It's a Musical Life

This trip wasn't our idea at all, in fact it was our friend and fellow teacher Steph who thought it would be good to go into London to see the performance of the musical 'Blood Brothers' (Steph and I were about to start teaching Blood Brothers to our Year 11 classes). I suggested this to Mark and he was happy to trail along after us, go to the theatre and hold our bags of shopping.

So after booking our tickets, we only had a whole school week to wait until our weekend in London. It was a great trip and we visited Covent Garden markets (which were far less markety than it was made out to be). We also saw St. Pauls Church which was the church that Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle sold flowers outside in the movie My Fair Lady. In the afternoon we watched the performance in The Phoenix theatre in the famous West End theatre district of London. I had already read the play so I knew how it was going to end but Mark and Steph didn't and in some ways I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I didn't know what was going to happen.

Everytime we go into London we stay for the weekend to justify the cost of the train tickets and the travel time (don't ask, honestly it makes you weep) so after we dropped Steph off at the train station we checked into our hotel. The next day we visited the British Museum which was one of the most amazing places I've ever visited. The Rosetta stone, the beard of the Sphinx and the Parthenon statues were some of the highlights but it was all very overwhelming that we didn't get to see as much as we had originally planned.

Anyway, it is our very first day of school holidays now. We'd planned to hire a car and drive up to Luton, the Cotwolds, Stonehenge and Bath but that plan has had to be scrapped due to the snow. It's not currently snowing in Hastings but most of the country is covered in a lovely, thick blanket (I'm sooo jealous), and you'd be hard pressed to get me driving around in snow, fog and black ice- No thankyou! So what are we doing? Well it turns out we'll be going into London again. After our self drive England touring trip was scrapped, we had no plans until yesterday morning...

It's actually quite sad because we are taking the trip Steph was meant to have. These holidays Steph was having two of her friends come over from Canada and they were going to spend several days in London. Unfortunately, the grandmother of one of her friends passed away on Friday morning. Naturally, they were no longer coming over and Steph booked a flight back to Canada and left straight after school ended yesterday. She was so kind to give us her tickets to Phantom of the Opera and the Jack the Ripper walking tour (I'm actually wetting myself with fear about the walking tour, I'm a real chicken) which are non-refundable. So Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights we will be spending in London where we will have to lodge our overseas vote for the upcoming State elections in Australia House (A.K.A. Gringotts Bank in the movie version of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone) and hopefully catch up with Mark's cousin, Roger. Other than that we're going to be old and teacherish and catch up on our marking and lesson prep. Yay!