Country Girl Goes To The City

Although I live in a town that would like to be a city, I still think of myself as a Country Girl. We are lucky enough to live almost opposite a large park, and then there is another park with a river that I walk through to get to work. The town I come from I think of more as a large village, and when I go home, the bus takes me down a shallow hill and at the bottom shimmers the silver flat river that is the river estuary that the village clings to. Carls parents live in a tiny village with no street lights- so you see, we are a little country couple. And never do I feel it more than when we go to London, as we did on Sunday.

I took quite the wrong bag, one that does not zip up or close, and spent much time worrying that I would be pick pocketed at any moment. I fretted that I was about to board the wrong train and be carried off to lord knows where. I spent much time being jostled about and being afraid that the map would be wrong, and I would be lost forever in the maze of streets. Of course none of these disasters befell me, but I did find it so tiring to worry about them! In fact, lovely things happened. The weather was cool but very bright, yet with that curious hazy quality. I spent the train journey planning which of the fields we passed would make quite the nicest place for a little farm. I squealed with excitement in the deepest depths of the Picadilly Line, when I spied not one but three little mice scampering about on the line! We had lunch at Covent Garden, and while I nibbled on a still-warm waffle, there were three musicians playing the violin.

The purpose of our London excursion was the theatre! To see a show! My lovely sister and her fiancé had got us tickets to see The Blue Man Group. They had seen it on holiday in Las Vegas and loved it. As did we. It is ever so hard to explain them. Let us start with they are three men, all painted blue, who never speak. They do a lot of drumming in their show, and play with colour and light a lot. There is a lot of humour too. And there is an amazing band to accompany them. For example, near the start of the show, one Blue Man is drumming. He has two drums. There is another Blue Man either side of him, and one squirts some red paint onto his drum, so that when he drums, it spatters. Then the other one squirts yellow paint onto the other drum. Then more and more paint…it is most assuredly worth seeing if you can. Almost impossible to explain though! I have found one man here in the library who has seen the same show as me, but a few months ago, and we spent much of yesterday saying ‘and did the blue men do that?’ ‘and did they cut the cake in half?’ ‘and did they do the paper thing’? Quite lovely-and what a nice sister I have!