An idiots guide to an idiot: October 2019

A splendid couple of days spent in London with the Memsahib to celebrate her Birthday. Julian kindly dropped us at the station & off we went on an uneventful, if seemingly long journey. Got to our base for two nights, the Hampton by Hilton in Docklands and chilled for a while before going down to dinner, then off to the Theatre Royal in Haymarket for Only Fool and Horses the Musical.

Theatre Royal's fire curtain

and ornate ceiling.

Cut it abit fine getting there to be honest but all was well. The show was absolutely brilliant! Very funny, the characters all sounded, if not looked like their Only Fools characters. You didn't really have to know anything about the programme to find it funny though I think it did help in parts as alot of the gags were from the TV programmes, with the extra special gags ( Del falling through the bar for instance) getting an extra cheer from the audience with other gags hinted at. It was very good and I'd highly recommend it, with ice cream during the interval we'd had a great night! Back to the hotel passing the extinction rebellion mob taking up space in Trafalgar Square. Don't get me wrong . I agree we must stop buggering up the world we live in, I'm just suspicious of the layabouts who are always available for demonstrations......or did they all just get time off work!?
Up to a good breakfast, plenty of it and on asking gluten free bread and cereal for T so all was good. We'd arranged a tour of Shakespeare's Globe theatre on the South Bank so made our way over there, found ourselves walking past Sumner Street which if my memory serves is where my Grandad worked in a newspaper printers. He got my Dad a job as a reading boy when he left school in those days at 14. Basically a reporter would write his piece then get a reading boy to read it aloud to see if it sounded ok. My Dad was no reader, not at all stupid he did struggle with putting punctuation in the right places and read the same way! It wasn't long before the reporters would pass him over for someone else. My Dad was furious, telling me that his dad didn't have a clue about him get him such an unsuitable job & he made a fuss when my Dad left!
The Globe is only 22 years old and based on as much evidence as is available on what it would have looked like in Shakespeare's time, the original is nearby but underneath another building which itself is listed so there's no chance of excavating.
Calling it a 'tour' of the Globe is stretching it abit. There's some exhibition bits to see then your guide takes you into the Globe where you sit and he tells you everything there. It's not a tour behind the scenes etc. We were told we could take as many photos as we liked unless there was any actors on stage. There was to be a matinee performance of A Midsummer's Night Dream and a couple of actors bumbled out onto the stage and started these daft warm up noises, then press ups, then stretches accompanied with afew more noises. What a load of pretentious bloody nonsense! They may have well announced to everyone, 'Here we are darlings, we are actors!' It was however very interesting to find out little nuggets like this Globe is the only building in London to be given permission to have a thatched roof since the Great Fire of London in 1666 due to the fire risk. We were quite keen to see the afternoons performance it sounded pretty reasonable with standing tickets at £5 each...but they'd sold out so the only ones available were restricted view seats from £28 each so we left it.

Boxes were the great and the good would seat

The Globe stage

Us with the great metropolis as a backdrop.

We walked on heading towards Borough High Street and passed this:

It's been used as a burial ground for people considered outcasts from medieval society such as prostitutes & paupers. It was used from medieval times closing in 1853 with an estimated 15000 burials therein. Sounds like part of it was rediscovered in the 1990's when the Jubilee Line was extended. The Friends of Crossbones made and tend gardens and added memorials to the people buried there. Go to their website to find out more :
http://crossbones.org.uk/
Onward then and spotted this towering above us.

Got to The George Inn in Borough High Street. A coaching inn dating back to the 17th century and the last remaining one in London, its owned by the National Trust but run by Greene King Brewery.
Had a very nice pie here (T had Halloumi) and their ale. The George first then Twickenham Redhead.

After a spiffing lunch and drinks we decided to return to the hotel for bit of a rest before tonights gig.
Got a cab to the 02, found a beer, then our seats and a t shirt for me (£30 I must be mad but I like a gig t shirt!). Our seats were better than I'd hoped for, we were really very near the stage on the right.
MC50 were the first support. Celebrating their 50th anniversary they started quite well but got a bit tedious, with a looney singer (Marcus Durant) who plucked imaginary things from the air and flicked them towards the audience! The Stranglers followed them. They were good when they did songs we knew but their other stuff left me unmoved. There're certainly not a pretty band, there's no eye candy in this lot! I'd seen them about 40 years ago while their then lead singer, Hugh Cornwell was in prison on a drugs rap so the vocals were taken by such luminaries as Ian Drury, X-Ray Specs, actor Phil Daniels and more..it was better than tonights gig! However this paled into insignificance when Alice took to the stage. Quite brilliant would be the short answer, its more of a show than a gig with Alice Cooper. There's certain theatrical bits to it, no less than monsters running on, college girls getting murdered, Alice being guillotined not to mention a strange zombie type killer bride & nurse! You really have to see it! With a final flourish during the encore of 'School's Out' with giant balloons descending on the audience then Alice spoke to us and introduced the band including an exceptionally good girl guitarist Nita Strauss. There was also a short tribute to Ginger baker who'd just died and Pink Floyd's 'Another brick in the wall.' It was a bloody good gig! We didn't rush from our seats and ambled back to the station by which time had cleared of crowds (not a sell out, infact the top tiers of the 02 were curtained off) It had been a great, very busy couple of days!