Saturday 1st March 2025

Woke around 0900. Got up and made tea. Porridged at the computer. Took most of the morning to finish the VP research. Made a lavish ham and chicken salad lunch. Worked on until 1730. I walked to Stoke Newington…Aki off to Blackhorse Road for dinner with Rowing Club comrades. I dined at the City Kebab shop on the High Street before repairing to the Tower Theatre to see “Afterlife”, an adaptation of a Japanese film that Aki and I had enjoyed very much when we saw it some years ago, set in a Purgatory during which the recently deceased have five days to decide which memory from their lifetime on planet Earth, they would like to take with them into eternity. It's a lovely idea, and the film has a certain spiritual glow about it.  The Tower production was rather slow and dull. I can't figure what it is...whether it's simply the amateur actor has no verve, or whether it can be blamed on the fact that rehearsal time is so truncated compared to the intense day-by-day rehearsal schedules of the profession...I suspect it is the former, though, unfortunately. Got a No.106 bus back to Finsbury park, and walked through the crowds of Muslims marking the beginning of Ramadan outside Finsbury Park Mosque. Watched some FA Cup MOTD before Aki got home...she'd had an enjoyable evening of Mexican food and cocktails at Ellie's flat in the new development at Blackhorse Road.