Will try to work on shorter sentences next time.

Dear all Olly,

Well, I promised I'd write, but didn't really think about what. Emma condoned Big Brother discussion, but I haven't been watching it, so I don't have anything to say on the matter; I haven't been watching the football, either, although someone tells me that lots of men in different coloured shirts ran up and down a field for ninety minutes, occasionally knocking each other over and crying; and I know nothing about Eastenders, other than that some people with rasping voices wander about market places shouting "Peggy!", and that someone called Phil once got shot, but I think he's ok now.

So what can I talk about? I sat my RS GCSE on Mark's Gospel earlier today, and have spent the past few days feeling as though I know more about Jesus than I do about most of my immediate family--so I could probably go into some detail regarding the healing of Blind Bartimaeus, or the sending out of the Twelve, or the importance of the Last Supper to Christians today--but that's perhaps not the most interesting topic to pursue, and I expect I'll end up blaspheming every which way and insulting members of every religion going, so I'll leave that one.

As it happens, I have quite a talent for babbling--at considerable length--about nothing at all, as I am proving here, but at least I hope Olly has something to read now.

Perhaps I ought to say something of vague worth. Well, I enjoyed the meeting today, at which I suppose we proved that the more does not necessarily equal the merrier, and that much joy can be had with only eight inquiring minds (nine, counting Peter), silver foil, and the prospect of Clocktower bags. The upgraded refreshments, though delightful, were probably not intented to be taken along to the evening's performance, during which it was discovered that packets of crisps somehow become very, very loud in a small auditorium (although I sat smugly with my near-silent Jammie Dodgers).

'The Bogus Woman', which I think most of us went along to after the meeting, was a harrowing one-woman account of the atrocities experienced by asylum seekers, both in their home countries and in detention centres in the UK. Performer Sarah Niles played an impressive total of forty-eight characters in a ninety-minute show: very well-acted and written, and deeply shocking at times. Not 'uplifting', perhaps, but I don't expect that was the intention. I don't think I've attended any post-meeting performances which didn't involve any of the characters dying, actually--is this some kind of foreshadowing? Am I to die an early death, perhaps inflicted by spoon-wielding maniacs?* But then I suppose I missed the Bill Shannon thing, and unless it was quite a different affair to what I imagined, I don't think there was any death in that.


My God, I'm sorry, I've typed so very much yet said so very little. (Welcome to the inside of my head.) I'll leave you in peace.


[By the way, for whoever is in charge of this blog and can change all the settings (Emma?)--I think the time is set to US hours or something mad like that: I changed the time on this post manually, but it originally claimed to be about half five in the afternoon (which, if the pitch black view out of my window and my increased lethargy are anything to go by, is not quite right). We might need to re-set that... ]


*The Librarian's Joke is still one of the best things I have ever seen. I'd love to see it again; I wonder if they'll come back? Or maybe with a new show.