delicately) there’s the occasional mouthful of gunky mucus to dispose of, if that’s not too unappealing an image for you to conjure with on this fine and lovely grey morning…

Ah yes, that old problem; Whether to swallow it or spit it out….?

That, of course, is never an easy call, but you know that it’s far better to get the wretched stuff out of you than to have it lurking somewhere and trying its very damnedest to infect something else inside your body in that oh-so-sociable manner that these diseases have.

Of course the other knotty little problem that I’m having to cope with is the fact that having a sore throat does mean that it is where it is, and so does tend to affect my ability to taste anything, and consequently, my appetite is severely lacking at the moment, meaning that taking in the basic foodstuffs which might just help me to feel better seems so utterly unappealing that I seem to have adopted a new policy of trying to starve the ruddy germs out of my body.

Yesterday lunchtime I stared at a loaf of bread with a view to having some toast, and the memory of the flavour and the mere prospect of eating some more of it so filled me with horror that I simply brewed up a cup of tea instead, which is hardly enough to keep body and soul together, but does have the advantage of not stimulating those “cough” muscles like any actual food seems to…

Except, as I found to my cost half way up the stairs, it still does, and I really think that there ought to be a new word created to describe the tricky little dance of trying to keep the hot liquid inside the mug as you are maintaining your balance on a staircase and simultaneously coughing up a lung.

A hacker…? A Paso Tissue…? The Kha, kha, kha…? Wasn’t there a book called “The Coughin’ Dancer…?

Meanwhile, while you think about that, here’s a new variation on an old adage…

“Cough, cough, go away… I’m sure you’ll be back another day…”

Especially if I have to go on any more trains…

BLUE SKIES

The sun is out, the sky is blue...

We really ought to make to most of it now that we've got it...

And yet...

Isn't it funny how you start to miss the snow almost as soon as it's disappeared...?

I'm a really fickle creature, me...

Really fickle...

SNOWFALL

Funny stuff, snow…

I could, of course, claim that I have a “love/hate” relationship with the wretched stuff. At least I could if I hadn’t resolved to try not to “hate” anything any more, and that whenever it starts to fall it causes me to feel utterly miserable.

Oh, it’s pretty enough, I know, and there is something rather wonderfully therapeutic about watching the large flakes as they tumble towards the ground as a gentle snow flurry passes by, and of course, for those whose lives are blighted by having young people to entertain it is a blissful distraction and an opportunity to get creative in a very “hands-on” kind of a way.

And a good blanket of snow can make even the most unpromising of landscapes look rather beautiful for a while. At least until it all gets grey and slushy and filthy after a couple of days or so. As anywhere gets coated with a beautiful and transforming coating of this most natural of wonders, any old landscape can suddenly seem quite astonishingly pretty and mesmerising, which can make even the most unskilled of photographers able to create an image that might be considered half decent to the untrained eye.

Last year I managed to spend a day in Yosemite Park just as it got hit by its first snowstorm in months and the results were both spectacular and stunning if also more than a tad chilly and soggy.

So far, I’m really not making the “anti” argument fly really, am I?

So why does snowfall depress me so…?

Is it possibly because I live upon the very brink of the countryside in one of those areas that suddenly becomes a right royal pain to get about in if the roads are all suddenly snarled up…?

Possibly…

Is it because I tend to head out at such an ungodly hour that everything is still frozen and the streets are lethal to move about on…?

Very likely.

The problem really is that whenever it starts to snow and the “Oohs!”  and the “Aahs!” and the exclamations of “Isn’t is all so pretty?” are ringing in my ears, I’m just thinking that my days are about to become seriously annoying and life is about to get harder, and every surface I venture upon whenever I choose to venture outdoors is about to become dangerous and treacherous and everything I have to do in order to live my life, from just getting to work to buying a loaf of bread, is going to start to get really, really annoying…

Not only that but I run the risk of having lumps of the stuff chucked at me by complete strangers who claim that they are “Only having a laugh” whilst annoying people can either find nothing at all else to talk about, or suddenly develop a desire to hurtle downhill fast upon a piece of plastic for no very good reason, or complain about the fact that by the time they had managed to acquire a sled of some kind the snow had already vanished.

“It’s snowing!”

“Bloody marvellous!”

“Don’t be such a grouch!”

“Bah!”

No, you can keep it.

A fall of snow might very well be your particular “bag” and fill you and yours with a great deal of happiness, but don’t expect me to be very happy about it when it happens.

THE ICE STORM COMETH

“It doesn’t seem too bad” I said down the telephone, “in fact it sounds as if it might be raining…”

And so, ten minutes or so later, I headed out for what I hoped would be, at worst, a twenty minute round trip to the station wearing my YakTrax over my boots to cope with the settled ice, and a mere two jackets over my jumper.

Which is why, ten minutes later, I was sitting shivering in a car park in a hailstorm waiting for an indefinitely delayed train and finding that to be really no fun at all as I pondered upon my inability to shift my cold and whether this sort of thing was contributing to that…

Another message told me that a points failure at the train’s ultimate destination meant that two trains were currently “blocking the line” after the stop I was still waiting at. It was, coincidentally, waiting “indefinitely” at a stop quite nearby to where my mother remains in hospital, ironically on a day I’d decided not to visit but instead to have a quiet night in.

I did wonder why they couldn’t let it come through and wait at this stop seeing as that bit of track was currently clear, but that kind of logic only really works if you’re sitting in a car moping and failing to see the “bigger picture…”

I did wonder whether our early evening “special treat” venture to the local curry house, which we’d tentatively planned, after my beloved had endured a particularly busy and grotty week of extended working days, was still on the cards… and presumed that it wasn’t…

I did also wonder about that argument that we should all get rid of our cars and use public transport and how that works on a night like this and where the transport system would be if it couldn’t rely upon us to back it up every once in a while…

After failing to get a signal to tell the world how miserable I was feeling (because that always helps), I briefly trotted out into the hailstones to see if there was any further information on the screens.

The automated voice announced that “The next train to arrive would be the delayed 19:25 service…” so I soggily returned to the car, shook some of the ice from my hair and rang back to ask if the message was referring to them…

It wasn’t. Their train hadn’t budged an inch.

After another shivery half an hour or so, another message confirmed the worst, that the train had been officially “terminated” right where it had been sitting for the past forty minutes and wasn’t likely to be going anywhere.

I also suspected that the promised “later services” were likely to be heading in anything like this direction any time soon either, and started the car, set the demisters and the wipers to full, and set off to drive to where I should have done earlier if I’d been able to see which way the wind was blowing…

Well, it was quite dark…

Of course, there had been the risk of setting off only to arrive and find that the train had actually finally left, or to have missed a message saying that it had now stopped again at one of the stations in between, or all manner of other logistical possibilities which turn up when you’re alone in a car and driving it through an ice storm and really not inclined to answer a telephone even if it does ring.

It was gone nine o’clock when we finally arrived home, soggy, cold, and clutching a hastily bought bag of chips…

This is our world, and welcome to it.

MOORE MYSTERY

One of the wicked temptations of going to the big city is the W H Smiths on Euston Station if you suddenly find you’ve got half an hour to spare before your train is likely to be boarding. So it was with me this time and I happened upon the latest edition of “The Sky at Night” magazine which was, of course, its “tribute” issue to Sir Patrick Moore.

Whilst I was mulling over whether or not I ought to buy that, given that I had a book in my pocket and that morning’s “Metro” still to read, as well as a colleague who might have been in the mood for an “After-Show” chat, I also noticed the “Special Edition” celebrating his life which was sitting next to it on the magazine racks and so, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, I simply had to, had to, get both, so I picked them up, went over to the counter and paid for them with the last of my cash.

To be fair, I did, at least, resist the other “Special Edition” that was also sitting nearby; Their “Guide to Astronomical Photography” (but I guess there’s still time for me to change my mind about that…)

Anyway, I managed to get onto my train and our seat allocations meant that my colleague was far enough away from me to be able escape my mutterings and musings and try to have a nap, so I opened up my shiny new magazines to have a bit of a read…

Tucked inside the front of my freshly bought “Special Edition” was a hand-written note which was dated nearly two weeks earlier and said:

“Robert, In a moment of madness I bought this from W H Smiths today for you. I am, you may be surprised, watching the Astronomy Series on BBC2 – Absolutely fascinating (Some info way beyond me!) Some learned odd looking bods. Cx”

“That’s odd…” I thought.

Did this mean that my exciting new purchase was actually second-hand?

Had “Robert” or “C” returned it to the W H Smiths for a refund…?

Had W H Smiths managed to sell the thing twice…? (I know that there’s a recession on, but really…)

Then there were other possibilities to consider…

Had “Robert” been so appalled by this mad old gesture that he had returned the magazine to the racks rather than admit to some kind of connection to the thoughtful “C”…?

Had “C” suddenly had a change of heart having decided to buy this token, and thought better of publicly admitting to some kind of affection for “Robert”…?

It seemed odd to me that someone would tuck a note inside such a thing (even if they intended it as a gift) before they actually paid for it, even if they had suddenly found that they didn’t have enough pennies with them when they got to the counter.

Perhaps there are mysterious forces afoot in the lives of “Robert” and “C”…? Perhaps they are having some kind of illicit affair and a strong dose of common sense finally overtook the momentary rush of blood to the head of this rash opportunity to make a public display of their previously strictly private liaisons with all its attendant risks of finally providing hard evidence…?

Or maybe “Robert” doesn’t even know that he is the object of someone else’s affections and “C” suddenly got cold feet…

Maybe “C” just dropped the thing as she was dashing for a train and someone just popped it back onto the racks...?

After all those other ideas, that would be all rather mundane and disappointing, wouldn’t it…?

So many possibilities, so many strange “goings on” in the world of Amateur Astronomy, it almost leaves you giddy at the intrigue and deviousness that could be going on somewhere in the great unknown…

It will, I’m sure, remain a mystery, but it added a few minutes of allowing my imagination to roam free as I made my journey home…

THE HOVERCLASS AND HOW I GOT TO IT

You know how sometimes you remember things quite vividly, but you’re not quite sure where from and whether you actually just made it up…?

Maybe that’s just me then…?

Anyway, recently I was thinking about hovercraft when I was suddenly struck by the most extraordinary memory of a hovercraft story that I once read in an annual I had when I was growing up.

A swift search on Google (other search engines are available) was enough to make me believe that I’d imagined the whole thing, as I couldn’t find a trace of it anywhere, which is, of course, unusual in this day and age. As the mysterious (and usually quite wrong) masses tend to have you believe, “If it isn’t on the web, then it probably never existed, etc.” which is, of course, nonsense.

Thinking about it afterwards, I realised that it was probably in one or other of the 1960’s “Beano” Books which I had as a small boy and which I rather unwisely swapped many years ago for a paperback copy of “The Making of Space: 1999” which I coveted and craved at some point in the mid-1970s.

I suspect this was a pretty poor deal, given the current going rate for 1960s “Beano” Books, but you swaps your stuff and you makes your choice, and sometimes you live to regret it. Perhaps those volumes lurk as a bit of a “rainy day” nest-egg for whoever it was I made the swap with, or maybe they just threw them in a bin twenty years ago…

Who can tell…?

Anyway, with no idea of what the story was called, or any idea of which annual it was in, I was rather stumped, and my tentative requests to my rather paltry list of socially-networked chums didn’t get me much response. Then I remembered that I “followed” my local second-hand bookshop on FizzBok, and so, on the off-chance that they might just have some in stock to flick through, I dropped them a swift (and probably quite cheeky when you think about it…) line, seeing as I didn’t have any chums whom I was aware might be collectors of such things, and didn’t really feel like paying through the nose online for a copy of the “wrong” edition.

Anyway, they couldn’t help much, but ultimately they helped rather a lot. I ought to explain: You see, they did put me on to a “Beano” Comic Forum, which I was able to sign up for, after which I was able to ask the pertinent question. Sadly, one answer came that there was a “Beano” archive out there, but, rather unfortunately, it didn’t include the contents of the annuals.

In the meanwhile I did some more searching and found a Wikipedia page, which did list the contents of old “Beano” annuals, but was far from being comprehensive. This, I presume, is because the author only has access to whichever editions he has in his own collection, but also proves that if you do have any other copies, there’s a gap there that is available for filling, if you have a yen to do so.

Then I got a lucky break.

Thinking about things from another direction, I did another search, this time for the 1966 “Beano” Book, and this conjured up another archive, one for British Comics, which was being written out of pure love by a keen blogger who lives out there somewhere. Written in the list of contents for that particular volume was a story called “The Hoverclass” which seemed to be pretty likely to be exactly the story that I had been trying to remember.

Looking into that list also rekindled so many fond memories of all those “adventure” stories from that era; “The Iron Fish” (which I’d almost completely forgotten about); “The Q Bikes/Karts”; “General/Admiral Jumbo” (I SO wanted one of those aircraft carriers even though I’d’ve looked an idiot having one in our local park); and (of course) “Billy the Cat (& Katie)” all of which has gripped my young imagination in those far off years when I was knee-high to whatever…

Sadly, typing “The Hoverclass” into Google still didn’t get me any further, but I was able to update my posting on the “Beano” Forum with this vital piece of the jigsaw puzzle and this yielded spectacular results as someone was able to inform me that there was a “Members Only” Group out there who were archiving those old Annuals and scanning every page, and they were able to supply me with links to the entire sixteen page story that had stuck in my mind so vividly for all these years, despite me being unable to recall what the name of this one-off comic strip adventure was called.

It’s mildly interesting, I suppose, that when I was finally able to read back that story now, it all seems a little bit alarming really. After all, being written as it was during the era of the “White Heat of New Technology” it is a story packed full with fighter jets and snow cats and the rather spectacular appearance of a pirate submarine (perhaps that’s where my love of submarine stories began…?). These are all battling our plucky band of schoolmates, who have been dragged off to the south pole by their teacher on board a jet propelled hovercraft in search of their missing fathers, for control of a new source of Uranium.

It could never happen now…

Anyway, the piece that I wanted to write, all about hovercraft and other exciting technological innovations in fiction, and how they were used to try and make school teachers appear to be far more exciting than they otherwise might have been, the very thing which started off this train of thought, still hasn’t been written, and perhaps never will. But at least I now know that I wasn’t imagining things and there really was a story that I read as a small boy and which involved a large hovercraft full of children, and a huge cake of that very hovercraft being baked at the end…

But then, by telling you that, I’m spoiling the plot for you, aren’t I…?

NT LIVE: “THE MAGISTRATE”

I attended my third “NT Live” event last Thursday (Jan 17 2013), which was “The Magistrate” by Arthur Wing Pinero, and starred, amongst others, the well-known American actor John Lithgow.

Whilst I know that I’ve mentioned it before, for those of you who don’t know, these are events where a play is performed live in London in front of cameras which broadcast the entire show live or, in the case of places in different time zones, “as live” to various cinemas around the world so that many more of us can get the opportunity to see some of the rather incredible stage shows which get performed in the West End that we wouldn’t otherwise get the chance to.

Anyway, it really wasn’t a play I was all that familiar with, to be honest, but it turned out that it was a rather wonderful, witty and entertaining night out and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, despite all of the other stuff that we’re struggling to find time to deal with at the moment.

We even managed to find the time to sit down for a meal at a nearby Tapas place beforehand, which, given my recent struggles to find the time to actually eat, was something of a miracle.

To be honest, this was the first time that we’d attended one of these events at a different venue to the one we usually book for, mostly because this time the tickets were booked for us, and the venue we went to was nearer to the home of the person doing the booking, and the seating was deemed to be far more comfortable that the place we usually went to.

However, because it was a multiplex rather than an “Art House” cinema, they did seem to have less understanding of what the needs of a theatrical audience might be. After all, the whole notion of the “as live” experience is that the venue basically becomes a theatre for the night which ought to mean that late comers aren’t allowed in, and I will admit that the amount of chatter going on behind me did rather spoil the first five minutes for me as I couldn’t hear what the actors were saying because of some general mutterings about car parking, traffic and whatnot, which together with the little old lady who kept waving to her friend to let him know where she was sitting (right in front of me), and the woman who arrived and stood in front of me for a full minute as she removed her coat, it was all rather distracting.

During the interval some of the “old regulars” pulled out thermos flasks full of coffee rather than pay cinema prices for their massive cola drinks (which is not quite the same as slipping to the bar for a swift G‘n’T I’ll grant you), all this in a cinema that once hit the local headlines for refusing to let people bring in their own sweeties bought in the Tesco over the road.

Luckily, the show was brilliant enough to get beyond such distractions, with some wonderful lyrics written for the songs which covered the scene changes, some fabulous performances from the entire cast, although John Lithgow’s “silent comedy” routines with a bat and a leaning doorway – and his rather excellent accent - did rather steal the show.

It was beautifully designed too, with stunning costumes and the most ingenious sets based upon the idea of a Victorian pop-up book, all of which made the lapsed stage designer in me very envious indeed.

Anyway, I’m sure all of this means nothing to those of you who missed it, and the whole “NT Live” rights situation probably means that DVD releases remain unlikely unless enough people persuade them that there might just be a market for such things. If your appetite has been whetted, your best bet is probably keep hassling the website for a repeat showing (which they do occasionally do…) or hope against all hope that BBC4 (which feels like the natural home for such things) lasts long enough for them to consider showing a season of these plays in a couple of years or so.

MY DAY OUT IN WORDS

To be honest I really didn’t want to go this time.

I was still struggling to get rid of my New Year cold, there was still the ongoing minor family crisis, and when the weather took the turn for the worse that it did last week, and then stuck around getting even more worse than that, and so the prospect of dragging my weary bones all the way to London for the day for this year’s annual trade show really did not appeal.

After all, it was bad enough worrying about how and whether I was going to get there without facing the prospect of battling and struggling to get home again afterwards. Reports from the Capital implied that the transport system was struggling to cope and when your tickets have specific journeys printed upon them, things like connections can get a little too dicey for a punctuality-obsessed person like myself.

I vaguely remembered – possibly wildly inaccurately - that there had been some talk at one point about not “having” to go at all this year, but then the tickets got ordered so what could I do other than grin and bear it…?

And so, once again I faced a long hard day of travelling and trying as hard as I could to be vaguely sociable, after a lousy night’s sleep and a whole day of anxiety and trouble, simply to have the prospect of walking around an exhibition hall, finding out what all of our competitors are up to, and then feeling bad about it, and all with the added prospect of perhaps having to face some imagined fallout from some of the technical issues which we were aware had developed during last week’s final frenzied push to try and get everything done in time.

Basically, it was not expected to be the “fun day out” some might think it might be.

And then there was a quandary.

Would it be best to drive all the way to the main line station, risking rush-hour traffic jams in the ice and snow, but consequently not having to deal with possible cancellations of the local trains due to the adverse weather conditions and the horrors of late-night connections…?

Or would it be better to just catch the local train and live dangerously…?

After much dithering, I went with the train option, which did give me a rare opportunity to observe a woman doing her complete make-up routine, from pancake to final touches, whilst sitting upon a moving train.

Arriving at the main-line station, I had a forty-minute wait there rather than risking going to the city centre station and possibly missing my connection after enduring the “sardine can” effect that tends to happen after the intervening stops.

The train rolled in on time and, despite the snow and the ice, and I think for the first time ever, m’colleagues and myself all managed to actually end up travelling down on the same train at the same time, instead of one or other of us having a connection crisis and having to buy a brand new ticket in order to get there at all.

Granted, the vagaries of online booking meant that we didn’t get to sit together (which may have been very shrewd planning on someone’s part…) but we were all going in the same direction at the same time, even if our train was reportedly “back-to-front” with those of us in the common herd being, for once, in the carriages at the front of the train, and “first class” being at the back.

I did wonder how that could happen, given that the train runs backwards and forwards on rails between Manchester and London every day.

It must have been one heck of a skid…!

Anyway, we got to London with the staff apologising for the 15-minute lateness of our arrival which, given that the entire country was coated with snow at the time, seemed to be pretty impressive to be honest. We crossed London using the time-honoured tradition of Underground trains (in their 150th anniversary year… the Northern Line we were using being one of the oldest, as I was able to drearily explain from a factoid I learned from book I read last year) and the Docklands Light Railway with the opportunity it offers to jeer at the bank buildings.

We arrived to be greeted by the boss wearing an astonishingly colourful tie, and telling us jovially of “101 problems which might be about to become 102…” Later on he would tell us tales of the extortion being committed by the venue electricians demanding hundreds of pounds to install extra sockets which you could only use for the three days of the show’s duration before they took them away again, and the threats to not let you have any power at all if you refused to pay up.

Then it was the usual routine of going around the stands, looking at what everyone else is working upon, assessing your own relative professional shortcomings and hoping to improve upon them, eating an overpriced sandwich or two, and meeting and chatting to some old acquaintances, whilst also managing to not meet others who you heard were around but never actually ran into, despite it being a small and rather enclosed world…

Perhaps they tended to leap behind a handy pillar whenever they spotted me. After all, if I was better at recognising people, it’s what I would probably do...

A few hours later, I turned around and headed home again, stopping at a “Burger King” to buy that annual indulgence which I pay dearly for a dozen hours later, and arriving home completely exhausted around about ten o’clock at night and wondering, like I do each year, whether I get as much out of these events as I really ought to be doing…

MY DAY OUT IN PICTURES

Cold Steel

Virgin Pendolino

Ice Warning

Snow and Ice

Mist and Steam

Euston 15 Minutes Late

A glimpse of a landmark

Trade Show

Gaming Machines

A glimpse of the Thames (probably)

Wandering Traders

Trading and Telephones

Euston 17:38

Train Home Version 01

Train Home Version 02