Imagining Imogen

Yesterday, I went to see my friend Dani M in a small play he's been involved in since it debuted up at the Edinburgh festival last summer. It's called 'Imogen' and I had no idea what it was about apart from a small blurb on the flyer and a quote from Time Out magazine endorsing it with five stars.

Being a small off-West End production, it had been showing around various small theatres and so I made my way down to East Croydon Station after work heading for the Warehouse Theatre. Not the smallest venue I've seen a play in (that honour goes to a fringe theatre performance in the back room of a Soho cafe when I was a student), but it was intimate as the stage area itself was not so deep, exposing the actors directly to the audience.

A tale of love and loss - of how a man struggles to deal with the death of his daughter from terminal illness and the ultimate strains it wreaks on his increasingly fragile marriage. Superb puppetry conjured up the image of the lost daughter who converses with her father in his mind. The two leads were excellent in conveying the heart-wrending breakdown of a marriage due to stress and mental illness brought on by familial tragedy.

Memorable scenes include a dream sequence which involved a very physical performance by the lead actor and all-round this production was a fantastic example of inventive small budget theatre. Sometimes the greatest surprises are the smallest ones to be discovered.

World Cup 2006

It's here at last, the 2006 Football World Cup - time for overt nationalism, complaints about the match ball, plus pivotal dodgy refereeing decisions which all combine to create this brilliant four-yearly footballing extravaganza.

The earliest World Cup I can remember watching was Mexico '86 when I used to rush home from school to catch whatever match happened to be on, as well as that infectious theme tune ('Aztec Gold' - what a classic!). Of course, we were all football mad in the playground at that time, screaming the names of top players as we shot.

The girls didn't have a look in, what with the Panini sticker albums which took up the rest of our playground time when we weren't attempting football in the style of the Brazilian masters such as Zico, Careca and Socrates!

Pretending to be a Brazilian superstar, swapping Panini stickers with schoolmates and watching World Cup matches at home over dinner in the warm summer evenings; like my first love, I'll never forget my first World Cup!