Shattered ....

I am soooo tired!! I've just dragged myself out of bed - mainly because the dog was crossing her legs and her tummy was rumbling!!

I've had a brilliant weekend. Friday night was great fun. I was manning the phones from 6.30 until 9.15 when the second shift took over. I took £360 in donations which was okay, some of the others around me took more (one girl had three individual donations of £100!). The atmosphere in the call centre was brilliant, they had a magician coming round to entertain us as well as a face painter and a balloon modeller (or is that modelist - I'm sure you know what I mean!!). The people calling in were lovely and so generous. The running total for our call centre when I left was over £62,000! The time flew by and I didn't really want to go home but I knew I had to because I had such a busy day planned for Saturday.

I was up quite early on Saturday morning to get sorted for my trip to London. My friend and I go twice a year to see a show for each other's birthday. She organises the trip when it's for my birthday and I organise it when it's for hers. It is quite a little ritual now! Whoever organises it doesn't tell the other one what they are going to see until we are on the coach. When we get to London, we take a taxi to the theatre and then find a restaurant as nearby as we can and have a long, leisurely lunch. After the show, if time permits, we have a quick coffee before heading back to get the coach. The coach leaves Bristol at 9.10am and gets us back for 8.45pm which is just long enough. It was my turn to organise this trip!

Yesterday, went very smoothly indeed. We got to our stop in London at 11.30 and were at the theatre by 11.50! Fortunately for us, there was a Garfunkels restaurant just two doors down from the theatre. I love Garfunkels because there is such a variety of choice on the menu. I had an omelette which I knew would be 'band-friendly', followed by an ice cream sundae which I also knew would be 'band-friendly'. I also had a nice large glass of rose!! Am definitely getting some fierce restriction at the moment because that was all I could eat all day!!

The Sound of Music was brilliant!! I was a bit apprehensive because it is such an iconic film and I've felt a little let down when we've seen other shows that have been based on well-loved films. We saw Mary Poppins (one of my all time favourites) and both found it quite dark and very different to the original. We also saw Dirty Dancing (who doesn't love that film?!!) and it kept so closely to the original film script that it just didn't feel right, you were aware that they were following a script - also the guy playing the Patrick Swayze role just couldn't fill his shoes, I spent most of the show thinking 'why on earth would she fancy him?'!!

Anyway, the Sound of Music avoids these pitfalls.

**** The following paragraph contains spoilers for anyone going to see the show****

The show is fresh and vibrant. It sticks fairly closely to the original story but due to time contraints it obviously has to be condensed down a bit. This is done very well. The script is not identical to the film and there are three new songs which kept it fresh. The children were fantastic. My only gripes (and I concede that I'm probably being a bit picky) were, Simon McCorkindale is a bit too old to play the captain, Summer Strallen played it for laughs a bit too much (but that is probably how it has been scripted and once I got past that it didn't annoy me so much) and they changed the reason for the captain's engagement to the baronness being called off and more or less implied it was due to her policital view not being in line with his rather than that he was in love with Maria. Having said that, I really enjoyed the show and it brought a tear to my eye on more than one occasion which, as a hardened Sound of Music viewer, I didn't expect! If you want to see a great show in London, I would thoroughly recommend it.

My boyfriend is coming over later and I've stupidly told him I will cook a roast dinner. I have all the food in but I am too tired at the moment - guess we'll be eating late today!!