Fish Pie

Sock Monkey fully intends to make fish pie tonight. In addition to the million other things I have to do tonight. I have salmon but I don't have any cod. Or prawns.

I mentioned to P that I''m sure I can just scrape the breadcrumbs off a couple of fish fingers and stick them in but she considers this a not-very-nice solution.

However I just checked Fish Pie Etiquette with my colleague and she recons she wouldn't even scrape the breadcrumbs off. She'd just shove them in unpeeled for extra crunch.

I could go and buy some cod but I haven't even got round to buying my Christmas presents yet. And have you seen the price of fish these days??

Well. Alison Moyet playing the mouth organ is something I hadn't imagined I'd ever see

Sock Monkey wasn't dragged to the Royal Festival Hall on Sunday but Sock Monkey was fairly ambivalent about the whole thing.

P had booked tickets to see Alison Moyet performing the London leg of her 25 Years Tour. I'd seen Yazoo in 1983, seen her at the Glasgow Apollo in about 1989 and saw her playing Mama Morton in 'Chicago' years ago, I think she was in the play 'Smaller' when I saw that too so I wasn't really that bothered about seeing her again.

I'm glad I did because my God she was bloody amazing! She appeared on stage literally half the size she used to be (and looking very slinky in a long black dress) but with all of the voice remaining. Her voice hasn't changed a bit, its still wonderfully deep and husky and bluesy.

Chatting in between songs she was also a very funny lady, preceeding every anecdote with 'Thankyouverymuch' and sounding a bit like a cross between Tommy Cooper and a Fish Wife then laughing at her own speaking voice.

She sang a huge selection of her back catalogue, including all of Yazoo's best-known material, her biggest solo hits and 'Windmills of Your Mind' which is one of her favourite songs. Some of the older songs were rearranged to accommodate the difference between synthesizer accompaniment and the more traditional guitar/bass guitar/drums/piano/backing singer band and they worked really well. And she wasn't afraid to highlight parts of her performance which she felt weren't up to scratch:

• "Stop. Hold it. I lost it there. Start again"
• "I was singing in a different key to the music there"
• "I can never remember the lyrics to the second verse and Annie has to mouth them to me."
• "I missed a verse out there. You paid your money, you need to get your money's worth" - then she sang the missing verse acapella.

A particular favourite moment for the audience was when Alison performed 'Weak in the Presence of Beauty'. She introduced this song with the following comments:

"I'm not going to sing 'Invisible'. I'm not being coy then say, oh ok I will sing it. It ain't gonna happen. And if I don't sing that one I can't not sing this one. I can't not sing both of them."

It was interesting to hear her basically say that she does not like two of her most successful numbers.

She then went on to tell us that the original recording featured a trumpet solo but the performer on the record wasn't here (the way she said this was if to say 'yeah, as if he would be here') and that they improvise. Either Annie (her wonderful backing singer) or her pianist play the part of the trumpet. Alison said she had been told not to do it but being told not to made her want to do it more. So in the middle of her performance of 'Weak in the Presence of Beauty' Alison Moyet, very well respected, hugely successful singer stood in the middle of the stage and made trumpet sounds in time to the music. It was a highly entertaining moment which the audience really enjoyed rewarding her with huge applause.

She interacted with the audience in a really nice way too. To the comment of "Very well done Alison" she laughed and said, "Wait till next time".
When someone asked her how she was feeling she said "I'm really enjoying myself." And she looked like she was enjoying herself too.

And the following conversation:
Person in audience: "Mwaf woof bloop"
Alison Moyet: "Pardon?"
Person in audience: "Mwaf woof bloop"
Alison Moyet: "Pardon??"
Person in audience: "Mwaf woof bloop"
Alison Moyet: "Oh I can't understand what you're saying....But I'm assuming its positive so thank you very much!"

During one of her anecdotes she told us about how her father used to come home with lots of mouth organs and that this is the only instrument she can play. She then went on to play the harmonica accompaniment to the next song. And yes she actually can play.

At the start of her encore she said, "So you can plan your getaway: you are getting two songs. So don't waste the skin on your palms. The first one is a bit Boo Hoo then a happier one." She introduced 'Je ne quitte pas' by telling us that her mother phoned her after a previous date on this tour to inform her that she had mispronounced two words in the song. This, Alison said, had made her feel so nervous for the next gig that she mispronounced another seven words trying to concentrate too hard. And that anyway, 'How many people speak French in Grimsby?"

Two hours after she walked on stage, she left to a well deserved standing ovation from some very, very happy punters.

One of the best performances I have seen this year.

If you want to go anywhere in a hurry London Underground can be relied on to FUCK it up for you

Bastards.

Southern-shitty-bastards-Trains were late this morning as bloody usual. To add insult to injury I had to sit across from Ugly Man. He looks like one of The Proclaimers' less attractive brothers who has the added extra of having a gob which hangs open in a particularly gormless manner.

I averted my eyes and looked out of the window at the dinosaurs, like I do every morning. I like to look at them every morning as I sit with my newspaper and my flask of tea. One of them has a fiberglass head. A bomb blew its concrete head off during the Second World War.

So then two ugly people got on the train at the next stop and proceeded to slobber over each other for the rest of the journey. I hope they don't breed as the results would be horrendous.

Then the bloody overpriced-ram packed-shite-tube was buggered as usual and I got into work 20 minutes late. The arseholes.

I was looking forward to going to an organised walk around Crystal Palace tonight. Its the anniversary of when the Crystal Palace burned down and we had to convene at the Parade with a torch before our wander around the park. Here we would be told all about that night and hopefully also about the ghost who inhabits the train tunnel. She was one of the people killed in the train crash. She was on the little toy train which shuttled people from the station to the Crystal Palace. Story goes that they didn't bother getting the bodies out - they just filled up each end of the tunnel and left them entombed there.

Because it has been raining non-stop for about 3 days I wore my wellies to work. I wasn't the only one I can assure you. Linda wore hers and spent the day in little pumps, Lisa wore hers and spent the day wearing what I appeared to be Christmas socks and I wore the old birkenstocks that I wear around the house. My wellies are pretty special though. I think they look like SuperHero boots, P thinks they look like Spaceman boots and Ruth at work said they looked like I would be able to walk through radioactive matter in them. See:

So in order to get to this evening all about one of my Special Interests I left work BANG on time (even though I arrived late) and what do you know the Jubilee Line was fucked. It took 30 minutes to get onto the platform. They (London Underground) can't manage to design a station which is only about 10 years and specifically has to deal with thousands of people every day. Idiots. Its more congested than the crumbling old stations which are a hundred years old and only had 3 passengers a year. So I missed my train. Which meant I wouldn't have time to go home, drop my bag off (which contained my swizzy new digital SLR which arrived at work today and I wasn't going to take to the park with me), put on my thermal socks and grab my torch. In fact I wouldn't have even had time to have gone straight there. The later train I did manage to get had two more ugly people slobbering all over each other and I was also subjected to a conversation of complete drivel carried out two dweebs.

AND getting out of Crystal Palace Train Station in the evening is a nightmare. The train empties its bowels onto the platform and everyone has to walk UP 40 stairs, ALONG a walkway, DOWN 40 stairs, ALONG another walkway and UP 70 stairs (or something like that). Then there are only 2 turnstiles for a hundred people to exit from. The sooner they knock the station down the better Grade-2-Listed-or-not. The toy train station at Chigley is bigger. You know the one that goes from The Hall to the Biscuit Factory. I always found it really quite odd that the Biscuit Factory workers have a barn dance after work each night and was very disappointed when I found real life isn't like that. Although you do get a Christmas Party once a year.

So I am not going out tonight. I am gong to eat steak, drink beer and watch the tv. And if that bastard upstairs doesn't turn his tv down I am going to go up there and turn the volume down for him with the aid of my 2lb mallet I bought for the express purpose of smashing down the hideous fitted wardrobes which used to be in my bedroom.

HAA-rrrrrruph!

Birthdays Come But Once a Year

And Sock Monkey's birthday was yesterday!

In honour of the momentous occasion Sock Monkey and P took the day off work (so it wouldn't be ruined) and went out for the afternoon.

After the present presentation we went into town and had Tapas for lunch (where I managed to throw my glass of not-even-sipped-at beer all over the floor in an incident involving bread - don't ask) then we visited Sacred Made Real at the National Gallery. This is is an exhibition of Spanish painting and Sculpture from 1600-1700. Sock Monkey is very fond of religious art. And the creepier the better, that's what I say.

My favourites were the statues rather then the paintings although I did like this (points right) mainly because she reminded me of the lady at the start of a Columbia Pictures film.

I was interested to discover that the statues are actually several planks of wood which are joined together rather than one piece of solid wood. The head and hands tend to be solid and the rest is hollowed-out to make them easier to carry when they are being paraded through the town during religious festivals. The correct term for them is 'Polychrome Sculpture'. And another intriguing fact is that whilst the scultpor carved them he was absolutely forbidden to colour them in and so a painter was then brought in to finish them off so to speak. This was called 'Encarnation' which literally means 'bringing to life'.

Here are more of my favourites:

Ecce Homo by Gregorio Fernandez before 1621

(this is about as tall as me)

Dead Christ also by Gregorio Fernandez about 1625-30

(world famous and on some of those lists of Things You Must See)

Christ as the Man of Sorrows by Pedro de Mena 1673

After this we had a little bimble around the National which, I discovered, is stuffed with Religious Icon Art. This Pleased Sock Monkey as I love Icons (I have two at home) and I've only ever seen dismal old Dutch Masters in the National. A return trip is planned.

After our Religious experience we went for a steam, sauna and swim. We were therefore cleansed inside and out. Not for long though because as soon as we left the gym we had a cigarette and decided to avoid rush hour by having ONE drink then going home.

P decided that we should go to a very ornately decorated cocktail bar in Piccadilly Circus (as we happened to be walking past). Here she presented me with champagne cocktail to celebrate me being even older than I was the day before.

After we finished our champagne we decided that it was still a bit busy outside so would stay out longer but go elsewhere. So we trundelled along to Freedom Bar for more cocktails. This is where we started off that night we ended up singing karaoke in the O Bar...

So about 16 gallons of margarita later (P stuck to various champagne cocktails) we moved on to G-A-Y Bar. God knows why - we are about 25 years older than everyone else. Aren't young people ('yooths') skinny?

At approximately 10pm P announced that she absolutely had to have something to eat so we went to Balans. Sock Monkey ordered an all day breakfast but had a lot of difficulty eating it because it was making me feel a bit ikky (it wasn't the tequila or the Smirnoff Ice you understand) and so after nibbling at a bit of bacon and sampling the sausage I basically turned it into just beans on toast. I did however become most fascinated by a mushroom which looked like a piece of steak. As I was dissecting it I managed to propel my toast across the room. So that was two bread incidents in one day.

We then sat outside to enjoy the charm of Old Compton Street where we got talking to a young boy at the next table who P insisted was a Rent Boy.

Then we got a taxi home. Arrived back at Sock Monkey Mansions at midnight. When I got up this morning I didn't look like I had had a steam/sauna/swim. I appeared to have rabbit's eyes.

Tonight I'd quite like to go to bed early but I'm meeting a load of friends for dinner. Told P I was going to have a starter, a sip of water and be in bed by 8. She said "lol ok that's what you think."

A most satisfactory birthday indeed!

I Have Turned into my Mother!

So my Mum knew everyone who worked in every shop within a 2 thousand mile radius of our house.

Sock Monkey has lived in Crystal Palace for 3 years, really likes it and is friendly to all the local shopkeepers. It may have gone a bit far now though.

In the 5 minute walk from the train station to my flat I interacted with the following people:

1. The girl who works in Tesco. I said hello to her in the street. She said "Hi!" back. She was on her way to work

2. The lady in the corner shop (she is married to one of the men who works there - they live upstairs). I asked her how her 5 year old son is. He was in bed because he is only little

3. I waved to the man who owns the chip shop. As usual he waved back and shouted, "Allo darlin' ow ar you?" (him and his son who also works there are Turkish hence the accent)

4. Finally I said hello to the man who owns the new Indian shop (v. good by the way - lovely Halal meat and every spice and rice you could imagine) at the corner of my road. I spoke to him on Friday night (they only opened on Monday) and asked him how business was. I can't remember what his name is but it begins with an 'S'

I am sure this is a good thing but am also a bit concerned that I have turned into the local looney!

I'm Rubbish

• Sock Monkey hasn't told you about the holiday in Dublin.
• Sock Monkey hasn't told you about the trip to Paris.
• Sock Monkey hasn't even got round to writing the report of when my sister came over from America and that was in April! (but then I only just sucked the photographs out of my camera the day before yesterday and naturally I have to illustrate my report with pictures).

Sock Monkey can however tell you about a recent night out.

So we all meet up and plan to have one drink then go for dinner. We have two drinks and decide to go for dinner but got waylaid into a cocktail bar instead. It was packed upstairs so P suggested that we sit downstairs even though we had seats upstairs. This was her sneaky way of getting us into the room where they do the karaoke.

P likes singing so off she went whilst we sat and watched. Well of course we had to look at the song menu and pick stupid songs for her to sing. Then I saw something entirely suitable for a Sock Monkey to perform!

I wrote down my song title and track number and gave it to the lady. This is where my evident psychosis and split personality obviously took a turn for the worst. The name I wrote on the slip of paper I gave the lady was 'Sock Monkey', not my real name. Sock Monkey never comes out! Sock Monkey only ever writes reports on here. Its a bit like Jekyll and Hyde - we are two completely separate personas.

Anyway, the lady said, "Now Sock Monkey is going to sing".

Sock Monkey jumped up to the microphone and started the song. Please bear in mind that Sock Monkey couldn't carry a note in a bucket and shouts, as opposed to 'sings'. I dragged P up for moral support and made her stand there like my Able Assistant. Like a magicians assistant (although I had no intention of sawing her in half).

Then I launched into my song which, frankly, I don't think people appreciated anything like as much as they ought to have done.

Its quite a difficult song and the lady said that only one other person had ever chosen it. It was really the last verse which was the killer, I was running out of breath and there was the slight possibility of passing out or throwing up afterwards as its a bit like running very, very fast. But Sock Monkey managed all of the lyrics which went as follows:

"Now if you want to take some pictures of the fascinating witches who put the scintillating stitches in the britches of the boys who put the powder on the noses on the faces of the ladies of the harem of the court of King Caractacus...

...you're too late! Because they've just... passed... by!"

I can confirm that "The Court of King Caractacus" is a bloody difficult song to sing. But 1 gin & tonic, a margarita and a bucket of sea breeze helps.

We did have dinner in the end. We got to the restaurant at 11pm.

Phew that was a bit scary for a minute

Sock Monkey had a nasty fright at lunchtime.

Sock Monkey was perusing the BBC News website and spotted the following headline:
"Boyle is 'moving closer' to Porno".

Ohmygod!ohmygod!ohmygod! Susan Boyle of 'Britain's Got Talent' fame is going to be in a porn film?????

*Runs screaming plucking at eyes*

Then I clicked on the headline and read the first sentence only to discover the story was about the film director Danny Boyle who is thinking about making a film of the Irvine Welsh novel 'Porno' as a follow on to his film of Welsh's novel 'Trainspotting'.

Thank goodness for that! The alternative was unthinkable and would have scared more than the horses.

My New CD

I am very pleased with my new CD. This is a version of Track Number 1 which I've been trying to get hold of for ages.

Mission accomplished once again! I don't know how I managed before Amazon was invented.

Some Men Give the Rest a Bad Name

So last night I am on a packed, humid tube. Inside the carriage there are two rows of 3 seats facing each other and a space one either side for luggage or to stand. EVERY one of these seats had the arse of an able bodied man aged between 30s and 40s stuck to it. A woman in her early 30s got on and she was holding a baby who looked about 4 months old. She looked like she had probably gone to her office to show her new baby to her colleagues for the first time. There was nowhere to sit so she had to stand holding the baby and try her best to not fall over seeing as she couldn't hold onto anything. You know what with having armfuls of baby and all. Did any of these lazy selfish bastards give her their seat? Did they fuck. Did they notice her, it was pretty crowded? Yes. Each and every one of them looked at her then looked away. One of the selfish lazy bastards actually kept looking at her. I felt like shouting "Give her a seat you bastards!" but thought better of it. Best of it was that almost all of these men were only going two stops to London Bridge so it wouldn't have been a great hardship to give up their seat like any decent human being would have. Bastards. I hope they all break their leg and have to stand on the tube because no-one gives a shit if they are less able to stand what with being on crutches. Sometimes I hate men. On a much happier note though I read this on the BBC website today:

"A Greek woman accused of setting fire to the genitals of a British tourist in Crete is due to appear in court."

Sorry come again?? Why on earth did she do that?

"The woman admitted assault after dousing the man's private parts in alcohol and igniting them, but says she did so after being sexually harassed."

Ok so he was perving at her but really - set fire to his bollocks was that really necessary. And anyway how did she manage to get sambuca on them om the first place?

"Police on the Greek island say the tourist was drunk and had waved his genitals at several girls before allegedly groping the suspect. The man suffered second degree burns and is recovering in a private clinic. The 26-year-old suspect handed herself over to police, claiming she had acted in self defence."

Ah so he was waving them around in a nightclub. I'll bet he was shouting 'Eer girls want some ov that?" Serves him right then. But the Greeks must think she was a bit over the top though.

"She has won praise on Crete for what has been seen as defending her honour.

According to police the 23-year-old tourist was drunk when he dropped his trousers in a nightclub in the resort of Malia.

The suspect, who has not been named, said she doused the man in Sambuca and torched him after she asked him to stop harassing her and he failed to stop.

The case has been widely discussed on Greek television, and there has been precious little sympathy for the young Briton, said our correspondent.

He added that many Greeks are sickened by British bad behaviour in Malia and other resorts."

Good for her. If I'd been out with my friends and had had some pissed up tourist repeatedly waving his cock at us I'd like to think one my mates would do the same thing.

left: an artist's impression of said incident

Went to Brighton - Felt Very Proud

This (points to the left with thumb) is what Brighton looked like last Saturday. What a glorious summer's day to celebrate Brighton Pride!

Sock Monkey arranged to meet up with friends in the bar at Brighton Station as our trains got in at almost the same time. This is where the plans started going a bit wonky.

I got off my train and the closer I got to the bar the more it looked like a branch of Marks & Spencer Food Hall. Ah that would be because it was a Marks & Spencer Food Hall. Then I got a text from Jan, "We are in the Railway Bell opposite and have a pint here for you". This is the kind of text I like. Sock Monkey hadn't seen Jan & Lynn for the best part of a year so it was lovely to catch up. We had a couple of drinks, a big gossip then schlepped to Preston Park.

The walk there wasn't so bad but when we got there Preston Park wasn't looking her best. It was grey and yeuch. We had arranged to meet some other people so J&L waited for them at X marked the spot whilst I went on an errand to the beer tent. After about 20 minutes we gave up waiting for the others. Thank God because we were outside the Wimmin's Tent which appeared to be having a flashback to the 1980's and was emanating angsty songs.

Then we spent a delightful 45 minutes queuing up for a pee and by this time it was bucketing. Actually it was quite a laugh as everyone had gone into extreme Dunkirk Spirit and some of the girls were thinking of fashioning ShePees out of a variety of items they happened to have about their persons. A hollow flag pole being one one of them. And we discussed the point of actually practicing to become good at something so naff (ie Line Dancing).

I did eventually manage to meet up with Alan (after several phone calls along the lines of ,"Can you hear me??" "Yes I can hear you. Can you hear me? I'm in the queue for the loos beside the Line Dancing Tent. Yes dear. LINE DANCING".) I asked him where his boyfriend was and he laughed and said, "He refused to come. And all my friends left after half an hour! I'm going home now too." At least he lives in Brighton and could be wearing slippers and having cocoa in no time.

J, L & I took cover in the Line Dancing tent as we couldn't face looking for the Drag Tent. If in fact there was one. I must say the entertainment seemed to be a bit lame. There was a young guy standing beside us who seemed to be having a great time and told us, "I have my cigarettes, my drink and my Brokeback Mountain Jacket on. This is great." Sock Monkey just looked at him and replied, "We are stuck in a Line Dancing Tent".

We schlepped back to Brighton (young girl behind us in the mass exodus pretty much summed it up by saying to her friend, "I'm just so unhappy") and we went straight back to the bar we started in. This time to meet Lily & Jossipa who had just arrived. 2 hours late as usual. It was actually a fun afternoon believe it or not. We've all been friends for years and as such remember when we used to find all this exciting. Lynn said, "You spend years going out all the time just to meet someone you can stay in with." I think this is a fair point!

Where was P you say? She was in Norfolk at a wedding. One of her texts that day said, "Its bloody roasting here." The final one was "Am sitting on the beach with my brother having a drink". And she'd been narked to miss the Brighton trip ha ha!

I would have posted a nice pic of Jan & Lynn looking very waterlogged and miserable here but Jan declared it too hideous for human consumption and deleted it from my camera.

A Weekend of Dead Bodies and Ice Cream

Last weekend Sock Monkey went to see 'Bodyworlds and the Mirror of Time' or The Dead Body Exhibition as I like to call it. So for those of you who don't know what this is here is a brief description:

Right there is a very strange German man called Dr Van Hagens. He always wears a fedora which makes him look even more sinister and mad.

Dr Van Hagens gets hold of dead bodies and 'plastinates' them. This is a bit like something from Star Trek (the 1960's wobbly set version). Plastination is basically sucking all the moisture and fat out of said dead body to stop it rotting and going all mushy. *hmmm a bit like packet soup I suppose*. All this wet stuff is then replaced with silicon rubber and epoxy.

This stuff hardens with gas, light or heat curing, which makes the specimens go rigid. So they 'set', sort of like cement. According to the website "This allows them to be studied and displayed in an engaging way, as seen in the BODY WORLDS exhibitions". ie gawped at.

The bodies are displayed in various interesting poses which show muscle groups, tendons, etc. So we have one playing chess with his head opened to reveal his brain, two men in a rugby tackle, one man is holding his own skin aloft.

Some of the bodies are sliced like ham to show various cross sections.




And there are other exhibits where their circulatory system has been
preserved, like this rabbit.



There was even a plastinated giraffe which was pretty impressive. I won't put a picture the 8 months pregnant woman who has been cut open as this tends to give people the vapours. I like stuff like this but even I thought it was wrong, wrong, wrong to have two of the 'plastinates' exhibited shagging each other.

We had a look around there then went for lunch in Greenwich. I fancied Asian food so we went to a Vietnamese restaurant. Here I had pork belly slowly roasted in what appeared to be compost heap and mulch. And it smelled like toilets. Once we had recovered from our luncheon ordeal we got the boat back to central London.

Next day we went to Ben & Jerry's Sundae on the Common. The common in question being Clapham Common. Basically it was a great big ice cream promotion (but not Dr Van Haagen Daas - heh, heh, heh). There was free ice cream but I couldn't be arsed to queue for it. There were also pantomime cows wandering around for added atmosphere.

Sock Monkey hadn't gone there to stuff up on ice cream though. No, Sock Monkey had gone there to see the bands. The first band were horrible. The second band were called Answering Machine and they were v. good. We approved of them. The third band sounded horribly like U2 who I can't stand.

Then the fourth band were.......Camera Obscura hooray! We were within gobbing distance of them. They played mostly from their new album My Maudlin Career but finished off with Razzle Dazzle Rose from their previous album. They seem to like playing this one as their finale 'cause every time I've seen them (lots) this is what they end with.

Here are some nice pics, of Tracyanne and Carey. None of the boys though. I haven't sucked them out of my camera yet.

We didn't bother staying to see the next band or the headline band, The Human League. By then it was beginning to rain so we trundled off to the Two Brewers for a quick drink. I don't think Sock Monkey and P have been there together before. Not that we have missed much. We just couldn't be arsed to walk the extra 2 minutes down the road to the far preferable Kazbah.

So that was Sock Monkey's weekend. Pickled Medical Specimens, seeing my favourite band play live and some outdoor beers. Very nice.

Duet for One

P took me to see this last Saturday. It is one of the best plays I have ever seen.

Also it stars Juliet Stephenson who is such a wonderful actress. She plays Stephanie Abrahams, a world famous concert violinist who can no longer play after being struck down with Multiple Sclerosis. Her husband, a famous and successful classical composer made an appointment for her to see to see a psychiatrist, Dr Feldman (played by Henry Goodman), to help her work through her emotions and think about a future of being unable to play the music she lives for. The play follows six therapy sessions which they have together in Dr Feldman's consulting rooms, taking us on Stephanie's journey of denial, anger, breakdown and the first step on the long road to rebuilding her shattered life.

First of all I adored the set. It was all dark and moody with sumptuous rugs and a chaise longue, the shelves filled with CDs and objects d'art. The lighting was fantastic too with the different times of day conveyed at the flick of a switch, light flooding through the venetian blinds.

Secondly the script is absolutely amazing. Tom Kempinski has written a powerful and utterly convincing play. The dialogue between the Stephanie and Dr Feldman is completely believable, Goodman's character sounding every inch the psychiatrist. There is some humour, which gives us some respite from the subject matter, but in the main this is a powerful, serious piece of writing.

I particularly point to the dialogue in the opening moments when Stephanie asks Dr Feldman, "Do you know what MS is?" He goes on to reply, "Yes, the nerve endings...." and gives a matter-of-fact description of the physical changes in the body and the results. This sets the scene perfectly for the audience to discard their preconceptions of MS and understand the facts.

In the second act there is one scene which I found particularly uncomfortable to watch as Stephanie had plummeted to the depths of despair. I can't think of a time where I have been at the theatre and could actually feel myself squirm and long for a scene to end: not because it was bad, but because it was too good and it ripped at your emotions.

Obviously, there is no cure for Stephanie's physical degeneration but we do see the beginning of the end of her mental collapse and her acceptance of the situation.This is such a wonderful play. An emotive issue is tackled with intelligent dialogue and the kind of humour you would only experience when faced with such a grim future.


Juliet Stephenson was at her shouty, emotive best. Henry Goodman, who I was not familiar with, was convincing as the professional, appropriately aloof and slightly eccentric Dr Feldman.

The set design was fantastic, as was the lighting and sound. And the final touch which I thought was perfect was that the programme was full with information about MS so you didn't just sit there, watch a play then go home again, you learn something.

One of Our Ducks is Missing

Its more than one actually. Its lots.

Over the last few years the duck population in London has dropped and ducks have been reported M.I.A.

The 'Bird Recorder' (one of the best job titles I have heard of) for Wandsworth and Tooting Common said natural predators were likely to cause population changes. He said: "They can be taken by pike and large carp, herons or foxes." Ahhh but this is not what the London Wildcare Trust thinks. According to them people have been nicking the ducks and eating them. Ted Burden, head of the trust, said: "People are taking them for their own table, or to sell on. They're not taking them to make pets out of them. They're ending up in the cooking pot."

Well I am pleased that during this recession people aren't dropping their standards. No nicking pints of milk and loaves of bread from outside the corner shop at 5am. No resorting to living off the contents of unlabeled and dented tins from the supermarket. No siree. People are refusing to compromise their lifestyle just because a couple of Yankee Banks fucked up on mortgages.

Its crispy aromatic duck time!
*I wonder how the sales of hoisin sauce are looking*

How I wish this show would be staged again

But unfortunately it has been shelved indefinitely. At least I got to see it a few times:

Shockheaded Peter

This is one of the best stage shows I have ever seen.

Never fails to amuse me

This morning I had the following conversation with my manager, David:

Sock Monkey: What time do you want to do the meeting today? Did you say this afternoon?
David: We're going to do it tomorrow instead with **** (our big boss). At two thirty.
Sock Monkey: That's the time you go to the dentist
David (thinking I had an appointment and we'd have to reschedule): Oh no
Sock Monkey (laughing): No...tooth hurty. That's the time you visit the dentist!
David (head in hands): I've lost the will to live

heh

Did you know 'My dog ain't got no nose.....'

Runaway Elephants

Ha HA! See below etching of said runaway elephants mentioned in my previous post. Photographic(ish) proof!

If you click on the image you will make it big and can then read the captions.

Kentish Town

I have been conducting some of my world famous 'research' . This time it was on Kentish Town because P lives there. Here are 3 things I have discovered about this part of North West London:

1. There is a nudist public bath in Kentish Town. Its called 'Rio's'
2. Kentish Town was the site of the 1st train crash in London on 2 September 1861 - 16 died

And thirdly, my favourite fact:

3. Elephants once ran riot in Kentish Town. They escaped from a circus parade and were later found in the basement of a house in Pemberton Gardens.

How the Hell did they get down the stairs?

Apologies for the break in transmission

Sock Monkey has been a very lazy bugger about writing my reports but I've just been so busy! My diary is ridiculous and I don't have a spare weekend until the middle of August. P says she's going to have to chuck me because I'm wearing her out and all the tickets are costing a fortune. I maintain that I simply can't miss anything.

So here is a bullet point list of what Sock Monkey has been up to thank you:

I went to see the Tiger Lilies. Their last show 'The Seven Deadly Sins' was a bit pants but I was pleased to see that they were performing the songs from Shockheaded Peter. I love Shockheaded Peter and have seen it several times. They sang pretty much all of it, including Flying Robert, Bully Boys, Fidgety Phil and Harriet and the Matches. They also sang stuff I hadn't heard before, most notable was the one about the prostitute. And naturally everyone dies in a horrible fashion at the end of every song. Shockheaded Peter has now been shelved and it isn't staged anymore so this was a treat. V. V. Good. Gold star.

Next was an evening out at Frank Sidebottom's Summertime Special at the Lextington (my new favourite venue). Sam and I found this highly entertaining, "Oh yes we did, we really did. We did actually. " He came skipping on stage singing Mungo Jerry's 'In the Summertime' (but naturally the lyrics had to include references to his Mum). P absolutely hated it and spent most of the evening either outside smoking or inside looking unhappy. I was very pleased when he sang 'The Monopoly Board Song', and of course Little Frank was there too.

Slightly less low brow was 'Time and the Conways' at the National Theatre. It had lukewarm reviews but I liked it so there.

Much more excitingly I also saw Antony and the Johnsons! Hooray! How good was he? Bloody amazing thats how much. He played for about 2 hours, much longer than usual and he chatted to the audience a lot which I have not seen him do before.

P and I splurged out on lunch at Gordon Ramsay's new(ish) restaurant The York and Albany and we can report that the food was very nice. The venue itself is lovely. Used to be an old boozer and they done it up laaavley, very light and airy. Its a hotel upstairs too.

I was supposed to go to my friend's book launch but it was on the same night as when I meet my personal trainer so instead of drinking free champagne and eating teeny tiny nibbles I was running around Crystal Palace followed by a man on a bicycle. The reason I didn't re-arrange my training evening is because I ran the Race for Life 4 days later. Two of my workmates and I decided that it would be a splendid idea to run 5,000 metres around Crystal Palace Park, along with 2,000 other people in aid of Cancer Research. On a day when it was 26 degrees. We finished in half an hour, raised £1,000 and deserved our drink in the pub afterwards.

P took me to the 125 Party. This was one of her friend's 50th birthday, her friend's husband's 50th birthday and their wedding anniversary all rolled into one. Hence the 125. God it was swanky.

Now then for those of you who don't have the pleasure of living in London you won't know that we have a giant, purple, upside down cow-shaped theatre on the SouthBank this summer. Udderbelly is a great venue. And outside they have astro-turf and a bar/food area. Its really pleasant. And in this green and purple pleasant land I saw Tina C. Yee Har! I love Tina C. Much more than her alter-ego Dame Ida Barr. Her show this year was called 'Complete and Utter Country'. P and Andrew were laughing so loudly the people in the row in front of us were laughing at them. She didn't sing the song "No Man's Dick is as Hard as my Life' but she did invite us all onto the stage to line dance at the end. We also saw Rhona Cameron there. She was rubbish but we all enjoyed the Pimms before, during and after.

I also sat and watched some opera in the park. The Royal Opera House in Covent Garden are showing live operas on outdoor screens throughout the country. So 3 of us from work went trip-trip-trip billygoats gruff, (armed with a big picnic and wine) down the road to from our office to Canada Square to watch La Traviata. It was a lovely sunny evening. Before the live broadcast started we were able to watch Venus Williams demolish her opponent in the Ladies' Singles Semi-Final of Wimbledon. It was very good - much better than the arse the Met in New York made of showing Faust. The Barber of Seville is the next one in a couple of weeks.

Andrew & Jacques had a most civilised dinner party. Actually it was a very, very funny evening with a good mix of guests. Most enjoyable.

Tonight I'm off to the Vortex for some Jazz. P's friend Lianne Carroll is performing. Tomorrow we are being old gits by going to a matinee. We are seeing 'Duet for One'. Then we have tickets for 'Warhorse' (which is apparently quite difficult to get tickets for). Its P's birthday soon so I am taking her out for the day and for a nice lunch. In Paris. We are also going to Dublin for a long weekend and I'm meeting up with some friends in Brighton in a few weeks. I also have an unusual party to go to. My friend's car, Brad (named after Brad in the Rocky Horror Show) is 30 years old and she is having a surprise party for him. So big ol' barbeque at Angela's. Her parties are always a laugh.

P & I are also going to Ben & Jerry's Sundae on the Common at Clapham - this looks good. There will be a helter skelter, coconut shy, loads of ice cream (what with it being Ben & Jerry's) an herd of pantomime cows and live bands. Guess who is playing? Camera Obscura! hahahahahahaha

Tunisia

Sock Monkey and P went to Tunisia and had the most fantastic, relaxing week.


We stayed at the Sinbad Hotel in Hammamet. I have now decided that I need to have a pirate's name in the title of all my hotels from now on. It was beautiful. Possibly the nicest hotel I have ever stayed at. Very swanky de-la posh and just our cup of tea. Or bottle of Tunisian Chardonnay as we quickly became accustomed to every night. The door of our room was opened for us and we were met with this: 

Our Room

Our room looked more like a junior suite with a massive bed covered in flower petals (different arrangement every day), a day bed, bathroom with bath & shower and another separate shower-room and French Windows which led onto our own private terrace. Two minutes after we arrived I answered a knock at the door and found someone standing there with freshly-laundered, fluffy bathrobes for us. Yes, this will do nicely we thought.

It was early evening so after quickly unpacking we made our way to catch our first glimpse of the hotel's private beach (below).

Managing to stop ourselves clapping with joy and then went to the Pool Bar for a celebratory cocktail. The Pool Bar was beautiful. Outside there is an infinity pool gives you the impression that you are swimming into the sea. Inside its painted clean white with white furniture and slightly ultraviolet lights which make it seem even whiter. Its a real chill-out zone. Then we got changed and went for dinner.

Infinity Pool

Next day we took a walk into Hammamet to get some money. We had a brief look in the Medina then made our way home for an exhausting afternoon of lounging around on the beach. We had decided that we wanted to take a trip into the Sahara Desert and the next trip was leaving the following morning. We booked it and had an early-ish night as we had to leave at 6am.

Because we were leaving early our breakfast was brought to our room which we ate on our terrace. Then we grabbed our overnight bags and left. Its about 200 miles from Hammamet to Douze. Douze is called 'The Gateway to the Sahara' because many people who travel from Northern Tunisia to the Sahara stay in Douze the night before.

On the way to Douze we visited the 2nd largest amphitheatre in the world. It certainly was huge. You could go into where they kept all the lions-and-tigers-and bears (oh dear). And I learned something very interesting. You could see little patches of marble on the walls of the arena. This wasn't for decoration. Oh no. This was to prevent the sabre-toothed beasts climbing up and over the walls and probably eating people.

After lunch we visited the troglodyte village of Matama. Star Wars was filmed in this area and it does look like another planet. From here it was another couple of hours to the hotel we were spending that night at and our first footsteps into the Sahara.

Before checking into the hotel we took an hour tip into the desert. Some people decided to ride camels but I have been on a camel twice before and deemed it unnecessary to do it again. Particularly as this trip was an hour. P would have had the screaming abdabs if she had had to ride one of them. In fact she didn't even like to get all that close to them. Nasty, ill-tempered, hissy, spitty, things. So we went by horse instead. In fact quite a few people ended up going by horse after attempting to ride the camels and quickly deciding that this was a bad idea. Actually one woman we got friendly said the minute she got on the thing she started to cry and had to be helped down.

Next morning we got up at 4am. Yes FOUR o'clock in the morning. This wasn't, however, the crack of dawn because dawn hadn't cracked yet. We were dragged out of bed so we could see her cracking all over the Sahara. You'll have to take my word for it that this picture is of the sun rising over the Sahara. Anyway, we then went on to visit some Salt Lakes. I found these fascinating. They looked like something you'd find on the moon (except there isn't any water there, only bugs) and the piles of salt were rock solid. Then we had our proper big trip into the desert *claps hands*. I had come prepared and was wearing my 'My Little Desert Explorer Outfit'. P bought a Lawrence of Arabia-type headdress. These outfits were necessary. 

                                                           It was about 42 degrees and sodding hot. We were right on the border of Algeria and could just see it in the distance.

It was a big ol' journey back to Hammamet. On the way we saw people flogging petrol by the side of the road. Not from petrol stations but from plastic containers which they had filled up cheaply in Libya and brought over to Tunisia to sell more expensively. And we saw camel heads hanging outside butcher's shops. We were sitting beside a group of Croatian people on the bus, one of whom was very funny. He didn't like the distances in Tunisia and really wanted a holiday in London (I suspect to visit all the gay nightclubs) so he was having a great time. When the guide said it would be another 'one hour and forty minutes' to the next stop he cried out in theatrical dismay, 'What? That's appalling!' We burst out laughing. Then, eventually, we saw our gorgeous hotel, disengorged ourselves from the bus and went to see what floral decoration was in our room. Barney the Bear had stowed away in my hand luggage and had come to Tunisia with us. Despite not having a passport. He didn't come to the Sahara with us as it would have been too hot for him (what with his fur) and he wouldn't have liked the camels or the sand. So he stayed in the room until we returned. He enjoyed being made every day. The guy who did the room incorporated Barney into all of his floral designs. You can just spot him sitting on the left hand pillow in this picture.

We decided to book ourselves into the spa for some pampering. On the first day we had a massage under jets of warm water and an aloe vera wrap. The next day was the hammam, scrub and hot stone therapy. My skin felt as soft as a 4 year olds and it was the best 100 quid I'd spent in ages.

There was some more lounging on the beach involved, a little bit of snorkeling, a bloody jellyfish stung me, and another visit to the Medina where some henna'ing took place. I have been to Medina's before but I have never, ever been with someone who bargains so well that the shopkeeper eventually accepts their price, almost chucks the stuff at them and has a face like a smacked arse. Well done P! She drives a hard bargain.

I can confirm that Tunisian Chardonnay is very, very nice. Every evening we would relax at the Pool Bar with a cold bottle and watch the sun set. After dinner we would then head over to the other pub and play backgammon.

Here we are in the Pool Bar on our last night. After a having wonderful time in Tunisia.