An Evening in London

Maddie spent the night at her friend Megan's house on Saturday, so Skip and I headed into London and hit the half-price ticket booth to see what cheap (relatively speaking!) seats were available. We got seats in the 9th row to see Monty Python's Spam-a-lot. I see that the touring company will be in Fayetteville in December. It's definitely worth seeing.

We had some time before the show, so we sought out a little Japanese take out chain we had spotted last weekend. Wasabi is kind of a build-your-own- sushi takeout place. They do have a few seats in the restaurant, so we each got a little container and picked out different pieces of sushi rolls. It was good, but it's definitely better is you get it to go. They charge you a fee to sit and eat there, and they even tacked on the price of packets of soy sauce and wasabi. But all in all, it was a fairly inexpensive and tasty dinner in downtown London. We wandered through a little market set up in the courtyard of St. James Church where the poet William Blake was baptized. We made our way into the sanctuary and just missed a rehearsal of a string ensemble practicing for a Mozart concert later in the evening. It seems like there is always a place to hear free music somewhere in the city.

We still had some time before the show, so we defaulted to our comfort zone. We found the biggest bookstore around and browsed. How many times have we made fun of Little Rock for having so little to do that everyone ends up at the Barnes and Noble on a Friday or Saturday night, yet here we were in the middle of Picadilly Circus in London hanging out in the Waterstones. Five stories of books. We could have stayed all night.

Made our way to the theater not knowing exactly what to expect, except that it was a musical comedy and had gotten good reviews. It was a musical version of Monty Python's Search for the Holy Grail, but part of its humor was to make fun of musical theater in general. It was really funny. The lead was played by an Indian actor who created that wacky show, The Kumar's of No. 42 where an Indian family uses public access tv to host a talk show out of their home. The diva part was played by a Swedish actress who won the role on a reality show in Sweden where they searched for someone to play this part. Boy, did she have some pipes on her. Some of the humor was a bit tasteless, but all in all it was very funny show with good music to boot.

We made it to our smells and bells church on Sunday. The first Sunday of the month is a family service and when they say that, they mean it. The only sermon is a children's sermon. And that works fine in an Anglican service where the main focus of the service is communion. Maddie doesn't really care for the crosses that still have Jesus hanging on them, but at least there isn't a stained glass of St. George defeating a dragon.