Wildlife Photography Exhibition and The Play That Goes Wrong

I don't get many opportunities to take Tamsin and Tom out, so I like to make the most of occasions when I can.

So we started off by visiting the Wildlife Photography Museum, as we have done for a few years now, at  the Natural History Museum. This is always a joy, although it pays, as we did, to get there when it opens. It quickly fills up. We enjoy not just the photos, but also deciding which ones we really rate. Its a sort of photographic X Factor for us. We all have our differing favourites.

The other surprise in this year's trip as I ran into not one but two people I knew, and had a nice chat with both. To our surprise, on leaving we realised we had spent almost two hours in the exhibition. You know what they say, time flies...

Anyway, we then headed off to Chinatown for a dim sum lunch which was nice enough but rather too long in being served, resulting in a somewhat rushed walk to the Duchess Theatre for the second leg of my planned day - seeing the Play That Goes Wrong.

This is a simple farce. Its the amateur dramatics play from hell - everything a playwright versed in farce could think of going wrong, does. To a degree the star of the show is the collapsing stage. Just about every possible calamity has been thought of to accompany this murder mystery. It's almost as if someone had sat down with a a piece of paper and just listed every imaginable defect and then worked out how to make it funny. Forgotten lines, mispronounced words, over-acting, excessive gestures, defective props, indisposed cast members, incompetent stage managers, mis-timed stage entries and  weak "special" effects. Some (ok all)are just too silly to be true. A few get a little tedious as jokes, as the repetiton of a whole series of lines because one cast member says the wrong line and the cast members only know the next line they have memorized. Some are brilliant, like holding to the wall various collapsing props - pure slapstick, or making do with a chain to represent what should have been a dog on a leash. It is of course the sort of thing you need to see.

We laughed copiously - well you have to. It is probably TOO silly to really enjoy. You feel just ever so slightly guilty for laughing at something so lacking in subtlety.

With a little time to kill we popped across to Somerset House which was in the throes of being prepared for Christmas with its ice-rink being installed and its impressive Christmas tree being erected.

Finally we had dinner at the hotel, One the Aldwych. I was particularly keen at dining here as 25 years ago this was where I worked, not as a hotel bell-boy I should add. It used to be lawyers' offices, but when we moved out it was turned into this swish hotel. Food was good, but the service was superb. And that to some extent is what you pay for. But that's not such a bad bargain. After all, what you really want to do is enjoy an evening out. So comfortable chairs and pampering by the staff all adds to that experience and general feeling of well-being. Much of eating out is really the company, so you want somewhere that will enable you to enjoy that company at leisure, not where you are under time pressure, squeezed in like battery hens and unable to hear yourself talk for loud music or boisterous diners. Or crying children, This was just perfect, as was the company. So all in all a nice (and full) day. Just what I like.