Connections

Yesterday, while wandering round Lyttelton, I spotted this sticker in a car parked by the side of the road. I must admit, it wasn't something I expected to read in the window of a car parked by the side of the road in a small port town in New Zealand, to be honest. For those of you less familiar with the term, a Yellowbelly is a term to refer to someone from Lincolnshire, the county I was born and grew up in. I'm impressed someone bothered to bring a BBC Radio Lincolnshire sticker all the way over from the UK to stick in their car. Although is it any different to me having a Grimsby Town car window mini-kit in our car? I guess not.

Also yesterday in Lyttelton Tim & Christine introduced us to to another couple from St John's. They're from the UK too and have been here a couple of years now I think. It's a small world though, eh? Julie was at St Helens for some of the time we were there and knows some of the same people such as Vaniah and Juliette, and David was at Warwick doing maths (although it he was the year above me). It's just weird to think that we've probably been at the same parties as Julie back in London and at least have sat in the same church services, while it's conceivable that David and I walked past each other at uni, him coming out of a lecture theatre as I walked into it or something similar. And now we cross paths with them again on the other side of the world.

Last night Si & Bek came over for dinner (chicken fajitas followed by chocolate and banana filo parcels) and then we headed out to the theatre. They'd had some vouchers as a wedding gift and my sister had got me and Joanne vouchers for Christmas so we'd decided to go together. I was especially keen to go now because currently playing is Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas. I studied it at school when I was 15 or 16 I guess and I seemed to remember I really enjoyed it. I wasn't disappointed last night. I think a small cast playing so many parts (only six actors played everyone in the play) made it difficult for people who didn't know what to expect to work out quite what was going on but by the second half it became clearer. The bonus though was the delivery by the actors. The play is such a lyrical, poetic piece with beautiful and innovative use of language. It would have been easily been spoiled with poor delivery but the cast did it proud, although the attempts at Welsh accents warbling between Indian and South African did make my toes curl a little. I actually found a copy of the play on-line so if you're interested you can see what I mean about Thomas's use of language. The way he uses nouns as both adjectives and verbs is like nothing else I've read.