Tired of Sal Tlay Ka Siti? Tired of Life...

Just had the sort of weekend (well 27 hour window) that you can only have in London - absolutely jam packed.  Let's do this chronologically:

Peter and Alice: Dame Judy Dench and Pingu from nathanbarley in a play about the real Peter Pan meeting the real Alice in Wonderland. Sounds bloomin' ace.  Hadn't really looked into it (much like when I went to see Bingo last year and was expecting a comedy about a clown); let's just say it was gloomier than I expected and move on.

Kangaroo burgers at Borough Market.

Old Operating Theatre: I'd never been before - I'd seen it in lists of quirky things you should do, but never bothered to find out where it was.  Happened across it and there was little chance I was walking past.  Just bobbed in for a cheeky amputation, as one does on a Saturday afternoon.

Rose theatre: Now the ignorance is pouring out.  I didn't realise that the Rose Theatre was an actual thing.  I knew it used to be a thing, but was blissfully unaware of its continued (sort of) thingness.

Maslenitsa. Nothing like celebrating the Russian Sun Festival on a grey and drizzly day.

Book of Mormon: I don't really need to say much about this as it's been hyped right up already.  The hype is entirely justified.  It is a lot of fun.

The Curious Incident of the Trains in the Night Time

I went to see that show about the dead dog.  Dead good it was.  The show, not the dog.  The dog was dead, so was a little bit past ethics.

What was less good, and therefore far more fun to talk about was the journey home.  The trains were an absolute joke.  An hour standing on the concourse at Liv St, followed by a scramble for the train on Platform 12, a half hour wait then a dash to platform ten.  It was two hours before we'd left the station - well pumpkin.

Something else that was rubbish was the Essex Book Festival event that I went to.  All publicity is good publicity (I say that as someone who's pretty stoked about the prospect of ballooning over Valley of the Kings - didn't even know that was a thing until 2 weeks ago...), so I'm not naming names, suffice to say your man wasn't a raconteur.  Or someone who knew about the book that he had allegedly written. So, Essex Book Festival, you had a chance.  You blew it.

Game over.

Confetti.

If the band are divided

Support your local live music venue.

I heartily applaud Evoke's attempts to become a credible venue for live music. Since the demise of the Army and Navy, and Club Y, and The Cave, and the Basement, and Barhouse, and hooga we could do with an actual venue in Chelmsford City and so far they've managed some pretty good names.

Now Sham69, they're a name.  Don't know a great deal about them - the words to If The Kids..., the chorus to Hurry Up Harry, and that's about it - now I know a tiny bit more.  It seems that there are two different Sham69s touring.  One which has most of the members of the 77-79 version and one which has none.  It turned out that the one that played in Chelmsford was basically a Sham69 tribute band. Feeling a little bit cheated...