And the butler did it!

No trip to London would be complete without a trip to the West End to see something at the theatre. And never let it be said that I was incomplete ...

On Monday after our trip to St Paul’s Cathedral we stopped off at Leister Square to investigate the half-price ticket booth. If you could manage to work out which place was the authentic one – every single booth was calling itself “The Original” or “The Genuine” or “The Authentic” half price ticket booth! Anyway, we found what I think was the authentic one but I wouldn’t put any amount of money on it. We purchased tickets to “We will rock you” for this evening and also tickets for “The Mousetrap” for tomorrow night.



While we were visiting St Pauls Cathedral, Leigh decided to take 90 minutes to climb to the top of the dome to take some fantastic pictures of London including a 360 degree panoramic view of the city (warning! 6.5Mb file!). Worthy of note is the picture below of the OXO building on the Themes - there is a law that states that no building shall have signage on the river front, no advertising, nada - well, when they built the OXO building, they just happened to order stained-glass windows in the shape of an O, an X and another O down the side of the tower :-) Smart people! Also worthy of note is the Globe Theatre, one of London's few thatch-roofed buildings allowed after the great fire of london.



In the afternoon, we took a guided tour out to Windsor Castle. We drove past the Arc, a strange ship-like building near the city along the way. The castle is a truely amazing place - one of Europe's largest and is the Queen's preferred residence - however it is only her weekend home, as she is needed in London during the week for official business. The Queen was at Windsor when we arrived, because her reagent was flying atop one of the castle towers. The gardens were emaculate and beautiful (of course) and very well maintained.



After Windsor, the bus drove us out to Hampton Court Palace, past the Royal Mile where, nearby, Elton John alegedly lives as close as possible to the Queen. I guess Windsor is full of Queens :)



After a rushed tour of Hampton Court, we raced across the bridge to catch a train back to London (as we had left the tour bus at Hampton to actually tour the inside of it) and headed home for a quick-change operation before going out to the Theatre.

The Dominion theatre is directly opposite the Tottenham Court Road tube station and is home to “We will rock you”.



As you night imagine, this is a musical written by Queen and Ben Elton. It was terrific. While not an intellectually stimulating plot line, they manage to bring all the Queen songs together in an amusing story. It has lots of energy with Queen having subtly changed some of the lyrics of the songs to fit the story (but not changed significantly to effect the songs we all know), Ben Elton and his British brand of humour is evident throughout, and the director/producer has added in may local pieces that make it ironic and even more memorable. I recommend attending a performance should this musical make its way to your city or if you find yourself with an evening spare in the West End.

“The Mousetrap”, performance number 30,023 in St Martin’s Theatre, was classic Agatha Christie. It is everything one expects of this kind of British performance. I can see why it has been running for 50 years. Magical stuff. Which is just as well as the theatre is small and, while the view from the upper balcony is fine, the seats are soooooo close together (front to back as well as side to side) it is extremely uncomfortable. Luckily, like in the Arts Theatre, you can shift to vacant seats and make yourself a bit more comfortable. I’m not allowed to tell you anything about the show so for those of you who haven’t been already, you will just have to go see for yourself!