happy christmas day

christmas love from buttons...

bunny in wonderland

i can't believe how long it is since i last blogged...

anyway, i decided i'd post these snaps so you can see that brian isn't the only one who's been spending time in wonderland this year...

  

 

trick or treat time!

happy halloween!

back on stage

here i am last night at the cecil hepworth playhouse in walton on thames, helping brian prepare for a talk he was giving about lewis carroll...

it turns we were in the old movie studio of this guy, cecil hepworth, who was a pioneering british filmmaker who made the first film version of 'alice in wonderland' back in 1903. just think, if i'd only been around 112 years ago, i could have auditioned for the part of the white (or, in my case, brown) rabbit!

an actor's life for me

as regular followers of this blog will know, i am avid play-goer and, last week, i got to visit a delightful little theatre in a barn behind the former home of dame ellen terry at smallhythe in kent.

sir john, sir larry, sir alec, sir ralph and lots of other sirs and dames have trod the boards here and i thought of their ghosts hovering nearby as i gave (with all due modesty) a particularly effective performance of  "once more on to the beach, dear friends..."

i also posed with dame ellen's bust (saucy!) and her blingiest frock in which brian seemed to be taking a disturbingly close interest...

 

oxford madness

it was all very weird, there i was enjoying a sunny afternoon in oxford on 4 july, when suddenly there was this huge girl in a blue dress with a white pinafore, making a beeline for me in radcliffe square...

photo: mark richards

anchors aweigh

there we were – hippolyta and I – relaxing and enjoying a last afternoon of greek sun before we return home early tomorrow...

...when a huge boat comes into the bay with a large letter 'b' on it and hippolyta (wrongly) assumes it must be my personal luxury yacht that has come to collect her as a special surprise on the last day of our hols. buttons hippo does a bit of googling and discovers that it is the 'mayan queen'...

...buttons hippo then and tells her that it belongs to alberto bailleres, owner of one the largest mining companies in the world producing 25,000 kg of gold and 2.5 million kg of silver annually. as if this wasn't enough to excite hippolyta to paroxysms of near delerium, it turns out signore bailleres also owns a chain of department stores, specialising in brand names like Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Burberry and Prada.

i left her on the beach waiting for the mexican millionaire to send a dingy for her... this will not end well...

trekked-off

it's been an exhausting and frustrating few days: i've scarcely managed to to get more than  a few minutes of one-to-one time with hippolyta due to the interventions of brother bruno who is adamant that it is his sacred duty to serve as her chaperone and that it would be quite improper for her to be alone with me in other circumstances. he also insists that she spends those few available moments of the day (after her various beautician appointments) on reading his discourses on the influence of orthodoxy on the shaping of modern christendom and her daily spiritual exercises. I tried to point out that (with all due respect to my dear one) the words 'hippolyta' and 'exercise' are essentially incompatible.

with hippolyta beyond reach, brother bruno has been taking buttons hippo and i on a physically tiring (and mentally numbing) tour of the churches, basilicas and monasteries of kalymnos including extemporised homilies on brotherly love. laudable though such sentiments may be, they do NOT extend, believe me, to brother buno.

however, as this snap by buttons hippo shows, our most recent expedition ended rather unexpectedly...

...i don't remember much about it personally, but i think the photo may prove useful in my negotiations to spend a little quality time with hippolyta.

'blackmail' is, I know, an ugly word, but it does have certain potential virtues...

site-seeing

brother bruno, hippolyta's 'spiritual adviser' (he says), decided to organise a pilgrimage to the site of  Emporios' early christian baths.

  

hippolyta decided against going telling bro bruno that she needed to say her rosary (but i know she was planning on having a facial to regerate after what she calls 'the solar ravages'. foolishly, however, i signed up to go...

i didn't follow everything bruno was wittering on about: quite a lot of it was in greek (at least he claimed it was) and buttons hippo (who insisted on coming, too) kept interrupting to tell us that he was descended (on his father's side) from st augustine of hippo... Anyway, eventually we got there and, frankly, it was boring beyond belief!

i mean, i've seen a few baths during my world travels and i know this about them: they have taps (usually two) and a plug and plug-hole. here there wasn't so much a sign of any such accessories, let alone a soap-dish, loofah or a rubber duckie. and, then, to make matters worse, the bar was shut! 

as i told her when i got back and found her relaxing in the sauna, hippolyta certainly lucked out big time!!

the greeks have a word for it

today's the day...

...she's on her way!

just daydreaming...

...and waiting.

easter hoppiness

this was my easter egg from david...

...as you can see, it has my name on it – 'buttons'... But i don't know what a 'cotch egg' is!

 

mind you it doesn't really matter because it's basically chocolate!!

it's that day again...

...and i have received a special card from a certain special person...

a visit to ray

brian has been bemoaning the fact that the home of his old friend, fantasy writer, ray bradbury, in california has just been demolished...

here i am sitting on the famous mail box at 10265 cheviot drive back in 2003 and having a chat with the great man himself...

homeward bound

so our christmas and new year holiday is at an end and hippolyta and i will soon be heading homeward...

here we are on the roof terrace of our apartment with a little waif and stray we've adopted from the san marco abandoned hippo pound. wonder how he'll take to life in england? h and i will raise him together, turn and turn about. i'm sure he'll have warm welcome at the ascot hippodrome...

all good things...

...and, as i keep telling hippolyta, the memories will live on – indeed, i shan't be in the least surprised if she doesn't write it all up as a sensationally bestselling memoir.  

last evening brian and david went to something called mass at the big church in saint mark's square while we chilled out under the christmas tree which will, of course, be coming down tomorrow...

the romance of venice

hippolyta and i drinking in the idyllic romance of venezia as we gaze, at sunset, at the basilica santa maria della salute on the grand canal...

buon anno

happy new year from hippolyta and me in venice...