Well, I don't know about you guys but I have been incredibly busy (hence the lack of blogging in November hehehe). Anyway, back in the freezing cold of November, I was having lots of fun weekends so I thought I'd let you know what's been going on...
Saturday 17th November 2012 - Seeing Wicked in London
Amy and I went to London for her birthday. We spent a lovely afternoon getting lost in Central London.
A Note on Navigation
- My navigation skills leave a lot to be desired. All I remember from my Sea cadet days (don't ask me why Sea Cadets had to go orienteering in woods) is one of the leaders repeating to me over and over "rotate the map to ground, rotate the map to ground". All this means is that I might, occasionally, be found to be holding a map upside down. One year, when the bf and I were on our way to the Download Fest (woop!), I was Navigator and didn't realise that the entire time we had been on the M1, the map was upside down. This resulted in me requiring Laurence to make a slight(!) detour through Leicester or somewhere... Apparently you can't really turn round on motorways - who knew!? -
Best Laid Plans...
The rough plan (I only really work with rough plans) was to catch the train to London Victoria, walk to All Bar One (Leicester Square) for a bargainous lunch courtesy of their wine and sharing platter deal (Wine & Dine for £15 Deal). Then to head back to the Apollo Victoria theatre (near the train station) for the Wicked matinee. Afterwards, we were going to go and stay at my Aunt's flat in Hackney (or near Hackney - not sure how precious she is about her postcode :-P).
The train ride was uneventful. Fortunately it only takes about 90 minutes, maybe less, from where we are. The "rough plan" started to unravel when we were given a map and told, by one of the London tourist info people outside the station, directions for walking to Leicester Square. We started heading the way she told us but were headed into a large crowd outside Buckingham Palace and hemmed in by police. We soon realised that we had walked right into the middle of an audience all waiting to see the "Changing of the Guard". I've seen it before on school trips and stuff but I had completely forgotten what happened.
Regimental Soldiers in Fliffy Fluffy Hats
Basically there's a little parade with horses and Guardsmen in silly fluffy hats. It takes place every other day I think (London eh?). The parade is actually two regiments of the Queen's Guard switching places between St James (I think) and Buckingham. Blatantly not really necessary but nice for the tourists and quite fun to watch. The full schedule for the parades can be seen here.
We had fun watching the parade then got caught up in the crowd control. We were directed away from our commended route to detour across Green Park. The we somehow ended up near Knightsbridge, then walked back the way we came and eventually ended up in All Bar One as originally planned.
Camembert
Lunch was delicious. We shared a platter of baked Camembert, bread, celery and onion relish - yum! Cue arty food shots...
Once we had devoured our "sharing platter" (sharing btw is totally overrated - I reckon I could have managed a whole Camembert by myself), we headed back to the theater but went on the Tube this time. Partly because I didn't realise the time and we were now running late and partly because we had walked our little leggies off with our earlier escapades.
Wicked! - The Musical is fan-bloody-tastic. I first saw it a couple of years ago and fell in love with the witty script. It's based on the novel by Gareth Maguire (correct name?). Although, I have read all of the Wicked books (reviews to follow at some point) since and I have to say that there are a lot of differences.
Anyway, the story is a kind of prequel to The Wizard of Oz. A kind of prequel because there are parts of the narrative that are contemporary to Dorothy's story. The play is about the life of the Wicked Witch of the West (?) which has just been brought to an untimely end by Dorothy and a bucket of water. It's very funny and a real feel-good show.
Here are some unflattering pictures of Amy and I outside the theatre.
Saucy...
After all the fun of the theatre, we took the tube to my Aunt's house. We grabbed somme pizzas on the way and had a wonderful time stuffing our faces at her very swanky flat. My Aunt is only a bit older than me (my Mum = oldest of 5 and Aunt = youngest). She was responsible for a large part of my teenage corruption courtesy of old Seventeen Magazine issues that she used to pass on to me when I was like 12.
Brunch
Sunday morning we went for brunch at the Duke's Brew and Que. It was a-mazing and they offered a delectable array of waiters. No seriously, every single one of them was HAWT!
We had pancakes and maple syrup and bacon - yum. It was heaven! If you ever have the chance - go there!
HoF
After brunch we waddled to the bus stop and made our way to "Awksford Street" dahling. We had a little mosey round the shops and went into House of Fraser where the floors were paved with diamonds and the walls were leafed with gold. Sigh.
Not really but it was the most expensive department store I've ever been in and frankly not that great. Only because rich people appear to have no fashion sense, hips or boobs. This is a problem for me. Not so much the fashion sense but the lack of curves was deffo unnerving.
We decided, as you do, to gather ideas for Christmas outfits which we could then recreate using much cheaper pieces from *cough* Primarni *cough*. We had a laugh trying on various dresses (especially the hideous ones). Only it wasn't so funny when we saw the price tags!
Mary Queen of Whatnow?
Nipped into the Mary Queen of Shops shopshopshop. What a load of shite. I know its a shop for "the discernable older lady" but what it looked like was they had made a load of shapeless shift dresses which would then require you to buy an incredibly expensive belt to "cinch it in at the waist" like a normal dress. Pffff.
And THEN there were these...
Hmmm.
Home Again Home Again Jiggety Jig
Anyway after all that we were all tuckered out and finally got on the train home. Nawww.
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