It's another blog post

Can't be arsed to continue the story tonight. It's too late, and I'll need my sleep - at 5.15am the day after tomorrow I'm heading off on a coach to Germany with the Earnest crew.

Midsummer Night's Dream (the Clare May Week show, which I'm stage-managing) is amazing. We had to do it in Clare Cellars instead of in the gardens today because it rained, but the audience still loved it. Yesterday we did it outside in glorious sunshine and had an audience of over 120.

Haven't done any Spanish since my last blog post. I've been too busy with the aforementioned shows. My nose has given up the fight and is now periodically erupting with fountains of blood. Can't wait to get out of the country and find somewhere where the pollen isn't so damned nasty.

I wish I'd gone to the May Ball now. British Sea Power played it.

So, my next post will be some time after I get back from Deutschland (see what I did there? I put Germany in German. Clever, aren't I?). Somewhere across the river, a random orchestra is playing the Star Wars theme music. Getting to sleep might prove a more arduous task than I had predicted. GW signing off. Peace, y'all.

Spanish and Earnest

"Y'all right, Mr Beaver?" enquired another robot, poking its head round one of the doors of the burrowlike house.

"Never better, Mrs Beaver," the first robot responded. "We've got a guest."

"Great," Mrs Beaver replied sarcastically. "Well, I hope he likes unleaded." She then glanced at Sam. "Oh! It's an organic! Shall I eliminate him?"

"No, no," said Mr Beaver wearily. "He just wants to stay in here until the storm is over."

"Seems reasonable," said Mrs Beaver, regarding them dubiously. "Well, the TV aerial must have been knocked, as I can't get any reception. Shall we play a card game, then? How about knockout whist?"

So the three of them sat around playing whist for hours until a peaceful silence from above indicated that the storm had passed. Then Sam said a warm goodbye to the two robots and continued on his way, further into the forest.

Hello! Wow, a week since my last post. I'd love to say it was because I've been working hard, but it just wouldn't be true. I've had oodles and oodles of free time. I haven't been wasting it, though; I've been learning Spanish, or trying to. Now you'd think that at this point I'd post a facetious/smartass comment in Spanish, but I'm not going to, because my Spanish isn't good enough for that.

We had our first touring performance of The Importance Of Being Earnest yesterday at a little primary school in Hardwick. They had quite a nice lighting setup, and it was a pity that it hadn't been used for a while - it was really far more than a primary school hall needed. The show went well, although someone decided to restart it after the interval while the tech crew and half the audience were still out getting ice creams, which was rather confusing. In the end they stopped it and restarted it again. Embarrassing. It went down well with the audience, though.

Internet marriage

By the time Sam reached the trees the storm was almost upon him. The forest floor was dark and thick with undergrowth, and he wandered between the vast trunks with little hope. He could feel the air around him tightening as the energy increased, and with it his senses sharpened so acutely that he was able to make out a rather quaint door set into the base of one of the trees, three steps down.

The door was a cleanly carved piece of wood on bronzed hinges with a porthole-style window just below head height. Outside the door a couple of milk bottles and a yoghurt pot waited to be taken in, resting on a mat woven with the words "Bless This Mess". A small copper plaque proclaimed this to be the home of "Mr and Mrs Beaver".

Sam wasn't about to take his chances with the storm. Instead he picked up the golden doorknocker - in the form of a lion - and knocked sharply. Approaching steps could be heard from within.

A large grey-metalled robot opened the door. It was slightly taller than Sam and has humanoid in shape except for the flexible arm protruding from its upper abdomen. "What?" it demanded angrily.

"I'm sorry if I disturbed you," said Sam quickly, taken aback. "I got caught in the storm, and just wanted to get inside somewhere."

The robot looked at him suspiciously. "All right," it said after a few moments. "You can come in. Just don't steal anything." With its three arms it picked up the yoghurt and milk bottles and inserted them into a compartment in its torso. "Follow me."

Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, I'm now married. Her name's Latifa and she's very small and nice. Hopefully we shall receive two little linguist bundles of joy very shortly. How gloriously happy I am.

You'd think my nose would have figured out by now that running like a tap and convulsing like a mad thing isn't the best way of dealing with little bits of pollen. Unfortunately, noses are not noted for their keen insights, and so I have to suffer through yet another hayfever season. It gets infuriating when one is in a situation where one is required to look one's best and to eat, such as at a formal hall. Plugging both nostrils with Blu-Tack might work, except that then the pressure would gradually increase to such a level that said obstruction would be messily expelled across the room, and then I would lose much of my credibility.

The day before yesterday I went to see my room for next year with Daves. It had a window, and a door, and was roughly cuboid in shape; pretty much exactly what I'd expected, then. Didn't get to see my room, but saw an equivalent at the other end of the building. A staircase in Castle House (note here that I refer to "A" staircase, not a staircase in the sense of any old staircase) is populated by a lot of very nice people.

On Blogging

"When?" asked the red beetle.

"I don't know," responded Sam. The beetle shook its head and chittered, waving its forelegs wildly.

"You can't just ask a question that only consists of a question word and nothing else," Sam clarified, exasperated. "I've been waiting for access to this tower for the past forty-five minutes, and that's all you have to say to me?"

"If you don't want to play by the rules, that's fine," grunted a grimy-looking man in the queue behind him, "but if that's the case you can go somewhere else. Some of us actually want to get inside, you know."

"Aye," added a hunched woman. "There's an electrical storm coming." She pointed to the sky, where roiling clouds were hastening in their direction, a corona of energy playing around them. "If we get caught in that, we're toast. I don't want to be toast." She shuddered.

Sam sighed. "Tell me the answer and I'll go in and get out of your way."

The woman looked at him pityingly. "It doesn't work like that, love. It's your answer. I can't answer for you - it has to come from inside." The beetle whirred approvingly.

"But I don't know," Sam reiterated.

"Then no entry for you, my lad," the man said firmly. "Now run along and get out of our way."

Sam spluttered. "But what about the storm?"

"You might be safe in the forest," replied the old woman, lifting a wizened finger and pointing in the direction of a wall of towering trees against which the cloudfront was sure to break.

"Fine," Sam muttered resignedly. "Thanks, I suppose." Picking up his bags, he began trudging in the direction of the forest.

Hello. I am the Blogger. You are the Blogged.

That's right. After millennia of inactivity the indomitable machine that is George L. Walkden has unexpectedly whirred into activity, cogs creaking and grinding. I had my last exam today, after which I went to Starbucks and got bought a hot chocolate and a muffin. David and Fi and Jen are nice. Life is good, but timewasting isn't what it used to be, as I'm not really wasting anything any more. Instead I'm being constructive and blogging.

Expect neither intelligent criticism nor cutting analysis of current events on this blog. I live in the Cambridge bubble and don't give a monkey's about the outside world except insofar as it directly concerns me, and even then I'm often unashamedly indifferent.

Maybe I'll have something other than tuna mayonnaise to eat for lunch in the near future, but I do like tuna mayonnaise.