The week that was

Many things have happened this week (when I say "this week" I'm starting with last Saturday). Of course, now that I only tend to blog once in a week you get all the updates in one go. Aren't you lucky?

Bright and early Saturday morning - by which I mean, at about 10am on Saturday in the rain and by light of the black clouds - I departed for Essex, to spend some time with Kevin. We'd booked to see Derren Brown in a Southend theatre on Monday, so I planned to go home on the Tuesday.

I can tell you're hanging on my every word, aren't you?

The long and short of it was that I woke up on Tuesday feeling very down, attributed this to going home, and only paid attention to it later when I began to feel dizzy. This in addition to the slightly raised temperature and complete lethargy meant that I wouldn't be driving home that day.

It's now Friday and I'm still here. (In Essex, that is, not just in the sense of "I'm alive!".) The dizziness has been coming and going all this time; yesterday I was unsteady enough on my feet that even on a ten-minute walk down to the newsagent's I needed to hang onto Kevin with both hands. If I'm still here tomorrow and unable to drive home my parents have volunteered to come and collect me and the car, in which case I need to do instructions for them (not too difficult given that even I didn't feel lost the first time I drove to Kevin's).

Anyway. Derren Brown was brilliant (in case you've not heard of him, he specialises in mind tricks and psychological illusions - a lot of it comes down to the appearence of mind-reading). The first half of the show was funny and light, and featured such things as Derren telling us that he'd cross-referenced the list of the people who'd booked their tickets with the Southend telephone directory and then memorised it - and so anyone who'd booked and was listed in the directory could be told their telephone number simply by revealing their name.

Derren shortly confessed that, in fact, that's not what he'd done. Too difficult, he said. Instead, what he'd done was to memorise the entire Southend phonebook. He demonstrated this by telling a woman what page of the phonebook she was on, which column, her own telephone number and the ones above and below it on the phonebook (checked, of course, by a member of the audience).

He did the usual kind of thing as well - guessing correctly four times which hand a coin was held in; asking a woman to choose between two envelopes (and giving her most of the show in which to decide) and influencing her decision so that she chose the envelope with the parrot photograph in, not the one with the £500 cheque in; the usual tricks.

The second half I am sworn to secrecy on, I'm afraid. Sufice it to say that it was 'darker' than the first half, and featured things that he doesn't generally do on TV. Well worth an evening, anyway.

And, horror of horrors, I am informed that this Saturday brings the Eurovision Song Contest, a spectacle from which I have hidden for many years. (There's good reason why, too.) However, last Octoberish Kevin swore to pin me down this year and make me watch it (for reasons of mockery and not devotion, might I point out), so it seems that I shall be hiding behind cushions and the like to attempt to get away from the sheer awfulness of it all. Help me, somebody. Please?