OK, first up, the programmes for this year's Edinburgh show are finally ready and printed up, so I will be sending out special signed copies to all those who sponsored it. You almost exactly (in fact slightly more than) covered the cost of production, which means all the donations and adverts will be pure profit for SCOPE. Thanks again. I am going to attempt to get these to you asap, but am inscribing them all by hand so it may take a little while. Also my laptop has just crashed so there is a danger I may have lost some addresses and some of you didn't send me your addresses anyway.
So could the following people please send me their addresses if they want the special programmes
Sandra and Laura
Chris Heathcote
Rod Begbie
Shona Craven
www.ilovebags.co.uk
Steve Birks
James Williams (Fiona Knight)
David and Anne Reilly
Richard Hoggart
Jo Humphreys.
If you think you are owed a programme and haven't got one by mid-July then please also email me. This has been a logistical nightmare and there are bound to have been errors I am afraid.
Of course there are also special extra prizes for a lucky few (though most of you will get at least a little extra)
The signed TWTTIN and TGP scripts will be going to
Helen Currie
Ian Munro
Christina Martin
Gaynor Evans
Dave Owen
Leigh Caldwell
Sally Campbell
John Innes
Thomas Barry
Hywel McArdle
Paul Coupe
Hope you enjoy them!
Rememeber you will also get a free programme if you attend any of my "Someone Likes Yoghurt" gigs from now on. They are well worth the admission fee on their own (and I am sure I will get at least one review saying the programme is better than the show). Thanks so much to the very patient Mandy Webster for designing them for free. It was a lot more work than even I anticipated.
The sun shone on London and made its bitter and cynical residents uncharacteristically hopeful and happy. Though of course the heat also meant that the slightest annoyance could easily lead to us snapping in anger. I tried to avoid work by drinking a Frappuchino Light and reading a book in Soho, then I wandered, oddly contented for no good reason up to the British Library, where I failed to get any work done, and probably somewhere along the line broke my laptop,which if truth be told I hadn't really needed to bring with me.
So I headed home, and even though I had to get back fairly promptly for a poker evening, I couldn't really face getting on the crowded underground, which would already be filled with the sweat of a thousand commuters and didn't need any of the sweat that I would have added to the equation. So I just jumped on a bus that was only vaguely going in the direction I wanted. There is actually little more pleasurable than riding a London bus on a barmy summer day and to watch the city going by, wallowing in its rare good fortune. At Oxford Street I jumped on another bus which would get me to Notting Hill and then once there I didn't have to wait more than 30 seconds for a bus that would get me home. I had had the time of my life, doing nothing but sit and read and let my new home town seep into my pores on the clammy top decks of these finest of public transport.
I am glad I don't live in a Mediterranean country because I think I'd just sit in cafes and on buses all day instead of doing any work, but luckily for 350 days a year London is disgusting and fetid and I don't even want to leave my house.
Then I found out my laptop was broken and lost all the games of poker (annoyingly making it to the last three in three of the four games), so my feeling of peace and happiness soon left me. But at least I had had some fleeting contentment, which is all we can really hope for.
