Well, I’ve not got very far with my January task of going to watch the local ice hockey team and we’re already half way through the month. I have, however, used my time wisely. Last Saturday, it was Mark’s birthday. We all went for dinner in Maldon. Yesterday, another bit of Christmas. Tonight I made sushi. Actually fairly well.

Last night. So, Paul and I went around to Graham and Roger’s late afternoon to drink tea and eat highly brandy-fied Christmas cake. So brandy-fied, in fact, that it had started to dissolve the marzipan, which in turn had started to eat through the icing. It all conspired to make it all the more yummy.

We sat around until four and then caught a train to London with Trevor and Jon. It had come all the way from Peterborough, which was a bit of a turn-around. It almost implies someone has actually thought about how to run long-distance trains in this country.

Anyhow, Graham and Roger were treating us, although as always they didn’t tell us where we were going, except that we’d start at Pizza Express.

Which we did.

And then we went to the theatre at the Savoy. It’s a lovely art deco theatre dug into the ground to one side of the hotel. Inside, it still looks like it probably did in the 30s, with Mackintosh style decor, and silver walls throughout. The play was suitably old-fashioned.

It’s putting on Blithe Spirit by Noel Coward, right now. Penelope Keith was the headline attraction, although far from the most active part. Rather disappointingly she didn’t say ‘Jerry, do something’ even once, but it was fab nonetheless, particularly when the live people were talking to the dead people they couldn’t see but we could. If that makes sense.

So, in short I still need to sort out the ice hockey.

In the meantime, they have a once-a-month show on Radio 4 called Book Club, and the next one they are recording is with Stephen Fry, talking about The Hippopotamus, which I’ve read at least half a dozen times so far. So, I sent them an email to ask if I could be in the audience to ask a question.

It didn’t look hopeful. They have room for 20, they said, and they’ve been massively over-subscribed. To trim us down, they asked us all to submit questions, so after consultation with Chris of the Phin I asked is The Hippopotamus as much a story that supports the idea of finding happiness by maintaining your own personal faith as it is about debunking the tenets of organised religion?

And on Friday they emailed me back and asked me along.

Please make your way to BBC Bush House and report to reception, where your name will be held on a list. We will then escort to the studio, where you will be able to help yourself to refreshments and meet the other guests before the recording begins at 6pm. You will also have a chance to meet Stephen Fry and Jim Naughtie at this stage.

The recording is anticipated to take approximately one hour. We keep it very informal, with just twenty people in the audience, so please relax and remember to ask lots of questions - we need it to be as like a real-life book club as possible! It may help you to bring the questions that you have already submitted to us, which you are welcome to use as prompts.

So now I’ve started re-reading it. I thought perhaps some revision was in order.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 16th, 2005 at 9:58 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.