:: Dramarama & Saturday Shenanigans ::

Quietest Friday night in ages was followed by a trip bright and early on Saturday morning to buy a plate rack (flatmate had just produced a posh dinner service which had belonged to his uncle - I wanted to store it safely) and a new washing up bowl (old one had sprung a leak). Sauntering past the local shops, I couldn't help but wander into the cheese shop. This time I (sort of) resisted temptation and bought a baguette and a delicious lemon pastry, mindful of last week's festering Vacherin, some of which is still stinking out the fridge.

I returned home brimming with early weekend accomplishment and smiled at the spring sunshine, had a light lunch and headed to a play rehearsal. I neglected to mention on here that I've secured a part in another play. This one's called The Way We Live and is inspired by Trollope's The Way We Live Now which was also a BBC TV series a couple of years ago. Fortunately although it's only just over a month away, I only appear in a few scenes, as Jason, an unscrupulous city broker. Anyone who knows me will appreciate the incongruousness of this, but I'm looking forward to playing the part with gusto. We read through the play and I did a bit of characterisation...

God, this is getting dull. Time for a b3ta break! Competition entry ("Modern Fairy Tales") from b3tan newbie(ish), Crowscar:

It's Rumsfeld-stiltskin!

A slight aberration (falling asleep in front of the TV, natch) meant that I was late getting to the evening festivities - Bratislava Belle's birthday at Dust in Clerkenwell. When I rolled up at 9.15pm, they'd started charging on the door and no amount of blagging could prevent my having to pay four squid to get in. It was worth it however, as I later got given a tenner instead of a fiver in change when I bought a round of Zubrówkas. The party was a downright success as one of the birthday girl's Slovak friends engaged me in animated conversation over the second G&T of the night. She went on to pull Database Wideboy in a drunken flurry and the pair left early. When I left, semi-sozzled, I had no idea of the bizarre events that were to befall me.

On the first nightbus to TCR, I got chatting to some disorientated drunk Spaniard who wanted to know how to get to Ealing - a fuck of a long way, but he assured me there was one that went from the centre. For your information, it's the N207, which we discovered after extensive staring at bus stop posters. I was sad to see his bus turn up promptly, as he was quite fit (if a little rough round the edges) and offered me a cigarette for pointing him in he right direction. Nothing too odd so far - a nice bit of banter with a lost foreigner - and things continued as expected when my bus arrived at about 1.30am. The next thing I knew, I was waking up as the bus juddered to a halt. A quick check of my phone alerted me to the fact that it was 2.40am and that I should have arrived home half an hour ago. We were stationed in a residential area I didn't recognise. My abject fear at the possibility of arriving in Penge (see pikey test below) was allayed by the fact that a hoarding had an 020 7... number on it: we couldn't have got that far. But the mystery remained as to why we were held up. Angry mutterings emanated from those who were still awake and some people started to leave the bus to continue their journeys on foot. I could see several buses queued up ahead - we had obviously been sitting there a while. When we finally got going again, some 20 minutes later, there were gasps as passengers saw the cause of the hold-up. Two buses had been involved in a head-on collision. There was no sign of human victims, but a single decker stood eerily in a heap of glass shards, its lights still on and the route indicator from the front of the bus flung half way up the interior. My stomach turned as a breakdown lorry dragged the gnarled abandoned wreckage away to clear our path. Though I stayed on the bus it turned out that we were only 10 minutes walk from my house, and I was glad to be dropped off soon afterwards. The sudden silence on board had been galling.

Nothing more to report - Sunday was quiet and I didn't go to the Boat Race. I just spent time learning lines, making Indonesian prawn noodle soup and planning the opera. When I got into work this morning, Tigger proudly reported that pictures of last Thursday's bAsTaRd have now appeared on McSleazy's web forum. Infamy at last...

Last of all, here's another thing plundered from b3ta - this time it's of the Iraqi Information Minister, one Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf. By biscuits_ahoy!: