January
Saw Guys and Dolls with some bloke who'd recently been murdered in Eastenders.
When I say 'with', the bloke from Eastenders was in Guys and Dolls, I didn't accompany him to the theatre.
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Major Midget's arm came out of plaster early in the month. In December she broke both radius and ulna near the wrist by ice skating. Or not so much the skating as the not skating. Now it seems like a long while ago. She recently stuck the X-rays up on her bedroom wall as macabre decoration.
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Got a job offer from a large bank I used to contract to. Turned it down because:
a. It was a perm position.
b. Money would have been £60k less than I'm on now.
c. I'd actually have to go into the office most days instead of home working like what I pretend to do now.

It was worth considering though, because I know and like the main chap I'd be working with and my contract here is getting pretty tenuous.
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February
Saw Nights at the Circus at the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith. Angela Carter's multi-layered allegories went completely over WPKAW's head. She saw it as a completely literal (and therefore nonsense) portrayal of how life was in a circus at the end if the 19th century. She got quite upset afterwards when I tried to have a conversation about why it didn't work.

Natalia Tena(About a Boy, Mrs Henderson Presents) as the pivotal character, Fevvers, was rubbish. Tena's cockerny accent was worse than Dick Van Dyke's and her stage presence was so artificial and bullying rather than the supposed magnetic, naturally dominating presence of the character. Marred what would have been an otherwise accomplished staging of Carter's book.
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I work from home more often than I go into the office (two days a month is above average now), and there's not actually a lot of work to do. That means I have lots of spare time. So it wasn't too much hassle to start taking Minor Midget's class to the library on Friday afternoons. Except a large group of seven year olds can produce quite a lot of noise in a library. And they seem to go deaf and not hear anything you tell them too.
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Apart from that, days are wasted playing TrackMania Nations. Which is absolutely free (as in beer) to download and play. Best free game ever IMHO. If anyone remembers Stunt Car Racer, it's like that. Only better because you can make your own tracks, race online and gfx have improved a bit in the last fifteen years or so.
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Midgets were taken to Morocco by Mother of Midgets and her chap. They thoroughly enjoyed it. It's the most removed culture they've visited. Spain, Portugal, France, Norway and Wales are the others.
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March
Major Midget found out which secondary school she'll be going to in September. It's an all girls school. None of the girls (or boys) from her current school are going. Some others she knows from previous schools and holiday clubs are going though. I've already given them Gazbo's photo to scare them about nasty men that they might encounter at the school gates.
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Mother of Midgets split up with her chap after 4 years. Watch this space for wheels to fall off her wagon and Dr H having to step into full time midget juggling.
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Minor Midget turned 8 years old. Party and pizza and cake and jelly ensue. Also presents. I bought her:

1. Rush Hour, a traffic-jam puzzle game. It is now legendary as the most crap present ever, that turned out not to be crap at all, but is actually pretty great.
2. The Muppet Show - Season 1 DVD
3. 20Q An electronic version of 20 questions. Gets boring pretty quickly.

April
One of my best friends turned 50! Sent her some flowers and champers. Probably be dead of old age next time I see her.
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WPKAW and I went to Wales to see an Am-Dram version of The Importance of Being Earnest. WPKAW's mother played Lady "a handbag?!!?!" Bracknell. Badly.
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We visited a couple of my friends who now live down on the South coast near towards Brighton. I let my GPS work out the route for WPKAW to drive. I maybe should have switched it out of cycling mode so that it suggested the motorways that ran most of the way beside the 60 miles of muddy winding pathways it actually took us along. Fun, but not very time efficient. WPKAW got pretty irate that we took so long. So we jumped straight on the motorway on the way back and ground to a halt within 5 minutes in the middle of a 10 mile tailback that took us over two hours to clear.
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The Midgets attended a musical theatre club over the Easter hols. On the last day they did a performance of Les Miserables (abridged). Surprising choice to teach to midgets aged from 5 years old. There were no boys in the group either, so all parts were played by little girls. Made the love scenes a little awkward let me tell you. Do boys just not do drama now?
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Major Midget is in love. She's not told the young buck in question yet and is agonising over how to do it. She's already filled two A4 pads with plans. I have met his parents though, and they seem decent types. Why does she love this fellow? Because he is: Gentle, artistic, not like other boys, doesn't like sports and most of his friends are girls.

Must. Resist. Will. And. Grace. Stereotyping.
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Now
So that brings us up to date. Today is Thursday 20th April 2006 and I have actually come into the office today so can't do all the other slacker stuff I would usually get up to. I got so bored I wrote a diary.

It was quite odd coming into town today. That odd agoraphobic feeling when you've not been out for a few days.
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Tomorrow I'm back at home. Aborists are coming round to do a quote on pruning the trees in the back garden. Apparently it's not a good time of year to prune or fell conifers due to nesting birds. The  trees need to be done before the garden landscapers come in and renovate the garden in May.

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Films seen at cinema
Walk the Line
Johnny Cash biopic. Pretty good, but Witherspoon does not deserve the Oscar.

Brokeback Mountain
Interesting destructive love story.

Hmm, I'm sure I've seen something else at the cinema this year. Can't remember though. Anyone know where to find a list of films released to cinema in the UK this year?

DVD's rented and watched since last listed (Jan 5th)
Wallace And Gromit - 3 Cracking Adventures
The development of Park's duo that the midgets had never seen.

Bicentennial Man
Robot struggles to become human. "Pinocchio"/"I, Robot" cross with Robin Williams not totally hamming up the part of the robot.

Goodbye Lenin!
East German woman recovering from heart attack and coma has to be shielded from the news of the fall of the Berlin Wall because the shock might kill her. Works best as a vehicle to highlight the differences between E&W Germany during the cold war.

Sunset Boulevard
Almost a noir horror movie. Old actress fails to accept she's past it and much hilarity ensues.

Gandhi
Excellent and surprising biopic.

Scarface
Not as violent as I'd been led to believe. Most bad stuff is off screen. Actually dated and comes across as more of an 80's action film than a subtle gangster biopic.

House Of Sand And Fog
Not what I had expected at all. Woman gets evicted due to non-payment of tax she doesn't owe. The house was left to her by her dad, so she tries to get it back from the Iranian family that moves in. Everyone's dysfunctional personalities lead to japes and adventures. Not bad at all.

Romeo Is Bleeding
I can hardly remember seeing this. Let me take a look at the description on Amazon...
Oh, yes Gary Oldman plays a crooked cop who gets out of his depth with a female Ruskie hit-woman. Gets totally bizarre at the end.

Madagascar
Cartoon flick for the kids. Not brill by my measure. The sort of cartoon churned out now that kids will plead to see simply because it's a cartoon film with animals in. Meh.

Looney Tunes Back In Action
A cartoon/real actor film I actually wanted to see. Beats Roger Rabbit IMHO. But then I don't like Roger Rabbit.

House Of Flying Daggers
Nice cinematography. There's a foolish plot too. Not sure whether the plot was written after they had decided what scenes they wanted to do.

I Heart Huckabees Not a total waste of 120 minutes. Glad that different films like this can be made with major 'stars'.

The Astronaut's Wife
Should have been an episode of the Twilight Zone. And not one of the better ones. How did this get funding? Oh yes, Johnny Depp & Charlize Theron.

Batman Begins
Why do we need yet another Batman movie series? Because the last lot were made nearly twenty years ago. I feel old.

Old Boy [Disc 1 - Movie]
A man gets held prisoner for twenty years without knowing why. He gets released and slowly works out why. Using his fists.