I'm going to squeeze in a quick diary entry this morning, on account of the fact that I have to wait for my dining table to dry before I can varnish it, but more on that later…

As some of you may recall, I went out on Saturday night. Now, I don't get out much, and I never go into Plymouth at night, because I'm not overly partial to all-girl fist fights and as you know, I only vomit in the confines of Fortnum and Mason. However, when I heard that there was an oasis of tranquil sophistication amid the mire of the Barbican, I felt I had to pay it a visit.

The evening started out in a rather bizarre fashion. My friend Jemma come downstairs and said, 'Well, I'm ready.' Which would have been a perfectly acceptable thing to say, were it not for the fact that she was wearing a curly blond wig, and a principle boy's costume; shortly afterwards, her housemate, Mark, appeared wearing a pair of padded goat's legs (Yes, I did say goat's legs). A Puck was defiantly out of the question, so they both had to go back upstairs and put on something vaguely approaching normal. We were joined by my good friend Julie, and took a taxi to the cocktail bar at the Plymouth Gin distillery; we didn't have to queue to get a drink, sank into capacious leather sofas and stayed until closing time. I'm not a big spirit drinker, but there's something rather wonderful about sitting in the company of good friends and laughing 'til you're incapable of decent talking. The theme for the evening was a woman with an exceedingly funny name (well, at least we thought so). Jemma and Julie had talked about her at work and I'd read about her in the paper that day, and we all agreed that an opera singer with a name like Keedie Babb really should go a very long way - especially if smothered with chilli sauce and washed down with a pint of lager. We all wanted to be called Keedie that evening and decided to forgo our given names and adopt hers instead (I suspect that Keedie is actually her middle name, and that her full name is Donna Keedie Babb).

Julie rang up a colleague from work whilst under the influence of a rather delicious Rasberry Collins, and when he answered, Julie threw the 'phone into Jemma's lap, Jemma grabbed the 'phone, uttered the immortal words, Keedie Babb, and hung up. It sounds stupid and childish, but at the time it was hysterically funny, and we repeated the prank call several times before we tired of it.

I had four delicious cocktails and would probably have had four more, were it not for the fact that the bar staff switched on all the lights and shut up shop for the night. I cannot say any more about our evening, because what goes on tour stays on tour, but what I can say is that it was the best night out I've had for years. We will be repeating the experience sometime before Christmas, and I hope that this time Keedie will be joining us, and may perhaps serenade us with a bit of light opera, or a show tune or two.

Anyhow, enough about gin…

I have spent the morning attending to my table. It's a huge beast of a thing, made for entertaining a large number of guests; I don't have large dinner parties and so it's a little incongruous when there are only three of us seated at one end, but we've been through a lot together and I have to look after it. The varnish needed stripping back, and that was my job of the day. As I was rubbing away with the steel wool I thought how much like the table I was. Not because I can easily accommodate 12 people, but because death has stripped all the veneer from me. Death is like wire wool for the soul. It rubs and rubs away at you until you are completely stripped bare. It removes your self-esteem and allows people to see you naked and unprotected. Anything bad that happens to you shortly after death will leave a deep and lasting stain. Hurt will go straight to your core, and will remain there, but you will bear it, and become stronger because of it. But what death also does is to allow people to see your inner beauty. When you have lost the gloss that has taken years to achieve, the mask of respectability, the varnish of contentment, you can only show people your raw and honest soul; bare wood, with all the knots and imperfections that make you who you are. Some people will like what they see and others will withdraw, but once you have shown the world that you have nothing to hide, you can begin to feel proud of yourself. You can begin to build up your self-esteem, like layer upon layer of lustrous beeswax. Each time you achieve something significant on your own, you add another layer, and slowly but surely you will find that your inner beauty, your strength and determination is shining forth for all the world to see. Your experiences have given you an impenetrable topcoat, which will help protect you from anything that life throws at you in the future. You will have a heart of oak, nicely turned legs and the capacity to take hard knocks. See, it's not really so bad being a table, is it?



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