The boy is with his dad for three weeks so me and the missus are doing a passable impression of being young and fancy-free. This involves us not having to get up at 7.30am to ensure the not-so-little fella gets up for school and it means we don’t have to head back home at a reasonable hour post-work to ensure he doesn’t starve to death.
In fact it means we can do pretty much what we want without having to worry about the welfare of our favourite teenager. We can eat food he doesn’t like, watch telly he doesn’t like and dance around the living room without snorts of derision coming from under the hoody on the sofa. I can even crawl around the house naked pretending to be a dog bothering the cats should I wish. I don’t, of course, but I could.
Typically, of course, as soon as he’s away it turns out he’s needed as on Sunday I took the missus to see Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. As I’ve expressed in previous blog entries the boy is very useful when there’s a kids’ picture me and the missus both fancy seeing as we can persuade (bribe) him to go see it and we don’t look like the oddest people in the cinema.
But my wife’s craving to see Johnny Depp in action over-rode our usual need for subterfuge and we arrived at Kensington Odeon on Sunday without the aforementioned boy. Fortunately the place was pretty empty although I did pretend the supplies I bought at the kiosk were for my kids (I decided to invent a few) when the guy asked me if the huge tub of popcorn and the sweets I was cradling were all for me.
Surprisingly the film itself is fabulous but Tim Burton and Depp always do good work so this should come as no surprise. Depp, though, should get the Oscar he was robbed of for his role in Pirates Of The Caribbean. His Willy Wonka is a cross between Michael Jackson (minus the kiddy-fiddling rumours) and Marilyn Manson and is very funny. I can nearly see why the wife likes him so much. I’d shag him and I don’t even do fellas.
We also got out to the National Theatre on Saturday to see a play by Simon Stephens called On The Shores Of The Big Wide World. I bought the tickets for this in a hurry on Friday night and didn’t notice until we about to take our seats that the tickets were for a performance in two weeks time. Oops… Fortunately they exchanged the tickets and we went in to see the play. This was fortunate as the consequences of dragging the missus all the way to the National Theatre only to discover we were two weeks early were simply to horrible to ponder…
I’d never seen Stephens’ work before but the play was an engaging story about three generations of a Stockport family who have to come to terms with a tragedy, and with each other, in a six-month period. There was a real spark and tenderness about the writing and, going against the trend of a lot of modern theatre, the ending was quite upbeat and optimistic. It’s always good to find new writers you like – even if you realise it means you have to up your game at the same time...
The other highlight of the weekend was my second attempt at The Independent On Saturday’s Super Soduko Puzzle. God help me but I fear this may be a new addiction. I’ve even started coveting the BlackBerry 7100 I could win and imagining how much it could improve my life. Bizarrely I don’t know what a Blackberry 7100 does but I do know that I now want to win one. I can feel my hands stroking its plastic keys now. This could be serious…
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