Midge bytes

I went to London to watch Wicked.  It was!  Actually it was the best musical I’ve seen, and I’ve seen a few.  It actually made me cry at one point but I was feeling a little tired and emotional anyway!  Music was great, costumes were beautiful, set was also fab plus it is unusual in actually having a seriously good storyline rather than just being a vehicle for the music.  Go and see it.

Before the show we wandered around a surrealist exhibition in the V&A, which was mostly weird but generally wonderful (some Dali so I was happy).  I enjoyed the costume bits as well, although there were some ballet outfits from the 70s (possibly, don’t quote me on that) which were very artistic but looked odd to a modern eye used to synthetics as they were built out of wool.  I don’t think I’d enjoy doing ballet in a woollen suit (well, not sure I’d enjoy doing it anyway to be honest)!

Today the sun was shining so I was very brave and decided to head out to walk through London, a thing I’ve never done properly before.  I walked from Victoria, past Westminster, along the Embankment and the South Bank to the Tate Modern.  On the way to the Tate I bumped into and old am-dram friend from Exeter, which was funny.  As I walked along the South bank I got accosted in a friendly kind of way by a work experience student working for ITV.  He wondered if I would like to have my makeup done on ‘This Morning’.  As I was doing very little else this seemed as good a plan as any so I hung around watching the Thames while morning TV got made, practised my patent frightened rabbit expression for the before shot of my face, and sat having makeup slapped on in a liberal fashion in the same gazebo as Charles Worthington while he worked on a ladies frizzy hair.  All good fun, the lady who did my make up was very sweet and Fern (Britten? or is that someone else, she’s lovely anyway) and Philip Schofield were both friendly and nice about the after effects of the makeup…not sure what was said about me beforehand, I hope they didn’t make me sound too tragic!

Just for the record, I do own makeup, I occasionally use it and know what to do with it…I just generally feel that I look perfectly pleasant without it.  Please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, this is one of the many occasions in life where excessive tact could lead to many years of looking like care in the community!  However, my usual appearance would probably be improved by being able to remember where I left my hairbrush from one day to the next! 

On the way back to Devon by train I talked about this experience on my mobile.  Just as I was saying that I didn’t think anyone in the world would have seen me and I wasn’t likely to see it as it was live, the lady next to me said that she had seen it and had thought she recognised me.  I hope that wasn’t my 15 minutes of fame…I was hoping I’d get that for being good at my field, rather than for not putting any slap on, doh!

It was a highly entertaining couple of days off in the smoke anyway.  I want to see Wicked again!