Thursday Leeds

Blimey, I've got a headache.

Still, I have had a lovely day here in Leeds. Not that the Leeds tourist trade was any great help with that. I had planned to spend a lovely day on the Steam trains but they don't run at this time of year. This was a great shame as the day was designed to entertain the two lovely children of Chris, from the show, who is here with his wife and aforementioned offspring. Never mind, I thought, there is a tropical centre in Roundhay Park which is near to where I am staying and that will be fun. Butterflies, lizards, tropical fish and strange flora. Closed for a clean up, apparently.

We ended up at the Royal Armoury Museum, an offshoot of The Tower of London. A lot of money has been spent on this facility, you can tell. Brand new building, swish display cabinets. TV screens all over the place demonstrating various details of the history of warfare.

Dull as dish water, obviously. We soon found ourselves looking for somewhere to have lunch. The canteen looked dull as well so I told the kids they only served Cat Poo sandwiches and Rabbit wee for drinks and we headed off to Pizza Express. This was very badly named it turned out. The waitress told us that lunch would take at least half an hour to arrive. Maybe the 'express' refers to the milk in the coffee?
We left and headed to the only other place where you could get food in the area - the Cat Poo Sandwich cafeteria - which turned out to be rather good! Rabbit wee is delicious, we all agreed.

Having fed the ducks on the canal with the remainder of lunch I bade my new young friends farewell and headed in to town and the comfort of a seat at screen 5 of VUE where I wept and laughed my way through The King's Speech. I don't think I cried a great deal at the predicament of the main characters but at the gloriously Britishness of it all. Anything stoic set around WWII always gets me. It deserves every award it has got (although I notice there has not been a best director gong) and many of the smaller roles were particularly well played. Tim Spall as Churchill was a joy. Helena Bonham Carter is the Queen Mum, I swear. I didn't know her personally but I'm sure she was like that?

And now, I am back in my dressing room waiting for the show to begin and trying to ignore a stinking headache. This blog business is a good distraction. Sounds like a good house over the tannoy and everyone is ready for the off. I will be on in two hours time. I'll say it again, 'This is the weirdest role I've ever had!'. Still, at least I'm not doing a musical about the Ipswich prostitute murders, eh?

Tomorrow it's a trip to Ilkley Moor. As the song suggests, I shan't be taking my hat