Jacey Bedford's Journal

Went all the way to Birmingham yesterday to see John Barrowman in pantomime (Robin Hood). I'm a sucker for a good panto anyway and this was truly, gloriously silly. Barrowman is such a ham, he's perfect. (And the rest of the cast were also excellent.) Plenty if innuendo, lots of good singing, some very decent dancing and a bit of ice skating, too.

The whole thing was so good humoured; I haven't laughed so much in a long time. Well worth travelling from Huddersfield to Birmingam in cold January.

Americans, it has nothing to do with mime artists. If you don't grok pantomime look here.

As I said yesterday we went to see Snow White - a local am-dram pantomime which our friend Phil was in. I am loyal to my friends and Phil was lovely as one of the Seven Dwarfs, one of the best things in it, in fact, but the rest of the panto... Oh boy... and I like pantomime.

To add insult to injury one of the girlies along the row pushed her way past during the performance and managed to tread on Best Beloved's sore toe - the one he lost the nail from a couple of nights ago. He went white. I thought he was going to scream. When the lights came up in the interval I spotted she was wearing stilletto heels.

OWWWWW!

Anyhow, much as we felt we owed it to Phil, we crept out before the end. I've never done that in a live performance before because I do appreciate the effort that goes into staging something like that... but...

So I didn't manage to get the binding done before going to the panto. Instead I got up early (for me) and I trailed all the way into Wakefield this morning to get Joe's architecture portfolio bound. Having spent the best part of five hours, yesterday, printing it perfectly... you guessed it... the binder-lady screwed up and ruined the first two sheets with a cut that went off the edge of the sheet. With no time to do anything else we photocopied the damages pages on to glossy paper. Not quite the same weight, but the best we could manage. i hurtled home again, arriving twenty minutes before the earliest time I'd booked the courier to find the DHL van sitting at my gate. Apparently the website is wrong and you can't get a pickup in our area after 1.00 and in all innocence I'd booked the collection between 2.00 and 4.30.

Luckily it's a courier service I've used before and - bless him - the driver waited. Then he stood around while I packed up the portfolio and with any luck it's already winging its way to the University of London, Department of the Built Environment. (The Bartlett.)

DHL get my vote every time. Great service.