Back From Culture

Within an hour of returning from our annual cultural visit to Stratford-upon-Avon, all three cats presented me with a poo.
'They've been saving them for you,' said Andy. 'Aaaaahhh, sweet...'
'No,not 'aaaahhh, sweet,' I said, scooping the pooping into a bag for disposal. 'But it is nice to know they're still all regular and our absence hasn't induced a stress-related constipation. Gillian McKeith would be proud of those samples.'

Luckily, the dangling cherry tomato plants occupying the hanging basket occupied last year by some dangling strawberries presented me with half a dozen samples of a more agreeable kind, which I had all to myself because Andy thinks raw tomatoes are the food of Beelzebub. Demonic influence or not, they were very tasty.

Usually, when we visit Stratford, we stay at 'The Swan's Nest' which is right next to the Avon and within comedy spitting distance of the theatre. But since they added a swanky new restaurant a couple of years ago, their prices have shot up to ridiculous proportions, so this year we decided to stay a few miles outside the town in an Olde Worlde Tudore Farme House...e. Our room was HUGE!! For a start, you could actually run around inside the bathroom. Properly run around, like in a circuit. Not that we did, well, not after the initial experiment, because the olde worlde floore was very creaky and, over the years, had taken on a bit of tilt.

And the grounds were beautiful. I mean, they had a gardener for heaven's sake. And when you listened for noise, you couldn't hear any, because there was no noise. Except for the minor family contretemps we heard last night through the olde worlde tiltey floore when basically the parents were telling their teenage son that he was a lazy little so and so and no, he couldn't have a day off from his holiday job because he wanted to.

There were two dogs at the B and B. Motto and Gertrude. Motto was a black labrador, who was very polite and very friendly and refrained from climbing onto the breakfast table to get a piece of breakfast toast, unlike some cats I could mention. And Gertrude was a black setter-type, also very polite, a bit more keen to play ball in the garden and determined to re-write the rules of playing tennis, which included ignoring line calls and running off with the ball. She disappeared periodically, and then would return sopping wet, so I assumed there was a pond or stream or river somewhere on the property that we didn't discover.

Andy and I made many speculations about our hosts because that is the kind of juvenile game we play on homeward bound journeys. Were they landed gentry fallen on hard times so had to take in guests? Was the olde worlde farme from his side of the family, or her side, or were they nouveau riche types who made a killing on the stock market and purchased the pile during the last recession for a song, did it up and were now rolling in it, using the B and B takings to fund shonky business dealings in Guatamala? Did their son look spaced out because he had partaken too much off the wacky-baccy, or because he was a teenage boy and they all look like that these days?

Well, we stopped playing the game after a while because we were distracted by an idiot in an Audi (I won't go into Andy's Audi-driver theory here, because it is very complex and not very complimentary.)

And then we arrived home. There will be more of our Stratfordian exploits later in the week, because there is much to tell. Like 'The Hathaway Tea-Roome Nightmare,' 'The Comedy of The Encore Eatery Error', 'The Tale of The As You Like It Big Head' and 'The Jolly Outdoor Theatre Frolic.'

I am bracing myself to write them a la Shakespeare style, but it IS going to take quite a bit of bracing, and I don't quite have the energy to start now, because, having avoided cooking for the last three days, there are people waiting for dinner to be presented before them which means I suppose I'd better get back into the swing of the domestic routine.

Luckily, cat poo duties are over with. For today, at least.

A Grand Day Out

We do like Stratford-upon-Avon, we really do. In fact, we like the whole swathe of middle England that stretches between Oxford and Birmingham like a bumpy green blanket. It feels like you are being hugged by gentle hills. It feels like coming home. There is a point along the M40 when the motorway cuts through a hill and the countryside opens up before you and this is the point when Andy and I both go 'Aaaahhhh!' and we know we've arrived and it's only a short distance up the motorway before we can drop off and take the scenic route to Stratford, through Banbury and in and out of a string of little villages that punctuate the lanes like freshwater pearls, each with their own character and charm.

We arrive in Stratford to just-right sunny weather and after checking into the hotel (The Swan's Nest - we always stay here because it is right by the river and a five minute walk from the theatre), we went to find Andy's parents who were just finishing their lunch in a tea-shop in the middle of the town. We hadn't eaten so it was back to the river to the Baguette Barge, which is a canal boat that sells freshly-made baguettes, sandwiches, cakes, crisps and drinks. We like the Baguette Barge. You place your order with the lady on the top deck and then magically, a pair of hands appears from the bottom deck bearing your baguette/sandwich. It got us thinking about other modes of transport one could sell food from. The Toastie Tandem. The Sandwich Cycle. The Bagel Bus. The possibilities were endless. Well almost.

Sitting in the sun by the river at the canal boat yard munching a baguette, watching the many ducks, swans and geese going about their very important business, finishing off with an ice-cream. Marvellous.

And the bear didn't let me down either. I know I wanted a real bear, or failing that a man in bear costume in the performance of A Winter's Tale and neither of those materialised. But the twelve foot high bear puppet which did appear with a bang and a roar and a chaos that made the audience fair squeal with excitement more than compensated.

'GGGGRRRRRAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!' went the bear. 'AAAAAARRGHHHHHH!!!!' went Antigonus as he was dragged to his death. It was very exciting! The whole production was well executed in the brilliantly quirky way that is unique to English theatre. I have to say though, that I think A Winter's Tale is one of Shakespeare's weaker plays (in my humble opinion, sorry Mr Shakespeare sir, but even you, your great Bardness, must have cringed a bit when you saw the practical realisation of your written word come to life for the first time in this dramatic effort). We've seen RSC productions of nearly half of Shakespeare's plays now, and this one comes in near the bottom of the ratings table for me. But it was theatre, nonetheless, which is always good to experience.

This morning we went for another ramble across the river before making the journey back to Kent. More just-right sunshine. More thinking how great this most English of English towns is, with its massive hanging baskets and window boxes exploding colour everywhere, its embracing of visitors from all over the world who have been drawn to its Tudor streets all for the common cause of loving Shakepeare, its ducks, geese and swans making their own dawn chorus to greet the new day.

Stratford-upon-Avon always brings a smile to my face and a warm glow to my heart.

Yes, we like this place. We like it very much indeed.