“Cats and Dogs” at the Horniman – 17/02/22

Posted on February 18, 2022 by katese11

It’s been a while since we last ventured to deepest South London. Reuben was offered the opportunity to go to Forest Hill after church last week and he dismissed it with a shrug that suggested it was just too….far. And so it was on a rainy Sunday afternoon. But on a sunny Thursday with tickets to an exhibition about dogs? Bring it on!

Of course, the days are long gone when we could just hop on the 185 for the Horniman but there are a variety of ways to get there from Highams Park. I chose to do the changeover between overground lines in Dalston as I vaguely knew where we were going and there was only a small chance we’d get confused and accidentally go to church. So we got off at Hackney Downs, hopped on a 56 for a few minutes and hopped off again at Dalston Junction. We didn’t sit on the bench outside there for 45 minutes like we did last time we’d hung out in Dalston…instead, we went for an earlyish lunch at McDonalds. Eva has very recently discovered that she likes the vegan McPlant burger (“an ideal cinema snack” apparently) so wanted to go for one of those, fries and a strawberry lemonade. I know plenty of people would avoid McDonalds on principle but when you have a kid who’s an anxious eater, any environment she feels safe in is a total win. Especially when she’s now eating something vaguely resembling protein*

*Resemblance may be surface level only

She didn’t quite finish her burger or her drink so we took both with us on the overground, which was heading towards Crystal Palace. I know Eva’s been there before but it was when she was much younger and she’s clearly forgotten because she was filled with wonder at the very sound of the name. “If only all stations had such wondrous names!” she declared in her…distinctive way.

Turns out she’s easily impressed by station names. Surrey Quays, Canada Water and Rotherhithe also met with her wonder-filled approval. “I just can’t believe my ears….or my eyes” she said, as we slid through the grey surrounds of SE16. If you’re the woman in this picture, I also need to apologise for the child’s relentless singing of Encanto songs with half the words cut out. Snowy was practising her part as Mirabel, you see, so she only needed to sing Mirabel’s lines.

If you’re wondering, this is Snowy:

What? You thought we could go and see an exhibition about dogs and not take any of the cuddly dogs with us? How little you know. I was just thankful I only had one to keep an eye on and not the full 27.

We had 2pm tickets for the exhibition. If I’d gone full Alpha Mom, I’d have made sure we had tickets to the aquarium and the storytelling and the craft sessions and all the other bits as well. But you should know by now that I am far from an Alpha Mom. It’s hard to label yourself nowadays with Greek letters without sounding like some deadly viral strain but I’m probably around the Gamma or Delta. It was unlikely enough that we would make it out of the house at this point in half term, let alone all the way to South London so I didn’t overcommit. One ticket was fine.

It did mean we had some time to kill before our timeslot though, even with the half mile slog up the hill that I’d kinda forgotten about. Eva refused point blank to go into the Hall of Dead Things so we went to the musical instruments gallery, where she was lost in wonder once again…this time at French Horns rather than Canada Water. Who knew there were so many types of brass instrument? And so many flutes!

We spent some time at the interactive screens, listening to what a zither and a Jew’s harp sounded like (although I think my father owns both of these instruments so I could have just asked him really). When I tried to take a picture of Eva using the white screen, the weirdest thing happened:

And it was even weirder when Snowy was sitting on top of it. She looks like she’s had an 1980s makeover:

We also visited the “Hair” exhibition, which had some freaky elements to it. There weren’t as many fainters as there were when we held the “Skin” exhibition at Wellcome but still, there is something slightly unnerving about anything that was previously on a person and is now in a museum.  There were some pictures of good dogs but their owners were wearing clothes made out of the dogs’ fur. All a bit Cruella de Ville for my liking. This bit was fun though – a wall of mirrors where you could arrange nature-shaped magnets to give yourself a new hairstyle:

By the time we’d done those two galleries, it was 2pm and so we were ready to go into “Cats and Dogs”. If you’ve read this blog for anything length of time, you’ll know which animal we prefer but there’s plenty to look at in this exhibition for both feline- and canine-lovers. Eva scampered around a bit, looking at the various activities before trying out the “Can you jump as high as a cat?” test. She couldn’t…but she had fun trying.

Then a similar idea  – “Can you run as fast as a dog?” The aim was to weave in an out of the yellow poles in less than 3 seconds but Eva never quite managed it, especially not on all fours.

Next, we had a go at the Horniman breeding program. I think we tried almost every combination of dogs and I can’t quite remember what we crossed with a dalmatian here:

But Eva certainly thought it was adorable:

Mind you, she also thought this was adorable:

We watched a couple of films about the origins of dogs and how the good wolfie boys became the good slightly-less-wolfie boys. And discovered that Eva is about the same size as a German Shepherd:

We had to wait a while for the doggy version of Guess Who but I beat Eva in both games. Even though she had Snowy on her side, who really should be the dog expert:

We spent around 50 minutes in the exhibition in total. It was half-term-busy so I think we’d have stayed longer if there weren’t any queues. But there’s only so long I can deal with being bemasked anyway, so it definitely felt time to get some fresh air.

And what a glorious day for some fresh air in the Horniman gardens! I don’t know whether spring comes sooner in South London but it certainly felt springlike with the blossom out:

I’d completely forgotten there were animals in the grounds, so stumbling across a pair of alpacas was a nice surprise:

Even if Eva thought the brown one looked smug. Does this look smug to you?

We also spotted a lamppost wearing a wig, presumably to tie in with the “Hair” exhibition:

We wandered about a bit, playing on the outdoor instruments and just generally taking in the view:

“Look Eva, we can see across the whole of London from here” I said, as we stood at the vantage point. Eva looked at me, momentarily confused and told me that no, we couldn’t because some bits of London were behind us. Hmmm, so I never get a bit of poetic licence then?

I wanted to stop for coffee and cake before the long journey home and Canvas and Creams had been recommended to us. I didn’t get any decent photos but Eva was enjoying her red velvet cake, honestly. I had a soy latte and a slice of carrot cake.

We were almost homeward bound but just stopped to take a photo of this mural, which reminded us both of Antonio’s room from Encanto:

And then back northwards, with this “angelic” sky, as Eva described it to see us off. I think it was somewhere around New Cross:

Nice to breathe a bit of South London air for a while and return to our old haunt. Thanks for having us, Horniman!

“Cats and Dogs” runs until 30th October 2022. For tickets and more info, click here.

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Out and About

Posted on February 13, 2022 by katese11

After I spent a long time writing about the exact reason I cry at a kids’ film, a friend suggested I might want to get out of the house more. The same friend also enabled me to get out of the house by taking me to Loughton on a Saturday afternoon. Except that those two things happened out of sequence….even after our epic voyage to Loughton, she *still* thought I needed more excitement in my life. How is that even possible?

I bet you wanna know more about that Loughton trip, don’t ya? Well, it’s true that after two weeks of Covid isolation I was happy to go absolutely anywhere so Loughton on an overcast Saturday afternoon was an exciting enough prospect. Bits of it are quite scenic:

And it has a good tree, just in front of the world’s most car showroom-like Nandos:

I had been promised a Clarks and a New Look and only one of them was still there so I did not manage to buy a handbag. I did browse Superdrug for a new hair colour and have a rifle through the racks of the charity shops. I also saw this boxing/sunbeds combo that could not be Essexier if it tried:

Then we went to a cafe, which I won’t name because it was a slightly underwhelming experience. My waffle took a while to arrive and, when it did, was a bit…basic:

But pleasing on a geometric level, right?

The next day I left the house again, for IRL church and then hanging around Angel Central while Eva went to see a film at my old stomping ground. The N1 Centre, as was, has changed a bit since my day but I realise that my day was almost 20 years ago. For instance, this is new:

I also found a functioning branch of Itsu, which is a rarity in these post-lockdown times:

It was surprisingly hard to find somewhere to have a coffee though. I did a bit of shopping after lunch – H&M, M&S, Monsoon – and still failed to buy a handbag. I did manage to find the upper floor of M&S after much wandering about and using a tiny, cranky lift. It was only on the way out that I spotted the stairs and a (non-functioning) escalator that might have helped.

 

After all that, I just wanted a sit down. Pret in the shopping centre had a massive queue. Starbucks on Upper Street has closed. The other Pret on Upper Street has very little seating, so would have been a stool-perch, which I’d already had to do at Itsu (won’t someone think of us poor middle-aged people?) An independent place called Redemption Roasters looked promising but was packed and, again, I was possibly too middle-aged to go there. I resorted to googling and ended up just opposite the McDonald’s I’d taken Eva to before her film. There’s a Costa there which, although small, had enough seats for me to sit and read for a bit. The book, incidentally, was a new purchase from the very nice Upper Street bookshop. It was a spontaneous day out, so I hadn’t brought any reading material with me. As I walked through Chapel Market, I reflected on how Islington is still very much a town of two halves. Illustrated by this Waitrose, squeezed in among betting shops and Cex:

So it’s fair to say we haven’t been on any big days out lately. It’s taking a while to adjust back to the outside world after the isolation and our Plan B-restricted homedwelling in January. Going back to the office this week for the first time and restarting choir after a two-month break have taken most of my energy, alongside recovering from Covid itself. But Eva and I were out teaching English yesterday and, on the way back, had the choice between Five Guys and McDonalds once again. Reader, I chose well this time:

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We Don’t Cry At Encanto….No No No

Posted on February 8, 2022 by katese11

 

I know. I’m a grown up and clearly not the kind of person to cry at a kids’ film. Except “Toy Story 3”. And “Up” And pretty much any Muppets film. Oh and let’s not even mention the ugly crying I did over “Coco”. So maybe I am that kind of person. Maybe I’m the kind of person who puts the “Encanto” soundtrack on while the kids are at school and I’m working. Maybe I’m the kind of person who find themselves sobbing into their spreadsheet. But it’s totally logical and I’m going to tell you why.

There are two chief culprits here. Not even I could cry over a bunch of donkeys playing violins on the brow of the Titanic. But “Dos Oruguitas” is an obvious tearjerker and, slightly more obliquely, “All of You” too. Anything to do with Abuela and generational trauma, basically.

I’m going to break down the lyrics of “All of You” because that’s the one I can’t sing along to past the first verse or so. Grab your tissues and join me.

Look at this home, we need a new foundation
It may seem hopeless but we’ll get by just fine

OK, we’re starting with the very concept of “home”, which is what the whole of the Encanto is – it was created as a home when Abuela needed it most. It does a sight more than most homes do. In fact, I dreamt last night that our stairs turned into a slide first thing in the morning but guess what? Dreams don’t always come true, kids.

Anyway, a quick callback to “Family Madrigal” to start with. A bit poignant as this time round, the home is a pile of rubble but also optimistic. If I wasn’t busy hardening my heart, it’d probably get me on the first line.

Look at this family, a glowing constellation
So full of stars and everybody wants to shine

Callback continues, with a subtle shift of emphasis – everybody *wants * to shine, rather than everybody *gets* to shine. I told you dreams didn’t always come true.

But the stars don’t shine, they burn
And the constellations shift

A shift in every way at this point – thanks for the signpost Mirabel. After the major chords of the first few lines, we hear a G#m on the word “burn” and the optimism of the “shine”, “fine” and “new” just seems a little uncertain. And it gets even more uncertain as she hits another minor chord on “shift” which isn’t even on the first beat of the bar like “burn” is. It seems like Mirabel started hopeful but is wavering…or perhaps just getting philosophical. My eyes are still dry. Yes, they are.

I think it’s time you learn
You’re more than just your gift

Oh gosh, is that Luisa she’s saying that too? Like, she doesn’t need to carry all of that pressure any more? I think these lines speak very deeply to anyone who’s ever felt like people only appreciate them for what they can do rather than who they are. From Malcolm in the Middle to Margot Tenenbaum to Maddie Ziegler, this has gotta chime with a few people hasn’t it? It’s also interesting how the music changes again, shifting down from E to an out-of-key D# major chord on the word “gift”, almost like Mirabel is anticipating the seismic emotional shift that’s about to come as Abuela starts singing.

And I’m sorry I held on too tight
Just so afraid I’d lose you too

This is where I lose it every.single.time. Abuela is making amends for the hurt she’s caused and explaining that it was her love for the triplets that led to that hurt. Dagnam, I’m welling up now just thinking about it. I have a rule that when emotionally stunted characters -Giles, Dr Cox, Toby Ziegler* – cry that I’m allowed to cry too and I’m not making an exception for Abuela. Look how she strokes Pepa’s face in exactly the same way as Captain von Trapp strokes Liesl’s face after his own emotional breakthrough:

*No relation to Maddie

The miracle is not some magic that you’ve got
The miracle is you, not some gift, just you
The miracle is you
All of you, all of you

The same alloftheemotions as before only this time it’s even more so because a) it’s Abuela saying it and b) Bruno turns up.

If you hadn’t guessed from the Captain Von Trapp reference, family reconciliation always makes me well up. It’s the classic Railway Children “Daddy, oh my Daddy” moment isn’t it? I was reading “Curtain Up” to Eva a few months back and could barely make it through the last chapter when their father comes home at Christmas time. I know it’s a well-worn plot device but gosh darn, it gets me every single time. Just looking at Julieta and Pepa’s faces when they realise Bruno is back could probably start me off crying without even listening to the song:

Okay, so we gonna talk about Bruno? (That’s Bruno)
Yeah, there’s a lot to say about Bruno
I’ll start, okay
Pepa, I’m sorry ’bout your wedding, didn’t mean to be upsetting
That wasn’t a prophecy, I could just see you were sweating
And I wanted you to know that your bro loves you so
Let it in, let it out, let it rain, let it snow, let it go

OK, phew there’s a bit of a light relief in the form of some Camilo-Antonio-Bruno bantz. And a “Frozen” reference, obviously. The chords are all over the place at this point – mainly somewhere around the key of G but with a fair smattering of B Majors to keep it unpredictable. But all very upbeat and it means I can get my breath back a bit before some more family reconciliation stuff

That’s what I’m always saying, bro
Got a lotta ‘pologies I got to say
(Hey, we’re just happy that you’re here, okay?)

Julieta is the best. No, Felix is the best. I really don’t know but yup, just weeping straight through this bit

Uh, But
Come into the light, the triplets all reunite
And no matter what happens we’re gonna find our way

And this bit.

Yo, I knew he never left, I heard him every day

Oh Dolores….always gotta have the last word. You never thought to mention this before? I guess they don’t talk about….who now?

What’s that sound? (Oh, oh)
I think it’s everyone in town

Just when I’m starting to get myself together, here’s another trigger. Everyone pulling together to rebuild a home. It’s like those feelgood news stories you see after disasters when you have to…yknow….look the saints in the aftermath of tragedy. Oh gosh, I’m off again.

And it’s like…EVERYONE in town. Gut man, Mariano, all of them. No one is cross at the Madrigals even after they’ve been hit on the nose by falling debris. They all appreciate what the family have done for the town and now it’s time to give back. Waaaaahhhhh

Hey
Lay down your load (lay down your load)
We are only down the road (we are only down the road)

More stuff on not putting so much pressure on yourself (are you listening Luisa?) and letting others help you. This reminds me of “Once More With Feeling” where Buffy thinks she has to fight the demon all by herself and then all the Scoobies turn up to help her (“Quick Tara, Anya…she needs back up”). After two years of Covid, we’re all carrying so much emotional baggage and have felt like we’ve had to just struggle on for so long that having an entire town turn up to tell you to lay down your load is really quite….affecting. And I gotta say, whenever we’ve needed the HP community to spring into action when while we’ve been isolating, they have been just as marvellous as the Encantoians.

We have no gifts, but we are many
And we’ll do anything for you

You see, they really want to help. It’s not all about being gifted, it’s about community. Sob.

It’s a dream when we work as a team (all of you, all of you)

Oh the three sisters are friends again too…even though we never really knew that much about the Isabela/Luisa dynamic so not sure whether they needed any kind of reconciliation in the first place. It’s all good though. And nice callback to Isabela’s theme.

You’re so strong
Yeah, but sometimes I cry (all of you, all of you)
So do I

ME TOO, LUISA.

I may not be as strong but I’m getting wiser
Yeah, I need sunlight and fertilizer
Come on, let’s plant something new and watch it fly
Straight up to the sky, let’s go

All of this is pretty jolly. OK, I’ll be fine.  Nothing but good vibes from here on in.

The stars don’t shine, they burn
The constellations glow
The seasons change in turn
Would you watch our little girl go?
She takes after you

Alright so…parental pride in a child that’s always felt a bit neglected. …kids growing up and becoming independent…all that might potentially set me off again if we don’t move on quickly.

Oh
Hey Mariano, why so blue?
I just have so much love inside
You know, I’ve got this cousin too
Have you met Dolores?
Okay, I’ll take it from here, goodbye
You talk so loud
You take care of your mother and you make her proud
You write your own poetry every night when you go to sleep
And I’m seizing the moment, so would you wake up and notice me?
Dolores, I see you (and I hear you)
Yes (all of you, all of you)
Let’s get married (slow down)

This bit is sweet. I’m not overly invested in Mariano’s heartache. Happy for Dolores but it’s all registering mild on the wibble-o-meter.

All of you, all of you
Home sweet home
I like the new foundation
It isn’t perfect
Neither are we (that’s true)

OK, let’s finish this song reallll soon before I start again.

Just one more thing

No, not one more thing

Before the celebration (what?)

No we’re good. Feel free to start celebrating

We need a doorknob

Oh gosh

We made this one for you

They got Antonio to do this line. Why would you do this to me?

We see how bright you burn

Waaaaahhhhhh

We see how brave you’ve been

Oh gosh, now we’re channelling Lily Potter at the end of Deathly Hallows. Not.enough.feels.in.the.world

Now, see yourself in turn
You’re the real gift, kid, let us in

Aw, even Bruno is getting slushy now? Wahhhhh once more

Open your eyes
Abre los ojos

Unintentional Vanilla Sky reference?

What do you see?
I see me
All of me

Fade to black and repeat “it’s only a kids’ film. It’s only a kids’ film….”

But just in case you think I’m alone in this, here are some randomly selected YouTube comments from this song. I’ve removed usernames as they might not want to be associated with this ridiculous piece of overthinking. But if you spot yourself, do wave!

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Platform 9 3/4

Posted on February 5, 2022 by katese11

There’s a date that’s been in the diary for an untold amount of time and that’s Eva’s 9 3/4 birthday. I say “untold” because I really have no idea how log ago I put it in there. I remember her asking ne to put it in there a few months ago and, to my surprise it was already there. So this trip was a long time in the making. Not that that’s any guarantee of it actually happening though. Not with a lengthy period of family isolation at the end of January. But Eva and I were covid-free in time and we managed to squeeze a jaunt in between work and bedtime. It was aa flawless plan.

What was not so flawless was me burning my finger on the pan when cooking gnocchi the evening so I’m mainly typing lefthanded with my right hand soaking in a bowl. Excuse the typos.

The plan was simple – just to get a picture of Eva at Platform 9 3/4 on the day that she was exactly 9 3/4. Having been confined for so long though, everything that wasn’t Our Lounge was a source of wonder to both of us. There was a woman carrying a dog on the escalator at Walthamstow Central (at least someone paid attention to the sign that says “Dogs Must Be Carried on the Escalator”) and when we got onto the tube, there was a blue-haired woman reading “Harry Potter og Ildbegeret”. That’s “Goblet of Fire” in Norwegian, if you didn’t know, and Eva was thrilled at the coincidence as she sat on the Tube in her homemade Ravenclaw scarf and her even more homemade Ravenclaw robes. She’s recently shifted allegiance from Gryffindor to Ravenclaw so her robes were just Gryffindor ones with a paper crest she’d drawn stuck over the top. She was even more thrilled when the doors opened at Highbury and Islington and there was a giant poster for “Philosopher’s Stone”.

We walked through the corridors which appeared to have fancy tiled flooring but as Eva exclaimed it really was just a picture of some fancy tiled flooring. A man was playing “Albatross” on a guitar at the end of the corridor. There were people who weren’t in my immediate family. it was all very overstimulating. Just look at Eva marvelling at the station roof:

The actual photo we went there for was very straightforward. There was barely any queue so we got through very quickly.

We got through the shop far less quickly and Eva managed to score both a Ravenclaw hairbow and a Luna Lovegood necklace. She wanted some Bertie Botts beans but for £7.95 it seemed a steep price for a small packet of sweets that were going to be largely inedible. There was a large selection of Ravenclaw merch to choose from so I think I got off lightly.

I had promised her some dinner though and we had a tough choice between Burger King and McDonalds. Eva was too busy to choose because she was concentrating on making the clock brighter with her wand:

We started drifting towards McDonalds then sped up to get her past “Kingdom of Sweets”. Then we saw a third option – Five Guys. I’ve chosen McDonalds over Five Guys before and regretted it and, safe to say, I regretted it this time. I wasn’t eating dinner as such because we were having gnocchi later (the regrets continue) but did get a portion of mozzarella sticks that was, apparently, meant for  three people. Thanks for pointing that out Eva.

The McDonalds experience was predictably chaotic but the money we saved by not going to Five Guys meant that I could buy her some ridiculously expensive sweets from “Kingdom of Sweets” on the way back past. Yes, I’m a soft touch but I’d challenge anyone to stay strong and stingy in the face of a child who looks at the sweets and says, eyes shining “Am I really awake? Or is this just a magical dream?”

OK yes, I’m a soft touch. But she said later that it had been the perfect day so it was worth it. It sounds like we just sat on the tube for ages and then ate some sweets but as I say, we haven’t been out much lately…

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My Apprentice Life

Posted on January 27, 2022 by katese11

I’m not entirely sure why I’m sticking with The Apprentice. I’m sure everyone else gave up on this show years ago. And this series is trying its hardest to repel me – first with an episode about teeth (boak) and now an episode about gutting fish (double boak). But hey, I’ve been home for six straight days now and I certainly don’t have anything outside-worldy to blog about. So instead I’m watching The Apprentice and thinking about times when we actually left the house.

It was triggered by the opening scenes in the National Maritime Museum, where the besuited ones stood on the giant world map that a toddler Eva scooted around in March 2013:

The year before that we had, apparently taken an Apprentice-inspired trip to Regent’s Park after watching an episode where hapless candidates failed to realise how big the park was. I don’t really remember this day but, reading back, it seemed that I was pregnant and hangry so it’s not surprising I blanked it out. More surprising is that I ate a hotdog that day and thought it was good. Definitely pregnant.

I do remember an encounter with some real-life Apprentice candidates, though at the time it took me a while to make the connection. We were in a pub for Bob’s birthday, after a trip to Spitalfields City Farm and I noticed someone dressed as a life-size hotdog. Weeks later, when we were watching someone traipising round Shoreditch in a hotdog costume, something sparked in my weary brain. I asked the group mind on Facebook and it turned out that yes, we had been on the scene as they’d been filming. There’s a bit of a hotdog theme. I didn’t buy a hotdog that day though because I wasn’t pregnant then and had regained my former mistrust of them from my cinema days. If you only knew what I knew….

Talking of cinemas, there was that one time we met another Apprentice candidate at a cinema. We were there for a CBeebies Premiere and Luisa from Series 9 was there. And very nice she was too. I think I was a bit preoccupied by the lovely Sid from Beebies at the time though.

That’s not the most notable Apprentice encounter though. I’ll save that till last. First, here’s a picture of the notoriously awful “Relationship Guru” game from Series 10 that I spotted in the wild in the window of Zest, Broadwick Street. I even considered buying it for a brief moment, as a funny Christmas present for Nathan. But that was a very, very brief moment.

And then there was the time my whole belief system fell apart as I realised that the conversations in The Apprentice were staged. Yes, really. The candidates were in a taxi, passing through Kennington, which is where we lived at the time. In the first line of the scene you could see the Lobster Pot, as it was then, and the car was heading towards Elephant & Castle. In the second line of the scene, the car is heading the opposite way down Kennington Lane, with our local Tesco in the background. Two shots, half a mile apart and in opposite directions. I was outraged.

But I promised you something notable to finish on and this, honestly, boggles my mind to this day as it’s one of the weirdest things that’s ever happened to me. A Eva and I needed to travel to Milton Keynes one Monday and, on the Sunday night, my mind was full of the logistics of it because previous trips to Euston with a two-year-old had not gone well. So when I fell asleep, I had a typical-for-Kate anxiety dream about the next day’s travel. In it, we were at Euston and Nick from the Apprentice walked past and demanded a snack from Eva’s snackbox. On the Monday morning, when we got to Euston who do you think walked right past us?

Correct, Nick from the Apprentice. I told you this was weird. He didn’t ask us for a snack but I darn near offered it to him in case that’s what I was meant to do.

So there you go, my #1 all-time Apprentice-related memory. I hope you enjoyed it more than I enjoyed the fish episode….

 

 

 

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Kew Gardens – 01/01/22

Posted on January 1, 2022 by katese11

Today has had some spontaneous elements. That will become apparent as you read on but, in my defence, it really is quite difficult to plan ahead at the moment isn’t it? So I’m never sure whether anything will actually happen, whether we’ll be in Hampshire for NYE or not and whether or not the children will be up for a bracing New Year’s Day walk. Actually, scrap the last one. We have enough data from previous years to confidently assess that, whatever their mother says about “tradition”, they will not be up for it but will grudgingly go along with it.

So, much uncertainty and, as Eva said during The Masked Singer tonight, “a plan with so many moving parts”. Turns out we *were* in Hampshire for NYE and the children *were* up for a bracing New Year’s Day walk. Well, kinda. So, in the style of Shed Seven, we chased rainbows all the way up the M3, only stopping at Fleet services for a meal that I intended to be brunch but was pretty much lunch because the kids wanted Burger King.

My whole concept for this day was “breaking up the driving” because we’ve been up and down that M3 a fair bit lately and we’d all been late to bed last night. So lunch at Fleet and then a visit to Kew.

The only problem was that Kew closes at 3PM this time of year and the latest entry slot is 1:00-1:45. I didn’t want to leave Winchester until 11ish, so Nathan could sleep as much as possible between partying and driving, so that wouldn’t give us huge amounts of time to explore. Still, with some careful planning we could make the most of it.

Ah yes, that’s where I went wrong. I only really checked where to park around Kew this morning and had found a road somewhere near the Lion Gate. I knew we drove past Kew Gardens on the way home from Winchester and I thought as far as “get somewhere that looks like Kew Gardens, stop car, go through gate”. Kew don’t encourage people to drive – presumably out of courtesy to the local residents – but I thought it was justifiable seeing as it was the halfway point of a 70 mile drive back from Winchester. I think otherwise we would probably have got the tube, like we did to the National Archives.

We parked up fine, not far from the Lion Gate and on a road that was only permit holders for Mon-Fri. I may have even spotted Peter Serafinowicz as we were looking for a spot and Eva took the opportunity to do some hopscotch along the way:

But what I didn’t consider is that we also had tickets for the Children’s Garden (which are free but need to be booked) and had come in at precisely the opposite end of Kew Gardens to where we wanted to be. The Children’s Garden timeslots start 15 minutes after your entry time so ours was for 1:15…but considering we were running lateish and didn’t even get in through the gate until 1:20…well, you can imagine. Also, Kew is a lot bigger than I anticipated. We drive past it all the time, and it does seem to go on forever at that cringingly slow 20mph on Kew Road but still, I didn’t imagine it would take almost half an hour to traverse.

Anyway, it did. Along the way, we passed some of the hothouses and an art installation but we didn’t stop to look because we were on such a mission. We made it to the Children’s Garden by 1:45 and it was closing for the day at 2:15, so we had half an hour to explore. Eva completely missed the whole area with sand and slides and only noticed it as we were being shepherded out by a woman with a bell. But here are some of the things she did find:

The age range for the Children’s Garden is 2-12 but most of the play equipment was geared towards smaller children. Roo was slightly underwhelmed by the trampolines but Eva enjoyed them:

I think he would have had more fun if he’d been wearing shoes he could climb in, rather than his sliders but that’s an argument I’ve given up on.

Oh, and Eva was dressed as a Dalmatian all day but again, that’s pretty standard at the moment.

After a late night and a long walk, I was pretty desperate for a coffee by this point. The Family Kitchen, right next to the Children’s Garden, looked promising. But alas! It closed at 2! We consoled ourselves with a trip to some toilets nearby and started making our way back towards the gate. Yes, I know we’d only just got there but the gardens closed at 3 and it was a long walk out. See, I told you this was badly planned.

Looking at the map in hindsight, it seems like the Brentford Gate or the Elizabeth Gate would have been better options for getting to the Children’s Garden quickly. But parking near either of those looked challenging and possibly even involved parking in the middle of the Thames, so I can’t go on living with so much regret. Maybe though, finding a spot closer to the Victoria Gate, which was the gate we used to exit, would have been a nice compromise.

But I’m getting ahead of myself! There were some interesting things to see on the way out. I realise that Kew is meant to be a celebration of nature and most of the interesting things I’m going to talk about were man-made but you probably know by now that I’m not really that good at nature-related things. Still, here’s a Monkey Puzzle tree:

And this is The Hive, which is inspired by nature and had a soundtrack piped into it from a real beehive:

Mainly though, it was just a nice spot for taking photos:

My favourite spot, though, was right next to the Victoria Gate and had several neon stars in front of the Palm House. I would have stayed there longer if it wasn’t so close to kick-out time:

 

Eva wanted to go to the shop and I assumed that this would also be near to closing. It was but we still had time to circle round three times in increasingly frantic loops as Eva looked for a “souvenir that would last”. I was pretty keen to get her out of the souvenir-shop loop so she scored a wooden pen, as well as pricey bags of sweets for both her and Roo. The cafe that was housed in the same building *was* closed already, so still no coffee…but at least she had her souvenir.

After that, it was just a simple matter of a half-mile walk back down Kew Road to where we’d left the car, with kids that got moanier with every step. As The Cat would say, 100% Successful Trip. I think we might need to revisit soon and go to all the bits we missed, like the Treetop Walk but we did at least get those kids out for that bracing walk.

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“Ever After” at Chickenshed – 22/12/21

Posted on December 23, 2021 by katese11

Copyright Chickenshed

In the last few days, the festive cheer has taken a bit of a dour turn, hasn’t it? We’ve not been out of the house too much in the last week or so but Eva and I had this treat in our diary and, with negative LFTs for the pair of us, we set off to do at least one fun thing this holiday.

And what a fun thing it was! “Ever After” is a big, raucous show that’s full of joy and energy. With four casts of 200 performers each, it must be a logistical nightmare to stage but it meant that there was always something to look at. The basic premise was that the Brothers – and possibly non-binary sibling – Grimm had mixed all their fairytales up and the result was what we were watching. Hansl and Gretl stumbled upon the Man With No Name and the twelve dancing princesses and all the tales wove into each other seamlessly.

Copyright Chickenshed

With such a busy stage, it seems difficult to pick out individual performers but there were a couple of people that kept catching my eye.  The lead dancing princess didn’t have any lines as far as I remember but she infused the character with an acute sense of mischief as she drugged the guards so she and her sisters could sneak out to dance. And her dancing was effortless but stunning. Every time she was on stage, she absolutely lit it up and the rest of the dancing princesses were exhilarating too. Eva’s very fond of “The Restless Girls”, which is a recent retelling of the story so she was delighted when the Queen first mentioned the trouble she was having with worn out shoes.

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The other person who really impressed me was the blonde signer. With the rotating and extensive cast I’m not quite confident in matching actor’s names to parts so I apologise for that but I think she may be called Maddie. Either way, she was amazing. Signing, acting, dancing and I think even singing at one point as well. The BSL in this show was so well integrated into the story that it just seemed absolutely natural. The signers were part of the story and mirrored what the main cast were doing. If an adult and child were talking together, an adult and child signer would be doing the same beside them. I’m probably not explaining it well but it was incredibly well done. It meant that any hearing-impaired audience members not only followed the dialogue but also all the nuance and emotion that went with it. Maddie’s movements when shadowing the wicked stepmother were sharp and flawless and her dance moves were similarly flawless.

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Oh, and the wicked stepmother (played by Bethany Hamlin) was also one of my favourites. She might have been pure evil but she had a lot of style. I would totally wear that purple dress. Also, she had a gorgeous singing voice. Admittedly, one of her songs was the only but Eva struggled to cope with – it was to do with eating children – but her sneeze was one of Eva’s favourite parts. I won’t say more than that but it an impressive sneeze.

Eva was very emotionally invested in the story all the way through. When the characters were desperately trying to guess the name of the Man With No Name, she was shouting it out in the hope they’d hear her. I should have explained to her that it wasn’t a panto and no-one was waiting for her input. When the characters finally worked it out, she let out an audible “yes!”, much to the amusement of the people behind us. Her overall verdict on the show was “amazing” and she liked it as much as she liked “Rapunzel“, which has always been her high benchmark for Chickenshed shows.

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Of course, just because I’ve singled out some of the performers for praise doesn’t take away from the excellent way the whole ensemble worked together. Everyone moved perfectly in sync and even the smallest child knew their lines and said or sang them well (having sat through many performances by my own children, this is in no way a given). Some of the best moments in the show were when the stage was full, such as the gloriously colourful court of the Queen:

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Still, I can’t say I’d fancy being one of her 16 husbands.

Ashley Driver, who I think we’ve seen before in “Mr Stink“, was a lot of fun as Hansl and Gretl’s father who talents included gardening, tongue twisters and marrying unsuitable women. The four Siblings Grimm were also very funny and, straight away, got the audience laughing.

We always enjoy our Chickenshed trips but there is something particularly special about a huge, fantastical show like this one. The sets, music and production values are some of the slickest we’ve seen at the ‘shed. It’s really worth seeing and it’s on till 8th January, so plenty of chances left…all being well.

For tickets and more info, click here.

Disclaimer: I received free tickets in exchange for a review. All opinions remain honest and my own. 

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A West End Day – 11/12/21

Posted on December 11, 2021 by katese11

I feel like Christmas has snuck up on me this year. Real-life singing is back after a year of being cancelled and there’s something about prepping three choirs’ worth of people to sing “O Little Town of Bethlehem” that has pushed all other to-do lists out of my head. But today I had a clear day between a Friday night choir gig and a carol service/choir gig Sunday special. So I decided we should have a Lovely Family Day Out and do some Christmas shopping. I know, it sounds like I’m setting myself up for a disaster but don’t worry  – expectations were low and snack levels were high.

To keep that balance tipped in the right direction, I decided we would go for coffee as soon as we got off the tube. I had vague thoughts about going somewhere in Carnaby Street so we could see the decorations but most places either had outdoor seating only, which would have been a bit chilly, or were going to be way too Instagram for me and my surly tweens. I’d hate to think that my slovenly pastry eating would ruin someone else’s perfect selfie.

Still, we wandered up and down Carnaby Street a bit to see the decorations and they were definitely worth the walk. Look how pretty they are!

But the kids were already complaining of being too tired to walk so the slightly-delayed hunt for a coffee stop was back on. We ended up in Costa on Argyll Street, mainly because Eva had requested it and it’s a bit of a bonus if she’s guaranteed to like something that’s on offer. It had plenty of seating downstairs and, importantly, toilets so we filled up on sugar and caffeine before tackling Oxford Street.

Oxford Street has changed a lot since my day. Entire streets leading to Soho seem to have vanished and there is a surplus of “American Candy Store”-type shops but fewer big-name retailers than there were 18 years ago. (Also, I’ve just realised that I am really, REALLY old).

One shop that’s still in place is Urban Outfitters so that was our first stop. At this point, we were in the tried-and-tested Two Teams formation, with Eva and I buying presents from her to Reuben and Nathan and the boys buying presents from Reuben to me and Eva. At least, I hoped that was what they were doing. I was somewhat dubious when we bumped into them in the menswear department of Urban Outfitters. I don’t know if they were lost or if they’d already veered off track, perhaps distracted by the vintage arcade games down there…but I’m pretty sure there were no gifts for me or Eva in the menswear department. But we left them to it and scarpered before they could see where we went next.

Looking back at my posts from the first time we ever tried this, I realise that Urban Outfitters was my first stop then as well. Some things don’t change. At least I’m not having to carry Eva as well as all the Christmas shopping this time though. That time, Nathan and Reuben got distracted and started thinking about buying things for themselves rather than us so again, some things don’t change.

I can’t tell you where else we went because the boys both have internet access and one of them might actually read this. Suffice to say though, we had quite some success with the shopping and ticked all the boxes well before the 1PM deadline we’d agreed. We even ticked some boxes I hadn’t anticipated ticking like “buy sinister gift for Eva’s BFF” and “avoid meltdown in Hotel Chocolat after I pointed out chocolate dogs that I thought were cute and Eva thought were a hideous crime against caninity”. And we bumped into the boys again, this time near Tottenham Court Road tube. They were heading to Waterstones, so our planned meeting point of Five Guys in Argyll Street seemed a little pointless and instead, we went for the Five Guys next to the Dominion Theatre.

I seemed to remember we’d had a Five Guys on our Lovely Family Christmas Day out in 2018 and it had been a success then. So it was again today. Eva only had chips but she had a lot of them, and the refillable drinks were universally appreciated, especially after the disappointing drinks machine in Gloucester Road Burger King a few weeks back. So we had a bit of time to relax and recharge before swapping teams for the afternoon shopping.

The only downside to Five Guys was our order number. I’d like to think that no Jedi knights died in the making of our delicious burgers but I can’t be sure.

I think I had the 2018 day in mind when I suggested heading to Covent Garden after lunch. More lights and pretty Christmas decorations would be fun wouldn’t they?

Would they though?

By this point, I was on team mother-son, shopping for Nathan from Reuben. That bit was achieved fairly quickly and painlessly, so we decided to wander around Covent Garden and soak up the Christmassy atmosphere. On the way there, a man was handing out free tasters of something green that turned out to be soap. I really should have taken that as a bad omen – you might take a bite of something appealing but you’ll end up with a bitter taste in your mouth. Not that we ate the soap, but it was a close run thing. It really did look like sweeties.

There was nothing wrong with Covent Garden, as such. It was just manically busy. Oxford Street had been relatively quiet and so I had assumed the new variant and the drizzle had made people stay home. Nope. They were all in Covent Garden.

We tried to find the loos and the ones I remembered next to the Transport Museum were locked up so we had to use the nightmarish ones downstairs in the Plaza that cost a quid and have an inexplicable queuing system. Or at least the ladies’ door did. The gents didn’t seem to so Roo ducked through with relative ease but then seemed to have to wait hours for a free cubicle. I didn’t even try to join the queue. If only I’d take 2018Kate’s advice and gone to the Royal Opera House. It did cross my mind but I think I was conscious that I was lugging around an enormous bag of shopping by this point – the kind of bag you use to move house – and I would have had to go through bag inspection to get in. We really just should have done that though.

I’d also hoped Reuben would be wowed by the Lego installation but, 12yo cynic that he is, he mainly had constructive criticism to offer. There was a Lego Santa to pose with if you didn’t mind queueing for a few minutes so younger kids might like that (and not just shrug and say “you could probably just photoshop that”).

 

It was time to get out of Covent Garden. We squeezed through a tunnel of sparkly twigs that was probably very ‘grammable on a less busy day and called Nathan to see where they were. Then I got confused about where Maiden Lane was, fought our way through the crowds in the opposite direction and eventually cut our losses and told them to walk to Holborn tube and we’d meet them there. Covent Garden tube had a queue to get into it and I was guessing Leicester Square would be no better. Plus, Holborn was on the Central line which meant we could go home via Liverpool Street and have a loo break there, seeing as Covent Garden had been a bit of a toilet bust. If you’ll excuse the expression, which conjures quite the visual image. It did have a massive Christmas tree though:

So very much a day of two halves – some successes, some fails (let’s not even talk about how horrendous the Central line was) but I kept the kids fuelled with food and we bought everything we needed to. Christmas Family Day Out – done. Hopefully Eva’s forgotten that I also promised to take her to Winter Wonderland….

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Science Museum – 20/11/21

Posted on November 24, 2021 by katese11

Ah Science Museum – it’s been a long time. With all the Covid-safe complications and just being dog-tired from getting back into the swing of life we’ve been mainly spending our Saturdays mooching around HP rather than going on grand days out. I mean, we did go to B&Q last week but that’s as exciting as it’s got.

This week was different though. We had Yorkshire folk staying, who were wide-eyed at the prospect of doing some London things in That There London. We got them to do all the booking – cause pre-booking is essential for the big museums at the weekend nowadays – and, even though they’d booked early, the Wonderlab slots were all sold out. Still, there would be plenty of other bits of the museum to explore.

We had a specific timeslot for arrival and South Kensington tube is currently closed for the Piccadilly line so I wasn’t sure how it would all work. Naturally, we were about half an hour early so just dawdled from the tube and the nice lady on the queue barrier let us in when we still had around 10 minutes to go, technically. Once we were through the doors we had to scan our e-tickets at some new scanning stations but other than that, everything was pretty much normal. Of course, we were strongly advised to wear masks and there were some exhibits that were closed because of distancing but yknow, as normal as possible under the circumstances.

We didn’t have much of a plan, except that we were booked onto the Force Typhoon at 3 o clock. Eva was keen to go and see the Space bit first, so we started wandering through the ground floor to see what was new in space.

Well, this was new…I think. I can’t remember when we last visited, pre-lockdown but I think it may have been early on in 2019.  And Tim Peake’s Soyuz spacecraft arrived in the museum in the May of the same year. There was an interactive screen next to it where you can look around a virtual interior of the craft and, of course, both kids wanted to use it at once despite there being a window they could look into to see much the same thing. We also had a look at some of the old favourites, like the hologram planet:

This piece of narrative took on new meaning post-lockdown though:

The same faces for months on end? Imagine that!

We were planning to go to Pattern Pod but there was a queue and, as it transpired, both my children are way too old for it anyway because it’s only for Under 8s. I’m not sure there was an official age limit before but I definitely thought Roo was in danger of trampling the small ones even a couple of years ago so it seemed fair enough. There is a bit of a gap for older kids though, given that Wonderlab sells out so quickly. Maybe the interactive exhibits like “Who Am I?” would fill that gap?

The answer is yes, partly. As we walked in the large screen was showing some kind of system error and there were a number of exhibits that were closed. But the ones that were on and working were good. Eva did a game where droids tried to capture human emotions:

And Reuben thought that these human expressions were all variations on “having a dump”:

From there, we went down and back up to the new Medicine galleries. I’d seen some pretty, flower-like things from the ground floor that, of course, turned out to be some kind of sinister representation of how disease spreads.

I’d noticed the old Pandemic section next to the Pattern Pod had disappeared, which made me think it had been quietly shuffled away when pandemics became less like a fun computer game and more like something that took over our entire lives. I was wrong though – the pandemic game has just been moved upstairs into the new section so, if you’re not already tired of predicting how a pandemic can infect an entire city, you can still play the computer game version.

There are interactive bits in the next gallery as well. Reuben spent some time putting this poor man’s organs back in entirely the wrong places, giving him a liver as a hat and a pair of lungs as a pair of trousers. What has happened to the British educational system?

The medicine galleries were a bit much for the squeamish girl but she liked the communications gallery better. She’s keen on all things internet and phone-based and there was a game where you had to plan where to put phone masts in order to gain the best coverage. Again, Reuben didn’t exactly take the challenge seriously and put all his masts in the same place, to ensure really good coverage for that one guy. Hopefully not the same guy who’s currently wearing his lungs as a pair of slacks.

 

I think we swooped by the Mathematics Gallery at some point as well but the kids were flagging at that point so I think we just had a bit of a sit down next to this things and didn’t really look at any of the exhibits:

We were booked onto Typhoon Force at 3 so had to rush through the flight gallery in order to be there on time. We’d often walked past these simulators on the way to Wonderlab but had never tried one before. Eva seemed a bit nervous just before it started but she declared it to be “so much fun” as she came out. It’s not as nauseau-inducing as I’d feared it might be and was actually quite a gentle swoop over the Lake District and some unnamed mountains in Wales. It lasted six minutes which was about right.

After that though, we were well ready for refreshments and we had the usual confusion at Shack Bar about where to queue and where to stand while waiting. Plus the added complications of masks and perspex screens. It took a few sprints to the table at the far end of the cafe area before everyone had what they needed and I did get melting ice cream all over my hand. But then my brother-in-law got ice cream all over his mask because he forgot he might need to take it off before eating. So I win. Plus I had a coffee and a millionaire’s shortbread, so I was definitely winning.

It was almost time to start heading home but we had a few more places to check out first. We had dashed through Flight in the manner of people who had a genuine flight to catch (chance would be a fine thing!) so it was nice to walk back through in more of a relaxed manner and view the planes from the walkway. Also, if I’d been so inclined, I could really have hocked a loogie from up here. Lucky Nathan was wearing his hat:

 

(Also don’t hock loogies. It’s not Covid-secure)

There was also a plane with a cut out to the cockpit, that the kids liked:

From Flight, we could walk across the top to “Engineer Your Future”, which I thought might be new but a quick google suggests it’s been there since 2014. I guess we’ve just never got to the top-west corner of the museum before. It was very interactive, with games like Rugged Rovers:

I downloaded the app and tried to connect it to the big screen but it wasn’t working. There seemed to be a few bits that were similarly glitchy. We couldn’t make this one do anything:

But there were lots of other fun things, like a game where you had to design a baggage sorting system for an aeroplane. Spoiler: no baggage got sorted on my watch.

We popped downstairs to Atmosphere, which I don’t remember much of except for this photo opportunity:

I think I was a bit tired by that point. Roo wanted to go back to “Who Am I?” and this time, the interactive screen as we walked in was working:

This is pretty much what happens when you ask Reuben to stand still for a photo. Which is how the Christmas card shot we later took outside the NHM was a bit blurry:

On the way out of the museum, we stopped at the gift shop. Eva was tempted to buy a Laika space dog but I’m glad she didn’t because that might have made me sad every time I looked at her. So instead, she spent £12 of her own money on rocks. Obviously.

We were aiming to pull off the Gloucester Road fast food hack, which has the advantage of walking past a very pretty and Christmassy NHM. But my beloved hack didn’t go so well this time. The ordering machines were broken and let us put the full family order in (twice!) before bleeping out and telling us to go and order from a real person. More masks, more confusion. There was no napkins and – hopefully unconnected – no loo roll in the toilets. Only one of the drinks machines worked and it didn’t have any of the fun flavoured Sprites or Cokes, just normal Coke and orange Fanta. But we got the kids fed, which was verging on urgent by 6PM, considering their last meal had been a 10:30 brunch.

And we also got to spend a bit of time contemplating the underside of the emergency staircase at Gloucester Road tube. Don’t ask why.

So covid-era Science Museum – a few bits missing here and there but still fun. Don’t forget to pre-book. More information here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Posted in Token attempts at culture (museums) | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

“We Are Gonna Be Okay” – 23/10/21

Posted on October 27, 2021 by katese11

Image taken from E33 Facebook page – copyright E33 Dance Company

As we came out of lockdown restrictions over the summer, always with an eye to possibly going back into them by November, there was a bit of a challenge in the arts sector as to how to reflect and deal with all that’s gone on over the last two years and how we deal with it. I wrote a few weeks back about “The Wishing Tree”, which was the Little Angel interpretation of post lockdown optimism. Tonight I saw a different interpretation but, as we edge closer to November and with rising case numbers, it feels slightly bittersweet that the optimistic summer months when these shows were conceived may soon be a fond memory.

But for now, we’re allowed to leave the house and do fun stuff so, to an extent, I’m enjoying it while I can.

And top of my list of things to do while we can was to try out the new branch of the Northern line! If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you might have noticed that I’m a bit of a tube geek and the Northern line extension is particularly exciting for me, seeing as we were Kennington residents for seven years. I’m glad we left not long after they put a giant hole into Kennington Park in order to facilitate that extension tho.

I’ve gotta say that Kennington station has not changed much. It was a smooth cross-platform change from the southbound Bank branch to the new bit, which I guess is just the end of the Charing Cross branch now? That’s gonna take some mental adjustment. At which point do we start admitting that the Northern Line isn’t really one line at all but two, bound loosely together at Kennington, Euston and Camden Town?

Anyway, the end of the Charing Cross branch seems pretty infrequently served, as three of the four trains on the board terminated at Kennington. We only had to.wait a few minutes but the friends I was with told me they had to wait a full 13 minutes on the way back.

Once we were aboard, we were slightly struggling to see what was new. The tunnels looked grimy as ever and the trains haven’t changed.

But, oh.  THIS was new:

And, more to the point of the trip, THIS:

It’s very chrome-y and shiny, much in the style of the newer Jubilee line stations. It had a huge line of ticket gates – Kennington might have six times as many trains as Battersea Power Station Station but Battersea Power Station Station probably had six times as many ticket gates as Kennington’s three. Plus some very shiny escalators in place of Kennington’s very irritable lift. And a cool colour changing light thing. Ooh space agey!

OK, so let’s get to the point of the post. I was in Battersea to see a dance show called “We Are Gonna Be Okay” by E33 Dance Company. We were there primarily to support a friend from church, who was both dancing and choreographing for the show, and honestly, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Last time we’d been to see a friend from church in a contemporary dance show, I’d enjoyed it but also not quite known what was going on. I just assumed that I’m not high brow enough to really understand interpretive dance

As it happens, this show was pretty accessible, even for someone like me. The first piece was to “The Greatest Show”, which is a crowd-pleasing start, and I had to do my best not to sing along. Then the director of the company, Rachel Riveros, introduced the individual dancers and explained a bit about the company and where they came from. Then came the first real indicator of All That Stuff Last Year – a film called The Peace Project, filmed by individual dancers in lockdown. It might have been at this point that I first noticed my friend  – who I’ll call Bella for now – wiping away a tear or two. The first time but not the last.

There was a short interview with some of the kids from the classes that E33 run at their partner organisation Providence House and then a piece called “Ahava”, which was choreographed by one of the young people from the E33 mentoring programme. It was really lovely to see how the company connected with inspired kids of different ages and backgrounds. Honor Dixon, the 16-year-old choreographer of “Ahava”, introduced her piece and, while I know nothing about choreography, it was pretty amazing work for someone that age. I believe the inspiration might have been from Ezra:8 in the Bible but I’ll admit that Ezra is not the most well-read bit of my Bible so I was happy to follow Honor’s suggestion and not try to follow the narrative too much but just enjoy it. This was followed (I think) by one of the Providence House singers – Jessica – performing “You Gotta Be”, accompanied by the Providence House kids as backing dancers.

By now, we were taking bets on when Bella would cry next and the fourth piece – “Beloved” -was a sure thing. The narrative on the programme says “Knowing who you are and that you’re unconditionally loved”. It was a very moving song and a beautiful dance to go alongside it. I too might have been welling up by the end but hey, I’ve denied being an easy crier.

I full on cried during the next bit as Rachel Riveros came back to share the inspiration behind the last dance before the interval. It was titled “You’re Gonna be OK”, which also provided the title for the show. She shared a very honest and raw account of her recent miscarriage and how she struggled to find God in the midst of it. Blimey, I’m welling up just writing this. I always find it emotional to hear stories of baby loss and, as she talked about looking out at the view from the top of St Thomas’ Hospital I could picture exactly where she meant. I never lost a baby in that hospital but we did have some highs and lows on that maternity ward, especially in the very first days after Roo was born. So that was a real emotional connection for me. We’d each been given an electric candle on our seats as we came in and, halfway through the piece, Rachel was handed a candle by her son and, right on cue, we all lit our candles too. See, you’re crying just reading this aren’t you? After all the darkness of the last few years, the wave of light was a little bit of hope and I think we all need that. I also don’t think it was a coincidence that, just a week after Baby Loss Awareness Week, we were lighting candles to tell a bereaved mother “You’re Gonna Be OK”.

Phew, I needed a quick break after all that emotional labour and luckily it was the interval next. By the way, I don’t have any pictures of the show as there was no photography allowed but I’m hoping to get my hands on the press photos soon so you can see some of the things I’m talking about and not just rely on my vague descriptions.

The first piece after the interval was choreographed by the friend we’d come to see so, of course, we all thought it was amazing. It was called “Endurance” and was inspired by his experience of arriving in London this time last year, just before a grim winter of lockdowns. I think Bella might have cried again at this point. After that was a film called “When We Whistle”, which was shot just by the Thames during the second lockdown. You can watch it here though be warned – when I just played a clip, Eva wanted to know what the “chicken sounds” were.

I must have been getting tired by the end because I don’t remember too much about the last three pieces – I know that “Rescue” was choreographed by Randall Flinn, a friend of the company, and that the music for “Father’s Song” was considered an unusual choice because the rhythm was quite slight for dancing. It was a beautiful song though, and made a fitting finale. There was also a lively dance to house music, called “Onwards” just before the end, performed by the second company.

All together, the show was a rich emotional journey  – almost exhausting at times but also uplifting and reassuring. E33 are hoping to take the show on tour soon so make sure you go and check it out. More information here.

Image taken from E33 Facebook page – copyright E33 Dance Company

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