Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are alive and well

A mildly surreal evening yesterday, watching Neil Gaiman and Susannah Clark in conversation at the Bloomsbury Theatre, interrupted for 40 minutes when the fire alarms were set off by “something in the nanotech lab”.  Reassuringly, if a little disappointingly, it wasn’t self-assembly flames or molecular mites effecting an escape.

And then walking back to Kings Cross past St Pancras station, being illuminated by swirling spotlights.  And, Londoners being Londoners, everyone walking past ignoring the sight rather than revelling in it.

[Although as an evening of oddities it ranks a poor second behind the night I watched the film of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead in Leicester Square then walked to Victoria along a curiously deserted Mall in the heat of summer, only to be surprised by a fireworks display being launched off the roof of Buckingham Palace.  Taxis continued on their bustling way as I was the only person to sit on the kerb and watched for a bizarre twenty minutes.  And no, I was sober at the time.]