No Films But A Wonderful Curious Incident This Week

I realise that this has looked a bit like a movie fanatic's blog recently but, after three films last week, we didn't manage to get to the cinema at all this week. We've been keeping very busy though and spent Monday and Tuesday in Rochester on our final childcare stint for a while. It was a hands-off babysit as we helped ease our replacement into the job. As we drove away on Tuesday afternoon it was sad to see an end to what turned out to be a totally unmissable period of our lives. 

We've managed to get to three spinning classes and three circuit training classes up at Fram College and are starting to feel the benefits. I've lost about 8lbs since Christmas, my blood pressure is nice and low and I feel much fitter. Spinning is hard work and about ten of us cover around 30kilometres in the forty-five minute session of sprints and climbs (this photo is one from the internet but the classes are very similar at FramLeisure). The circuit training provides another hour or so of intensive exercise and we are both feeling well on it. It's not easy to get up at six-thirty on an icy morning to participate though.

Although we are into keeping fit, we didn't get involved in any of those dry January shenanigans. I imagine Richard and Sarah at The Framlingham Wine Shop were cursing whoever came up with that idea but on Wednesday evening it was business as usual at their regular wine tasting session which is great value at £10 per head (deductible from any purchases). We tasted eight very good wines with some nice cheese and enjoyed the company of half a dozen other local wine lovers. I look forward to tasting most of them again when the order is ready.

 

After yesterday's exercise classes we headed off to Ipswich and onwards to London for a matinee performance of The National Theatre's production of The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time. Marion and the kids loved the book when it was first published but I didn't read it and went to the play with only an inkling of what it was about. The book is now a set GCSE text and there was a high percentage of teenagers in the packed Gielgud Theatre's audience  They were not disappointed. It is a beautiful study of a teenager on the autistic spectrum. It's visually spectacular and moves at a frenetic pace on an almost empty graph-paper set that the actors transform into a tube platform, a railway station, a police station,a garden, an escalator -anything and everything in the blink of an eye. We were at the very front of the stalls and were totally immersed in the action as the two hours passed by in a moment. I am sure that the many kids in the audience will not only have come away from the play with a better understanding of the text but also a clearer view of the difficulties faced by both the sufferers of autism and Aspberger Syndrome and those who care for them. The cast is wonderful and Abram Rooney in the lead role was outstanding.