It's really not that exciting

I went to the National Theatre with a bunch of others including onebyone and venta, to see the new Tom Stoppard trilogy of plays, The Coast of Utopia. All three of them. In one day. This may not have been a great idea, but I'm glad I did it anyway. I didn't enjoy these as much as Arcadia (probably my favourite play), but they were very good. Especially the sets and backdrops. How many plays have you seen which do a very good job of depicting a man getting on a boat, and that boat going out to sea, past harbour walls? I've lost my enthusiasm for reviewing them, now that venta has done such a good job of it, so go see her journal for more details.

Anyway. Celebrity spotting. It seems perfectly reasonable to see two fairly serious British actors at the National Theatre, which is how come I'm really quite sure they were them. Ralph Fiennes was in front of us in the tea queue in one of the intervals, looking very handsome, but also shorter than expected (which Ralph - my Ralph, that is) says was some kind of illusion. He also looked like a miserable git (Ralph, not Ralph ;-). Patrick Stewart was loitering around the lobby in the evening with a glass of wine. Actually, even if I'd seen him in Sainsburys in Oxford, I'd still have been sure it was Patrick Stewart. Lex was so excited about him, that when I'd returned to where the rest of the posse were loitering, he had to go and walk past just to see.

Right. I'm working at home today, so expect no more entries at all, while I spend the day proof-reading lots of moderately boring conference papers, resisting the temptation of the computer, sitting here, with its modem, looking at me.

Having said that...

... my music has just reminded me of something I was thinking of writing about, so maybe I'll come back and do that later, when proof reading has got too much.