I'm just a cock-eyed pessimist

How good was Pilates on the Reformer yesterday? So good that I woke up in the middle of the night and could barely raise my arms above my ribcage. They are sore today. I see all of my fat converting into muscle in no time. If only I'd got rid of more of the fat first! I'm going to have rower's arms at this rate.

As it turns out, the National did sell the last of its allocation of Masque of the Red Death tickets last night. However ... there are tickets still available at the Battersea Arts Centre. I'm going on the 30th with W and J and butterbee and bathtubgin, aiming for 7:15. If you want to go to this or another date, I'd say call them NOW and get your tickets bought.

In other news I've fallen in love with the Italian bakery/coffee shop/bar across the street and have been going about twice a day. The ham and cheese croissant, it's just the thing after the five flights of stairs I went up on my way into work today after being lied to about what platform the next train was leaving from twice and then trying to make up lost time (Proustian pun here?) leaping up the escalator at Holborn. And it's only £1.25. And they have free snacks at happy hour.

And The Eyre Affair, it's hysterical, great for lit fans and English grammar nuts AND alternate history buffs. (itsjustaname, I think you'd love it, would you like it next? And irrationalrobot, you should suggest this one for science fiction book club.) I realized I'm now going to have read three mystery-like novels in a month - The Curious Incident, the new Lucifer Box novel, and this. Whatever is happening to my taste in books? Are Dick Frances and Miss Marple my future?

my head resting in shadowdaddy's legs

We enjoyed a very nice concert tonight in East Finchley - Emma Kirkby and the English Consort of Viols performing music of 16th century England. But ... somehow they didn't really seem to have their acts together. The first half was tepid, and in the second half Emma stopped a song and restarted it because she was off beat, or something. shadowdaddy thought that too much of the music was getting lost in the back of the church; my suspicion was that the grouping of singer and consort hadn't really practiced together more than about once before the show.

Here's a poem from the show I thought could be sung about me, as it captures how I feel about England (and is indeed about it), though I wouldn't liken myself to Venus:

Fairest Isle of isles excelling,
seat of pleasures and of loves.
Venus here will choose her dwelling
and forsake her Cyprian groves.
Cupid, from his favorite nation
care and envy will remove;
jealousy, that poisons passion
and despair that dies for Love. (etc.)

Afterwards were were walking back through downtown and about 60 teenagers were gathered on the streets and the energy was weird. Five of them broke off into some kind of ball of anger, pushing and yelling and basically convincing us we wanted to be nowhere near any of them. The cops showed up and we crossed over to the tube and the milling anger (now focused on their compatriots on what had been on our side of the street). By the time we made it to the tube station, there were four cop cars there. It was bizarre.