lemons

Dave said that the shower had mysteriously stopped leaking, and theorized that the mould growing in there had plugged the leak. Perhaps this is how it will work: any problems with the house will be solved by new problems. Some kind of fungus will fix the loose fence panel; ants will repair that broken hinge on the kitchen cupboard door. I suppose it would be better if the landlady did it. But there are so many little problems that to describe them to the letting agent would be simply too much - you'd end up sobbing down the phone, overwhelmed.

I had a week off. Perhaps the highlight was being in the same cinema audience as Anita Harris, Miss Diane from Crossroads, David Van Day and Nick Cotton from Eastenders. Or was this some weird dream I had? Oh no, I seem to remember it did happen. The BFI were showing three short - though not that short - horror movies originally made in the 80's to be played before such classics as The Exterminator starring Robert Ginty. One of them featured the young David Van Day, so that accounts for his presence at least. It featured also a killer garden gnome, something of a first in film history, I understand. Also, as far as I am aware: a last.

But there was really only one question on the audience's mind: where was Christopher Biggins? There was no reason for him to be there, but there was no reason for him not be there either. It turned out that indeed he would have appeared, if only he hadn't been 'stuck in traffic' (or 'stuck in a door', as one wag in the back row suggested.)

There was a brief Q and A with the director, the writer, and a Punch and Judy man (I would explain, but I really don't have the time.) This was dominated by a rather eccentric man in the audience who was less interested in asking questions than in making puns on the director's surname, which was Long. Something like: 'You are long in the tooth but also long on substance.' Then he started talking about Vlad Dracula, but only so that he could make a pun on 'Romanian' and 'remaining'. At this point they hurriedly took another question.

Dave bought a packet of lemon raisins, the entire point of which was that they were raisins, but tasted like lemons. I wondered if there were any other foodstuffs that might be sold on that basis. Oven chips? Apples? No. Even lemons themselves would probably sell better if they were advertised as tasting like something else.

They didn't even taste much like lemons anyway, to be honest.