Last Tuesday we staged our two ODN festival entries in the village hall for the benefit of the local audience and I am told they went down well. Now I was going but had a birthday celebration to attend in the afternoon and never made the hall. I feel quite bad about this, but not as bad as I felt Wednesday morning I can tell you. Anyway I shall be attending the performance at the Unicorn this week instead.

There was a good turn out last week and both Kill Jill and When A Man Knows were very well received and Nigel James from the ODN came to review both plays. He thought that Kill Jill was "very imaginative...very credible...very confident...played convincingly [and] should go down well with audiences." Nigel wrote of When A Man Knows that it was "brilliantly performed by Mike Lacey and Susi Dalton. Director, Barbara Douglas has done a very good job with this play, performed by two very accomplished actors. Overall, a very polished performance and one which should do very well at the festival." So all bodes well for our two performances at the ODN Festival this week, which runs from 31st May until Saturday 6th June at The Unicorn Theatre in Abingdon.

Went to see ‘Deadly Murder’ on Saturday at the Mill at Sonning and regular readers will know of my admiration for this splendid venue which offers great theatre preceded by lunch or dinner. A great afternoon spent with good friends two of which we would have enjoyed a post theatre drink at a riverside pub, but who got lost despite us frequently passing them going the other way, the roads are narrow and busy round Sonning and there was no where to stop or turn round. It was a bit like a Ronnie Barker sketch.

Anyway the play starred Rula Lenska and was a three hander built around a plot to con the leading lady out of some expensive jewellery. Twists and turns abound and acted out on a magnificent set, as you would expect, the whole thing was a delight. For anyone never having been to the Mill, I thoroughly recommend it.

It was a great weekend spent in Fleet a with a great lady, we'll call her Joan, and friends, not forgetting the sheila.

Now for a tale of the times.

It is August. In a small town on the South Coast of France, holiday season is in full swing, but it is raining so there is not too much business happening. Everyone is heavily in debt. Luckily, a rich Russian tourist arrives in the foyer of the small local hotel. He asks for a room and puts a 100 Euro note on the reception counter, takes a key and goes to inspect the room located up the stairs on the third floor. The hotel owner takes the banknote in hurry and rushes to his meat supplier to whom he owes €100. The butcher takes the money and races to his wholesale supplier to pay his debt. The wholesaler rushes to the farmer to pay €100 for pigs he purchased some time ago. The farmer triumphantly gives the €100 note to a local lady of the night who gave him her services on credit. The young lady goes quickly to the hotel, as she owed the hotel for her hourly room use to entertain clients, and lays the €100 on the counter. At that moment, the rich Russian is coming down to reception and informs the hotel owner that the proposed room is unsatisfactory and takes his €100 back and departs. There was no profit or income. But everyone no longer has any debt and the small town people look optimistically towards their future.

Could this be the solution to the Global Financial Crisis? Or, is there a catch here?