Harmless babble

The weekend brought a considerable improvement on the maudlin mood of Friday. Larians hit on the perfect way to cheer me up, and took me to Macclesfield, to watch the local Am-drammers' production of Hampton's Les Liaisons Dangereuses.

I had misgivings because the only MADS production I've seen before was 'Dracula,' a total disaster. I have now seen two entirely separate productions of this play, both of which were happily appalling. I felt privileged to watch Jonathan Harker's tophat stapled to Lucy's chest in a frantic mis-staking, and I recall watching awe struck as, on Drac's line: 'Keeel meee den! Ay peetee yoooo, vid your long sheeps' faces!' The vampire hunters promptly acquiesced by kicking his head in.

Enough of past delights.
LLD is bloody hard to produce with satisfaction, because the definitive Valmont and Merteuil have been provided by Malkovitch and Close. It leaves directors and actors in a situation where they are inevitably going to be compared to something extraordinary, and the decision is hard: Do you play it safe and facsim the film, or do you go your own way and risk the displeasure of the audience who know what they like?

The director compromised, and gave us a faithful rendition of the film all until the last minute, where Merteuil's debacle was substituted for a card game speech about waiting for the future, and continuing to play the game. At the end, the backlit shade of madame guillotine fell with perfect timing, and it was then one recalled the growing distaste of the servants at their masters' doings. I don't know if this was the novel's original ending, but it was an interesting twist.

The rest of the weekend was spent being constructive and doing boring but very necessary admin, sorting out, of all things, my bloody filing cabinet.

Fingerlickin' Fred jauntilly leapt out of the gerbilarium when I was changing the water, fell through the air the full length of the cabinet, and landed on the carpet, looking a bit startled. Forget what people tell you about gerbils and their addiction to tubes. It's bollocks. Fred wisely recognised it as a ruse and wouldn't go near it. He took a lot of coaxing, but eventually Larians caught him gently and put him back and he promptly spent the rest of the night stuffing his face (the gerbil, that is, not Larians.) We then got to see something so sweet!

I haven't seen the baby gerbils since the day they were born, and my fear was that Freakella had eaten them. In fact, they are all alive and well (as far as we could tell - we never were sure if there were seven, eight or nine) and moving around tentatively in Freakella's huge underground complex. Baby gerbils can run before they can see. Their eyes are still shut but they have fur and no longer resemble purple penises. One is sand coloured, at least two are white, one is a deep grey and one is black...the others were shuffling around inside and I couldn't see them very clearly.

They are totally adorable. I do not want to get rid of them. What we need is another fishtank, and then to just divvy up the communities by sex, and they will all live happily ever after. Ahhh!

And with that, I must stop babbling on and get to work.