Highlight of the Day - Getting up early, without a hangover, and being super-productive. I felt like I could've seen Heather Small interrogating me with a warbling "What have you done today to make you feel proud?" and answered very successfully even at 11am. I went into Oxford Street, which is uncharacteristically bearable and sparse before 11 and got my refund in River Island (open open open this time) and then scurried around M+S, House of Fraser and John Lewis looking for the biggest plain white plate I could find. It was for work (I had to drop it off at work before 2). My work's a bit confidential, so I can't really divulge what it was for, but it had to be huge, flat, round and plain white. I also couldn't tell any of the very confused sales assistants what it was for and I imagine they were talking about crazy plate boy all day. John Lewis was the winner. Pizza plate - 35cm diameter, in case you ever need a ginormous plate.
Embarrassing Moment of the Day - Apart from forcing people to measure plates, it was my unexpected item in the bagging area at Sainsbury's. I mean, pray tell self-checkout lady, how unexpected can a bag of carrots in Sainsbury's really be??
Embarrassing Moment of the Day - Apart from forcing people to measure plates, it was my unexpected item in the bagging area at Sainsbury's. I mean, pray tell self-checkout lady, how unexpected can a bag of carrots in Sainsbury's really be??
So, after my proud productivity, I did some work at home and then went out in the evening with friends. We first went to Yauatcha, that beautiful glass restaurant cum aquarium on Broadwick Street with all the macaroons in the window. It was very posh (lovely sinks in the loos). It was the sort of place where they place the napkins on your laps for you, which I hate. I prefer to keep my lap to myself, thank you very much, stranger. We had dim sum, which was delicious and it wasn't actually as expensive as I'd imagined. The service, however, was really slow. The waiter asked us if we had any allergies. My friend said prawns and he wrote down and read out "Seat one, prawn allergy" in a slightly awkward, proud way (Heather wouldn't have been impressed). He asked if we had any celebrations. We were sort of halfway between two of our birthdays, so we said it was both of our birthdays. At the end, they brought us one macaroon to share between two. I suppose I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, but ONE macaroon? It was covered in hundreds and thousands and was bubblegum flavour and frankly quite disgusting. I'm 26, not 6. The rest of the desserts looked INCREDIBLE though and I will have to go back to try one (or some).
After that we went to what was my real highlight of the day, which was a play by the theatre group Cheek by Jowl at the Barbican. Me and my friends all speak French (not EVERY friend of course, but the ones on this evening), so when we saw that a French play, Ubu Roi, was playing, we thought we'd go and check it out. It was quite astounding. At time hilarious, at times terrifying and certainly quite surreal throughout. It's sort of theatre of the absurd style, in that a lot of it doesn't make a lot of sense with several nonsensical words (not just because I didn't understand the French!!) and fairly unconnected references. He was constantly talking about his Chandelle Verte (Green Candle). It reminded me a lot of Ionesco's, La Cantatrice Chauve (The Bald Primadonna), which I adore. The acting was incredibl (much of it was really physically challenging) and it really kept you on the edge of your seat for the whole 2 hours. It also had English subtitles, so you could go if you don't speak French. I recommend it highly.
The only negative would be that the Barbican can be a fairly stressful place. I love the stuff they do there, and it's really reasonably priced, but there are so many buildings with so many entrances and it said on the ticket (in pretty big letters) "Latecomers will not be admitted." We arrived with 10 minutes to spare, one friend went for a cigarette, the other two to the toilet, I strolled up to the ticket lady to check we were at the right door and she said "Oh no, that's a different theatre." Cue panic. Then there was announcement saying performances begin in 5 minutes and all of sudden there were lots of people running around. Two friends came back, they went to find the actual theatre and I was waiting for the other friend, who was on the wrong floor. We ran to the theatre where a ticket lady was calling my name. She'd been waiting for me (it must have been 7.31) as they were closing the doors and my friends had left my tickets with her. It was all quite stressful. Apart from that and the odd bubblegum macaroon
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