11th February
Opening night for the Gang Show at the Haymarket. Violet-Elizabeth
tells me that it went very well, although disappointingly it wasn’t a full
house. There are a number of our young people from Old Basing and
Lychpit in the show, and they have been rehearsing for 5 months now.
12th February
Tonight I was chaperoning “behind the scenes” at the Haymarket. I was struck by the tremendous sense of teamwork backstage, with all the cast members helping each other with the very quick costume changes. After the finale, the Deputy Chief Scout came to talk to the cast about how much he had enjoyed the show. Apparently, the bizarrely named Bear Grylls (the Chief Scout) was unavailable to attend although he had been invited.
13th February
Bumped into Jeff Owen in the town centre. I asked how his giant
carrots were progressing and was shocked to hear that Jeff might be hanging
up his gardening gloves as far as the Village Show was concerned.
Personally I think this might have something to do with his fear of the
competition as we enter the fourth year of my ten year plan to wrest the
trophy away from him.
Came home to find that an enormous bouquet of flowers had been delivered.
The trouble was, they weren’t for me! As I said to the florist on the
‘phone, as much as I would really like to keep them, I am an honest person,
and therefore asked for them to come and collect them and deliver them to
their rightful owner.
Chaperoning again this evening, and tonight the Mayor and Mayoress were in
the house. Afterwards Councillor Gurden came backstage, and said that
he was very proud of the young people of Basingstoke, some of whom sometimes
seemed to get a bad press.
14th February
Laid low with a heavy cold today, so managed to elicit the full benefits of Valentine’s Day as Spencer brought me a cup of tea in bed, together with a splendid bunch of flowers (almost as big as the one delivered in error yesterday!).