A WEEKEND OF ENTERTAINMENT

No pictures for this one. Last weekend we went to London to see a show "The Producers" which was fabulous. We took the train up early to have a wander around before going to the show at 2.30pm. We walked from Fenchurch Street Station into the city area, past an incredible building known as the Beehive.Then past Lloyds which I think is a most unattractive building. We asked a workman where we could find St Pauls Cathedral, and he obligingly took us along the street to point out exactly where it waas. He was a Bulgarian, and obviously keen to try out his English.

St Pauls was 9 quid to look through, and as we did not have a great deal of time to spare, we decided that we would put a visit there onto the back burner. Took a bus up to The Strand and found Covent Garden which was mass of Market stalls and street entertainers. Jugglers, acrobats and singers aplenty - the atmosphere was terrific. To our surprise we found ourselves looking at the Theatre Royal which was where the show was - which solved the problem of having to look for it!!

We had lunch in an Italian cafe - excellent smoked salmon and a pizza with a "free" glass of wine. On to the show. It was a musical full of comedy and as one would expect, superbly presented. At the interval we went into the bar and paid 6.pounds fifty for a stubby of beer and a can of lemonade - thank God we didn't want champagne.
This part of London is pretty familiar to me as I stayed in a Hotel on the Strand when I first used to go over to London, so despite some reluctance from She Who Must Be Obeyed, we were going in the right direction for Charing Cross station, from where we took the underground.Taking a punt on train times to Laindon (our home station) we stayed on the underground to West Ham arriving to find he C2C train just leaving. But the service is good and we only had to wait 15 minutes for the next one.

Sunday we had free tickets to the movies courtesy of The Times and Landrover as part of a promotion.The cinema where the film waas shown is at Lakeside, a major shopping complex about 20 minutes away from home. This is the third time that we have taken advantage of these offers to have a pre-release showing. The film was about the famous picture of the raising of the American flag by Marines on Iwojima. A bloody and tragic film which had us both a bit shell shocked when it was over.

And so to home and the exciting prospect for Carol of only three days left of the school terms before the Christmas break and our trip to Norway.

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