Among the things I did this week was buy cake twice for people whose birthdays it wasn't. First on Monday, I bought my intern Christopher Robin (not his name, just what I call him) cake because I'd been informed that it was his birthday. Not so! It's next week. And then, rather more spectacularly, I bought a cake (full size) for the director of one of our shows thinking it was his birthday. Had the cast sing to him, the pianist play along...yup. Again, not so much the right day. That time it was because of the American way of doing numeric dates - they do month/day/year and in England it's day/month/year and in Canada it's all over the place. So I got it wrong (his actual birthday being April 3rd not March 4th). But I figure if you are going to screw up, it might as well involve cake.

I think I may have told this story already, but I'm so tired, I can't even be bothered to go back and check!! So apologies, if I have.

I stayed for the first half of the Mariinsky Opera's War and Peace. In my defense, the first half was two hours long and I'm working all day tomorrow so... It was the final dress rehearsal so it had some odd technical things going on - mainly that the director was on stage the whole time checking furniture (which he mostly seemed dissatisfied with), telling the extras where to move, standing in for at least two main characters who were absent for some reason or other and conducting the orchestra. It was quite something to see! A big deal had been made about their set - a huge revolve that was set on a very steep rake (this leading to the furniture not sitting properly and some of the drops not landing as they should). So steep in fact that many of the actors were having huge trouble walking on it without tripping or appearing drunk. The whole thing was quite strange. I'm glad to have seen what I did, but not at all sad that I left.

There is a lot going on with some of my dear friends in Toronto - I'm thinking of you guys...