I am always going on about the mundanity of my life though, of course, in actual fact, I am quite pleased not to be embroiled in a civil war, a natural disaster, a feudal dispute with members of my extended family (well, not yet, anyway) and other such extenuating circumstances.

But last week was, even by my exacting standards, a riveting one. Oh yes, instead of sitting at home watching Casualty, I was hob-nobbing with actors at the Bite the Mango festival at the Pictureville Cinema in Bradford. Gasp, I even saw a famous Lollywood actress in the flesh.

If I am quite honest, I do not really have an interest in Lolly, Bolly or even Holly, wood. Most films are formulaic, and Indian films in particular comprise inordinate amounts of singing, dancing, gyrating, way out jewellery, daft mannerisms and hey, that's just the men.

The women too are stereotypical characters who are portrayed as being evil vamps or tarts with hearts. The dialogue is often peppered with innuendo and enough double entendre to make even Julian Clary blush beneath his layers of make-up.

Punjabi films are marginally worse. Oh, I'm trying not to cause offence here - actually they are a lot worse and always feature hefty young damsels sporting twice their bodyweight in lip gloss who leap around on Kashmiri mountain tops and actually have the audacity to look wide-eyed and innocent when they cause an avalanche or two - usually at a moment of excruciating high drama. What I want to know is how they manage to get their hands on all that lip gloss and those false eyelashes while living atop K2 with only a nanny goat for female company.

But anyway, despite my low opinion of films in general, I jumped at the chance of seeing a real life film actress, especially since she had travelled all the way from Pakistan to talk about her most famous picture and answer our questions. And, of course, I wasn't going to let my free tickets go to waste either.

My first priority was to find a babysitter for Toddler. Our last foray into the world of the silver screen was a bit of a disaster. It was supposed to be Bite the Mango but I ended up biting Toddler's head off because he wouldn't sit still.

It was my fault totally - though I noted with bemusement how good he was with my mother. "How do you get him to stay quiet?" I asked. "Easy, " mum replied, " every time he opens his mouth, I put a Jelly baby in it." And when the sweeties ran out, so did I. Run out, that is. Unfortunately so did he. This time I was determined to sit through an entire film - even one lasting three hours, so I left Toddler at home.

And I'm glad. The evening was a success: the movie star was beguiling, the film too, was gripping and had me laughing, crying, scared, horrified, etc. But it was only when the actress had gone and the credits rolled that I remembered that I had forgotten to ask: "How did you manage to get your hands on so much lip gloss when you were atop K2 with only a nanny goat for female company?"

Oh well, there's always next time...

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.