The Charlotte Bronte Code

Am I reading too much into Jane Eyre? I say 'reading' - 'viewing'. I'm reading a book called The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde, which is a good and funny book but revolves largely around characters leaping in and out of the book Jane Eyre, which I haven't read. So I rented the TV series, just as the teenage version of myself used to do for English Lit essays and exams (but only if the York Notes weren't available).

Anyway, early on, Jane Eyre meets a friend in an orphange type place, called Helen. Helen doesn't appear much in the TV version - pretty much the only thing she says is something like: "Well Jane, girls who behave go to heaven, and those who misbehave will go to hell. And it's up to us to last long enough in this life to reach adulthood, so that we can prove ourselves worthy and good people." Something like that, but with a few more 'verily's I imagine. Then Helen dies. Jane grows up, still fondly looking toward Helen's tombstone, which reads 'Helen Burns'. Now for a start that's not a good surname for the tombstone of someone who questioned which way they were going as they walked towards the light. Plus if read it syllabically backwards, 'Helen Burns' becomes 'Burns In Hell'. Not nice, granted. Am I reading too much into this? Is this a hidden message from Charlotte Bronte? Can I track the Holy Grail from this clue? Or am I just a slightly aspergersish wordplay fanatic who reads too much into things? Yes, that's it, yes.

In other news...

- I did a curry and comedy night on Saturday in Surbiton, and the fella I was sat next to - a charming, slightly stocky but very sweet-natured Nigerian fortysomething - turned out to be an Olympic gold-medallist. I've never had dinner with a gold-medallist before. It was quite exciting. He won a gold at Barcelona '92 for heavyweight boxing. He's the heavyweight boxing champion of Nigeria, and the former heavyweight boxing champion of Africa. That's a whole continent. That's quite cool. We should send him to Mugabe - he'd sort him out. Anyway, he doesn't box any more, cos his wife thinks it's a bit violent. Well of course it is. He punches other men professionally. Anyway, he's a gent, and very cool. And I'm not just saying that cos he could bit 7 tonnes of crap out of me.

- Part of my meal last night - up here at Leicester Comedy Festival, from where I write - included jalapenos and chillis. Which were, I'm afraid to say, not evenly distributed around the food. So I moved the jalapenos myself, by hand. Then I realised it was quite late and rubbed my eyes. And my, that hurt. But at first I thought they were aching with tiredness, so I rubbed them some more, really hard. Then screamed with pain. So the lesson here is: there's no 'i' in jalapenos, and equally there should not be jalapenos in your eye. (Yeah, definitely the 'slightly aspergersish wordplay fanatic'...)