The husband came over to see the dog, who is recovering from her little operation. Not that you’d know that she’d had an operation: she is back to her old wonderful, annoying, loving self again!

She woofed energetically when the door knocker sounded, and bounced manically at him when he entered the house.

I had her dressing held in by micropore tape and she was wearing one of my old running tops to protect it.

“I can’t see that lasting,” said the husband.

It didn’t. She worked out how to remove the T shirt and had scratched the micropore tape away before long. The solution was to switch to something more robust: masking tape! Haha! Get out of that one then!

After our tea (fish and chips), I put on The Importance of Being Earnest. A live performance of the play recorded in a theatre. It was starting Ncuti Gatwa (Dr Who/Sex Education) and Sharon D Clarke (Holby City, but also Dr Who).

This was the play like no other performance! Even camper than ever, sexier than ever (Ncuti knows how to work his various talents), and with the most original casting.

It was Sharon D Clarke’s reimagining of the role of Lady Bracknell that blew me away.

This was the true genius of this production.

Lady Bracknell always used to be played by a posh sounding white actress.

More recently, she has been a man in drag (Stephen Fry is currently playing her in the West End).

Sharon played Lady Bracknell with what I think was a Jamaica twang to her voice and it did something remarkable: it added a dimension to the battleship of a character – it made her real. Authority was carried like a modern matriarch, her voice, the tone and timbre of it, all conveyed the lady’s power over her family.

With Sharon I noticed jokes that I hadn’t been aware of before. Maybe they were something that a Victorian audience would have laughed at because the old girl playing Lady Bracknell would have been a recognisable contemporary characterisation for them. Now Sharon has brought her to life in her own way, she is again recognisable.

She was no longer a person from a previous time. Neither was the Lady a parody. She was a contemporary.

What an incredible thing to achieve! Despite the Victorian costumes, sets, the Victorian morals, she made the play current.

Even the next morning I can hear her saying with an attitude of one with the beginnings of a migraine “the line is immaterial”.

I’m gonna watch this version of the play again and really get the most out of it.

What did the husband think?

It was long with too many words!

Funny how he, who loves to talk and can talk for hours found the dialogue too much, yet I who burn out in conversation loved it!