The Moon The Moon in June

So, a week ago last Friday, I wondered over to the Southwark Playhouse to see Unlimited Theatre's production "The Moon The Moon".

It's the second thing I've seen at the Southwark Playhouse now. It's a quaint little theatre under the London Bridge railway arches on Tooley Street. OK, you hear the trains going over your head, but the place makes up for that in Character and there not bad enough to distract from the plays.

The play itself was very surreal, about a man who having lost his wife and daughter now thinks he's being followed and talked to by the moon, who reminds him of his wife. The ending was a bit gorey, although in a very sureal way.

The set was really impressive, being based around a basement room (which the main character ends up being locked in). However, it was built with lots of hidden doors and cupboards. You never knew which one they were going to open next or what would be inside it, whether it was another member of the cast coming on stage, a fridge or even a window.

Unfortunately, I caught it right at the end of it's tour and it's now finished, otherwise I'd recommend going to see it. However, if their other shows are anything like this one, Unlimited Theatre are well worth looking out for.

I'm off to see the next show, The Rover performed by Looking Glass House at the Playhouse on Wednesday evening. If anyone fancies joining me, tickets are available through the Southwark Playhouse website.

The Hunting of the Snaz

So last weekend I once again failed to make it to one of cartesiandemon's parties. As I was getting a bit short of facepaint for yesterday, I thought I'd pop out and get some first, so walked to Eltham, where there was supposedly a stockist according to the snazaroo website.

I, however, realised my mistake on arriving at Eltham and discovering the mile post stating it was 8 miles back to London Bridge (and also the fact that I had appeared to have dropped off the end of my little A-Z). As a result it didn't end up being a very quick trip out to the shops, especially as I went via Maritime Greenwich. It wasn't a complete success either as the shop seemed somewhat closed (in the completely gutted with a "to let" sign outside sense).

The trip was quite fun all the same, and involved:

• Discovering the really good second CD exchange shop in Greenwich, where you can pick up all the old CDs that no one is really interested in for about £2 each (more popular ones were more expensive. They seem to set an initial price and reduce it by a pound every no and then looking at the price tags they had). OK, 10 CDs may be excessive, but it's not as if they cost me much (may talk about what I got in a separate post at some point in the distant future when I finally get around to it).


• Lots of charity shops. Clearly I've always needed a silver stilton spoon! *nods convincingly*


• Peering through the window of Allodi Accordions and going "ooo, shiney!", as is the law when walking down Lee High Road. OK, I can't afford one and I can't even play one, but there's still something really cool about having an accordion shop nearby


• Much exploration

Ok, in the end I resorted to ordering facepaint online and if I'd done that in the first place I could have gone with the original plan and gone to Cambridge. One of these days, I may actually make it to one of cartesiandemon's parties. Either that or he'll give up inviting me given the number of times I've said I'll come and failed to make it *hangs head in shame*.

Dancing for a dead Christian

Yesterday was fun.

Was a bit worrying at first when at 10.05 I seemed to be the only Gog there 10 minutes before the procession. Hoddeston offered me a kazoo, so I could process on my own though. The rest of the side arrived shortly after that though, so I didn't have to resort to that.

It was the first time they'd asked me to call a procession, which was quite fun and seemed to go reasonably well (we didn't have a lot of music, so it was a little difficult to hear). Not sure what the rest of the side thought of it, but I was fairly happy with my calling for it. We seemed to keep a fairly consistent distance from the team in front, did a reasonable number of figures where there were large bunches of audience and they all seemed to hear me ok.

We did our spot in the main display, which seemed to go ok. It was a bit of a shame that the audience had thinned out a bit by then though (then again, that will partially be the sides earlier in the display disappearing off and it's difficult to maintain interest of shoppers for 9 dances).

The rest of the afternoon was a fairly relaxed affair going around with Bedfordshire Lace and St Alban's Morris Men. The spots were only 30 minutes, so we got about 3 dances at each. I wasn't convinced by some of the spots as Christopher Place and especially outside the Cathedral seemed to be away from the crowds (there was pretty much literally no-one but us at the latter), but then there are limits on where you would be allowed to dance and the market was taking up most of the main shopping area in the city centre.

Had lunch between the displays and the first spot, so during the actual lunchbreak I ran off to the amazing tea shop next to tourist information, which morganmuffle has introduced me to when I went up there in May, and dragged half of Molly with me. Actually, I think I managed to drag all of Molly, but only half stayed for tea, the other half opting for the pub instead (admittedly a difficult choice).

Turns out it's a really good thing to post details of where we'll be dancing on here, as jinglebellafeed turned up at the Cathedral spot bearing many ice-lollies. If you ever want to know how to make molly dancers happy that's a good way of doing it *subtle hint for anyone else reading this*

We only did one dance at the last spot, as people had to run off, but it was quite interesting to see Wicket Brood doing a version of the Mississippi Mud Dance (one we nicked ourselves from Ouse Washes), but with Sticks in Border Style.

To make things even better the weather remained hot and sunny until we finished dancing and only then did it start the thunderstorm :-)

Stomp were amazing as ever in the evening.

All in all a good day and I seemed to have endless amounts of energy. Still seemed to have plenty left after the whole day of dancing, plus the 4.5 mile walk back home from St Pancras. Think I must be getting fitter again, which has got to be a good thing given I was feeling a bit unfit dancing back in April.

Feeling more tired today, but it's more "lack of sleep" tired rather than "lots of dancing" tired, which also makes sense as I can only have got around 5 hours of Friday night and didn't get home and to bed until about 3 am last night.

Rounded off the weekend with a trip around the Tower with miriammoules today, which was nice. Once again, managed to escape without having my head cut off, which has also got to be a good thing.

There seems to be a thing going round facebook at the moment with people listing what they're thankful for each day for a month, perhaps I should just be thankful for not having my head cut off each day for a month... That is rather reliant on me not having my head cut off though, so I guess as I can't tell the future I'll leave it, especially given Thrales will probably make attempts on it. *crosses fingers and acquires large amounts of duct tap just in case*

Then again, perhaps I'd get a sainthood the same as Alban did for having his cut off? Do you think they'll mind that I'm not Christian like he was?

NEXT TIME ON THE WEEKEND LIFE OF A hmmm_tea: Touring the Borough with Thrales on Friday, followed with being at Paddington at 7.45 am on Saturday morning (ouch!) to go off to Chepstow for the weekend dancing with Wild Hunt.