In which Helen goes to the theatre...dahling!

Dame Eileen Atkins in "The Female of the Species"

I'm trying to break my diet coke habit. The cheapest price for a can is 60p -- roughly 1.20. I just bought one from the vendor outside my building, so it may not happen.

My new favourite food item is the Cadbury chocolate pudding with chocolate chunks that you mix in. Cadbury is real chocolate; not waxy like ours is. (I want to write like yours ). It is so good.

I was walking on the Waterloo bridge tonight. There is nothing to seeing a city like London at night. The lights and stuff, yeah? You don't need a description. It's like seeing Pittsburgh at night after coming out of the tunnels. Except it is more real to walk across a river like the Thames with the wind and feel the bitterness of the cold and see others taking photos or rushing along without even noticing because they've lived in the city so long. And the double decker busses, the black taxies of old fashioned build -- the click, click sound their engines makes -- the sound of traffic, the ringing of Big Ben that you see in the not-so-distant distance. Just nothing compares for me.

Went to a play tonight. The Female of the Species. A comedy. A comedy about feminism. Is that possible? Apparently it is. It was great fun. Was three rows behind the stage. The actors you may know. Dame Eileen Atkins played the lead. She just won an Emmy in America for her role in the BBC mini-series Cranford. She was Judi Dench's sister who dies after the first episode. Anna Maxwell Martin was the second lead. I've seen her previously in Cabaret when I was last here. She is married to the director of this play -- begs one to wonder how she got the role. She's been in North & South -- anyone? -- the factory girl who befriends Margaret and then dies of Consumption. (A lot of dying going on). She also played Esther Summerson, the lead, in the tv miniseries Bleak House. Lastly, but particularly heartfelt for me, is Sophie Thompson, whose name I had to look up. I don't know anything about her but I did recognize her from Emma, the Gwyneth Paltrow version, where she played Miss Bates. (She doesn't die). The annoying spinster who's always yelling things to her deaf mother. I loved her in that role! I can't be all "writerly" about her acting -- write something interesting -- fuck interesting -- I hate trying to think up ways to make my writing interesting, although I probably should, given that people read things in order to be entertained, all I can write is fuck was she good. She played a woman who has three little kids, doesn't love her husband, and has literally been driven insane by it all. Just walks out one day, ends up at her mothers (Eileen) -- after taking a train and a cab -- forgetting that she's left her kids at home by themselves, the eldest six...So we just had a fire alarm. Spent the last ten minutes out in the cold. I seemed to be the only one who thought it might be a good idea to bring a coat. False alarm. Probably someone's cooking in one of the kitchens; happens all the time I'm told...So Sophie's character is essentially a sort of overly dramatic one which makes her very funny. Here's a clip of her in "Emma", by far my favourite scene in anything. I love how she say's "I'm just going to say, 'hello.'" Watch from 3:40 - 4:40.



I can hear the girl in the room next to me who is Chinese talk in her native tongue with a friend of hers who is staying the night. The walls are very thin; can hear everything. Should probably keep that in mind.