Day in the Life #5

Asked by my mum this morning if I wanted to go to Rufford Park with her, my dad, my aunts, uncle and grand dad for a walk. She suggested I could come and take pretty pictures. Almost decided to until I realised that my camera batteries were dead anyway. Thus stayed in bed for a while before getting up doing my usual internet stuff and then making a big breakfast of smoothie and porridge. Decided to be indulgent and eat it while watching SATC. While I was getting the DVD my dad came into the living room. Completely the wrong SATC to watch with him present – Samantha blowing random delivery guys, Miranda getting head from a guy who ends up with her all over him… fortunately my dad walked put about half way through and I was able to relax and watch the rest.

Bath. Saul calls and asks if I want to come to Oxford. Today. His brother is leaving and thus he has the room all to himself. Dinner and a night with him at the Old Parsonage is tempting… but I’d made plans to go to the theatre with my cousin. Being asked at 2pm to make it to Oxford this evening is also kind of short notice – I have a life! Can’t drop everything at the last minute and run. Still… hmm. I guess I’d been ambivalent about going in the first place, as I think he had about me being there – it being a big old family thing and all, but I have a feeling wires got crossed, and we were both a bit unsure of what the other had been thinking too.

Dressed. Town with my mum. Not really in a shopping mood. Eventually break for coffee. Watch as my mum gleefully fills in a complaints card – I think it cheers her up, and to be fair, the service had hardly been exemplary.

Home. Food, more stir fry. Sore eyes so change contacts. Leave to meet my cousin at the theatre. Run into my primary school head teacher at the theatre, exchange pleasantries. Play starts - 1001 Nights Now. Set in a Christmas factory – packing baubles and plastic Santa’s, people of Middle Eastern extraction share narratives. Very powerful, with elements of physical theatre as well as traditional story-telling. One of the most surreal scenes was where a tale of the torture of Abu Ghraib is told – life under the Americans not much different from life under Saddam, by a man standing amidst a stage full of waist-height white plastic Santa’s. The moment of greatest tension however contained no spoken narrative, and simply consisted of the workers moving boxes of baubles, stacked high in their arms, across the stage and attempting to lower them to the ground without them toppling.

Home. Tired. This. Talk to Saul. Now bed.