Marianne Dreams

We went to see this play - an adaptation of the novel for children by Catherine Storr - at the Almeida Theatre in London on Saturday.

I found I was crying with the sheer loveliness of it. A truly wonderful piece of theatre, magical and charming.

A tale of serendipity/spooooky coincidence now follows:

The reason I bought tickets for this event was because I'd finally discovered the name of the TV show based on this book, which I'd been searching for since the internet was invented. I'd been pleasantly terrified by this programme as a child but could remember nothing about it except that there was a boy ill in bed, a girl who visits him, a magic sketch book which could summon up for real whatever was drawn in it, and some horrible big monoliths outside with eyes on them. Last November I finally tracked down the name of the programme - it was "Escape into Night" and it was based on a novel by Catherine Storr.

Quite by chance I read in my free copy of the Waitrose magazine that the book was being dramatised. I borrowed the book from the library and found it gripping and fascinating, and of course I ordered tickets for the show.

Joco et ludo

Despite failing to attend a school that taught Latin or anything else so grand I am curiously delighted by this expression. It was fascinating to learn some history (from my bed-time reading of "The History of the Countryside" by Oliver Rackham) about pollarding and coppicing underwood, felling trees for timber, hunting for deer, pannage for swine, etc that the monks of Suffolk, when visited by the Queen of France, used their woodland for fun and games.

Kind wishes extended to you and yours on this first day of the new year, my dearies

We consider ourselves unobliged to make a resolution as on the 30th day of December last year we (Mr HC and myself) CLEANED THE OVEN. Now absolutely ALL the signs and symbols on the fiddly shiny fascia have been deleted, along with the grime and baked-on grease of dinners past. Cooking will be so much more instinctive and unpredictable than ever before. However, the thermometer can currently be read through the glass door, so clean as it now is.

New year's afternoon eve we cooked: two quiches, 16 bread rolls, one stollen,lentil and tomato soup for 11, prawn risotto for 10, one raspberry pavlova. All satisfactorily well received, I believe and none burned or under-cooked.