walkout

MrDavid77 kindly donated a couple of hours' of his company to me this afternoon on his last full day in-country before heading off to Cornwall on the way to Cairo. I recall that is was similarly raining five weeks ago when he turned up, though his manbrella (new at the time) now shows the marks of wear and use and was easily popped inside-out by a small gust of wind as we stood on the corner of the street deciding where to go.

I failed to get everyone up and out early enough to be able to hit the parliament and the World Press Photo exhibition the second it opened in order to avoid too much tour-group business, mostly due to not getting back until well after two last night and staying up for a nettle tea and chat before going to sleep. I'm hoping to use the father-visit as an excuse to pop out for breakfast at least once but that will have to wait, too. Shortly after breakfast at around lunchtime father wandered off to poke at the galleries and possibly the botanics, Nicky stayed in to nurse her snout with eucalyptus-derived decongestants and I popped out for some walk in anticipation of another evening with a large meal quite late at night.

Having poked through the remaining pile of tickets and judged that there wasn't a great deal there until next week when every evening is occupied and anything else I want to go and see would have to either fit into the small gap between work and booked-thing or be missed, I again left Nicky snuffling when father had popped out alone to another Usher Hall event to see if Marcus Brigstocke had improved any as a standalone stand-up act since last witnessed, assuming that as he was reasonable in his news-mocking capacity that he might have something worth saying on the subject of religion in his God Collar show. My work-colleagues will be visiting it following next week's departmental hogwash event (partly on my recommendation, though there was little else on the shortlist compiled by boss not already sold out) when I shall be going to a pre-booked otherthing. He started off reasonably well but drifted off after about twenty minutes into a thirty-minute waffle about how amazing his kids were, only occasionally attempting to tie what he was saying back into the main thread of his argument. He also seems to have worryingly not quite got the point of atheism, nor some of the justifications of its proponents, opportunities for cheap laughs aside. It was also painfully loud from the first note of the intro music; I hadn't any earplugs on me so had to use screwed-up bits of Tesco receipt from my wallet. For what good it will do I shall inform the venue but shall spend the next couple of days worrying about the damage done.