Every now and then all of my friends appear to be watching some TV show, and I think, "Ooh, I wonder what that is about?" But that's usually as far as it goes. Sometimes they show it to me, and I watch (and maybe even enjoy it) but then never watch any more of it; sometimes I crank it up on Iplayer and fail to make it through an episode. One way or another, I just forget to watch it.

In other news, I got Chariots of Fire (which I saw on Monday) and Flahooley written up (the second thanks to djm4), and if you're curious how a group of people from South Africa would approach La Boheme, I can answer that question for you, too.

It's Saturday and I am planning on 1) gardening 2) showering 3) seeing the Yayoi Kusama exhibit at the Tate 4) going to my last concert of the Lufthansa Baroque festival 5) attending a Eurovision party 6) packing ... somehow. Better get on it.

Today was payday and a great and glorious day of indulgence it was. First, at work we have an "egg and bacon sandwich" club. The way it works is that everyone who is in the club takes turns buying egg and bacon sandwiches for everyone who's in the club on a rotating basis. Last time it was my turn; this time I got to have a nice hot breakfast sandwich delivered to me at my desk at 10AM. Awesome!

Next up was my two month review with my boss. Here in the UK when you start a job you are on probation with limited rights and benefits (and it's easy to fire you); while you're on probation, you have monthly meeting to review how things are going. I reviewed the list of goals I made my third week there and was pleased to see I was making progress in all of the areas I was hoping to. Boss man said he was pleased with me overall and had no complaints and then wanted to talk about strategy for the next month. I liked this.

Then it was noon (before I knew it!) and I went across the street (well, down the street then across) to the National Portrait Gallery, where I saw this Lucien Freud retrospective. He's one of three artists I hadn't heard of before I moved here (David Hockney and Francis Bacon were the other ones) who are all just really famous in England. I thought it would be good for me to really get a good feel for his style and chanced the "sold out" sign on the website in hopes there would be tickets at the door: and indeed there was (just a half hour wait to the next slot). I enjoyed the show quite a bit, especially after reading this trashing of Damian Hirst in the Guardian yesterday and seeing the horrible self-indulgent, hagiographic exhibit of David Hockney's crap two months ago. Freud can paint; his paintings are often ugly but he is a master of the materials. I got through the exhibit in 1:15 despite the press of the crowds, but I have to say, it was really worth the effort to see it.

Back to work and nobody seemed very focused - the question was when would the drinks and food order show up for the party my team was hosting at the end of the day? Right about when I did, apparently. This meant my next goal was walking around the company giving away ice cream bars - an act which made me a real hit, I think, given the warm weather.

Then it was nearly time for the drinks party. All work had stopped. So what did I do? I headed out to get some money from the cash machine and get a massage. When I got back to work, the drinks party had started. WOO who put vodka in the Pimms? Really, it was a nice way to start the weekend! I left at 6 and headed over to the Young Vic (via the footbridge over the Thames) to meet a friend for "The Suit," a Peter Brook directed play about a man who gets angry at his wife and just can't get over it. When the play was over, I was unable to resist the call of the banana split for sale in the Young Vic restaurant. It was better than expected - sprinkled with pistachio nuts instead of walnuts, and honey instead of chocolate syrup (not that chocolate wouldn't have been nice), and all of the whipped cream my heart desired. I had a good catchup with my friend over our desserts while the sun slowly set (it was a short show). Then it was home and my roommate has made me another Pimms! Really, this is my idea of a GOOD FRIDAY. Hope yours was nearly as nice!

If you're not on Twitter, you're missing most of what I have to say these days (remember when I posted seven or ten times a day? Ah how life has changed) and probably don't know I'm in the middle of enjoying the Lufthansa festival of the Baroque. It's a two week series of performances that mostly takes place at St John's Smith Square ... except for the one choral concert they do at Westminster Abbey. That was last night, and the music was two motets (Bach and Handel) and Handel's "Ode for St Cecilia's Day."

Unusually, I found the English words of the ode very pleasant - possibly because they were by Dryden rather than some hack lyricist. Here's the ending, which gave me goosebumps:

"So when the last and dreadful hour
This crumbling pageant shall devour
The trumpet shall be heard on high
The dead shall live, the living die,
And Music shall untune the sky."

Pretty good, huh? Even better with big old Gothic pillars rising into the sky next to you. I was there with my roommate and we had seats facing the chorus ... really, a highlight of the musical year for me.

The soprano who sang it, Sophie Daneman, was great and is supposed to be performing in Lully's "Atys" with Les Arts Florissants later this year, so I'll be looking to hear her again. As for me and my roommate, well, looks like we'll be heading to York this Christmas for the Early Music Festival. Hurray! As for this festival, there are four more concerts schedules, two for tonight (Friday) and two for Saturday - I'll be seeing Saturday's organ concert then heading out to booklectic's to see the Eurovision finals. Gotta mix it up with the high and low culture, you know.

I'm doing a little protest on Twitter and have changed my user profile. I'm keeping it here so I can change it back once I'm hating the IOC a little less.

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to bake it. With lasers. - Henry Miller x yes.thatcan.be/my/next/tweet/

(The story: @spacehijackers had their account closed down because their profile said "official protesters of the 2012 Olympics.")

I'm having a hard time keeping up with my writing, what with my new job actually keeping me busy all day and then seeing four shows a week. Or, in a weekend, which is what I did Saturday and Sunday - two Baroque concerts, one Starlight Express (with H, who enjoyed it), and one lost musical (Flahooley, which I had to leave early to get to my next show!). This is the second weekend I did something with H, and she says she wants to do something with me every weekend. That would almost work if I could get her to work on the yard with me, but that's not what she's talking about, I think. And I do need to work on my yard more; my hours of gardening yesterday was 75% weeds and 25% planting stuff in pots. Weeds: need more work. Stuff: not all planted.

By the way, last weekend I took H to the Wellcome museum to see the Brains exhibit. What freaked her out? A painting of a woman giving birth. What freaked me out? Attempting to explain to an 8 year old Hitler's eugenics program (one exhibit was about some little boys her age who had been killed while at a mental asylum, and the research that had been done on them before and after they died). Meanwhile the slices of brains and brains in bottles didn't seem to upset her at all, despite the fact there was a warning notice being given out saying the exhibit had been making some people faint. Go figure.

Nothing I saw this weekend has been reviewed, and only Flahooley will ever get the treatment. I'm relieved: I was up until 1 AM Saturday finishing my review of Duchess of Malfi, which I saw Tuesday with severe_delays (and found turgid in the revenge tragedy manner). Much better, in fact, hysterically enjoyable was What The Butler Saw. I hadn't really heard of Joe Orton before I moved here but I think the comparison of him with Oscar Wilde - only with all of the deviant sex intact - is quite good. I want to go see this show again while it's as manic as it was when I saw it, but I don't think I'll be able to get to it anytime soon.

Otherwise: life is continuing to be pretty good for me, and I continue to wait for the other shoe to drop but enjoying what I've got while I've got it.

I was sexually abused by my stepfather as a child. This has affected how I am as an adult, especially in terms of issues of trust. My mother continued to live with this man for eight years after I told her what was going on. It mostly stopped but I made sure to avoid ever being alone with him. I still had to eat dinner with him every night and have him drive me to Girl Scouts and the mall and go buy groceries with him. So do I know how to bear up in a dangerous situation? Yes I do. Do I expect to go through life without support when I am under fire? Unfortunately, I do. But it's not how I want things to be. Do I know how to live without love and affection? I learned how to do that during those years, too, but that's now how I want my life to be as an adult. I lived with the shame of this for years and then at some point realized I hadn't done anything wrong. So I'm talking about this because I think it's important to say it happened and I didn't do anything wrong and to let other people know if this happened to you, you were not the only one. My counselor said I am not damaged from this in how I deal with other people, but I take betrayal very hard and desperately want security. But mostly, I'm okay. And sometimes, when I see how I deal with people who actively want to damage me, I think I'm probably too okay, because I should not even speak to them or acknowledge their existence. Right, time for work.

I'm as nutty about shows as ever: two so far this week and a third tonight. I'm behind in my reviews, but managed to slip one for Misterman in late night. Ooh, and I have my first "reader deal" ever special for my blog: free drinks if you go to the current installation of the six part Tempest in Hoxton and use a code word (no one has asked me for the code word yet though so I guess I'm not all that popular).

Last week I saw a very much excellent show, Barbarians, right down the street from where I live. Seeing top class actors like that in a space that holds about 50 is really great, but when you crank it up to 11 with performances that made me have to remember I was not actually in a room with a bunch of angry skinheads (or one angry skinhead and his two friends) it all just a bit too much. Well, actually, it wasn't too much at all, it was fantastic.

(Looks like there's a fair few other reviews I haven't posted lately, including one for Einstein on the Beach and a chatty thing on how I rate shows, but rather than link back to about a month's worth of writing I'll just say to head yourself to my Wordpress blog if you're interested. Work is so busy I can barely find any time to write at all these days, especially with a four show a week schedule, so crossposting them to Livejournal just isn't happening.)

Meanwhile in my other obsessions I've got 192 Foursquare mayorships, despite losing two this morning. My my, it's a good thing I try to avoid getting into things like this (she says 32,271 tweets later).

Finished off the last of my Mariage Freres first flush Ambootia Darjeeling from last year this morning at work. Even a year old it has really held its taste. Help help! I've only got 25 other bags of tea to choose from but NONE OF THEM IS AMBOOTIA!