Ascension

I found out today that Jesus didn't actually rise up to heaven on Easter Day! That's fairly mind-blowing information. I thought he died on the cross and got put in a tomb on Good Friday (or is it Black Friday?) and then appeared to a few people like Mary Magdalene in dreams on Easter Saturday before ascending to heaven in a blaze of glory on the Sunday. Apparently there's something called Ascension day which happens later in the year, which means Jesus was actually a zombie for quite a long time. Why do we not celebrate Ascension Day with some pagan ritual? Why did I not know any of this before? I guess this is what comes from having a card carrying atheist for a father!

Today has been delightful. We spent a completely impromptu day at Julie's house after dropping the cats off at Abbie and Ian's in Wandsworth.

We arrived in Catford at 1pm and spent a full twelve hours playing games. I love days like this when no one is rushing off and there's a sense of timelessness hovering in the air. We watched a film at some point: a rather unconvincing animation called 9, which wasn't the famous musical by Maurie Yeston but something about rag dolls in a post apocalyptic world. It didn't thrill me if I'm honest. It felt like a series of action sequences for the sake of action sequences with no narrative to link everything, or as Julie put it, "an attack, defend, attack, defend film..." There were way too few female characters as well.

We played a game of Trivial Pursuits which we discovered in Julie's loft. The questions were written in 1986, which made for rather hysterical inaccuracies. "Q: Which is the nearest communist country to Italy? A. Yugoslavia." Some of the questions simply made no sense to a 21st Century mind! Poor Abbie and Ian were 2 and 1 years old respectively in 1986 so didn't stand a chance!

Sam appeared in the evening, having been to see his new nephew who is so young his name has not yet been announced. They're presently calling him "monkey", because this is the year of the monkey and the lad is half Cantonese. I wonder if it might stick as a nick name. My Grannie used to called me a cheeky monkey. In fact, when Nathan and I went to visit her, right at the end of her life, when she was in a state of advanced dementia, she used the term to describe me again.

We drove home through Hackney and I had a lovely moment when I looked at the Empire with it's shiny marquee and thought "Brass is happening there in a few months..." It was a rather fine thought.