Bedtime stories

It's been a long and fairly frantic day. In a good way, on balance. At work, evidently Laura was feeling the strain too, because she wrote this email to her friend:

'You are no fun if you are busy. I have lost a playmate.
What do you want for your birthday?'

And then she got her surnames confused and, without realising, sent it to the head of UK Financial Markets instead. The Big Boss was out of the office but wrote back almost immediately from his Blackberry saying something like: 'Laura - I don't get this' whereupon she became acquainted with her error and visibly cringed for the rest of the day. I laughed with such force that I had to lean against the wall for support and did that kind of extended exhalation/wheeze that makes one sound as if one is about to die from a massive asthma attack.

Now I am numb with tiredness. But I will say this: like so many other people, I wantonly label almost any great record as one of my Desert Island Discs, caring little for the fact that, were some grateful minion to add up all my alleged choices, they would total in the region of three hundred times the required eight pieces of music. However, last night I faced up to the fact that, come what may, Ravel's Bolero would have to make the cut. It is a phenomenal, seductive piece that reminds me of happy times idolising Torvill and Dean. Plus the key change towards the finale is the only thing in the world that makes me want to learn to play a brass instrument - other than Slideshow by Rufus Wainwright. Ooh, and the entire score of West Side Story. Ice skating, Rufus and musicals? How odd: all of a sudden I seem to have morphed into a laughable stereotype of a gay man. Time for bed.