Being very grown-up (sort of)

This Friday saw our annual 'doing something loosely defined as 'cultural', when the Kiwi and I went to see Pygmalion at the Old Vic. It got off to a slightly shaky start, when (being used to films and concerts) we turned up on the dot of 1930, expecting it to start some time afterwards, and were made to wait upstairs and watch the first act on a monitor before being let into the theatre. Nonetheless, the remainder of it was superb, Tim Pigott-Smith attacking the Henry Higgins role with evident relish and Michelle Dockery brilliantly timed and spot on as Eliza Doolittle.

I've not seen the play before and, although this could be as much down to the performance as anything else, I was surprised by the savagery with which Shaw tears into the privileged classes, showing through Higgins a thorough hypocrisy and lack of humanity, particularly in the face of Eliza's articulate, grounded and self-aware father. Whilst Col. Pickering offers some hope of redemption for the upper classes, he's still shown as fundamentally juvenile and short-sighted as Higgins.

It also reminded me how damaging a 'happy ending' can be to a play's message - in stark contrast to My Fair Lady, there's no closure to Pygmalion. For the viewer, this means the questions raised in the play are still firmly in the mind long after the show's over; it doesn't offer answers, forcing you to mull it over for yourself.

Anyway, following that we wandered down The Cut to Livebait, where the food was brilliant but the service, unfortunately, was catastrophic. Hey ho. The rest of the weekend involved travelling down to East Sussex to see some friends of ours and their 5 month old baby girl, who's a right bundle of smiles - although for some reason the sight of the Kiwi was enough to reduce her to inconsolable tears at first.

Fortunately they made friends before too long and that afternoon I was treated to the mildly alarming sight of my girlfriend displaying what can only be described as something of a maternal side - even taking over (bottle) feeding duties for a while. She didn't even seem to mind being vomited on, which is totally not my experience of her. Well well, how times change...

Update etc

So, you've probably noticed that it's been a while since my last entry, and so it has. I've not got bored of this blogging thing, I've been alternately manically busy and avoiding getting online for non-work purposes in a kind of 'laptop brings pain' sort of way. So here I am, with a rare Saturday to myself and in a bit of a communicative mood. Work is finished for the day, having spent this morning trying to get something right that's been plaguing me all week.

On that. One of the major frustrations I'm finding at the moment is that whole thing about just not knowing stuff. There are things that are expected of me which I'm just not being told about, and of course when it turns out that I've not done whatever it was, I end up looking a bit rubbish. There's also the annoying thing about knowing what it is I need to say or communicate, but not knowing the 'proper' ways of doing it. These have been a recurrent themes over the past week or so and have been getting on my nerves somewhat. I think we're almost over the worst though, for now.

This particular phase of this project has slipped by a week, which isn't great news. The Project Manager came back from holiday on Monday (my 30th, incidentally, more on that later) and predictably was appalled by how random it'd all got in his absence. Personally I reckon that properly briefing the team and formally appointing a de facto team leader might've helped, but there you go, what do I know? One more week to go, looks like a bit of a week of absolute hell to me, most of it spent in Ireland with nowhere to hide.

On a more fun note, I turned 30 on Monday, which was horrifying. I'd never really been that bothered about it, but all of a sudden towards the end of last week I was starting to feel like I'd really not got to where I wanted to be in general by this age. I reckon I was being a bit too hard on myself, but it got to me a bit all the same. The pain was eased slightly by an afternoon in the park with some friends on Saturday and lunch at the River Cafe on Monday, which was absolutely tremendous, something I'd wanted to do for years.

The Kiwi, continuing her trend in buying me potentially lethal gifts (last Christmas she had me thrown out of a plane at 15,000ft), has bought me a first helicopter flying lesson. I'm really looking forwards to it - one of my life's ambitions has been to learn to fly a helicopter, so she's done well, I'm amazed and so touched that she's picked up on it. I suppose the only worrying thing about it (apart from the fact that there's no reason to be found in most schools of physics why something like that should actually fly) is that having wished for it for so long I turn out to be rubbish at it. We'll see. I'm bracing myself for my Christmas present, which will no doubt be a 'Beginner's Lion Wrestling' course or something. She's ace - always helping me push my boundaries.

Speaking of continuing trends, I've discovered that for the first time in my life, I'm actually getting fat. This is truly horrific. I've always been slim, and yes, sometimes tended towards a little beer belly, but I've never actually noticed wobbliness. Until now. I've cut out beer (sob), bread (making finding lunch more tricky) and I'm trying to get some exercise in where I can. Which reminds me - must go for a swim. In fact, I think I'll do that right now.