Friday ramblings

To continue in the cultural update vein, on Wednesday I went to see August: Osage County at the National, which officially ended my near-eternal run of disappointing theatre experiences. I'm not saying it was perfect, by any means, and I did snooze through most of the first forty minutes, but the action kicked in after the interval and I was hooked. Or maybe that was the white wine. Very funny characters, a lot of strong women and family angst, modern issues and timeless crises - I fully expect that this is a play that will be performed in decades to come. The one fractional low point of my evening's experience was the fact that it made me feel a little sad about being an only child. Not because the siblings in the play were particularly beneficial to each others' lives, but still, there's always seemed something vaguely enviable and comforting about being able to scream at someone who's roughly your age and a close blood relative.

While I was at the theatre, for some reason, my mother and godmother alighted upon the subject of Tamagotchis. I had nothing useful to contribute to the topic, but in the spirit of continuing the conversation, I mentioned that I had a Furby. When I worked at the pop magazine, back in the day, my editor and I had both bought one, on the grounds that, when you put two Furbies face to face, a sensor between their eyes picks up on the fact that there is another of their kind nearby, and they start to have conversations. We thought that, on this basis, it would be unfair only to purchase one. Apart from talking to each other, Furbies do a small variety of other things. They purr loudly when you scratch their head or belly. They rock backwards and forwards when they get sleepy, sing themselves a lullaby, snore loudly and then fall asleep. They say a startled 'WOAH!' if you pick them up too quickly. Occasionally, they'll blow you a kiss or start burbling nonsense, a propos of nothing. It used to be quite amusing when I'd be doing a phone interview with, say, a Spice Girl, and in the background, my Furby would wake up and start chatting away, often saying gems such as, 'Me bored now. Pet me, please.' or, occasionally, doing a large and fruity belch. Ah me, those were the days.

Yesterday my boss came into my office while my friend Laura was sitting on my 'guest chair'.
"Looks like you two have been coordinating outfits," he said in his regular Arnie voice. "Yesterday Laura was wearing the red flower on her jacket. Today you have a red bow. Very discombobulating." Discombobulating is his new favourite word. Job satisfaction doesn't get much better than this. That said, I ain't 'alf looking forward to the weekend.