I could write a novel if I could only come up with a PLOT.......

That was what my ma used to say all the time when I was a kid (along with "If I had my time over again, I wouldn't have children", said, of course, with a dainty laugh, but We Knew. So why does it appear now, as the title for today's entry? Because I couldn't think of anything better, that's why!

What's going on? I am still hacking and coughing and feeling like chewed string. This is only a COLD for freak's sake. It will pass. Like in a million years. It's getting in the way of properly getting into good stuff. Though I am as a consequence knitting away like fury on the strip waistcoat, and allowing myself some small hope that it might work. I do really, really hope so. I am feeling, actually, quite enthusiastic about possible projects, and do NOT want to be put off!!

We did go out on Saturday, to Manchester, to the theatre. Had a lovely day, some shshshshoppping (ie, I put far too much on my credit card because LB had some good stuff in, like a very, very cool un-formal suit in, oh guess what, a sort of plumaubergine. But I need to take up the skirt from the top which is going to be a bear. Unpicking the entire shebang, cutting down, re-attaching the lining, putting in the elastic waistband. I can do this - repeat ad nauseam....) So, back to the theatre - with M&F - we saw Volpone and it was terrific. Loved the play and loved the two leads, Gerard Murphy and....Stephen Noonan?? They were both in their natural element, like fish in water, led us around by the nose or the hand, depending, and created the really magic of theatre that actually you don't see all that often.

A brief list of plays where this has happened.....Brief Lives (Roy Dotrice); Wild Oats (Alan Howard); Much Ado..(Derek Jacobi and Sinead Cusack); Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (Howard again); Becket (Robert Lindsay and Jacobi again); Arcadia (Bill Nighy and Rufus Sewell). Oh, and The Madness of George 111 (Nigel Hawthorne) probably just creeps in.

I love the theatre. Not many people know this - but when for a brief moment it looked as though I was going to have to leave Library School because of an admin mix-up, I was severely tempted to apply to drama school. One could, in those days, and there were grants. Sigh. But I didn't, ultimately, have the courage. Now, there's a plot for a novel....What would have happened to Moi if only.

Still, we end up where we end up, and the challenge, success and satisfaction surely lie in what we do with what we get, either from happenstance or choice.

So, folks, we are in to the final hours before....Well, what? The farce before the farce? The soi-disant democratic process before the days and weeks of argument and chicanery? It would be lovely to find that Kerry (for it is of course, the US election whereof I speak) immediately wins by a clear enough margin for it all to be done and dusted, but I hold out little hope. Neither do I seriously think that in the final analysis (ooh, I do love a good cliche!!) that a change of Prez will make THAT much diff, but - at least we would see the back of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perl and Wolfowitz, plus any others equally as bad that I wot not of.

Wouldn't it be luverly?

gw