Subject: muh cousin with the fringe on top ! 
12 June-19 June 1999 

Date: Sat, 25 Sep 1999 03:56:27 PDT 

Celia arrived in England the Friday earlier and went to Manchester for the 
weekend. 

I got the call to meet her at the St George Hotel in Upper Regent Street on 
Monday ! 

The day at work was infuriating, lots of email to respond to but far too 
hot in the office to think and be productive at work and play. 

At the moment while I am writing this I am wearing just a shirt and 
shorts, who cares about formality ! 

After work on Monday I get off at Oxford Circus. Made one of those 
life-forming decisions and walked north up Regent Street. 

Sure enough at the very end (figuratively) just when I was about to doubt 
my inate sense of direction I came across the hotel at the very end 
(literally) of the road. Entered the tiny tiny foyer and entered the lift 
and up to Celia's room. 

Very plush surroundings; gave her a big hug, she tells me the bags got 
lost somewhere in transit, I made a beeline for the toilet ! 

We wait around for cousin Rodney he turns up before the bags and we click 
on the tv and see if we can get any adult channels. We get a photo to 
immortalise this. And YES it was one of 'those' hotels - only joking ;-) 

To the Wongs, thanks for the cookies ! 

Eventually the bags arrive, and we head downtown and eat at Wong Kei's to 
give Celia a taste of London in her week here.  After dinner we walk around 
town and show her some sights, she'll probably do some of them by herself. 

Now Celia has plans with other friends so we plan to go see De La Guarda 
on Friday night. 

Nothing much happens except on Wednesday it is my day off so I spend it 
with Nina who has just arrived in the country. In the morning we check out 
changing of the Guard then walk through town and have lunch at one of those 
fancy lawyer pubs on Pall Mall. We get cheap tickets for Oklahoma at the 
Lyceum Theatre. We have dinner then meet Emma the Lyceum Tavern where 
friends of ours work. 

Each day there are 100 cheap 5-10 pound tickets if you present yourself to 
the box office so we managed to get some on row L on the far right. 

What can I say ?  The musical was the best one I've ever seen, lots of 
well-known songs that I didn't know the titles but knew everything about 
them now. The cast was great with a lot of gymnastics and had Maureen Lipman 
and Hugh Jackman as the main male lead. Even now months later I still 
surprise myself when I burst into song on the tube with "Oh What A Beautiful 
Morning", ramble a bit on "The Surrey with the Fringe on Top" from time to 
time and occasionally when Emma and I are walking along the road we link 
arms and break into "The Cowboy and the Farmer Should be Friends" complete 
with dance steps !! 

The whole audience really enjoyed the show and was very vocal, much more 
than normal musicals. The show was 2 1/2 hours so we got our money's worth 
and left the theatre around 11pm. I know all my family would love it and I 
imagined my Dad sitting beside me whooping and hollering like everyone else 
!! 

Next week the show finished. At this time we were saving for our Europe 
trip so we didn't go again to much regret, wailing and gnashing of teeth. 

It was recorded on film though and has been shown on UK cable television. 

Thursday we had a night in. 

Friday 

http://www.delaguarda.com/ 

I got tickets to De La Guarda for me, Emma, Celia and Rodney. We got there 
not quite knowing what to expect. We went to the Roundhouse where I last saw 
STOMP in January. 

We entered the venue, all black curtaining with a low ceiling. No 
discernable 'stage'. The sounds of the rainforest enamate throughout. Above 
us the ceiling is actually white and we see it is newsprint. We see shadows 
moving and rushing quickly above us silhouetted on the newsprint. Nursery 
sounds play now and we see shadows of children playing with small toys above 
us, then water is splashed down like spittle some of which falls onto us as 
we are on the side of the 'stage'. 

After several splashes the music stops and UV light comes on and above us 
is a myriad of dotted colours like stars. 

The music starts building again and balloons land on the ceiling above us. 

Then the music builds to a techno crescendo and various people tear people 
sized holes through the paper and balloons and little plastic toys come 
through and land on us.  A while later a couple of metres in front of us an 
upsidedown guy tears through the ceiling and picks up a member of the 
audience screaming.  He lifts her up through the paper...and we realise 
she's part of the performance. After a few minutes the other members of the 
troupe swing down and tear the ceiling and light water and all the balloons 
fall down onto us ! 

With the 'ceiling' gone they pull away the plastic walls around us and we 
can finally see the whole size of the venue. It is a rectanglish room with a 
balcony and rails going around the side from which the performers on wires 
and swing from and grab hold of. 

The rest of the show was more theatrics and avant garde screaming etc and 
was ok but didn't live up to the beginning. At some point they do lift up 
people if they want to and try to get everyone dancing ! 

Check out the website of some cool photos of the described scenes ! 

After the hour long show we walked round Camden looking for a place to 
eat, we settled on Nando's which is a south african chicken restaurant chain 
that specialises in Portuguese spicey (Peri peri) chicken. Between the four 
of us we got 2 large salads 2 chickens and a mountain of chips, luckily we 
manage to finish it all off ! 

After a hearty relaxing meal we wiped the chicken drool off our lips and 
faces and headed home. Gave the cousins a hug and hoped Celia would be back 
soon...