A Little More Clued Up

I always seem to remember loads of things about these evenings after I’ve posted, so I thought I’d add a few more things which made me giggle.

I think the strangest thing was walking down the road in Oxford with C and K (who I saw the show with) and Colin Sell walking past us in the opposite direction. At which we all turned around and went “It’s Colin”! We did wonder about shouting hello, but he’d gone past by then.

During the show Tim was doing his One Song to the Tune of Another and got ever so slightly out of time with Colin on the piano (being a fantastic accompanist, Colin caught up so quickly you’d hardly have noticed), which seemed to amuse Barry and Graeme, who were laughing away behind him.

When Humph was busy telling one of his jokes Tim happened to take a swig of water right before the punch line and K and I were both concerned that he was going to choke on it!!

After the show, at the stage door, as Tim was coming out Jeremy said to him something about ‘these are here for you’ and pointed to us. How ever did he know??

All Clued Up

Wednesday night I finally got to see the I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue tour. It’s a bit like the recordings, but they have made it a little bit more ‘visually’ interesting! And the rounds played are a kind of Greatest Hits, so I did feel I’d heard some of it before. Not that it matters, because it’s a whole different experience live.

I won’t say too much about the show, so as not to spoil it for those who haven’t seen it yet (and believe me, it’s worth the wait!!). What I will say is it was lots of fun and I laughed lots, although Jon Naismith really needs to get some new jokes! I knew the punchlines to all the ones he told, as did a good section of the audience round and about.

Poor Jeremy Hardy, the ‘guest’ for the tour, had a cold which I think it was affecting his singing …

After the show we ended up coming out of the theatre right by the stage door, which was handy. We waited for what seemed like ages before anyone came out to see us (a huge group of 5 people had gathered by then!). I got autographs and photographs with everyone – I even stopped Colin as he was going to walk away. He said that no one usually wants to stop him! Bless!

Jeremy appeared first and signed my programme, as well as posing for a photograph with me. I’ve realised that either Jeremy is actually quite tall, or I’m quite short. Because he was taller than me and I was wearing heels!!

Tim appeared next and we chatted with him for a while. My request for a hug was greeted by ’yes please’(!!) followed by the best hug ever. I also had photographs – Tim didn’t think he looked ok in the first one, so insisted on another. Not that I was going to complain about standing with his arm round me. We got a bit tangled up through all of this and it seemed to take an age for us to separate (although it could be it just seemed like that) Tim signed my programme to the ‘Lady in Red’, although I didn’t notice this until I was on the train home when it made me giggle!

After we’d said goodbye to Tim (and he mentioned the possibility of another tour – shhh!) everyone else came out in a rush all at once, so I was dashing about getting photographs and autographs from Humph and Barry. Humph is ever so tall. Mind you, it doesn’t help that I was standing in the gutter talking to him! And he complained that Jeremy had signed all over his face on my programme!! And Barry made us all laugh by standing smoking right next to the ‘No Smoking’ sign and not realising, even when everyone was pointing at it for him!!

I didn’t get much chance to speak to Graeme as he was with some people and seemed keen to get away. I did get my programme signed, a photograph and an all too brief hug though.

Then it was time to catch the train home, until next time …

Have you met Miss Smith?

The first series of The Sarah Jane Adventures began on Monday. It’s following on from the pilot episode which was shown at New Year.

And I won’t say too much, as a) it’s a two parter and b) those of you who work or don’t have kids to remind you it’s on may not have been watching children’s telly at 5pm!

But it’s good (and well worth catching the repeat on Sunday at 6pm on CBBC ). Proper children’s drama that adults can watch and enjoy too. (Russell T Davies’ previous children’s drama Dark Season crossed over like this too)

And if that wasn’t reason enough – the Slitheen are back!!

The Good Life

There’s been a couple of programmes on telly recently attempting to tackle the issue of being ‘green’.

BBC Three have a series called Outrageous Wasters, in which a family who use more energy and water, make no attempt to recycle and have little concern for the environment are taken away to live in a yurt in Wales and be shown green alternatives and made to think about the impact their lifestyle has. Meanwhile their house is modified with solar panels and fun ways of sorting recyclables to try and help them consider continuing this new outlook when they return home.

I’ve been quite impressed with the series so far (and quite shocked at how wasteful some people can be). It’s been interesting to watch the change in people’s attitudes to realising that it’s not really difficult to make some basic changes to their lifestyle, but more importantly how everyone doing their little bit can make a big difference.

Over on Channel 4 there’s been a short series called Dumped. This programme took a group of volunteers and asked them to live on a dump next to a landfill site for three weeks. A good premise with lots of potential for looking at how much of what we as a country throw away is actually useful. Unfortunately the programme makers made it a competition with the person or people lasting the full three weeks getting a share of the prize money. This meant that the programme was more interested in the disputes between the people than it was on considering the issues it should have been highlighting (They were there, but well hidden). So I only managed to watch a couple of episodes before giving up.

It had so much potential.

News just in …

And from the research department for stating the obvious comes these stories -

 Women are choosier than men

Birds get startled by dogs

And people get paid to do research like this??!

Where The Wild Roses Grow

Well, my garden is coming along nicely now – I’ve got rhubarb, strawberries and broccoli planted for next year, along with a few herbs. The compost bin is filling up. Roses are blooming and I’ve found and replanted more bulbs than Blackpool illuminations!

My big problem at the moment is slugs. The nasty things keep trying to eat my plants! Despite consulting various sources of gardening information I’ve not found a good solution. I don’t want to use chemical slug repellents, but I did find one which was garlic based. So I thought I’d plant some garlic, but that doesn’t seem to have done much yet. I’ve also put crushed eggshells round my veg plants to create a sort of anti-slug razor wire! I have a feeling this battle may continue for a good while yet …