We took the girls down to London to see the English National Ballet’s special children’s production of Sleeping Beauty. I took the day off work and we went down on the train, which made it a proper adventure. We had an easy trip down getting a block of seats with table and snacking and chatting the way down. Lola was very excited about getting the tube, which we did down to Holburn, Lola picking up a lovely compliment on her attire from a fellow passenger (she had a dress on and her Railway Children coat over).
We got to Holburn early enough to grab some lunch; we went to an Eat, I think. Hard to distiguish among the rash of franchises that line the main road. Had some hearty chilli thing which was ok but I should have saved the money as I finished off both kids’ toasties. Then we strolled over the road to the Peacock Theatre where Natalie and Louis were waiting for us. We had no trouble finding the place: we just had to follow the flow of tiny girls with furry pink wands back upstream — they were obviously exiting the previous performance. I have to say, the merchandising, and particularly those nasty plastic wands (and *why* were they furry?), seemed a grabbing, cynical ploy that marred an otherwise excellent show.
Anyway, the performance itself was really good: great narration by the nurse character, great costumes and dancing. Good length, too. Maybe an hour and a half including interval.
After the show we we all walked together up to St Giles Circus (being en route to John Lewis, where Isa and wanted to pop in) for a spot of dinner. A very enjoyable walk up Longacre with the kids playing chase games with their new . . . pink . . . wands. We stopped at a Croc shop and got a pair for Neve. And then at another place where we got something similar for Lola.
Then 
we got St Giles and the huge new building that Dodge is managing, part of which is a big Zizi’s where we installed ouselves and ate pizza and pasta and antipasti and stuff. Amazingly, after all that we still had the stamina to head off to John Lewis. Luckily, we saw a bus as soon as we hit Oxford St an jumped on that, which was great fun for th kids and speeded things up. It turned out John Lewis didn’t have what we looking for but we didn,t mind to much. Got a tube back to kx and onto a train home. Must have been gone ten by the time we got back but Lola and Neve were still in good spirits.