I Just Want to Tell You How I’m Feeling…..

Tired. But that’s not the main point of this post. In fact, there are a few things I want to tell you about but don’t worry, we’ll come back to the post title eventually.

First though, let me tell you about our Friday night trip to see “Noises Off” at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. It was a leisure trip rather than a reviewing trip so I won’t tell you everything about it but it was lots of fun. If you’re not familiar with the idea, it’s a play-within-a-play so there are a group of dysfunctional actors playing a group of dysfunctional characters in an intricate farce. The first act is quite gentle humour but the second act is where it really escalates and the mainly-mimed chaos behind the scenes in Ashton-Under-Lyme had all three kids howling with laughter. It’s recommended for ages 12+  – probably because there are a few F-bombs – but the 10- and 11-year-olds thought it was great and the 14-year-old also enjoyed it, as well as treating it like GCSE Drama homework (he is studying Brecht, apparently). It always helps to have a bona fide National Treasure in the cast – in this case Felicity Kendal – alongside other famous faces like James Fleet, Matthew Horne and Tamzin Outhwaite, who the girls didn’t quite remember from “The Masked Dancer” but they were impressed by her moves anyway. CousinZ described her as “iconic”. I was pleased to add another 70s sitcom star to my list, after catching Wolfie Smith live earlier in the year. And yes, I might have reminded Nathan not to channel Norman Lovett and get overly distracted.

It was SO well done and cleverly written – the foreshadowing in Act 1 more than paid off by the end and the actors gave marvellously physical performances, especially Matthew Horne. The slapstick made it accessible for the younger end of the party who might not get all of the jokes and double entendres. The theatre itself is also gorgeous and not too big, so easy enough to find the loos and the bar. Just watch out for the one-way system in the ladies’, which flummoxed me for a while, and the step coming out of it which caused a little tumble. Definitely worth a trip though, and the tickets were very affordable for a West End show on a Friday night. On the way back, we bought fries – you know where from – and wandered up Carnaby Street to see the latest glittery things. I think it’s a universe of some kind:

The next morning we were bleary and overslept but we needed to get CousinZ to Reading for a handover so we rushed to get out of the house. We had an important stop to make on the way, just by Latimer Road tube so we needed to be dressed in black t-shirts and on the train as soon as possible. We made a quick Pret stop at Liverpool Street and then jumped on the Hammersmith & City line.

One thing I hadn’t considered at Latimer Road was the enormity of the Grenfell shadow as soon as you get off the tube. I don’t think the girls clocked it but we turned the wrong way out of the tube first off and seeing the sign pointing towards the tower like nothing had happened made me catch my breath. I’ve seen the tower in real life a few times – the first time was from the Westway not long after the fire and it was a horrific sight. Now, it’s a bit less visually jarring but it’s still a sobering reminder of what happened there.

There’s no easy way to segue from that thought to the frivolousness of the next section without saying something trite so I’ll just leave the picture here and a small gap before I get on to the main aim of our trip.

So, I just happened to see a Londonist article a week or so back, which contained the answer to a question I hadn’t asked but maybe I should have. When Reuben was a few months old, we’d taken him to various music-related sites in London to get some photos – we stopped on the Abbey Road zebra crossing and squeezed his buggy into the Ziggy Stardust telephone box just off Regent Street. But we didn’t think to seek out the tunnels where Rick Astley had filmed the “Never Gonna Give You Up” video. Until now. So all credit to Londonist as their intel was spot on. You just need to cross the road outside Latimer Road tube, and take the cobbled street next to the Co-op:

And there it is! I think Rick himself was probably standing in the road as he grooved but I wasn’t prepared to take too many risks with a child that wasn’t mine, so we did the photoshoot from the opposite pavement instead.

Londonist were also correct in that the interior scenes in the video were shot at the Harrow Club, which is on the same road as the bridge. We didn’t go inside but we did get some photos of this unmistakeable window:

From there, it was full-speed ahead to Reading for the handover. Although bits of Reading are very similar to how it was when I lived there, the station is almost completely different. And they now have a Wendy’s, which Eva was very excited about as she didn’t think they existed outside the US:

There weren’t huge amounts of vegetarian options so Eva just had chips and a drink. I had a burger which was nice enough but pretty much like most other fast food chain burgers. It was worth it for the novelty factor though. Eva insisted on taking her paper cup home as a souvenir.

There was also a new candyfloss making machine in the Oracle, which she very much enjoyed:

It’s quite mesmerising to watch this stuff being spun out of basically nothing….and you end up with something the size of a child’s head.

I liked the idea of getting the Elizabeth Line all the way back from Reading to Liverpool Street but it seems like it takes an hour to get as far as Paddington, whereas the fast train takes 23 minutes. And with a Disco 2000 to get to, time was of the essence. We still got the Elizabeth Line from Paddington to Liverpool Street though, and it was much swifter than the H&C version we’d done that morning. So Crossrail was worth it after all.

A bit of a whistlestop tour of our weekend but at least you can see now why I’m so tired. I considered not blogging any of this but hey, I’m never gonna let you down….