I appear to have dropped into the countryside again.
One minute I'm walking down a perfectly normal high street with a Jussaic Park themed cafe, and the next I'm crunching down a drive in almost pitch darkness, getting freaked out by the silhouettes of all the old manor house lurking in the distance.
Now like, this is a bit embarrassing for me to admit. Me, queen of the shadows. lurker in the darkness, the enemy of sunshine. But I don't like countryside darkness. It's a completely different beast to city darkness and it freaks me out. Because here's the thing, I grew up in the countryside. More than that, I grew up next door to a twelfth-century graveyard, in the frickin' middle of nowhere. And you know what, try as I might, I never met a ghost. So that means, if there's a rustle from the bushes, I know damn well it ain't Caspar lurking in there, and that scares the crap out of me.
Turns out, the rustle in the bushes of Ruislip is a couple of sweet terriers going on their bedtime stroll.
The fact that they almost gave this theatre marathoner a heart attack doesn't seem to be bothering them in the slightest. They leap around each other, yapping after their mistress as she circles behind some great barn.
Yup. Barn.
Because tonight's theatre has been built within the confines of the Manor Farm. A medieval farmstead that is now open to the public in what I can only assume is Ruislip's answer to Disneyland.
Up ahead, one of the few lamps fighting this darkness, goes off.
I get out my phone, and use it to guide myself down the path, through a gap in a hedge, around a loop in the road, and there it is. The Winston Churchill Theatre.
I clamber up onto a grassy bank, soaking my shoes in the process, and try to get a photo. But even with the lights blazing outside, I can only get the slightest glimmer shining off the sign, to show up.
Apparently I'm at the Winston Chu tonight.
It looks busy though, which is good. The people of Ruislip aren't afraid of the dark, and they are out in force for some quality Hello Dolly action.
Inside, the foyer is buzzing, and the queue for the box office stretches all the way across the entrance.
I join the end and try to ignore the squelching in my shoe as seat plans are pointed at, positions are negotiated, and tickets bought.
"By card?!" cries the box officer in horror as the person in front of me offers his Mastercard as payment.
The car owner points out the presence of a card machine behind the counter.
"It's their machine, not ours," says the box officer.
Duly chastised, the card owner puts the offending bit of plastic back in his wallet and finds the cash instead.
My turn.
"Hi!" I try, my voice croaking. Yeah, I'm still ill. Very ill. And I'm not hiding it well. "I'm collecting. The surname's Smiles?"
"I'm sorry?" says the box officer, blinking and leaning forward.
Oh dear. I try again.
"The surname's Smiles? S. M. I..." What was left of my voice gives out.
"Did you book online?"
I nod. I mean, obviously I did. I'm the one person in this room under the age of seventy. And I'm not well. I try to avoid the whole social thing as much as possible. This conversation is already way longer than I can cope with at the best of times.
"Ah!" he says. "You just need to show them that then," he says, with a glance at the front of housers.
Christ. I know 2019 is the year of the e-ticket. The year everything changes. The year paper tickets are swept away in the face of the mighty QR code. But I really wish someone, somewhere, would standardise how audiences are meant to deal with them. You never know whether an e-ticket means queueing to sign in, or blazing right through to the auditorium without stopping. And there's no way to find out before getting there.
It's exhausting.
And box officers always make you feel stupid for not knowing.
I'm so over it. I just want to sit on the floor and cry right now.
Bet the ushers will have loads of fun cleaning that mess up.
I manage to stay upright though, and stagger down the couple of steps that take me into the main body of the foyer.
A programme seller spots me.
"Would you like a programme?" she asks at the same time as I squeak out: "Can I get a programme?"
"One pound fifty?" she says, as I croak: "How much are they?"
Witch!
I quickly get the money out before she manages to reach the deeper levels of my subconscious. "There, exact change!" I say proudly as I hand her a pound and fifty pee coins.
She's not impressed. She clearly just found out my rant about e-tickets and that time, way back when, I got scared by two adorable small dogs all of ten minutes ago.
"I like your elephant!" she says, indicating my purse in what is definitely meant to be a distraction from her mind-reading abilities.
"Thanks! He makes having to pay for things that much easier."
She gives me an odd look. Unsurprising, as those syllables all came out as a garbled mess.
I slink away. I'm not fit for human company right now. Or ever. But very much not now.
The ticket checker is dressed very smartly. Black suit. Red accessories. Very swish.
He waits patiently as I struggle with the Ruislip 4G to download my e-ticket.
"Which seat number?" he asks.
I show him my screen. "Err, is that it?" I say, pointing at my screen. "K21? Does that sound right?" My brain is utter mush. I have no idea what a seat number should look like right now.
"You're in K21," says the very smart ticket checker. "On the far side."
I follow his pointing hand, down the corridor, towards the far side, and emerge in a large auditorium that looks like it's been stuffed into the local school hall.
The stage is very high, and an orchestra pit has been crafted with the use of black blankets slung over railings.
I find my seat, on the aisle, thank the theatre gods, and I slump down in relief.
A pre-show announcement comes over the soundsystem welcoming us to the theatre and begging us not to take photos. Until the curtain call. Which we should then feel welcome to put on the socials.
Excitement is high.
The mayor is in.
At least, I presume the man wearing a medal on a red ribbon around his neck is the mayor. I have serious questions if it isn't.
As the lights dim, my fellow audience members whoop.
And now, I haven't seen Hello Dolly before. No, not even the film. But even so, I'm pretty sure I'm having a fever dream right now because this is intense. There's a girl crying the whole time. And strangers engaging in highly choreographed routines. And grown men crawling around under tables. And songs about hat ribbons.
And then I remember that's just how musicals were back in the day, and once I realise that this is not the last firework display of my dying brain, I actually manage to enjoy it.
I stay in my seat during the interval. Not sure I can cope with the world outside, with its programme sellers, and e-tickets, and roving terriers.
My row is proving to be a bit of a causeway, and I stagger to my feet and lean myself against it until the interval is over.
I have a look at the programme.
I do love the biographies in amateur theatre productions. We have tales of a 'welcome retirement from the police force' squidged between instructions to sing along, and serious crimes against punctuation. It's so charming I want to boak.
Shit. Okay. Deep breath. Don't boak on the nice people of Ruislip. It's really not appropriate.
My row is all back now. I think I can sit down.
There. That's good. I feel a bit better.
Act two. And there's a bunch of waiters running around with their trays in what surely must be a direct contradiction of the EU directive for occupational safety and health. Not that any of that will matter in a couple of weeks’ time... I wonder if Ruislip is Remain or not. I decide it's best not to know.
Somewhere in the corridor behind us, a phone rings.
The audience giggles.
They giggle even more when the owner of the phone picks up.
"I'm at the show! Yeah, it's still on!" floats into the auditorium.
The front of houser leaning against the wall looks back, but doesn't move and we all giggle through through the rest of the conversation while the cast fight valiantly on with this tale of true love and gold-digging. At least, I presume it's true love. It's only been a day. Though there definitely is gold-digging, which I very much approve of. Being poor sucks. I need to find me a rich man to marry.
Or woman. But somehow I don't think I could convince a rich woman to put up with me. They've got smarts, those gals.
Either way, I should probably sort out this cold first.
I'm not exactly looking my best at the moment.
But first... I need to figure out how to get back to Hammersmith from here.
And not trip over my own feet in the dark.
Or get eaten by a small dog.
Or fall asleep on the train.
Or...