déjà vu?
Well sort of – the title is slightly misleading (since the last time I was actually in Leicester Square was probably when KLR and I paid a visit to the super-busy KFC there when on our way to see James Earl Jones in Driving Miss Daisy at the Wyndhams theatre last year) but that did nothing to stop the slight sense of faintly unsettling otherworldliness that only getting up at five am yesterday morning after three hours sleep and travelling back to a city which, despite being the best part of three hundred miles away, I’d only left six days before.
I alighted on platform six at Kings Cross ready to dash for the Piccadilly Line knowing with near-certainty that I was going to be standing still outside for the next two hours minimum; fortunately my policy of sticking strictly to a single glass of water before setting off, one Costa flat white upon arrival at York and strictly no liquids thereafter happily paid off, as following a carefully planned timed visit to the on-train facilities as soon as I spotted the Emirates Stadium looming I got through the ensuing (three, as it turned out) hours without incident and yes, I (just) got my precious FrightFest weekend pass – yay!
They sold out ten minutes or so later, apparently. Not only that (and I got a good seat too), but I passed a long-time favourite of mine Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead, Spaced, you know the one) on the Empire’s stairs as he made his way out of Ice Age 4 (along with a zillion others large and small, many face-painted and clutching prehistoric balloon animals which I secretly coveted and by the look of others, I was not alone) and had some surprisingly wonderful sashimi at the peaceful little Yo Sushi down the alley off Oxford Street which proved to be something of a mini oasis, where my Kindle and I spent a pleasant hour and a half or so in the end watching tuna being neatly sliced, Hairy Prawns being industriously assembled and trying not to drop my BlackBerry in the soy sauce (again). I’d dashed straight from the ticket desk to the Princes Charles cinema round the corner for our free screening of The Aggression Scale (a sort of adult Home Alone which definitely gets a thumbs up, although a few more booby traps would have been fun), and by the time I emerged again a little after 2pm I was not only parched but starving, the packed lunch I should have known better than to put together having been long gone by eight am and not even making it as far as Doncaster. I got home, pass in hand and having managed to hang on to the special bag of chocolate buttons I’d been saving for the train back (and which had attained seriously desirable interior-of-handbag temperature as a result) shortly after half past seven and all ready for an early night.
So that’s the good news! (for me at least). The bad news is that this coming week is almost entirely booked up, with a handful of oddbods left but certainly nothing on Tuesday, Wednesday or Friday and only a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it on Saturday. The following week is looking more promising for the three days of it I’m still here, but it’s filling up and anybody who is keen to visit before my holiday would be well advised to get in quick. The new pics are on their way to Proper Site as soon as I remember how to upload them and some are already up on Adultwork (which can fortunately be operated by anyone semi-conscious or above) for the less patient. The new front page pic is being done asap though – watch this space; or at least the one that appears when you click on the link to the right…
Update soon.
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