Kew Orchids (29 Feb 20)

My second visit to Kew Orchids this year was to take my sister there and it was a second visit that I was happy to make. In previous years, before long queues and ticketing, I would visit the exhibition several times; once in-depth and other passing visits because it was a pretty place to go.

We went for the first timed slot of the day, 10:30am, and the careful planning worked out very well. Our 65 bus arrived at Victoria Gate just after they opened at 10am and we were able to walk in via the members' queue with almost no waiting.

We ambled across to the Princess of Wales Conservatory knowing that we had half an hour to get there. Even ambling we were there in about fifteen minutes and were resigned to having to wait for another fifteen so we were very pleasantly surprised to be allowed in straight away. Not only did the remove the need for any queueing but it meant that we had forty five minutes before the next group would be allowed in.

The first big display of orchids was a series of arches in the large central section. Displays like this are best appreciated at a little distance (rather than admiring the individual flowers close-up) and that was a lot easier to do with not many people around. We were back there towards the end of our visit when it was a lot busier and there were several people patiently waiting for a gap in the crowd so that they could take the phots they wanted.

From there we took a necessarily circuitous route and tried to cover all of the main paths in all of the rooms without retracing our steps too often. Without planning, but with good knowledge of the building, I think we achieved that.

The festival seemed less intense this year with fewer staged displays and more flowers embedded in the existing beds. I liked that as I prefer the natural beauty of the individual flowers to the manufactured beauty of the displays.

As this was my sister's first visit to Kew Gardens when it was fully open (the Christmas Lights are a separate thing) we invented a route through the gardens and that worked well too. That had to start with a drink and some cake in the Orangery and from there we went to Rhododendron Dell, Minka House, Bamboo Garden, Sackler Crossing, Temperate House (mandatory) and, finally, The Pavilion to do some shopping.

It was a packed couple of hours and still left us with plenty to do on our next visit.

Blitz! at Union Theatre was joyous

I do not need an excuse to see a musical at Union Theatre having seen so many good ones there and my only problem is finding the time to do so. Blitz! was always on my radar and a visit from my sister (to visit Kew Gardens) was the spur to pick this evening and I dutifully bought three tickets at £22 each.

It was a change in personnel but the same plan; meet in the theatre cafe for a coffee while waiting for the box office to open, secure tickets in Group 1, go to Culture Grub to eat then back in time for the opening of the theatre and to claim seats in the centre of the front row.

All I knew about Blitz! was that it was by Lionel Bart, which was both a recommendation and more than I knew about other shows I have seen.

The first scene hit the ground running with most of the cast on stage singing as they sheltered from an air raid in an underground station. I almost always like songs with lots of singers and I certainly liked this one.

b.t.w. another play that I have seen, The Shelter, told the story of how Churchill was forced to allow working class people to have shelter.

The main story, possibly taking from Romeo and Juliet, was about two local families who argued constantly but two of the children fall in love with each other. A simple but effective premise.

A second theme was about another son who had gone into the army and was home for a few days before going abroad. He was a bit of a jack-the-lad and fell in with some bad people.

The blitz was the other main character in the story interrupting and destroying lives and giving the cast plenty of opportunities to sing anti-Hitler songs.

Having sent the scene quickly and successfully the musical moved forward joyously with plenty to enjoy in the story, the music and the performances. There was quite a large cast and they were called on to do a lot of dancing as well as singing. The movement was superb throughout, as was every aspect of this production. That was hardly surprising given that Phil Willmott's name is on the poster and I know from many past experiences that he creates great shows.

Jessica Martin, as the matriarch Mrs Blitztein, was the star of the show and lived up to that billing. She was more than ably supported by more people than it is possible to mention here. There were many characters in the play telling many little stories and they were all told with flair.

I had expected to enjoy Blitz!, mainly because of the various people involved in it, but it far exceeded my reasonably high expectations. It was simply joyous.

Gurteen Knowledge Cafe: The University of the Future

It is great news that David Gurteen is planning to run several Knowledge Cafes in London this year and good news that I was able to make the first one.

Keeping with the good news, it was held at Regent's University, in Regent's Park funnily enough, and it is always nice to have an excuse to go there. The travel worked reasonably well (Richmond to Hammersmith to Baker Street and then walk) and I got there around 6:15pm which gave me plenty of time to have a few veggie sarnies and a cup of coffee before the event started at 6:30pm. I also had the chance to say "hello" to a few of the other regulars.

The reason we were there was to discuss The University of the Future.

At first glance this is of little interest to me but, on the other hand, I was involved with schools for several years, I like to go out of my comfort zone and I love Gurteen events.

The session was expertly introduced by Peter Sharp who, amongst many other things, has a PhD in Knowledge Management and has worked in the field of business management and professional skills at Regent's University.

In a few drawings (a welcome change from the usual slide format) he explained some of the pressures that universities were under in several areas including money, expectations on all sides, and competition.

That set the conversations rolling. As usual we did these in three rounds of small table discussions (with people moving to different tables in each round) before having a group discussion at the end. Also as usual I took very few notes at the time because the conversations got in the way and what follows is a mix of these notes, additional memories and subsequent analysis in a desperate attempt to produce something coherent.

I do not usually comment on the conversations themselves but it is worth doing so this time because they had a different feel. Having universities as the theme attracted a lot of people from universities which tended to restrict the scope of some of the conversations and they were restricted even further, in my experience, as they seemed to have come with their answers prepared rather than waiting for the conversations to provide some. They were still good conversations, perhaps I felt that because I was an exception to the universities rule (there were others), and I both enjoyed the evening and learned from it.

Peter Sharp opened by contrasting Balir father (50% to go to university) to son (apprenticeships are better) but we never addressed that argument directly as the argument for apprenticeships was not in the room. I think that was a shame as there are clear issues with the universities model and I would have liked to hear how outsiders playing in the same area feel.

If we look at a cube (sorry, I cannot draw this) with numbers of people along one axis (say 0-6 million), their ages along another (say 0-100) and then all the things that universities might provide to students (academic teaching, clubs and sports, social interaction, etc.) then universities fill a very small part of that cube in that they provide some of those services to only 50% of the population for only 3 or 4 years.

There are many other providers of all of these services and the cube is fully populated. The big question for universities, I feel, is deciding where to be in that cube. For example, it may make sense for them to be more engaged in life-long learning so that they can use their skills, knowledge and facilities to provide formal education after graduation instead of leaving this to professional bodies (e.g. Institute of Chartered Accountants) and probably the easiest way to do this would be to absorb such bodies.

Michael Porter famously said, "The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do" and I think that applies here. There are lots of things that universities do (e.g. sports) and/or are interested in doing (e.g. teaching life skills like critical thinking) that may be best left to others with universities commission these services for their students for the period that the have them.

Part of this is to ensure that useful skills, like critical thinking, are not exclusively the property of the 50% or so who go to university but are available to all. Someone ranted in the final whole-group session on how this focussing reasoning skills on just the elite had enabled Brexit and Trump. It was me.

There are a lot of players and potential customers in the university world, in its broadest sense, and I think university will operate better if they become part of the community rather than just a campus.

[The photo from the event was copied from cooperativelearning.works who also wrote a blog about it.]

Weekly Walk: Around London

This week's walk took a lot less planning and being close to home we could do a slightly longer distance too. My partner in walking wanted to revisit a couple of parks and to explore some of Central London, so we did that.

The only parts of the plan we had fixed were to start at Hyde Park Corner (we can use the tube for free anytime of day), do Hyde and Regent's Parks, head for Tower Bridge and then back to Waterloo.

Things started well and Hyde Park was busy with other people having similar ideas. It got a bit messy as we hit the north-east corner of the park as roads got in the way of the footpaths for a bit. Walking in London is a constant reminder that pedestrians are second-class citizens.

Regent's Park reinforced that lacking an orbital walking route that does not run alongside the road. The pointed shape of our route shows that.

The section onto Tower Bridge was a succession of relived memories of times working in various places across London and while I had not walked the full route before I think that I had walked every bit of it several times before.

Local knowledge came in useful as we looked for somewhere to have lunch and we hit Rosie's Cafe just behind Tate Modern. I had used it regularly when working on a project in Southwark Bridge Road.

We had to finish the day at The Kings Arms in Roupell, so we did.

There were so many highlights along the way including formal gardens in the two parks, almost all of Clerkenwell, Art Deco grandeur in Herbrand Street, listening to the Fleet running underfoot and crossing Tower Bridge.

A surprise was just how busy it was. This was a grey, if dry, day in February and I would have thought that tourists would have better things to do than come to London at this time of year. Apparently not.

For the record, we covered 25 km in 4:18 hours of walking.

Albion at Almeida Theatre ran out of steam

There is something of a Mike Bartlett meme going on at the moment and while not a devout fan of his I will always be interested in seeing his work because of Charles III. Almeida is not my favourite theatre either but it is good enough and has a habit of putting interesting plays on. What hooked me this time was the simple statement, "Following a sell-out run in 2017, The Telegraph’s "Play of the Year" returns to the Almeida".

As is usual when visiting Almeida (and elsewhere, to be honest) I went for the cheap seats and booked Circle Row A Seat 40 for £20. This was at the far end of one side in a section that is often not open as it is hard to see the back of the stage from there but with the stage flung out into the middle of the auditorium the location was fine.

Also fine was the cafe beforehand. Circumstances meant that it was easier to eat at the theatre than elsewhere and the tomato and dahl was delicious and superb value at £9. The bottle of Pride beer was  fine as a drink but the £5.2 was on the steep side.

Albion, as the name makes clear, is a play about England today as we go through the tumult of Brexit. Here a successful business woman, Audrey Walter, was leaving London (EU) to rebuild her own Little England in the rural countryside.

We had village traditions, Polish workers, a reluctance in some quarters to leave London, and uncertain business conditions. It was Brexit laid bare.

For the first half of the play (one and a half hours) these themes were examined and explored with great effect with a range of characters adding different perspectives as Audrey Walters drove into her project with relentless zeal.

Then the interval; came and, as always, I took the opportunity to have an ice cream.

In most plays if I have been suffering from a little lack of attention in the first half the ice cream stirs me and it gets my full attention in the second. This time, and for the only time that I recall, the opposite happened and I found myself losing attention in the second half. The story progressed little (until the final moments) and I did not see the point of it.

It was still funny at times and still interesting but there was too little progression, too little change, to justify anther hour of much the same. Perhaps I missed something but the second half simply did not work for me. I could gladly have gone home at the interval and been satisfied but having stayed to the end I felt disappointed.

Kew Orchids (24 Feb 20)

The annual orchids festival at Kew Gardens is very popular and for several good reasons, orchids being the main one. This popularity has led to very long queues in recent years and to a timed ticket system this year.

I was able to avoid both by taking advantage of one of the early openings fo members which meant getting there by 9am, a time when I am normally thinking about having a second cup of tea in bed. The early start was something of a challenge but it did mean being in the conservatory when it was only busy rather than too busy.

The display seemed slightly muted this year, especially away from the central display and it only took me an hour (!) to see everything.

With fewer extravagant displays to grab my attention I was able to concentrate on the individual flowers; more of an opportunity than a problem. I picked this one photograph as an example of the delights on show.

Kew Orchids 2020 was certainly worth getting up early for.

Willoughby Pub Quiz (23 February 2020)

My turn as quiz master at the weekly Willoughby Arms Pub Quiz seems to come around very quickly and so it is vital that I have a process for producing the quiz.

That does change slightly and in recent months I have been using a theme for the whole quiz on the grounds that should make choosing the subjects of individual rounds easier. I am not wholly convinced that it does but I will stick with the approach until it breaks or I think of something better.

This week it was Cats and Dogs.

I changed the order of the rounds slightly (I should have done that ages ago) so that the potentially easier rounds on popular culture where alternated with the harder rounds. The rounds were music, facts about cats and dogs, films, famous cats and dogs (mostly dogs!), people associated with cats or dogs, and this week's news.

I think it worked OK though it was something of a struggle to find ten people associated with cats or dogs which I think made that the hardest round.

maliphantworks3 at The Coronet Theatre

Getting to see dance in South West London remains a challenge so the opportunity to see maliphantworks3 at The Coronet Theatre was a no-brainer, especially so as I had enjoyed maliphantworks2 there almost two years previously.

This time we went with friends. It was too difficult to meet up beforehand with us coming from three different directions after doing three different things but somehow we all found ourselves in the Old Swan at the same time. It was a pub I knew reasonably well from my many visits to the Czech and Slovak Embassies nearby and while the pub did nothing special the beer and vegetarian fish and chips were perfectly acceptable. They both did the job.

It was a short walk from there to The Coronet Theatre and we made sure that we arrived in good time to enjoy another drink in what must be the most eclectic theatre bar in London.

The performance opened with the main (i.e. longest) piece of the evening, The Space Between, developed with a video artist. Here light and sound were as important as the dancers who were often lost in the darkness only to slide back into view again. Possibly not for dance purists but I loved it.

After a short break we had two short films that had even less dance in them and just about took me to my limit of being able to accept this as dance. Perhaps that was the point. They were still attention grabbing but in a different way.

The evening closed with Duet which I had seen and loved before, and loved again. It was similar to the first piece with the lighting playing a lesser role, that did not make it better but it did make it different.

The dancing throughout was gentle and fluid, no leaps or rolls here, and the focus was very much on the upper body. The deliberate gloom and the clothing his the details and what we saw was shapes rather than gestures. It was a mood to sweep you along rather than something to focus intently on.

If there is ever a maliphantworks4 I will be going to see that too.

Weekly Walk: Richmond to Harrow on the Hill

As with last week's walk, this route was directed mostly by curiosity and the transport network.

On previous walks we had gone through various parts of West London mostly travelling east to west so we wanted to go south to north to see different aspects of these suburbs.

The Overground was the most obvious route home so we set off at 8:30am heading for Harrow and Wealdstone. We had no firm route in mind but we did have a destination.

Initially we followed the river to Kew Bridge, a path well-travelled but it was better than going by bus or train. Once across Kew Bridge we were in new territory where we remained for (almost) the rest of the journey.

Between the M4 and several railway lines was a massive development of flats and the new home for Brentford FC. We were the only people there ot wearing hard hats and we had to wait for overhead operations to stop at one point.

Crossing under the M4 we came into Gunnesbury Park. We started by a pond and left by another. In the middle were a few playing fields and not a lot else.

From there we walked north to Ealing along minor roads that ran in parallel with the familiar 65 bus route. It was quiet on the streets and many of the houses were attractive Victorian brick-built. It was a pleasant enough walk though, being suburbia, there was little of substantial interest.

One of the features of the walk was finding ways to cross major transport routes that crossed ours. The first was the main line into Paddington and to cross this it was easiest to go through the centre of Ealing and to use the bridge by the railway station.

Immediately passed that we reentered side-roads. Here the housing went up a notch ot two.

It was not long before we hit the next obstacle, the A40. My phone kept advising me to turn right and to follow the North Circular but I was never going to do that so once we had got past Hanger Hill Park we turned left and were soon rewarded with a subway under the many lanes of thundering traffic.

That only delayed the problem and we were forced to follow the A4005 for a while, at least that was not as busy as the North Circular which turned towards the west at that point as we carried on going north.

At the first opportunity we came off the main road and headed east for a while into South Perivale before resuming our journey north.

We hit Perivale at a good time for coffee and headed to The Lunch Box where we had been a few months before when forced off the nearby canal due to resurfacing work. I think we both had the same as we had last time which for me was Set Vegetarian Breakfast No. 1 with brown bread and a latte. Good food and great value. Places like that are a highlight of our walks.

It seemed easiest to follow the A4005 after that as it was going our way and was not that busy. We veered off when we saw a sign for Harrow on the Hill and we started dreaming of expensive beers in ancient pubs. It was quite a long detour and as hilly as we remembered from the last time we were there.

Unfortunately we had forgotten, ot not realised, that there are no pubs along High Street in Harrow on the Hill. There may have been some on one of the side roads but they all fell away steeply from the High Street we were not tempted down in fear of having to come all the way back up again having failed to find a pub. At least Harrow on the Hill had given us several nice buildings to look at which was a pleasant change.

So we headed for Kenton.

Kenton is as nondescript suburbia as everywhere around it but at least it had a pub. Sort of. Next to the railway station was The Beefeater, as bland a pub as you could find and with no draft bitters available. I had to have a Staropramen which was OK but a long way off a first choice.

From there the Overground took us back to Richmond in about half an hour. Getting there had taken us a fraction under four hours of walking in which time we had covered almost 23km.

Won over by The Sugar Syndrome at Orange Tree Theatre

As always these days I booked to see The Sugar Syndrome with some trepidation due to my mixed reaction to the current programming at Orange Tree Theatre. I did not help that it was written by Lucy Prebble who is famous for writing The Effect which I have listen to a couple of times on the radio and find the portrayal there of medical trials so wrong that it annoys me.

All that said, I do go to everything at Orange Tree Theatre so I booked a ticket for this too. Since my last booking, not that long ago, the system there had changed and they offered different price bands in different parts of the theatre - remember that there are only three rows of seating downstairs and one upstairs. My usual place in the front row was considerably more expensive that the second row so for the first time in many years I went for the second row and paid a ridiculously low £15 for seat B23.

The play did not get off to a good start either. I found the first scene to be too brutal (a couple having casual sex) and this was not helped by the harsh lighting and loud music.

I had problems with the aggressive staging throughout and that really hurt my enjoyment of the play

Luckily the story got much better and very quickly. Perhaps the first scene was just meant to shock us before the real story began.

The story was about psychologically troubled people trying to come to terms with the real world, whereas The Effect was about normal people trying to cope with a psychologically manipulated world. I think that this worked better.

The story wove around a young anorexic woman and a couple of people who she met in a chat room (the play was set in the near past when people used dial-up modems and had demon email addresses). One of these was a convicted paedophile and the other, never formally diagnosed, had problems forming relationships. Her mother also had absent husband issues so nobody in the play had an easy or a "normal" life.

From that fairly simple, if unusual, mix of ingredients Lucy Prebble crafted a story that gripped, enthralled, entertained, informed and stirred. It was powerful without being oppressive, dark without being gloomy and tense without being scary. For two hours I loved it.

Jessica Rhodes as the young woman did a great job but the performance that grabbed me the most was by John Hollngworth, the paedophile, who knew exactly who he was and how bad his life was always going to be because of that, and who had come to terms with this. He was a very sick man who you could feel a lot of sympathy for.

I felt that the final scene, like the first, let the play down. A natural conclusion had been reached and the dialogue ended with a nice simple every-day phrase. The play could have ended then. No more words were spoken but there was a final scene that I found to be too final and somewhat unfitting with what had gone on before, this was not a situation that you could have a simple ending. If this play makes it to the radio too then I guess it will have to end where I wanted it to end so that is something to look forward to!

The Sugar Syndrome was a fine play that managed to shine through the treatment it was given and through my preconceptions. I would like to see, or hear, another production of it one day.

Blithe Spirit at Richmond Theatre missed the mark

I am always up for some Noel Coward and as it had been nine years since I last saw Blithe Spirit I jumped at the opportunity to see it again when a pre-west end production arrived at Richmond Theatre.

I jumped early enough to get my usual seat Dress Circle A25 for the opening night offer price of £31. That was a little more than I am used to paying there but the omens were good, not least the inclusion of Jennifer Saunders. I heard in the chatter beforehand that some other front-row regulars had been forced back to row E because of their tardiness and the Dress Circle looked to be sold out.

It was clear from the very begging that this was a different production from the one that I saw before as the opening scene was a maid having difficulty bringing a tray of drinks into the room. Elements of slap-stick pervaded the play from then on and to no good effect.

I think that what followed was an attempt to update the tone of the play and to complement the witty dialogue with less subtle humour. This was Blithe Spirit but not as Noel Coward wrote it.

Of course there is nothing wrong with updating or experimentation and the packed audience clearly loved this Blithe Spirit and Jennifer Saunders' role in it but while I found it entertaining it failed in comparison with my previous experience of it in every department. To give one specific example, in the 2011 production my star of the show was Ruthie Henshaw who played Elvira (a ghost) and in this production the actress playing that role does not even get a mention on the Richmond Theatre website.

I trying to improve Blithe Spirit, or to make it more accessible perhaps, this production lost almost all of the wit and charm that made the original play such fun and putting all the production eggs into the Jennifer Saunders basket meant that it dipped noticeably when she was off-stage, which was a lot of the time.

I did enjoy Blithe Spirit but not as much as I expected and it was not the play that I had gone to see.

How to Save a Life at Theatre503 was clever dark fun

I like to see everything that I can at Theatre503 but there are only so many days in the week. I could easily have missed How To Save a Life because it was only on for a week and it took some effort to see it on Valentine's Day.

I went for my usual front-row seat A4 which was an amazingly cheap £5 because no-one else likes being in the front-row.

Also usual was the meal in The Latchmere (the pub downstairs) beforehand. As always the food there was excellent and the service clumsy.

My brief reading on the play's synopsis led me to expect a light comedy on a dark subject and that is more or less how it started with a couple of nice theatrical touches to the chronology with a short step taken back to a beginning and later a longer step back to the real beginning.

Then one word changed the story and the mood. A light comedy became a serious play peppered with some light comedy elements, particularly when the two female leads remembered their early days together. It became funny and unsettling at the same time, as a dark comedy should be. How do you laugh at cancer?

Along the way a life was saved, almost in passing, and a serious point was well made.

The comedy was as I expected and that would have been enough but the play was so much more than that with its serious elements, clever crafting of the timeline and three excellent performances by Heather Wilkins, Holly Ashman and Tom Laker.

How to Save a Life was clever theatre that remembered that entertainment is important too.

Weekly Walk: Richmond to Uxbridge

This week's walk came about following a discussion on exploring the outer reaches of the Underground network, places like West Ruislip. I said that I would play around with routes on Google Maps and see where we could walk to from there that was 15 to 20 km.

That did not really work so I tried from Uxbridge (one end of the convenient Piccadilly Line) instead and it quickly occurred to me that the obvious place to walk to/from was Richmond. Starting from home gave the added advantage of being able to start the walk early, say 8:30am.

The first part of the walk was familiar enough as we walked along the Thames to Iseleworth and then it was a new route to Osterley Park. We had walked through there before but then we were travelling south and this time we were going the opposite way. I preferred this approach because of the first views of the house across the lake.

Immediately afterwards we had to cross the M4 which took us into unexpected farming country with the smells to match. The village of Norwood Green looked decent too.

We then crossed Grand Union Canal for the first time. I made the decision to avoid central Southall, expecting it to be busy, and to stay in suburbia.

At first that worked though the area looked decidedly run-down and had the shop familiar to poor areas. It was not all doom and gloom though and there were some nice buildings amongst the neglect.

We crossed the canal again and wondered why Apple Maps had not suggested that we walk along the towpath.

Suburbia died quickly and we found ourselves on a main road in an area of large commercial buildings. This was not what we wanted so we came up with a new brilliant plan, rejoin the canal and follow it the rest of the way to Uxbridge. This meant sacrificing a little pace as we swapped tarmac pavements for a muddy path.

We soon found ourselves in Hayes (not that we knew that at the time) and what we could see from the towpath suggested that there might be a cafe nearby and we did well to find Pop-In Cafe. They did not do the cake that I was hoping for but I was very happy to settle for a Cheese Omelette Breakfast which came with beans, hash browns and tomato. A bargain at £6; one of the delights of our weekly walks is finding cafes like this. It was only 10:30am at that time and I was not sure if that counted as a second breakfast or an early lunch.

Following the canal from there was easy if not desperately exciting due to the limited views. At least the peace was appreciated.

My last visit to Uxbridge had been about thirty years ago so I had little idea of what to expect so it was a pleasure to find that we had a choice of what looked like decent pubs to choose from. We went for The Metropolitan which worked out ok despite the limited beer choice. We decided not to eat anything so the meal I had earlier was an early lunch after all.

Rested and repaired, the journey home was evasy enough though it was frustrating to whiz through three District Line stations before changing at Hammersmith and then stoping at each of them going the other way. I am sure there is a good reason why not all Piccadilly Line trains stop at Turnham Green but I wish that they did.

I used MapMyWalk this week and the key numbers from that are we walked 21.7 km in just under 4 hours. That is what I call a good walk.

BCSA "Get to Know You" Social (February 2020)

A few changes and a few familiar things at this month's British Czech and Slovak (BCSA) Get to Know You Social at the Czechoslovak Club in West Hempstead.

Firstly I had a meeting during the day in Bloomsbury so I walked to the club from there. The most direct route would have taken me through Regent's Park but I had gone that way a few times and so chose a longer route up through Camden Town and on to Hampstead before turning West to, er, West Hampstead. I arrived at the same time as Richard, almost spot on 7pm.

The beer was the same, thankfully.

The food was different. Despite not being on the limited menu they were able to do a smazak for me and this was more upmarket than the ones I had been eating there for years. Most importantly the breaded cheese was nicer and the boiled potatoes were a better option than chips. I missed the little bit of salad though. Overall this was quite a step up and the price reflected that.

Finally, the conversations were much the same. The topics were different, as were some of the people, but the friendly atmosphere and convivial batter were as they always were. And they were the main reason that I went.

Blood Brothers are Richmond Theatre was predictably entertaining

There are lots of gaps in my Cultural Capital and Blood Brothers was one of them. I think that it had been avoiding me more than I had been avoiding it but, whatever the reason, our paths had not crossed until a new touring version arrived at Richmond Theatre and I duly paid £37.5 for my usual seat Dress Circle A25.

The first good sign was that the music was live though as this was coming from a couple of keyboards and a PC I guessed that it would be amplified. I quickly learned that the singers were too. I never like that because of the quality of sound that it produces and the way that the sound comes from the wrong places but I understand why it is done; basically properly trained good singers are too expensive for shows like this. Luckily they can still be found at places like Glyndebourne!

I knew nothing of the story, other than the brief marketing blurb, so I was disappointed when the play started at the end before proceeding to show us how that end was reached. That story was simple, verging on simplistic, with absolutely no surprises but it did enough to engage throughout, usually by exaggerating children's behaviours.

The music was OK without doing anything very much. There was one thing that I did like a lot though and that was the recurring "Marilyn Monroe" refrain.

Blood Brothers was more craft than art so was not really my sort of thing but the crafting was good and I was properly entertained if not moved.

My Cousin Rachel at Richmond Theatre

Daphne du Maurier did not feature in my young reading years but has featured frequently in my old radio drama listening years and good listening it has been too. So when My Cousin Rachel was announced at Richmond Theatre, way back in August, I was quick in to get my usual seat, Dress Circle A25 and was very happy to pay an opening night discount of £22 with my ATG Theatre Card.

I rarely book that far ahead and it was nice getting this sorted.

All went well until I got to the theatre on the Monday evening. The show had been cancelled just as I arrived due to technical details with the stage. It was a busy week, including two other theatre dates, and so I was resigned to missing it. A few days later it transpired that I could make a Saturday evening performance and so I called ATG to see if I could rebook or have to settle for my money back. I was very lucky as I could get seats in my preferred area (A23) and at the original discounted price. Result!

The set was suitable dark and Gothic as I settled down to enjoy the show.

The basic story was about the mysterious Cousin Rachel, a former Italian Contessa, coming to Cornwall to visit the ward of her recently deceased husband. Throughout the play there were questions about her motives and her past.

These questions added more and more to the drama and kept the excitement high.

Other themes added colour to the story; these included Cornish language and legends, society's conventions on class and the sexes, and the power of the sea. Lines like "I am a woman so I shall always be a servant" peppered the play providing many moments of thoughtfulness and humour. It was a rich and rewarding experience.

Any story dominated by one character needs that actor to be believable and Helen George was every inch the femme fatale. She was gorgeous, mysterious, playful, wicked, scheming, kind and everything else that Cousin Rachel had to be. The rest of the show was well cast too and all of the characters were utterly believable.

I liked the staging too. Essentially it was the main room in the manor house with a large staircase curving out of it and when the stage rotated that staircase became the cliffs above the sea and all that we needed for the transformation was a change in lighting and some sound effects. Simple but effective.

My Cousin Rachel was exciting, entertaining, engaging and everything else that a good story well told should be.

Endgame at The Old Vic was typical Beckett

For reasons that escape me there is a flood of Beckett performances this year and hot on my visit to Jermyn Street Theatre for a Triple Bill of his works there I found myself at The Old Vic for two more.

As is customary at The Old Vic I went for a seat in the gods, Lilian Baylis Circle where seat A-16 cost me a reasonable £30. There is a safety rail directly across the view but, depending on the staging, I can either sit forward and look over it or slink down and look over it. This time I did a little of both.

Looking around it did not seem to be much of a Beckett audience and I suspect a lot of people were pulled in by Alan Cumming and/or Danial Radcliffe. My suspicions were reinforced when after the short opening play, Rough for Theatre II, the young woman behind me asked the person next to her to explain what was going on in the play as if expecting clarity and simplicity from Beckett.

Rough for Theatre II was an exploration of office work with documents explored and sections read out. Of course the situation was more complex than that and this was done while a man was poised to throw himself out of a window. The pointlessness and the pernicketyness of the situation made this a light funny piece, a reasonable appetiser for the main course.

Endgame felt something like Happy Days with the main character, played by Alan Cumming this time, unable, or unwilling, to move but the differences were significant; here there was much more dialogue with other characters and that dialogue was questioning.

It was still Beckett dialogue though and as with all his other plays (that I know of) it was poetic, quirky, humorous and pointless. That is what I had gone to see and Endgame delivered.

The Visit at National Theatre was captivation and surprisingly funny

It is not unusual for me to forget why I have booked to see a show but this time I even denied that I was going when asked a few days beforehand! It was only when I flipped the electronic calendar over to the new week that I was reminded of my decision to go.

That decision would have been based on the play's synopsis (Claire Zachanassian, improbably beautiful and impenetrably terrifying, returns to her hometown as the world’s richest woman. The locals hope her arrival signals a change in their fortunes, but they soon realise that prosperity will only come at a terrible price.) and the presence of Hugo Weaving from The Matrix and many other lesser films. National Theatre was another draw as they certainly know how to put on a show there and have the technology to do so.

That was enough for me to push the boat out a little and go for Olivier Circle seat A23 at £49.

Learning the The Visit was almost four hours long was a surprise too but The Lehman Brothers had been very long too and that was brilliant so I was more cautious than worried.

The play quickly set into a pleasing routine. The story was gripping, the characters interesting, the dialogue surprisingly funny and the set excellent. The story moved slowly allowing the dialogue plenty of space to play and dance and the time flew past.

Lesley Manville was extraordinary as Claire Zachanassian, the woman making the visit and the award nominations will flood in. I don't know when or why the change was made but in the poster she has brown hair which became white on stage. The white hair really worked as it made her look even more striking than her dress and demure already did.

Hugo Weaving was good too though he had less to play with and he never once said, "Mr Anderson". I would have added a new character just to get that line in.

The setting, an American town that had seen better days, was topical even though it was set around sixty years ago. The hope the townspeople had for their visiting billionaire must be like that many American's had for the man they (somehow) elected as their President.

If anything the story was the weak point of the play and the ending seemed somewhat unnatural but the ending was not the point, it was the long journey to get there that mattered and that was full of good things.

Weekly Walk: White City to Olympic Park

I tweeted last week's walk and copied it to The Ramblers. In response they asked if I had tried their app; I had not, so I did.

A quick application of filters for distance and location and I found the Olympic Walk which at around 20km suited me perfectly. It also helped that the starting point, White City, was somewhere that I could get to easily by tube allowing me to start out early using my Oystercard.

The start was not good. The 65 bus promised in 7 minutes when I left home took over 15 and I was already late. Then there were all sorts of mix-ups on the tube at Richmond and no announcements to help. Most of us ended up sitting on a train on platform 5 safe in the knowledge that, while late, at least it would be the next one to leave only to see the train we had abandoned on platform 6 depart before us. There was a minor mix-up at Hammersmith too but as we were only going a couple of stops the change in destination did not concern us.

Despite these problems we arrived at White City just after 9am.

I had some familiarity with White City from my several visits to the BBC studios there, mostly to watch recordings of Two Pints..., but I was not surprised to see a lot of new building following the BBC's departure.

The route took us South, East and North for some reason until we hit the canal at point 2. We had walked the canal for around there to Limehouse before , and I had walked the central section many times, so the next couple of hours were easy.

We stopped for a coffee (and cake!) at Kings Place by Kings Cross just because I used to work there. It also gave us the opportunity to pop into two art galleries there, though a corporate event claimed most of the lower floors.

Back on the canal it was interesting to pass through the borders in to the mass housing of the East End and then the less dense housing of the outer areas like Cambridge Heath. Living in South West London this was the Far East to me and we went through places rarely visited.

The departure from the canal and from previous journeys happened at Victoria Park and the park was my highlight of the walk. We made the decision to take other walks in the area.

From there it was a short hop to the Lea Valley which we had also walked previously, including as part of the Capital Ring. We like canals and rivers and had no objection to walking here again.

The end confused me. I just assumed that we would arrive at Stratford but, instead it was at another station, the less well known Pudding Mill Lane. It is not obvious why there is a station there as there is nothing else nearby, and certainly not a pub, so we had no choice but to catch the DLR to Stratford,

Our search for a pub there was hardly our least successful and we found a couple in the High Street. Ye Olde Bull was empty, did no food but had a decent pint. The Anchor Tap across the road was a better bet and we got something with halloumi and avocado to eat. The craft beer advertised outside was London Pride! It did the job.

From there a fast, and very busy, Jubilee Line took us to Waterloo and an even faster train completed the journey back to Richmond. I was home in plenty of time to go out again for that night's theatre.

I used the Ramblers app all the way (though I took a shortcut in Islington that it did not seem to know about) and found it helpful and easy to use. I would much rather have a route map and a dot showing where I am than a set of written instructions as a map is much easier to follow, it just needs a quick glance, and if you do wander off route it is easy to get back on. I will definitely be using it again.