Saturday 30th October

                I was looking forward to a fairly quiet day, watching a bit of mindless TV with Ronnie, whizzing round with the vacuum cleaner and catching up on the ironing before I went out to help out at the play again.  So you can imagine I was not best pleased when the OH told me that he’d suggested to the cast that they should come round to our house after the performance tonight for some celebratory drinks and snacks.

                “It’s not a problem, is it?” he wondered idly.  “There’s only about a dozen of them.  Plus maybe the technical folk, a couple of partners.  And the front of house people,” he added hurriedly when he saw the frosty look I was giving him and completely misinterpreting it.

                I try to avoid Tesco at the weekend.  It’s far too close to the ‘outlet mall’ near here and consequently the roads are completely clogged from 10.30 until around 5.  Since the OH dropped his little bombshell at 9.30, I just about had time to check the cupboards for existing levels of snacks, beer and wine before beating the manic roundabout parking that develops.  Fortunately, my route home takes me round the other side of the roundabout, avoiding the queuing hordes so getting home again afterwards wasn’t a problem either.

                “We can put a comfy chair in the kitchen for you, Ronnie, so that you can join in without getting too tired,” I told her during an ad break for Upstairs Downstairs.

                “Ooh, no, it’ll be far too late for me.  I’m still shattered from last night’s excursion, I couldn’t manage two late nights in a row.  I’ll head up to bed if nobody minds.”   I sometimes wonder where Verity gets her party-liking from, because it certainly isn’t her mother.

                So I managed the whizz round with the vacuum and finishing the ironing before heading off to the village hall again.  The play was again excellent; it’s a pity in some ways that they only did two performances of it, because the village hall can only seat 60, so even if there are full houses both nights, which there pretty much were, that’s still only 120 people who’ve seen it.  Seems an awful lot of effort to entertain 120 people, but when they came back afterwards, they all seemed perfectly happy with the arrangement.  They’re not even having a rest – they start rehearsals for the February show tomorrow!