'I've never seen anything like it in my life'

It started as a bit of a catalogue of disasters – we were about halfway to Sunderland when Cat said, ‘I haven’t got the tickets’, and unfortunately she wasn’t joking. Hmmm, what to do? We had a restaurant reservation for 6pm, and would be very late if we went back. Guided by the fact that I was hungry, and our faith in the generosity* of the Mak’ems**, we continued. We arrived at the junction.

‘Is it the first or the second turning?’
‘I don’t know…’ Cat’s normally infallible sense of direction had failed her in light of the ticket dilemma..

I decided to take the first turning. Pretty soon I realised it was wrong, and managed to get lost going in to Sunderland, which we’ve never done before. When we arrived at the car park, it said ‘full’. Deciding it was fibbing to us, I drove in, and managed to find a parking space.

We checked in at the restaurant, and dashed over to the theatre, having retrieved the text message on my phone which said which row we were in, at least. We didn’t need it. There was no problem at all, and they just printed us duplicates.

We enjoyed our meal, and headed over to the theatre to see Dr Dolittle. It’s a touring production, starring Tommy Steele. There were a lot of kids in the audience.

It was quite a bizarre production. It wasn’t the theatrical low point of the year, that ‘privilege’ being shared, for different reasons, by the show at the Barbican, and Jack and the Beanstalk in Cardiff, the best we could say was ‘it wasn’t awful’.

Tommy Steele entered, brown of face, and white of teeth (I think you’d have needed sunglasses for the glare if you were in the first few rows), to a round of applause. But not from me. The theatre snob in me won’t applaud someone just for walking on stage. His performance was pretty understated, along with his voice, and the suggested love relationship with the leading lady, who had a belter of a voice, was frankly a bit freaky, given the 40+ year age difference between them. There was a very short girl playing a boy, there were lots of animals, and some very politically incorrect natives, to say nothing of the Great Pink Sea Snail.

Afterwards, we decided to head straight to the pub, as it was freezing cold, and to be honest, we were struggling for comments. ‘Colourful’ and ‘energetic’ being our best efforts. However, they weren’t needed, as none of the cast appeared. Which may actually have been a bit of a blessing.

*For it was in Sunderland that we once would have had to stay the night in the Travelodge, after my car got locked in the car park following a very late night in the pub, if the nice woman on reception hadn’t helped us out.

**I have no idea if that’s how you spell it?