I was going to write this up and post it yesterday evening, but there was rehearsal, and the usual trip to brandies after, and I was slightly drunk…

Wednesday evening my left footplate fell off. The lower part just fell away on my way home from the post grad thing. It was too late to do much about it, so I picked it up and came home. One good thing about living on campus is there are people who know stuff about mechanics about, so after breakfast yesterday I went over to the workshops to find someone to help. There’s this awesome guy with a beard, whose name I do not know; he’s very good at repairing things. So I asked him to look at it. He said ”let’s see what you’ve done this time.”

Within minutes he had turned the footplate pipe upside down, fixed the pedal to the other end and put it back on the chair, good as new. Jokingly, he said ”now that’s four beers you owe me” but I thought fair’s fair and set off to get him beer from Sainsbury’s. Six pints of Boddingtons for £5.

When I returned the man looked shocked. ”I can’t accept it,,” he said ”I’d lose my job. Just have a word with the dean and tell him what a good job we do here.”

Well, the day was beginning. I spent yesterday either working at my PC or in the library, working till five, going round in logic circles. It was then time for rehearsals, at six. First we played indoor cricket to warm up, then Ricardio set the guys a boring repetitive exercise which looked like it would take them all night to complete. Then, randomly, Burien showed up, and I had an idea. I asked Burien to help me fetch the beers from my room, and he obliged.

So there we were, watching the guys doing a team building exercise over and over again to the tune of right said Fred’s deeply dippy, sipping beer. The actors had to throw stuff to each other in a set pattern; if they failed, they had to start all over again. It was quite balletic really. The entire scene amused me greatly: I kind of felt like Hawkeye Pierce in M*A*S*H, sipping martini, watching orchestrated chaos. Life is good.