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To London to see Sean Holmes' new production of Blasted at the Lyric. The promotional posters all over the bar and foyer carried the slogan 'Reviled. Respected. Revived.' While I'm naturally delighted that this play is today recognised as a landmark piece and deemed worthy of major new productions like this one, for me there was an elephant in the room : the absolute tragedy that Sarah did not survive to see her work receive the acknowledgement of its importance that it deserves. The programme, at least, did nod to this, its notes on the author opening "Sarah Kane was born in 1971 and died in 1999. Despite initial critical hostility and outrage, her plays are now regarded as modern classics..."

Holmes brings a different and very effective staging to the play. The opening scenes are staged in a quality hotel room filling up a wide stage, with the bed as the focal point and a well-stocked minibar to the side. Then after the bomb goes off, all the fixtures and fittings disappear and the rest of the action is played out in darkness, around the bed, isolated against a backdrop of bare wooden joists, several of them damaged. Danny Webb portrays Ian as he should be played, haggard, dishevelled, his sardonic Yorkshire accent ravaged by alcoholism and lung disease. Lydia Wilson is a very convincing Cate, getting her fits spot on, and Aidan Kelly is suitably aggressive and crazed as the Soldier - with a hint of Irish accent. There's a couple of moments where Ian goes full-on naked but it fits in with the plot. The rape scene succeeds in being handled both realistically and tastefully - and, just beforehand, Ian and the Soldier are portrayed as almost being about to bond, before they fall out, setting up the denouement. A production that does the play full justice.

On my way out, one of the two young ladies in front of me said to her friend "The next time my brother calls me a big girl for not watching Saw..."

Switched my phone on in the foyer to find a text from Malc - Hawks were 1-0 up at Welling through Manny. On a hopelessly crowded tube (engineering works had shut down whole lines and huge sections of the network), in the open-air section of the line (thus my phone worked), I received another to say we'd won 2-0 and E*******h had been hammered 4-1 at home by Staines :)

Back at Victoria I met these lovely people when they asked me where the Greyhound stop was. We got talking and they explained that they were on a charity hitch-hike, trying to travel as far as possible without paying, in aid of Dreamflights, who provide holidays for children with learning disabilities. They'd set off from Durham this morning, got a free ride to Middlesbrough with their student bus passes, then persuaded a National Express driver in Middlesbrough to take them to London, so now they were about to try and get on the Greyhound to Portsmouth. I wished them luck and put a pound in their tin. Fortunately there were plenty of spare seats on our coach and the driver was a good sport, so I had them sat in front of me for the ride home. I asked what their plans were when they hit Pompey and they replied that they planned to try and get onto a ferry to France or Spain (they said they might consider the Isle of Wight as a last resort). They spent most of the journey on the phone to friends, family and others interested in their quest, including trying to set up meet-ups and lifts and finding out which ferries were leaving Portsmouth tonight. When we arrived at the Hard, the driver agreed to take them to the Continental Ferry Port after we'd all got off.

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The Hawk Ladies hit the FA Women's Cup trail today, away to Aldershot Town Ladies at Ash. It was raining when I arrived at the station, but there was no reply on the phone number displayed on the station info board for the local taxi firm, and there wasn't a bus for an hour, so there was nothing for it but to walk the two miles to the ground. With the floodlights in sight, Dick pulled up alongside me with Nicky and Alex in tow, waved to me to hop in and asked if I knew where the entrance was as he'd driven round in two circles looking for it. Finally we settled on asking a passing local, who said the entrance to the ground lay on the road leading to a new housing estate that Dick had declined to go down on the grounds that it couldn't possibly be there...

Lizzie being a local girl, some of the Sunday league lads who'd just played on the pitch before our game knew her from school and shouted hello. "She's harder than any of you," Trev quipped to them, and one of them replied "She's better than any of us too."

With the pitch having already taken one game today, and rain continuing to pour all afternoon (thank goodness there was a covered stand), the pitch was a mudbath pretty soon. Our girls' strength and stamina proved decisive as we adapted better to the conditions and ran out 8-0 winners. Lauren led the way with a hat-trick; Charley got two (her second was turned in by a defender but she immediately announced she was claiming it, and I looked up from my reporter's notebook to shout that I was giving it to her) and Jess and sub Chloe both scored goals that were shining examples of the skill to be found in women's football - Jess lobbed the goalie from just inside the Aldershot half, and Chloe, deep in time added on, under pressure from the Shots centre-back, knocked the ball back, executed a sublime turn and volleyed into the roof of the net. Suzy, next to me in the stand, who'd been talking about how Chloe blows hot and cold, mused "Why can't she do that every week?"

Suzy offered me a lift home, and took us on a mystery tour as her sat nav led us onto the M3 towards London, the Heathrow road and then onto the M25!

Well done, girls. Got to go watch the I'm A Celebrity intro show - Stacey to win!