Anyhoo (yes "anyway" was already taken).

I've no idea if this is actually any good but I've just listened to the whole thing without cringing while Skype-typing (yes, we could turn our cameras on, but then they'd know when we alt-tabbed away). Does get a bit Jackson-like in places, but considering that it's several decades since the stuff it echoes and the guy's dead, some similarity is not unforgivable.

Ok, I'm talking rubbish, but that's because I stopped talking and am trying to find a way of starting again (the above was in no way influenced by this).

Anyway, the Jubilympics. Came up to Laundrette with ma pauvre mère on Friday to borrow the Brosil's flat while they're off doing even more ancient celebrations (which as far as I can tell involves getting drunk because there are stones [well, it is Scotland]).

Came up on Friday, let them pack, said our goodbyes before bed because they said they were going early to beat the traffic, slunk off sometime later than they meant, got rung a few hours later with the question "By the way, where did you put the keys?"

Cue quick "oh my god... we'll ring you back".

And this is how we came to find that there's reasonably cheap petrol just off the motorway by Tamil Tempted (the Shell on the other side is cheaper), and even cheaper petrol in Whatfor (129.9‽ It's 146.9 a few miles away).

Mother furious, me amused; one of us is going to have a happier life.

So eventually we got to the RA for the SE with AA (who won't like that description of her, though that generation apply the aged label freely, mockingly, to each other) who'd gone round the Picasso first due to being abandoned alone in La Dun (I did suggest that I could drive to collect the keys, but my mother, well, wasn't that keen to spend time with her sister).

The Summer Exhibition was the usual, so slightly weaker than I remember it being (it seems old stalwarts have a tendency to die). One year I'll enter my contempt attempt (it involves dots).

Then from there the National, for dinner and dazzlement. Ok, so the misery Doctor in a moral warning to all comers, Antigone, which is rather like the great many dramas that echo it, is not exactly dazzlement. Was good, if not merry. And my mother is oblivious to cultural references (the Obama war room one? You know, all huddled round anxious? The one with Beatrice's hat in later editions? No? So what would you recognise? A short man swamped by his cloak in the wind as his horse rears? No, not it's not an Old Spice ad).

And then, because it was a play without ice cream and still light, and not raining, we wandered downstream to see what boats and ships were around for the morrow. Except by the time we got to TWR BRG Moron Londe were shutting the barriers behind us, the rain and wind had increased to a level that would show on film, and the ships beyond were dark hollows in the vileness.

So came the Armada, and came the not getting up early, and the rain, and miserableness, and the continued glitches that meant I didn't really want to wander far from civilisation, nor stand for hours. So we didn't go, because my mother, despite her propensity to talk to anyone about anything whether or not they want her to, refused to go on her own, and instead cried, screamed, sulked, and eventually fell asleep. She later talked about getting into a state, about being depressed, but promptly forgot that when I suggested she do something about it, something along the lines of talking to a doctor. She also refused to go to the street parallel to where we're staying, which had carefully blotted out the scorching sun with bunting, and announced all were welcome to share their bales (if it's not a daft question, where does one get straw in the middle of the capital?).

So instead I went shopping for several things, most of which I forgot, and made fairy cakes badly while watching the boats, and bands of rain, sweep down the Thames. There were going to be a patriotic group activity, except the other half of the group was asleep and I forgot the blue food colouring, and the BBC's method for making buttercream is the exact opposite of what is sensible, so didn't work, and then trying to rescue it made it too runny, and then the red streaks ran, so yeah, I made variously pink fairy cakes. Insert own queen based pun here.

Anyhoo,