Deb's Digest
Debbie Atkinson’s family life column, as featured in the Southport Visiter.

Tuesday 15 February 2011

THE RIVALS



We saw The Rivals in London on Saturday night. Our seats were on the front row of the upper circle and without leaning over the rail it was only possible to see the top third of the action, and as soon as anyone on our row did lean forward, those on row b complained loudly. We enjoyed the performance although I've seen better Mrs Malaprops. The manner in which Penelope Keith delivered her lines reminded me of the policeman in 'Ello 'Ello. The actor who stole the show for me was Tony Gardner (the cafe owner from The Lead Balloon) as the captious Faulkland.

While we in London I tried to get to grips with my new phone - purchased (or rather upgraded to) in order to get an app the younger son had shown us when he was home. With it you can track any plane in the sky at that particular moment, and since we live under a flight path, I found it fascinating to discover where each plane was going as it passed overhead. When the phone arrived I spent 20 minutes searching for the keyboard, only to find that it was a touch-screen device. I don't want to be an old fuddy duddy but I hate it with a passion. Over the past few days, I've spent all my time prodding the screen, trying to correct words and letters that make no sense and when I needed to make an urgent call, I found that I just didn't know how so it can now be located on eBay; I'm back to my trusty old Nokia and I'll just have to guess where the planes are heading.