One of the delights of this blog is that it gives me an excuse to visit cinemas I've never been to before. So it was that, in the short interlude before going to see the stage version of Absolute Beginners at the Lyric Hammersmith (more fun, I'd say, than the reviews suggested), I took myself to the Cineworld Hammersmith to see the Ed Norton/Naomi Watts adaptation of Somerset Maugham's The Painted Veil. This picturehouse was threatened by developers not long ago, only to be saved by concerned Nimbys, I mean local residents, such as Vanessa Redgrave. Although defaced by the obligatory multiplex decor and vulgar concessions, its seats in dire need of refurbishment, one can see in the elegant curve and lofty height of the lobby, and in the remaining original fixtures, the shadow of the magnificent building it must have been before its auditorium was chopped into smaller screens. Not much to say about the film. Lovely scenery, stiff upper lips. Watts more convincing than Norton as a Brit, but in some shots she looks as if she's secreting food in her cheeks. Odd how some writers return in cycles - that this film should appear just as Maugham's creaky old warhorse The Letter is back in the West End, and as I've just finished a book called All the Devils are Here by david Seabrook, an engagingly eclectic and partial account of the louche weirdos who inhabit the isle of Thanet, of whom Maugham's nephew Robin was one.

Sorry, I'd never allow myself sentences that long in the paper.

A digression. It was my eighth wedding anniversary this week, so Ann and I went to Magdalene on Tooley Street. Excellent nosh, the foie gras a highlight (although my rabbit shoulder and liver was also good), very charming, very camp staff. And since we've cut down on drinking in the week (Ann's almost stopped completely on weekdays, doing much better than me, even though it was me who was warned about liver damage in a battery of overpriced tests I took for the paper), the bill was less than £50 a head, which I regard as extraordinary for a decent restaurant these days. So, yeah, right, it was all great... apart from the couple next to us. They were married co-workers, and even though she was heavily pregnant, he began hectoring her after he returned his starter (the selfsame foie gras), about saying I-told-you-so, about her deficiencies at work, about the fact that she hadn't adequately briefed the builder who was rebuilding their kitchen. ON and on and on, all in a yammering, overloud voice, as if he suffered a combination of Tourette's and autism (don't write in, I know people with both).

Basically, all I wanted to say was: pregnant lady, if you are reading this - divorce him.

Looking forward hugely to the bank holiday weekend, partly because it's great to be in London when everyone else has buggered off, and partly because of an unusually hectic social programme. Tonight is ladies' night at Ann's father's regiment, the Honourable Artillery Company, which is always a joy, not least because of the way sixtysomething men become like awestruck schoolboys around Ann's dad, who was wounded in the war. Saturday I'm having a session in a floatation tank - a birthday present - then it's cocktails with the gang in the private members bar above Ronnie Scott's, followed by dinner at Sofra. Pub lunch Sunday, Spider-Man 3 on Monday morning. Assuming you've read this far, what's everyone else doing...?