I am loving the premium version of CityStrides

Today I paid £4 for a month's trial of the premium service on CityStrides and I am already loving it! I'll explain why but first, I'll start at the beginning.

I have been using MapMyWalk for years to map most of the longer walks that I do. This is a free app on my phone it does all that I want it to do in the free version, that is it maps the walks and gives me the total distance and time taken. The screenshot below shows my latest two walks.

For some time I have been using the free version of CityStrides which has been brilliant. The main thing that it does that I love is it pulls together all of the walks collected in MayMyWalk over the years and produces a LifeMap showing all the places that I have ever walked while using the app. (It works with other common mapping apps too.)

Not surprisingly this shows clusters around where I live and in Central London where I like to go walking. It also shows parts of Capital Ring and London Loop though, sadly, I did not always map my walks so there are some embarrassing gaps.

I use my LifeMap a lot when planning walks, I zoom in to the area I plan to walk in and look to see which roads I have walked before and I try to avoid these. If you like exploring as much as I do then new roads are always a better option than familiar ones.

Another thing that CityStrides does for free is show how many roads you have walked in an area. There are 89 areas in my profile and this is the start of that list. The area that I have walked the most of if London Borough of Richmond upon Thames where I have covered just over 50% of the roads.

All that I have covered so far is available in the free versions of the app.Today I played with the paid (£4 a month) version of CityStrides.

The feature I was most interested with in the premium version is the map showing red dots where roads have not been walked, or not fully walked. This allows me to easily find roads that I have not walked before, especially in areas where I have walked most roads.

At this scale of the picture below it shows the areas of Richmond where I have many unwalked roads. The LifeMap above shows that I have walked many times in these areas and the gaps are things like dead-end roads and side roads in housing estates. 

I plan to use this a lot to both plan general areas to walk and then specific roads to walk along. And this is not just about adding more walked roads to my profile, it is about finding new places to explore, every unwalked road has the potential for surprises and delights.

Zooming in further shows precisely where I need to walk to complete the exploration of a road and I was a little surprised to see a few red dots in North Kingston; I will correct those omissions on my walk to the pub this evening!

CityStrides was already a useful tool for a keen walker with its free features and the premium services for paid supporters are a powerful upgrade.

Rainbow in Rock at The Cavern (23 Dec 23)

It was three months since I had last seen Rainbow in Rock so obviously I was keen to see them again on a return visit to The Cavern in Raynes Park.

In many ways this was like all other Rainbow in Rock gigs that I have been to, excellent songs played excellently in a well constructed set that contained many very familiar songs plus a few unexpected ones. The mandatory crown-pleases included Child in Time and Stargazer while the less familiar songs included Never Before (from Machine Head).

What made the gig different was that this was their last gig with Andy Fuller on keyboards. He normally hides behind Andrew on bass so I made a point of taking a photo from the side this time, and in saying a few words to Andy afterwards.

Willoughby Pub Quiz (17 December 2023)

While I have continued to be the quizmaster every couple of months or so at the regular Willoughby Arms Sunday Night Pub Quiz I have not had the time, not the inclination, to post every one here and I have not had the time (or printer) to do a picture round either. This time I am breaking both conventions! 

The picture round was something of a cheat as I found it while tidying up some papers in my living room. As was often the case, I had used recent issues of British stamps for the pictures and a quick DuckDuckGo search revealed that these are from 2016!

 

Gardens by Capability Brown

Blenheim Palace, Longleat, Compton Verney, Highclere Castle, Alnwick Castle, Berrington Hall, Stowe, Croome Park

Beatrix Potter books/characters

The Tale of Peter Rabbit, The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck, The Tale of Tom Kitten, The Tale of Benjamin Bunny

Pink Floyd Albums

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Atom Heart Mother, The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, The Endless River

Mr Men

Mr. Happy, Little Miss Naughty, Mr. Bump, Little Miss Sunshine, Mr. Tickle, Mr. Grumpy, Little Miss Princess, Mr. Strong, Little Miss Christmas, Mr. Messy

UK's prehistoric treasures

Battersea Shield, Skara Brea Village Orkney Islands, Star Carr Headdress, Maiden Castle Hill Fort, Dorset, Avebury Stone Circles, Drumbest Horns, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, Grime’s Graves Flint Mines, Norfolk, Mold Cape, Flintshire, Wales

Agatha Christie novels

Murder on the Orient Express, And Then There Were None, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, The Body in the Library

Edward Scissorhards at Sadler’s Wells Theatre

Sadler's Wells has the charming habit of putting a Matthew Bourne show on over Christmas and I have the equally charming habit of going to them all. Often this has been on my birthday but this year the run did not extend to the end of January so I went for an early December date instead.

This year the show was Edward Scissorhards which I was really looking forward to not having seen it since 2009! Booking and seat selection were easy and I got Second Circle Row A Seat 28 for just £45.

Banana Tree is my pre-Sadler's Wells eatery of choice and it is for many people so I booked a table for 6pm to be safe. That proved to be a wise decision.

Eating at 6 also meant plenty of time to grab a beer at the theatre before the show. These rituals matter.

My memories of Edward Scissorhards were slight, having seen it only once and that all but fifteen years ago so I settled down to enjoy the show afresh, and enjoy it I did.

It had all the characteristics of a Matthew Bourne ballet with heaps of skilful choreography, especially when the stage is full of dancers, where the patterns of movement the ensemble make are much more than the sum of the individual parts.

A nice aspect of this show is that it has two moods with light domestic scenes and dark gothic ones, with music and dancing to match.

The story was good too. It closely followed the original film whereas most Bourne ballets, e.g. Swan Lake, deliberately chose new paths to take. It was captivating and emotional throughout, helped significantly by the portrayal of Edward. 

It is hard to compare these things but on this showing Edward Scissorhards is my second favourite Matthew Bourne show after the iconic, and original, Swan Lake. I just hope that I do not have to wait another fifteen years before it comes back again.

Pandemonium at Soho Theatre

Pandemonium at Soho Theatre had immediate appeal thanks to the names Armando Iannucci (illustrious cv) and Patrick Marber (another illustrious cv and a local lad too) so way back in August I booked my Xmas treat with seat G7 for a knock-off £25 (old gits discount).

Having booked it I forgot all about it.

Come the day I got a text message from Soho Theatre sending me my tickets for the show that afternoon and I quickly changed my plans! These included an early lunch, a couple of tubes to Tottenham Court Road and a quick pint in the theatre bar beforehand.

Pandemonium, as the poster skilfully suggests, is a play about the Covid pandemic and the Boris Johnson led government's woeful handling of it. There was a little prologue on the Brexit referendum, which gave Johnson's career a big boost, and we started with the two articles he wrote, one supporting leave and one supporting remain.

Clearly a lot of easy comedy targets in that scenario and safe territory for a play.

Pandemonium was more that that. For a start it played heavily with Shakespeare memes like rhyming couplets. The two articles became "To leave, or not to leave" and the scene was set.

In an hour and a half we met all of the key players from that era, even Liz Truss, and these were all brought to life by a cast of just five.  

The humour was relentless and all the well designed and executed theatry bits made Pandemonium an intelligent show, not just a funny one.

Globalise the Intifada

It is depressing that the marches in support of Palestine as it undergoes genocide are still necessary but as long as they are then I will keep going on them.

For some reason this one started by Bank station in the City which is not one contiguous large open space but a series of roads radiating from a small space so there was a little work to do to find out which of those roads the march was heading out on. It also took a little work to find a coffee shop open in the City on a Saturday but I managed that too.

The route was a little unexpected at times, especially the turn down Temple Avenue from The Fleet to Victoria Embankment. A high point was massing next to St Paul's Cathedral which surprised and confused a few tourists. The end point was, as expected, Parliament Square via Whitehall.

The march was, again, without incident and there was a good mood amongst the large crowd, despite the seriousness of the cause. 

There was plenty of chanting of slogans that nobody is trying to ban anymore (e.g. from the river to the sea) and also of a common one that social media decided to get uptight about this time (globalise the intifada); apparently some people were arrested for carrying banners saying this which is just silly.

A Woman Walks Into A Bank at Theatre503

The reason that I like Theatre503 so much is that they do new plays that are interesting in the way that they are structured and in the subjects they cover and A Woman Walks Into A Bank hit both sweet spots.

The play was the winner of the 2023 Theatre503 International Playwriting Award and that was more than enough to tempt me along.

Theatre503 does crazy things with ticket prices for old people happy to sit in the front row and my seat cost me all of £6. I probably paid more for my pint of beer in The Latchmere downstairs.

I also ate in the pub beforehand, as I always almost do, and this time I hit the bar snacks rather than the gastro menu and they did the job nicely.

From the start, A Woman Walks Into A Bank uses a narrative style, much like Wolfie did, where the actors tell you what is happening before acting that scene. Much use is also made of repetition with variations and additions. I found the style engaging.

The story of the play was fairly simple, an old woman walks into a bank in newly commercialised Russia and a young man, who proudly tells us he is a Branch Manager on the way up, sells her a financial product she does not need or understand.

We are then led through various scenes that tell us about their personal situations and life in Russia generally.

Unusually for Theatre503 there was an interval but it was there for a purpose, other than to allow me to buy an ice cream. The second half moved a few years later when the loan had become a problem and a debt collector was involved. Things developed from there.

There were other characters involved in the story, including an unfortunate cat, and all the roles were played expertly by Giulia Innocenti, Sam Newton and Keith Dunphy. I rarely name all of the cast and I did so this time because they all deserve a mention.

A Woman Walks Into A Bank was a throughly entertaining and stimulating play, it was remarkable even by Theatre503's high standards.