Old shoes, new shoes

I once heard on a podcast the suggestion that we try everything when we are young but as we get older we stick to just the few things that we really like. That makes sense from a risk perspective, why try something you might not like when something you know you love is on offer?, and also from a time perspective, why dwell over other options you've found something you love? I've been there with shoes for a while. 

I buy all my shoes from Ecco (size 42) and have a mix of smart home shoes, everyday walking shoes and extreme weather walking shoes. 

It's the everyday walking shoes that take the most damage, remember I average something over 20km a day, and my current pair have just collapsed after ten months. So I've bought a replacement pair.

There is always a fair degree of guess work when buying shoes on line, e.g. you cannot get a feel for the materials used, and Ecco keep changing their designs in their extensive range. This was meant to be a like for like replacement and I am very happy with the result.

Gold Rush at The Half Moon (18 May 25)

Gold Rush, formerly Honeyslides, have the happy habit of playing The Half Moon in Putney every six months so I have the equally habit of going to see them when they do. It is easy to say it is because they play Neil Young songs (the rather obvious clue is in the name!) but it is more than that, they play an excellent selection of songs that covers more than just the greatest hits and they play them very well with joy and enthusiasm.

Every night is a little different and this time there were a few rows of seats at the front and thanks to my usual good queue management I was able to grab one in the middle of the front row.

Except for a couple of minor glitches, the sound mix and volume were superb. It is hard to compare when the gigs are six months apart but I think this was the best sound set up they have had. 

The set had a few differences, as it usually does, This time the new songs included Sedan Delivery which meant no space for songs like Powderfinger. and Sugar Mountain.

My highlights this time included Words, Cortez the Killer and Southern Man. Of course Like a Hurricane and Cinnamon Girl were blistering too.

It really was an exceptional evening and one I hope to repeat later this year.

My only regret is that the one decent photo I took that evening (of three) had just Tom Billington in it and while he is the main man they are a band and they all played a significant part in the success of the evening. 

Giant at Harold Pinter Theatre

In the flurry of theatre announcements that I get, several every day, I somehow either missed Giant when it was on at Royal Court or I did not appreciate how good it would be so I was pleased when the positive reviews and sold-out run were followed by a west end transfer to Harold Pinter Theatre.

Fairly obviously, I think, the fanfare was due to John Lithgow's sward winning performance. That was my interest too though, perhaps unusually, because of his roles in Dexter and Cliffhanger.

I was quick at the second time of asking and managed to get a good seat, Balcony A9 for a very respectable £40.

Despite being up in "the gods" the view was good, helped by having all the action at the front of the stage. It was also less vertiginous than other similar seats that I have been in, thanks to a solid safety rail.

The story, such as it was, covered Roald Dahl's published views on Israel, which were based on his own direct experience, and how these were edging towards anti-semitism. 

The topic was controversial then as it is now with Israel again bombing neighbouring countries and that topicality made the historical story very relevant.

While the jury is out on Roald Dahl there is no doubting the quality of the script or of John Lithgow's performance. This was top-grade theatre and that it left such a controversial question still open at the end is to its credit.

Blood Wedding at Omnibus Theatre

This was as close to mandatory as any theatre production gets for me.

The original play, also called Blood Wedding, is by Lorca a giant of theatre. I had seen and loved various Lorca plays over the years, including two versions of The House of Bernarda Alba.

I had also seen his Blood Wedding before, oddly at my only other visit to Omnibus Theatre on the south-east corner of Clapham Common.

This version was by Barney Norris and I have seen so many of his plays over the years at various locations that we chat a little whenever we meet.

This Blood Wedding moved the story from historical Spain to contemporary Salisbury (if you know Norris' work you will have guessed that!). That relocation helped to make the story more relatable and relevant. 

The story was the same (no spoilers, though the title is bit of a clue) but the richness in the play was the characters all of which were believable, had depth and were brought to convincing life by an excellent ensemble cast. For example, while the centre of the play was a bride and groom and her former lover, I found myself particularly interested in the bride's mother and her motives.

Clearly I had high hopes for this production and it is fair to say that they were met and possible exceeded. This was an absolute belter of a play thanks to those characters and Norris' dialogue that described them to us.

Walking 15km from Gunnesbury to Rayners Lane

This walk was something of an experiment.

I wanted to walk in some new places in a linear route directed by Go Jaunty and my companion wanted to walk around 10 miles (yes, he still uses miles) and I quickly arrived at this route from the almost over-familiar Gunnesbury to the never-visited Rayners Lane.

I let Go Jaunty plan the route. I had used its route planner (it does lots of other things) before but only on short routes which had worked well but were not much of a test. I was using Go Jauntly because it has a "Green Route" option whereas Apple Maps, Google Maos, etc. just do shortest routes.

The new route was a quick success taking me along ia path I did not know about in a part of Ealing that I had walked through several times. 

And that set the tone for the next couple of hours which were a pleasing mix of quiet paths and lush parks. Everything was wonderful, until Greenford.

In Greenford we struggled to find a cafe and had to settle for a Costa in a shopping mall. After that we spent a lot of time following main roads because there were no paths and few parks (one!) in the area. At least we we were still doing steps and distance.  

Overall the walk was a big success and I enjoyed it a lot. More importantly, Go Jauntly passed this test with flying colours and it is now my first choice app for route planning.

Pink Floyd at Pompeii MCMLXXII

I have no idea why someone thought to update 1972's Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii in 2025, missing the fiftieth anniversary in doing so, but I welcomed the chance to see it again, this time on a big screen with big loudspeakers.

To save travel time, I chose to go to the Odeon in Kingston and duly paid £25 for my seat. There was some confusion on the day as it was moved to another screen, technical problems, and I ended up in the back row (K) of Screen 4, which was fine.

I am pretty sure that I bought Live at Pompeii at some point in some format now defunct , probably VHS, so I had not seen it for quite a few years and while I could remember some of the songs included I knew that there were gaps in my memory.

They opened with Echos which was an excellent start. A live version of Echos is on my iPhone and I play it several times a year. The sound quality was as good as expected and the video was as good as I should have expected which was good for its time but seriously behind today's standard. That did not matter though, I was there for the songs and they were great.

This was 1972 and Pink Floyd played a selection of their then most known songs including classics like Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun, Careful with That Axe, Eugene, and A Saucerful of Secrets. They also played Mademoiselle Nobs!

Despite being described as "live" with some post production work in the studio the songs sounded very much like their studio versions, which was again fine.

The film did little other that show the band and the only surprising thing about that was the amount of time spent on Nick Mason who impressed with his casual virtuosity. There were also a few scenes of the band in the studio talking which did not add much except that it gave us a glimpse in to the genesis of Dark Side of the Moon which would change their world for ever and have a big impact on lots of other people too.

As a film, Pink Floyd at Pompeii was not great and was rescued by the copious amounts of music which made it a good experience of any Pink Floyd fan, like me.

Neil Young Coastal

The only question on the Neil Young Coastal film was where to see it and I opted for the comfort of Olympic Cinema in Barnes where my comfy seat cost me a reasonable £18.5. 

The film was taken on the road during his 2023 solo tour and featured some travel time in his electric bus, some backstage scenes and a decent amount of concert footage. It was all filmed by Neil's wife, Daryl Hannah , and in monochrome. It very much had a home video feel to it and there is nothing wrong with that, in particular the conversations Neil had with his driver were clearly genuine and while they were rarely deep they were also interesting.

The concert footage, which is what I think most people went to see the film for, was interesting for several reasons; there were none of the "greatest hits", a phrase Neil himself used and instead it was mostly new songs, i.e. ones I did not recognise. One song I did recognise was Vampire Blues, from On The Beach (1974), which I had never head Neil play live before.

I am not sure how deliberate it was but over the relatively few songs played Neil used a lot of different instruments and he told us stories about a couple of them, indeed he seemed quite chatty on stage.

Being a documentary of a solo artist playing unknown songs it was all rather low-key. Luckily that artist was Neil Young and he was playing typical Neil Young songs so everything was good. I bought a ticket for his Hyde Park show the next day.

How to Fight Loneliness at Park Theatre

That I have a tag on this blog for Neil Labute (labute) is a good clue that I like his plays. I also have a Google Alert set for "labute london" and it was that which alerted me to the first UK production of How to Fight Loneliness at Park Theatre.

I got in quickly and secured a front row seat (A7) for £29.5.

I made the most of the opportunity of going back to Finsbury to get a few steps and a few new roads in before the show. I caught the Mildmay line to Hampstead Heath and walked from there.

I arrived in good time to eat beforehand which was just as well as two of the places that I had eaten at pre-theatre there before were closed, probably permanently.

Luckily Park Theatre has a bar that does pizzas and while the range is small they do an Artichoke & Olive (£12.45) which did the job. The pint of beer that I his with it was good too. And having pre-booked seats (unlike in their smaller space) I was able to sit in the upstairs bar area enjoying both until summoned to take my seat.

Anything I might have known about the play beforehand was forgotten and I took my seat ready to discover what was going on.

We meet a young couple, Brad and Jodie (thirty-something I would guess), at home fretting about an expected visitor and whether the right food and drinks etc. were available but also whether they themselves were ready for the meeting.

Soon Tate arrives and the situation becomes clear to us.

Jodie has been on several rounds of chemotherapy and now wants to die before she becomes frail and bedridden.

Brad had agreed to this plan reluctantly and wants Jodie to change her mind and live.

Tate has been chosen as a possible means of assisting her death, for a reason that is explained later.

And that is kind of it, the three of them talk about whether the deed should be done, how it could be done and whether Tate is the right person to do it.

Except, of course, that is not it.Neil Labute plays are filled with meaningful dialogue that usually gets dark and twisty, as it does here.

It is hard to describe the play as fun but it is thoroughly fascinating and engaging. It also gives some perspectives on assisted dying that are relevant given the current debate on this in the UK.

Making the dialogue work was a strong cast in which Morgan Watkins excelled as Tate. I loved his restlessness, his constant movement and frequent adjustments to his cap and jacket.

The staging worked well too with the scene shown above acting as both a living room and a beach with just a few prop changes.

How to Fight Loneliness is very much in the established Neil Labute mould so if you like his other work you will like this. I loved it!

Hampton Court Palace and Gardens (14 Apr 25)

I have been a member of Historic Royal Palaces for a few years mostly because Hampton Court is close by (half an hour by bus, under an hour to walk) and also because my two sons live close to Tower of London. As with Kew Gardens, I use my membership to make multiple short visits often as part of a longer walk.

The excuse this time was the annual tulip festival.

Arriving just on 11am meant it was coffee and cake time which gave a good structure to the visit with the cafe at the north end of the extensive gardens and the formal beds at the south end, A pleasant stroll through the busy side garden, the one that leads on to Home Park, led to the magnificent view of the frontage facing the river and the largest of the formal gardens.

Next to the large formal garden is another glorious garden kept delightfully pristine and peaceful by not allowing visitors inside.

 

Throughout the gardens there were stunning borders to savour. This one is also on the south side, towards the end of my short tour, and there were similar displays in several other places.

I was at Hampton Court for a couple of hours, all of which was spent in the gardens or the cafe. It was a couple of hours very well spent and I will be going back for more soon.

The Merchant of Venice 1936 at Richmond Theatre

Most plays at Richmond Theatre interest me and most performances of anything by Shakespeare do too so the combination of both was unmissable. 

As usual, there was an ATG opening night offer and so I was able to get seat Upper Circle A12 for just £31.5. However, on the night the Upper Circle was closed, presumably because of low sales (for some shows they make no attempt to open the upper level), and I got bumped up to Dress Circle B6. Luckily there was no one tall in row A.

I had not had the opportunity to see The Merchant of Venice for many years and most of what I remembered was from school days. Because of that I do not know how much of a shift they made in moving it to England in 1936 when Mosley's Blackshirts were rampant.

I suspect that quite a bit was cut, to give more prominence to Shylock but this is just a suspicion and most of the text of this play was most definitely Shakespeare.

I understand why they set the play when and where they did but to end with the populous standing up for the Jews jarred a little when Shylock had refused any amount of money to save Antonio who was portrayed as an honourable fascist.

The messing about aside, this was a good Shakespeare with a good cast in which Joseph Millson shone as Antonio. Everything about the performance was good enough to let me forget the updating and to simply enjoy one of Shakespeare's more notable plays.

Walking 15km from Sloane Square to Canada Water

My preference for walking is to go from A to B where A and B are easy to get to by public transport, B is some distance away, and the bit in the middle includes as much new territory as possible. 

My walking companion prefers parks and familiarity. This walk was an attempt to do both.

We started at Sloane Square because we can get there by tube for free from 9am and ended at Canada Water because that took us across south London which is not our usual territory and also through Burgess Park which is more familiar.

The direct route was not that long so I took us south first and after I made him walk down a previously unwalked road in Chelsea we crossed the river into Battersea Park, probably my favourite London Park.

From there it was largely a question of me trying to persuade my colleague to walk down unwalked roads without making it obvious that we were avoiding the obvious route.

I really enjoyed seeing new parts of London such as the grand houses in Stockwell Park not that far from an enormous new development of identikit flats.

One highpoint was coming across a large mural at a school which had a touch of Niki de Saint Phalle about it and even better was finding the artist there just finishing it off so I was able to pass on my admiration for it. 

Unfortunately I did not pause to take a photo of that mural but I did remember to do so later on and this mural is in St James's Road, Bermondsey which we passed towards the end of our jaunt.

My preference for walking is to go from A to B precisely because of walks like this one.

Dear Evan Hansen at New Wimbledon Theatre

When Dear Evan Hansen first hit the London stage a few years ago I heard good things about it and when this tour was announced late in 2023 the promotional blurb explained that it was "THE OLIVIER, TONY and GRAMMY AWARD-WINNING BEST MUSICAL". That attracted my attention.

My ATG+ membership gave me a great deal on the first night at New Wimbledon Theatre so in November 23 I paid just £29 for my seat Dress Circle A17. Friends and relatives were also tempted by the deal and I took bought the maximum four tickets allowed.

When we arrived at the theatre, just after 7pm, and joined the messy series of queues to get in we saw the "House Full" signs which boosted out expectations for the evening even further. Full of hope we took our excellent seats in the best part of the house and waited for the show to start.

I hated it. We all did.

The story was vaguely interesting and the set was very good, particularly the scene changes, but the characters were superficial, the music was  bland, all the songs sounded the same and the singing was only competent.

I struggle to find anything positive to say about it, other than it was better than Six.

Kingston Society: Trams and Trolley Buses

I have always been a heavy user and a fan of public transport so a Kingston Upon Thames Society public meeting on the local transport history was unmissable.

I was not entirely sure what to expect in terms of the range and depth of the topics covered and in the end I was slightly disappointed in both, we did not get much of an insight on when trams are a better option than buses and we did not see the details of the various plans for tram/light railway proposals that had been discussed over the years.

However, it was interesting to hear about the proposed schemes, some of which I had not been aware of previously despite my ongoing-interest in local issues over the last forty years or so.

The Q&A session was good too, bringing up topics (like trams v buses) and details of old routes that had not been covered in the main talk.

It also got me thinking more about trams and where they could be used locally and in doing so I thought a lot about Prague which has an excellent public transport system of buses, trams and metro (I lived there for a while so know the transport infrastructure well).

The speaker seemed to approaching the issue with the idea that all trams are good and we should have lots more of them but we need to think about where they could apply in London which has extensive Rail, Underground and bus networks.

The big advantage trams have over buses is that they run separate from other traffic while buses are in that traffic and run slowly with frequently delays as a result.  This puts trams in direct conflict with cars which is probably why politicians are against them.

Clearly trams provide the same sort of services as trains, for example when I go to Wimbledon (which is several times a month) I catch a train from Norbiton. I could catch a 57 bus but that is much slower. That means trams only really make sense where there is no equivalent rail or underground options and as these are both extensive networks in London that means the gaps to be filled need some work to identify.

These gaps are covered by buses, even if changes are required, so what we are looking for is routes that are busy enough to justify the capacity and long enough to justify a faster option with fewer stops.

I am not sure what information TfL has to help them to plan things like this as (as far as I am aware) they only count when people get on buses and so they do not know how long individual journeys are. For example, on the 65 route do they know how many people travel from Kingston beyond Richmond. 

The obvious place to look for gaps in the network for trams is radial routes where these do not currently exist. TfL is obviously aware of this and the Supper Loop bus is part of their solution.

Looking closer to home, I am struggling to find a need for trams in Kingston which, thanks to an accident of history, has a radial route of sorts that goes to places like Richmond, Twickenham, New Malden and Wimbledon.

North of Kingston is a different story but while I might like an easy route to places like Hayes or Wembley I would be surprised if there were enough people like me to justify laying tracks.

While this speculation is fun there is very little prospect of any significant transport projects in Kingston because there is no real problem that needs solving.

Picture You Dead at Richmond Theatre

I have never been a reader of detective fiction and rarely watch it on television these days so I had no idea (before I looked it up just now) that Picture Your Dead was the eighteenth Roy Grace story by Peter James but it looked interesting enough to go to see a stage adaptation.

As usual I went on the opening night to take advantage of the ATG+ offer of Dress Circle seat A23 for £36. 

I did not take a picture of the set, a mistake in retrospect, which worked like I've seen TV sets work with all the locations, more or less, on stage at the same time with the action moving between them. 

Stage left was a flat where a young couple lived, stage right was an artist's studio that morphed into a collector's private gallery and stage front was an undefined place where Roy Grace and another police officer discussed the case.

The only quibble was that some of the action was right in the front-left corner where the high numbered seats could not see, including mine.

The story was a good one with lots going on and going on quite quickly as things happen or were uncovered. And while most of the main thread was guessable, this was not a whodunnit more a willtheygetawaywithit there was plenty enough story to keep me fully engaged throughout.

Helping with the storytelling was an excellent ensemble cast with lots of strong believable characters played convincingly. 

The story, the staging and the acting made this an extremely entertaining and rewarding evening.

The icing on the cake was the double-twist at the end which changed the whole nature of the story and provided a good ending. The first of those twists was so unexpected and delivered so quickly that I am pretty sure from the overheard comments that some of the people behind me had missed, it was that good.

I had expected Picture You Dead at Richmond Theatre to be an "average" evening at the theatre, admittedly I have quite a high average, but it was much more than that. 

A Man for All Seasons at Richmond Theatre

My only previous exposure to A Man for All Seasons was being taken to see it at the cinema when at school, sometime in the '70s, so that I could learn some history from it. I never did well at history at school (except one term when we had a supply teacher, but that's another story) so I am not sure that worked.

While I was not particularly enticed by the play the draw of Martin Shaw was obvious so I was happy to give it a second chance.

The name was a big drawn, and possibly a big cost too, and the seats were more expensive that usual which drove me upstairs from my usual position into the Upper Circle where seat A10 was still £25 with my ATG discount. 

At that price there was little to lose and the view from up their is good, as the picture below proves.

Other people thought so too and a group of four of us went together; I am able to get four discount tickets per show and it is nice to be able to share the love of theatre with friends.

I remembered the bare bones of the Sir Thomas More story  but history has remained of little interest to me over the intervening fifty years and so knew nothing of the detail and was happy to have that presented to me.

I loved the staging!

The mood remained nicely dark and moody throughout while various props moved in and out briskly as the story moved from one scene to the next.

Martin Shaw was a dominant Sir Thomas More and easily lived up to his star billing.

Gary Willmot played "The Common Man" to good effect as a narrator, foil and modest participant.

Edward Bennett was might fine too as Oliver Cromwell, the main antagonist to Sir Thomas. In this he was the proxy for Henry VIII how made surprisingly few appearances in a story that was all about his claim to be the head of the Church of England.

And that hints at my problem with the play, the story did not really add up.  The ending was particularly problematic and might have spoiled the evening had not the production been so good in all other aspects.

Marcus Brigstocke at Landmark Arts Centre

Once upon a Time the whole family were big fans of The Now Show (Radio 4 comedy) and went to see recordings when that was an easy thing to do, and we did it with military precision to get seats in the middle of the front row. At its peak, The Now Show included John Holmes, Mitch Benn and Marcus Brigstocke.

Marcus Brigstocke also did a radio comedy programme called I've Never Seen Star Wars and we bagged best seats for a recording of that too and were rewarded by Brigstocke making fun of eldest son's long hair.

Our final encounter with Brigstocke in this series was when he and Phill Jupitus did some Edinburgh warm-ups at Jacksons Lane in 2012.

Then, out of the blue, the local Landmark Arts Centre, a mere 15 minutes walk away, announced that he would be bringing his latest show, Vitruvian Mango, to the venue. 

No thought was required to fork out £18 for an unallocated seat.

Lots of people had the same idea and the venue was all but full when I arrived about quarter of an hour before the show.

Just enough time to get a beer at to find a reasonable seat towards the back.

The show was a series of stories on what being a man means today. Many of these were personal and included trying to het to close to women when walking late at night and appearing on Celebrity MasterChef with Greg Wallace.

The stories were funny and also made a point, they were most definitely "woke" which the Radio 4 listeners of Teddington appreciated.

The delivery was very much as expected, and experienced before, with longish lead-ins and wry punchlines. That produced a steady stream of steady humour that lasted something like an hour and a half plus a break. That was a lot of good jokes in one evening.

Rainbow in Rock at The Cavern (28 Feb 25)

Seeing Rainbow in Rock playing at The Cavern in Raynes Park is a great habit to be in and this was my first chance to do so in 2025.

A lot about the evening followed the familiar lines with plenty of good songs played brilliantly, lots of people I knew there and some decent beer (Wainwright) to drink. Any evening that ends with Stargazer, Highway Star and Smoke on the Water has to be a great evening.

There was one slight, and good, change which this photo reveals. The keyboards had a bigger influence this time and that was due to increasing the number of sets of keys from one (played at an odd angle) to three.

Pride & Prejudice* (*sort of) at Richmond Theatre (3rd time)

Having seen Pride & Prejudice* (*sort of) twice in one week when it first came to Richmond (Monday 13 and Saturday 18 Feb 2023) I was always going to see it on its return. 

It was clearly a popular show and that helps to explain why seat Dress Circle A24 was £34 this time when it had been £28 two years ago. That is still a very generous price for such a good show and here my ATG+ Membership helped with the usual £10 off for the first night.

Pre=theatre followed the well established ritual of a Tofu Firecracker in Wagamama and a large bottle of Budvar in the theatre bar before the show started.

The set looked much the same as before, as expected, though the positioning of the props was slightly different.

The main difference from the original show was the cast, though the distinct lack of information about this on the ATG website is a familiar and inexcusable problem.

The new Darcy was the centre of the story, as the old one had been, and so Rhianna McGreevy had the biggest impact, at least I think it was her playing the role.

There were other small changes that I noticed too and I am sure that there were plenty of others that I missed. For example, they sang Big Boys Don't Cry last time but not this. 

Even with the cast changes, it was very much the show that I had seen and loved twice in 2023 and I loved it again in 2025. It remained an entertaining mix of stories and characters mixed with dollops of humour and song.

A Streetcar Named Desire at Noel Coward Theatre

I saw this production of A Streetcar Named Desire at Almeida Theatre just over two years before and, despite some misgivings, I really liked it. Then I had seen it on my own but its brief return gave me the chance to take my wife as her birthday treat.

The move to the west end upped the price a lot and having paid £25 for a front row seat the first time I paid £56.7 for Grand Circle C25.

My two previous visits to Noel Coward Theatre were also to Grand Circle and for similar prices so I knew that this was a reasonable place to sit and a fair price to pay. Being able to check where I have sat before is one reason that I note that part of the experience.

Seat C25 was end of the row and gave me an excellent view. The brain quickly adapts to static obstacles like the safety rail and it made no difference to my enjoyment.

Like last time, Streetcar got off to a bad start with some excessively loud and pointless drums and some equally pointless choreography. 

Then Blanche DuBois started to speak and the play started for real and everything was alright.

Possibly because I had seen this play a few times and this production once before, I was able to immerse myself in the dialogue and revel in its richness rather then having to spend any effort following the story.

It helped immensely that the dialogue was delivered with extreme skill; Patsy Ferran spoke frenetically and at length while waving her arms while Paul Mescal was blunt and loud.

There was some more distraction from drums and rain but these were minor and while these were unnecessary and unhelpful they were little and did nothing to detract from sheer brilliance of the script.

This was (almost( perfect theatre and I loved (almost) every minute of it.

Hoaxwind at The Oak (15 Feb 25)

After something of a hiatus (including Covid), Hoaxwind have been performing fairly regularly again and I have been reasonably regular in going to see them but completely hopeless in noting those concerts here. I will try to do better.

The Oak is not a great pub for music due to its "U" shape (with the band playing at the top end of the right arm of the "U") and is sometimes not a great pub for a pub with a very limited choice of beers. This night I was drinking Guinness because there were no cask bitters available.

The right arm of the "U" was full, as usual, so I was standing in the base of it, as usual. The view of the band is not great there and the sound quality is not great either but there is space to stand without being jostled and somewhere to put your drink so most of the people that I knew were in that area. And there were quite a few people that I knew out that night.

Hoaxwind have changed personnel a few times over the years, and a two of the originals were there watching, but their sound and set has not changed that much and we got a series of great songs (mostly) from the late '70s. Obvious highlights included Spirit of the Age and Hassan I Sahba.

It is good to see Hoaxwind back performing regularly and I look forward to seeing them again soon.

Walking 16km for several good reasons

The main reason that I was in London this day was for a National Demonstration for Palestine. The route varies each time and on this day we marched from Whitehall to USA Embassy in Nine Elms.

When congregating at Whitehall at 12pm it was obvious that this was going to be another large march and that the enthusiasm for meaningful peace was undimmed by the length of the latest stage of Israel's genocidal aggression or by the temporary lull while hostages help by both sides are exchanged. Trump's plan to turn Gaza into an American beach resort probably encouraged a few more people out.

As always it was a peaceful march and it was lightly policed because of the anticipation of this. We also has the usual Jewish groups out in support and a (very) few Israel flag waving idiots clustered at one point. 

Having completed the march it was time for the second thing on the to-do list and my younger son and I headed to Peter Jones on Sloane Square to buy a mattress. They had a surprisingly large number on display which made making a selection that much harder but we managed to find what he wanted.

The third objective, which is always there when I am walking away from home, was to walk some new roads to add to my City Strides Life Map, hence the wiggly bits at the start end end of the route. That was another success and I added 22 streets.

The fourth objective was simply to do as many steps as possible and in walking 16km I did just that.

The final objective was to take part in a special Pokemon Go event on that afternoon. That was the lowest priority and out of a possible eight raids I managed just two, which was enough for me.

With all five objectives met it as a productive and enjoyable five hours well spent.

Walking 37km to West Hampstead (and then...)

This was a journey in three parts, it was meant to me two but we will come to that.

I was able to start early on my monthly walk to West Hampstead from the British Czech and Slovak Association social so I could take a very indirect route.

My regular walking friend was also going to the social but had a lunchtime appointment so could not walk all the way with me. We agreed to meet at Waterloo at 4pm which gave me plenty of time to get some distance under my belt and also to tick off a few new roads, that is the wiggles around Wandsworth and Battersea.

As always new roads brings new sights and it was a genuinely enjoyable walk, despite the various no-through-toads that I had to walk down and then back out the way I came.

My friend was running late and I was running later so we changed the meeting point to Vauxhall. From there we walked almost directly to West Hampstead where with just a few minor detours I was able to tick off a few new roads in Maida Vale.

We arrived in West Hampstead almost dead on plan at a shade after 6pm.

Then disaster struck.

My friend tripped on the cobbled entrance to a side road and started bleeding quite badly. With a lot of help from concerned passers by and a resident we were able to staunch the initial bleeding, clean him up just a little and, having got no success from the ambulance service, one of the helpers booked an Uber to  Royal Free Hospital. 

That was immensely useful as being strangers to the area we had no idea where the hospitals with A&E were. As it happens, RFH is just of Hampstead Head and we had walked past there several times, most recently on 21 January.

We got to RFH at 7pm and he had his triage soon after that. What followed was a series of fixes and scans (a head injury is always a worry) and while the treatment was good it was very slow.  Sadly the snacks vending machine was broken so my evening meal was three unremarkable cups of instant coffee.

He was admitted for the final stage of the emergency treatment, stitches, after 11pm and was not due to be seen for some time after that. He was in good spirits (considering everything) and was being closely monitored so I left him in their care and took the last train home, which left Hampstead Heath at 11:45. It was a long night for me and a longer night for him.

His adventures continued. He was discharged from hospital around 2pm and ordered an Uber home. He was tired and suffering from a head injury so he failed to notice that he was being taken to a street with the same name in Croydon rather than Richmond. He did get home eventually, sometime after 3pm. 

The fall put a rather obvious dampener on the evening which was a shame as the 37km in the seven and a half hours before that had been a lot of fun.

Boys from the Blackstuff at Richmond Theatre

I need a reason not to see something at Richmond Theatre so I was always likely to go to Boys from the Blackstuff and in this case I had the very positive reason that I had enjoyed both the original play and the subsequent TV series by Alan Bleasdale in the '80s.

That was more than enough for me to fork out £26 for seat Dress Circle A19.

I do not recall the details of the original series, it was over forty years ago!, but I suspect that this was a companion piece rather than an adaptation. 

Original story or not, it very much had the felt like the show I remembered with a mix of desperation and humour as ordinary people fought for work in Thatcher's Britain.

What was new, or I missed it the first time, was the way that even those that were in work or were employers were trapped by the same system. Nobody was winning.

The most memorable character from the series was Yosser Hughes, with his oft repeated phrase "Gizza job", and he was put centre stage here too which I though overshadowed the other important stories a little. Making this version of Yosser Hughes look like the original did not work for me either and it almost veered into pastiche. Luckily the strength of the other characters and the other stories was enough to keep the "boys" of the title plural.

The staging was impressively simple,  flexible and appropriately industrial. In some ways it was the star of the show when everything else was good. Running a close second was the script that wove the stories of the various characters together to create a single narrative that informed and entertained.

Boys from the Blackstuff was not the Alan Bleasdale classic but it was a very acceptable substitute and a timely reminder of what neo-liberal politics does to ordinary people.

SWLH: Democracy Under Threat?

I go to most of the South West London Humanists (SWLH) discussion meetings but I remain bad at writing them up afterwards, despite always taking notes. 

The exception this time is more an attempt to get back into the habit of posting something that a response to this particular topic; though democracy is something I think and talk about a lot so I was particularly interested in this opportunity to discuss it further.

Oddly, despite my interest in this topic I took no notes during the discussion. I will try to explain why.

The discussion was seeded by a short presentation on the history and status of democracy and we were then asked to consider the threats and opportunities for it. What I felt was missing was any definition of democracy or any argument for why it is necessarily a good thing and without that foundation the conversations were very superficial. 

There was also the false assumption that democracy is ok now but is threatened by people like Trump. Whereas we already have a system where a lot of people do not register to vote, even more do not vote at all, the Government frequently breaks its own laws, media is controlled by a few billionaires with very firm agendas and the judicial system is ineffective because it is swamped.

Yes, we should consider things like maximum terms for elected officials, people's panels and other voting systems but they are all just minor tweaks to a failed system. 

For me, the bottom line is the world is in a nasty state (global warming, poverty, oppression, etc. etc.) and democracy has no answer to any of these and may well have caused most of them. We should judge democracy on the results it achieves for society and not on whether we like the people who get elected or not.

Space rock at The Half Moon

I had never heard of Here and Now or Paradise 9 but a friend said I would like them and other people I knew were going so it seemed like a good idea. One worth investing £15 in anyway.

Lots of other people thought so too and the event was sold out.

The pub being very busy and it being a Sunday meant that my evening meal for the day was a packet or ready salted crisps. Not for the first time. The Young's Ordinary was a welcome accompaniment.

Paradise 9 were led by three guitars with one of them doing the electronic space rock stuff. They only played their own songs, unlike most space rock bands I have seen who play some or only Hawkwind songs, but they had a familiar space rock vibe and I liked them a lot.

Here and Now were similar but different. They were led by two guitars and keyboards. Their heritage is very space rocky going back to '74, includes a splash of Gong and their leas guitarist used to be in Hawklords (he was with them when I saw them in 2017), but they sounded less space rocky than Paradise 9. Indeed I struggled to identify any bands that they did sound like, the odd riff sounded like something from the early '70s but it was a loose connection to the music of that period but nothing more than that.

Most of the people there, certainly those all around me standing at the front, were there for Here and Now who were technically the headline act but it felt like a double-headliner to me, they played for about the same length of time, and I preferred Paradise 9.

Kew Orchids (8 Feb 25)

The Kew Gardens Orchid Festival is very much part of my annual calendar (and their's!) and I like to go early to see what it is like so that I have time to go again, and again, if it looks good.

Being a member of Kew Gardens I can go to the gardens any time for free (and take a guest) and as the Orchid Festival is free the only issue is getting tickets which are now required to manage numbers.

I would normally avoid a weekend but my sister and two of her friends wanted to come up from Dorset to see it so we had to go for a slot at 11am on a Saturday. There was a queue but we got in soon after the allotted time. 

Many people had obviously not been to Kew Gardens before, let alone the Orchids Festival, and initial progress was slow as people stopped to look at everything, even before we got to the Festival part of Princess of Wales Conservatory,

The crowd of people continued as we entered the first section as that is where the main display is. A lot of people were taking photos of themselves and of each other with the cascade of flowers behind them.

Walking slowly was not a great problem as we wanted to see and enjoy everything too. As always there was a mix of colourful flowers and model animals to make the festival fun for the whole family.

A one way system was in operation (again) taking us through to the temperate zone at the far end from where we had come in and here there was more of a focus on the models than the flowers.

Immediately after that we were back in the warmth and back amongst the flowers. The orchids delighted, as usual, in their colour and their variety. 

The final model display, just before the exit, was this spectacular whale shark.

We were a little hampered by people at times (any subsequent visits will be at quieter times) but not that much and it took us almost exactly an hour to complete the tour. An hour very well spent and hopefully yo be repeated.

Macbeth at Olympic Theatre

There were two major versions of Macbeth on in London in 2024 and I chose to see the Ralph Fiennes and  Indira Varma version rather than the David Tennant and Crush Jumbo one. There were various reasons for this including the unusual staging of the first at Dock X and having a David Tennant version of Macbeth freely available on BBC Sounds (something BBC does not make enough of). That decision proved to be good and I absolutely loved Macbeth at Dock X.

Due to its obvious popularity the Tennant/Jumbo version returned to the stage and while I was more tempted this time, it being several months since I had seen a Macbeth, the pricing put me off what was not an urgent see.

Then it was broadcast in cinemas and paying just £20 was a lot more tempting than paying, say, £160 for a much worse view in a much less comfortable seat.

I have not yet found a regular pre-theatre place to eat in Barnes and on this evening I ended up having a plant-based burger in Coach and Horses which did the job.

From the start this was a radical version of Macbeth, staged in the round with a plain white stage and no props. The perimeter was black and in there lurked some of the cast, dressed in black, who provided off-stage voices. This included the three witches who we never saw.

The audience were wearing headphones and I never worked out why.

The final technology was the actors' microphones, an unexpected technology given the small size of the theatre. They were small and discrete and while they would have been hardly noticeable to the theatre audience they were very obvious to us watching in cinemas due to the many close-ups.

This was also a slightly abridged version running for about 90 minutes whereas the radio plays are almost 120 minutes. There is a lot of verbiage in Shakespeare so it is easy to cut stuff without impacting the story but while the text is unnecessary it is poetic and I find it hard to believe that it ever makes sense to ever cut any of it. And, rarely, the cuts here were large enough for even me to notice when some of it had gone.

All that said this was still a might fine production of a mighty fine play. The simplicity of the staging and the good lead performers, as at Dock X, allowed the play the space it needed to shine.

Walking 19km from Kings Cross to Canada Water

After the great success of last week's point-to-point walk (Gloucester Road to Waterloo) we went for something similar this week.

I wanted to go a little further east to visit some lesser known areas and, hopefully, a few unknown ones. 

The immediate constraint on the route was river crossings going east of Tower Bridge meant the Greenwich Foot Tunnel. A second constraint was only being able to use the tube before 9:30am so that gave us Kings Cross as the best start point.

And so, once again, we were at Richmond Station waiting for the barriers to open to old people at 8:57. As always, I walked to Richmond which gave me a 6k head start on the day's step count.

From there I had come up with a rough route to Greenwich that took in several parks, notably Shoreditch Park, Haggerston Park, Weavers Field, Stepney Green, Bartlett Park, Jubilee Park and Mudchute Park. None of these was brand new to me but usually I had walked past them and the intention this time was to walk through them.

Shoreditch Park was an immediate success...

... though finding any information on this impressive sculpture ws a complete fail - there was no information board nearby that I could see and the best that I could find online was a reference to the "javelin man statue" being moved within the park to this location.

Weavers Field lacked interest except for this centrepiece.

From there we continued our drift east and south with me constantly on the look out for new roads to walk which were more or less on our route.

We were also on the lookout for a cafe and had to wait a while for this as we were in areas of large housing developments with few shops and nothing to attract us. Google mentioned Beans & Beyond in Limehouse so we headed there.

I was expecting a trendy cafe, going solely on the name, but it was an odd, but effective, amalgam of a working me's cafe (all day breakfasts) and a coffee shop. I ordered a Red Velvet cake to go with my coffee and was very surprised when it arrived with three scoops of ice cream! We had thought at the start of the day that we might end with a full meal somewhere but this coffee break made that unnecessary.

Getting into Canary Wharf was not a lot of fun as we had to cross a busy dual-carriageway on the footbridge serving Poplar DLR station and then follow that road a little way before walking past a construction site to get into the centre of Canary Wharf.

Our route then was basically due south and I managed to find a route that included a few new roads without us being trapped on the wrong part of the isle by docks. Luckily there is a bridge by Crossharbour.

Before we headed underground and under water, we looked back across Mudchute Park towards Canary Wharf.

We had thought about walking all the way to Vauxhall but time and age were working against us so we walked up to Canada Water in Rotherhithe instead. We followed main roads for directness and this suite me as we had not walked them before because walking beside the river is much nicer.

Last week's point-to-point walk set a very high standard and I think this one equalled it. We are going to have to think hard about where to go if we hope to match these walks next time.

The Invention of Love at Hampstead Theatre

Hampstead Theatre is one of those places that I like to think of as somewhere that I go to regularly only to find out that I have not been there for three years (The Forest by Florian Zeller in February 22) so it was good to have an excuse to go back. The excuse came courtesy of a play by Tom Stoppard starring Simon Russell Beale.

Hampstead Theatre is quite small and from my experience of the place I knew that seats at the back are still good and so I went for Dress Circle Row C Seat 20 at £36. Frustratingly they have changed the seat numbering, there use to be just one sequence of rows A to (at least) N, so it is hard to compare with previous visits, which is the whole point of me noting seat numbers and prices.

All I knew about the play was that the subject was A E Housman, and I had forgotten that by the time that the performance day arrived.

And all I knew about A E Housman was that he wrote the poem A Shropshire Lad  which did not help as the play was about his life as a Latin scholar, which I did not know anything about.

The play started with Housman's death and took a look back at his time as a young man at Oxford University. 

There were lots of discussions about the Classics including the accuracy of the various sources and subsequent translations. I am not a Classicist but I actually found these discussions quite interesting, perhaps encouraged by recently seeing The Browning Version which played in the same area.

The students were less interesting, other then as a view on life at that time, thought there was a marked change when Wilde made a late appearance and risked stealing the show..

The Invention of Love came across as theatre for theatre purists, the construction of the play was intelligent, the staging was interesting and effective, and the cast was strong. I am not sure that it needed a big name to play the old A E Housman but I am am not going to object to seeing Simon Russell Beale on stage again.

In many ways The Invention of Love was really not my thing but the quality of the show won me over and I enjoyed it immensely.

Walking 19km from Gloucester Road to Waterloo

This walk with my regular walkee was essentially his plan, and one we have used many times, with a few diversions suggested by me. 

His plan was to walk through Hyde Park, through Covent Garden, cross Tower Bridge and finish at Waterloo. My variations were to include some roads we had not walked before which explains the indirectness of the route through the West End and the more southerly route south of the river back to Waterloo,

The weather forecast was not great and we were prepared to abandon the walk early if it became unpleasant to continue but the rain was little and infrequent and in the end we went further, 19km, than the 15km originally planned.

That also meant that we were out long enough for us to stop at a proper cafe where I had the customary all-day vegetarian breakfast which, uncustomary, came with chips. I forgave them the chips and was grateful for the respite that Al's Cafe in Bermondsey Street offered.

The walk took us to several interesting places thanks, I will claim, to my hunt for new roads. Amongst these were Lincoln's Inn, a new shopping plaza off Long Acre which Stanfords had relocated to, the former Prudential building by Chancery Lane, and Phoenix Garden on Stacey Street.

A lot of the familiar places, such as Covent Garden and Tower Bridge, were well worth another visit too.

Familiar and unfamiliar, there was lots to enjoy on this walk and we went home a little tired, well fed and very satisfied.

Summer 1954 at Richmond Theatre

Summer 1954 is two one-act plays, Table Number Seven and The Browning Version, by Terence Rattigan paired together as one show. I am not a great Rattigan fan (normally) but as a serious theatre-goer it made sense to see some serious theatre  on my birthday.

As it was my birthday I pushed the boat out a little and paid £50 for seat Dress Circle A 21. This is more that I would normally pay for Dress Circle and I head up to Upper Circle for the more expensive productions but this was my birthday and I was worth £50 (plus a little bit more for beer and ice cream).

I head heard The Browning Version on the radio but too long ago to remember much about it, and Table Number Seven was new to me so I was looking forward to hearing two new stories.

Table Number Seven came first and we set in a hotel in Brighton where several elderly people lived. 

The story was about one of them who had been caught acting inappropriately (for 1954) and the reaction of the other residents to this. These reactions varied from hostility to indifference as they discussed how the hotel should respond.

There were other events going on in the residents' lives and these gave all of the characters a richness that made the main story compelling and believable. 

It was all the little character details and the great skill of the ensemble cast that made the play a great success.

The Browning Version had a different setting and a different story but the theme and construction was the same. Events happened and we learned more and more about all of the characters.

It was all the little character details and the great skill of the ensemble cast that made the play a great success.

In both plays one character has to make one big decision in the main story line and while there was drama in that it was all the little steps along the way to those decisions that mattered. They were two rich and rewarding plays. Ideal for a theatre loving birthday boy!