Inertia

2012 seems to be rather slowly cranking its tired self into existence and today’s bank holiday has added to a sense of inertia. I couldn’t work out whether I needed to be working or not, so had a lie-in and then did a few lazy hours' composing before heading to the gym, which I didn’t realise was due to shut at 4pm. It would appear that LA Fitness will close these at the drop of a hat. Gone are the blissful days when you could tip up at 6 in the morning or 10 at night. One day I'm sure I'll get there and discover it's only open at lunchtimes.

After running for my allotted twenty minutes, I drove across North London to Columbia Road to see Philippa, Dylan and Deia, who was in a proper strop when I arrived. She hid under a little trampoline, and then threw the present I’d given her at a mug of tea which spilt all over my iPod. Fortunately, she very speedily cheered up, and was a delightful companion for the second half of my visit. We ate mince pies, drank tea and did jigsaw puzzles. Philippa was off to the new Westfield shopping centre, which I thought was a fairly optimistic prospect for a bank Holiday evening.

I picked Nathan up from work, but got there early and had about an hour to wander around Soho in the freezing cold. Fortunately, Foyles bookshop came to my rescue, and I had a lovely time browsing the music department there.

We’re watching telly tonight over a plate of pasta. We sat through the new show with David Jason; the one where he plays a Royal body guard, and both of us were horrified. It’s awful. Really cheap. The incidental music sounds like The Rugrats, and as Nathan pointed out, Jason has started doing physical theatre in the style of Hyacinth Bouquet! I find it hard to believe that a self-styled national treasure would opt to act in such a shoddy turkey. Surely he could tell from the scripts that this one was a dud - and without his name attached to the project, the license fee money would never have been wasted so shockingly.

350 years ago, and Pepys went to a posh lunch at the Wardrobe with Lady Sandwich, which was attended (amongst other fancy types) by Sir William Montagu and his wife Mary, who was meant to be a great beauty, but Pepys wasn’t impressed... "She seemed so far from the beauty that I had expected her from my Lady's talk to be, that it put me into an ill humour all day, to find my expectation so lost." (What a ridiculous notion!) Obvious in some kind of a grump, Pepys returned home and sat in his bedroom playing his lute until midnight.

To finish the blog, here are two pictures from my weekend in Lewes.

Brighton Beach

The hills above Kingston