Now, I'm one of those people who never win anything. Well, I certainly used to be. However, recently I don't seem to be able to make this claim anymore.
Last summer, squealing with delight that, "I don't win things, you know!" I was informed of my success in a prize draw at the Lush shop in Basingstoke. The girls and I had visited the previous Sunday, very late, because I'd wanted to buy a reasonable map of Europe for our forthcoming trip to Germany. After buying the map, we'd thought to pop into Lush for a couple of bath bombs, and had been persuaded to enter our names into their prize draw, the top prize being the huge Golden Box of Goodies.
Then last winter, at the Hawley Place Christmas Spectacular with Fireworks, I had my raffle numbers come up no less than 3 times during the draw! On the third time, embarrassed, I asked them to draw again for someone else to win.
And so on to the big one.
For the last I-can't-remember-how-long, I've been an avid reader of Empire magazine. I flirted briefly with Total Film, because they have a weekly film trivia quiz, but ultimately Empire is a more grown-up magazine (despite the fact that it appears to be written by young boys, for young boys). For a few years now I've been on their mailing list, receiving weekly updates on the film world in an email which includes links to their competitions page. And each week I have entered 1 or more competition, hoping to win nothing more than a DVD. So you can imagine my surprise to receive a call while supporting a classroom computer, telling me I'd won a prize.
And what a prize! I'd inadvertently entered their "Shawshank Redemption" competition, and my name had come up. I say inadvertently, because I tended to avoid entering the competitions which required that I be somewhere for a performance - what if I'd won tickets to the premier of a show in the US? However, not reading the competition details properly, I'd thought it was a special showing of the film, and since it's one of my favourite films, I thought I'd enter. As it happens, I was completely wrong.
The Prize I'd won, said the voice on the phone, was 2 top-price tickets to see The Shawshank Redemption at the Wyndham Theatre, with a pre-theatre dinner at the Bloomsbury Hotel, and a stop in the hotel after the show! I didn't even know they'd decided to make a stage play of the movie.
You can imagine how excited were the girls and I, as we prepared for the big day. Discussions of make-up, dresses, hair, jewellery and even finger nails were held in high, girlish voices all over the house. As you can imagine, my main concern was;- should I take my netbook and blog the evening on the spot, or just take a camera and do the business later? Remembering how my mother is about technology (this is why I'm not asking her for a Roomba for Christmas!) I decided that my mobile phone and N810 should be sufficient. In an attempt to make myself feel a little better about the lack of technology, I took the ultra-slim folding keyboard...
However, on the dress front, I decided on my own LBD - I'd bought this about a year and a half ago from eBay, a pretty thing, all black, with a lovely shape. A simple, and not too short, Little Black Dress. I bought some tights with which to wear it, and finally decided on my black cardigan with the sparkly bits and crochet - trust me, it looks a whole lot better than it sounds. Anyway, I looked gorgeous!
And so the big day arrived. Choosing my long, camel coat, we waited on the station for the 15:53 out of Fleet. As we'd arrived so early, and the 15:39 had arrived, and the weather was so totally pants, we decided we'd be as well off arriving in London a little later on the stopping train, so we got on. We didn't care - that just gave us more time in the warmth of the train, and more time to gossip. We can't have been more than 10 minutes later arriving in London anyway. To my delight, the Bloomsbury hotel is just round the corner from Tottenham Court Road station, so a quick trip up the Northern Line was sufficient to get us to the hotel in minutes!
Our pre-theatre dinner was booked for 18:00, leaving us only 50 minutes to get ready before we had to be downstairs for the meal. So I dressed! I got all dolled up, and we ambled down for the dinner. Now, it's got to be said, the pre-theatre menu is a little limited, but the food is very fine. I started with the smoked salmon (the options were smoked salmon, lobster bisque and warm goats cheese salad), and continued with the burger (some veggie option involving aubergine and breadcrumbs, battered Sea Bass fillet, minced steak burger and something else were the options for the main course), which was delicious. I have to say that the serving platters made me laugh, as the burger arrived on a chunk of wood, with the chips in a pseudo deep fat fryer basket. I finished off with the selection of sorbets, which I shared with mum.
Stuffed and happy we started on our way to the theatre, which turned out to be just outside the tube at Leicester Square.
And this is where it all started to go subtly wrong. We found our seats, fairly centrally located in the stalls, and decided that we'd sit straight away - mum's a bit out of shape at the moment, and was tired out from the stairs in the tubes. I was pleased we were so close to the centre, because this meant that fewer people would be squeezing past us to get to their seats. And unlike my favourite cinema in Basingstoke, it's not possible for people to sidle past while you're still sitting. As it happens, only 2 people needed to pass, but both of them smelled as if washing was an old fashioned idea to which I am the sole subscriber. It's surprisingly distracting, watching a play, to have the odd waft of nasty coming up. But astoundingly, it wasn't the smells which upset me most. It was the fact that all the effort into which I'd put choosing my outfit, and putting it on (and those control top tights are NOT easy to get into!) was completely wasted. I was the only person who seemed to have bothered to dress for the theatre.
It's just possible I'm now hopelessly out of date with regard to an evening out in London, but it's unusual for me to feel vastly overdressed like that. I've always felt that there are few situations in which wearing a pretty dress makes you feel overdressed. Well, I suppose wearing a ball gown to a beach party might be considered a little over the top, but come on! I think I'd draw the line at smelly jeans to the theatre. I suspect I was more annoyed about the smelly couple because they started necking as soon as they sat down, and I was jealous!
But let's take a higher ground, and review the show. It was fantastic. I find myself continually amazed by the theatre, because they manage to create something out of virtually nothing. Unlike a film, with a multi-million dollar budget, a theatre production relies on few props and no CGI. The abilities of the actors and director to harness my own imagination are what make a stage show magical - well, unless you're Andrew Lloyd Webber, in which case your set is going to be spectacular and move around like a peripatetic toddler. I kept asking myself before the show, how on earth they were going to make me believe this was set in a prison, but I needn't have worried. I was mesmerised through the whole performance. Characters who, in the film, had been fairly minor (probably due to not wanting to make too much of the whole buttsecks issue) were almost the stars of the stage - while the actors playing Andy and Red did receive the biggest applause, the actor playing Bogs (yes, the one who did "that" to our hero) came in a very close third! He played the character with a barely suppressed (and at times, completely unsuppressed) menace which clearly won him fans.
But I'm not here just to review the play, but to bore you about my fabulous trip.
D'you know, I loved my trip up to London. In fact, I was pathetically grateful for the time away from home, and the chance to live as myself, not just someone's mum. Even though our proposed trip to the British Museum (less than 500 yards from the hotel) was a bust when we discovered that we couldn't take our suitcase into the museum, I really felt, as I climbed onto the waiting train at Waterloo, I'd had a hugely satisfying trip.
And this is where it all started to go subtly wrong. We found our seats, fairly centrally located in the stalls, and decided that we'd sit straight away - mum's a bit out of shape at the moment, and was tired out from the stairs in the tubes. I was pleased we were so close to the centre, because this meant that fewer people would be squeezing past us to get to their seats. And unlike my favourite cinema in Basingstoke, it's not possible for people to sidle past while you're still sitting. As it happens, only 2 people needed to pass, but both of them smelled as if washing was an old fashioned idea to which I am the sole subscriber. It's surprisingly distracting, watching a play, to have the odd waft of nasty coming up. But astoundingly, it wasn't the smells which upset me most. It was the fact that all the effort into which I'd put choosing my outfit, and putting it on (and those control top tights are NOT easy to get into!) was completely wasted. I was the only person who seemed to have bothered to dress for the theatre.
It's just possible I'm now hopelessly out of date with regard to an evening out in London, but it's unusual for me to feel vastly overdressed like that. I've always felt that there are few situations in which wearing a pretty dress makes you feel overdressed. Well, I suppose wearing a ball gown to a beach party might be considered a little over the top, but come on! I think I'd draw the line at smelly jeans to the theatre. I suspect I was more annoyed about the smelly couple because they started necking as soon as they sat down, and I was jealous!
But let's take a higher ground, and review the show. It was fantastic. I find myself continually amazed by the theatre, because they manage to create something out of virtually nothing. Unlike a film, with a multi-million dollar budget, a theatre production relies on few props and no CGI. The abilities of the actors and director to harness my own imagination are what make a stage show magical - well, unless you're Andrew Lloyd Webber, in which case your set is going to be spectacular and move around like a peripatetic toddler. I kept asking myself before the show, how on earth they were going to make me believe this was set in a prison, but I needn't have worried. I was mesmerised through the whole performance. Characters who, in the film, had been fairly minor (probably due to not wanting to make too much of the whole buttsecks issue) were almost the stars of the stage - while the actors playing Andy and Red did receive the biggest applause, the actor playing Bogs (yes, the one who did "that" to our hero) came in a very close third! He played the character with a barely suppressed (and at times, completely unsuppressed) menace which clearly won him fans.
But I'm not here just to review the play, but to bore you about my fabulous trip.
D'you know, I loved my trip up to London. In fact, I was pathetically grateful for the time away from home, and the chance to live as myself, not just someone's mum. Even though our proposed trip to the British Museum (less than 500 yards from the hotel) was a bust when we discovered that we couldn't take our suitcase into the museum, I really felt, as I climbed onto the waiting train at Waterloo, I'd had a hugely satisfying trip.
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