Saturday 10.10.09 11.30am

Sorry it's taken me a while to get a post on here. I don't have a lot of time of friday's to put my thoughts on paper so I scribble them as I am travelling from place to place.

I'd like to start with telling you all it is 'Learn to sign week' so I want to teach you one that I find useful when working with children who cannot speak. Lift your right hand and hold your index finger and middle finger very close together, almost like a gun. Bring these two fingers to your chest directly above your heart and rub up and down like you are rubbing a coin. If you see someone who is profusely doing this action it means that they really need the toilet!

Imagine this...Thursday night Graham (boyfriend - will talk about him more in other posts) and I went to the theatre to see a show called Alison's House at The Orange Tree theatre. We had managed to get some of the free tickets from anightlessordinary so £1 on the bus there and back, we were like BARGAIN! Get there a bit early so we can pick up our tickets then have a drink in the Orange Tree pub next door. We walk back to the theatre at about 6.50 ready for it to start at 7.15; it's unreserved seating so we wanted to ensure a good seat. Much to our surprise there is a foyer full of elderly couples. We get handed a leaflet and asked if we are with the event tonight. At this point we are looking at each other very confused and both wondering whether we are in the right place. I ensure Graham there is only one Orange Tree theatre in Richmond and only one theatre here. The oldies are looking at us and we are looking at them. All flustered, we skuttle off to the toilet to waste some time and I wanted to read the leaflet to see what was actually going on. I quote "For anybody new to this event, Relate provides counselling and psyco-sexual therapy (PST) for couples or indivuals who come to us for help with troubled relationships". GREAT! So now everyone thinks that we're having problems too. It's a bit weird. We find some seats and we're definately the only ones under 65. NO WONDER THERE WERE LOADS OF THESE FREE TICKETS! A few other students join us and to be honest I can't wait for the lights to go down. But before that happens the organiser of the event apologizes for some of the general public getting caught up in their celebrations and introduces the night for the charity. Apparently they have trips like this all the time and after this they are auctioning off a lot of things to raise some money which we are invited to as the public. "It's quite alright!"

Other than the drama of the night, the performance was OK. Very serious performance about Alison Stanhope, the country's foremost poet that died 18years ago, and now the family house must be sold as it holds so many of the family's memories. It is set in America (with some very dodgy accents) in 1899. Not one of my favourite theatre performance I have seen here.

I hope you can humour my first post....:) Z