Good heavens October is finished and today is the 1st day of November. This year is whipping by at the speed of light. Our grandbaby is now officially overdue so I am on tenterhooks waiting to get “the” call. Of course it could still be as long as another 11 days! They allow mothers to go 12 days over their due date here before any intervention. I really hope not. My original guess was the 4th of November which is Thursday.
We have done a little chart for each grandbaby so every member of the family can take a guess at the sex, date of birth and weight. The joke originally, was that if you got it correct you could pick the name but that was always a joke! It’s a bit of fun anyway to see who gets nearest to being correct.
Well my weekend was busy..............tell you about that soon! So today I am frantically trying to get myself back to normal with my house work. When Simon is on holiday things really go to pot around here. I am out of my normal routine. I have so much to do today; I haven’t even been doing the half hour system. I may do that tomorrow.
So far today I have spent over an hour cleaning the bathroom from top to bottom. It was messy! I have a load of washing in the machine and one in the tumble drier and a gigantic mound of ironing waiting from last week. I don’t think I did any last week!
I have spent the last hour washing and preparing carrots and parsnips that we bought back from the allotment on Thursday! They should have been done before but ............well they just didn’t get done! I am blanching them and freezing them. I still have more to do but I figured it was coffee time!
I also have to sort out the eBay stuff I was selling. The auctions finished on Saturday and I haven’t done anything about them yet. I sold 8 out of my 11 items but I don’t think I have made much, only about £30 I think but that is better than nothing for unwanted clutter. I need to get all the addresses and get them parcelled up ready for the post office tomorrow. It takes ages.
So my weekend...........................Saturday as you all know was the trip to London to see Strictly Come Dancing. (It is our equivalent of “Dancing with the stars” for my Merikan friends......has 2 of the same judges too). Before I tell you about it I shall just say that we did eventually have a good time and we are glad we went but we won’t do it again!!!!
Simon took me to the station at lunch time and the first thing we see is that my train is cancelled! Good start. It turned out ok though because they said I could get the 13.01 instead which was due in any minute. I got on and rung Verity who was waiting for her train in Cambridge. This train was going to take longer as it was a stopping one rather than straight through.
We arrived at London Kings Cross within about a quarter of an hour of each other and Verity was actually waiting for me at the barrier. I rang her as I got off the train to see where she was and she said “I can see you”! We already had our underground tickets and had checked the official London tube website so we already knew that the most direct way to our destination wasn’t happening due to line closures. Fortunately Simon had worked it out for us and it was nice and simple. Victoria line to Oxford Circus and then the central line to White City, which is where the BBC television centre is located.
Kings Cross has changed massively. The last time I was there was last October when Simon and I went up for my birthday. Back then you still had to go outside to get to the underground. That is no longer the case and the stairs down are right there by the main line platforms. However if you want the Victoria line you have to walk for what seemed like miles along all the new tunnels! It was a VERY long way!
It took around half an hour to reach White City which is actually and over ground station so we had seen the television centre as we came in. Brilliant we knew which way to walk. As we exited the station we saw immediately opposite a very long queue. We realised straight away that it must be for “Strictly” so crossed the road to join the end. It was 5 minutes to 3pm and we had been told that the site opens at 3.30pm so we thought we were in good time.
As we joined the end of the queue a BBC staff member asked to see our tickets saying she had good news and bad news! The bad was that they have 300 seats and they had all gone!!! The good was that they could give us a standby ticket which may mean we would get in, but may not!
We were aware beforehand that the tickets they issue do not absolutely guarantee entry. They issue more tickets than they have seats to ensure a full audience. It is a bit like airlines over booking and hoping that not everyone turns up.
She told us that the standby tickets are for production members seats. Apparently the production team each get so many free tickets for their own personal use for family and friends and they often don’t get used. However they don’t know until the last minute how many will be available! I asked what our chances were and she said she had been told she could issue 90 standby tickets and we were numbers 46 and 47. She also told us that people had been queuing outside since 9am! My goodness I wouldn’t be that desperate to see it!
We felt this was all quite unfair. We were told 3.30pm. They must know that people queue each week from 9am so why not say, that to ensure you are one of the 300 you need to be there really early? In fact it seemed to me that the fairest thing to do would be to issue 300 guaranteed seats and then have a policy of allowing people to queue outside from 5pm for a possible standby seat. That way they would still get their full audience and people wouldn’t travel a long way only to be disappointed.
Back to the story..............it was pouring with rain and the queue moved extremely slowly! We did not reach the gate until just before 5pm so that was 2 hours in the rain! The security measures were the same as at an airport but I have never seen it so slow and we have been in some pretty slow queues at the airport!!! They take your mobile phone away from you at the gate which I thought was rather over the top. It meant I couldn’t phone Simon to let him know what was going on.
I understand they don’t want phones ringing during a live performance but can’t they just say switch them off like they do on an airplane? Obviously the BBC is special! We finally made it through the security checks despite Verity setting off the alarm! (The metal belt on her dress!) And were allowed on to the hallowed ground!
We were taken into the main foyer where everyone who had entered before us was still waiting! I guess at least they had been out of the rain! It wasn’t long before they made an announcement that they were about to begin seating. As the studio was a little way away they were escorting people across in batches of 20 at a time so we had to sit and wait. We were told that once the 300 had been seated they would see what standby seats were available!!! To cut a long story shorter we did eventually get called and were escorted to our seats which were not good at all but could have been way worse.
We were downstairs immediately opposite Bruno (one of the judges) but we had 4 rows of people in front of us and we were tucked in next to the cameras and there was a pillar sort of in the middle of us with a monitor screen! We could see either side of it. Actually once the show started we realised that we could actually stand up as long as we weren’t in front of a camera! That gave us a much better view.
It is a very long evening! They have a warm up guy who tells you what to do and they pre-record lots of bits and pieces including the audience clapping and cheering! Weird. We had to do it twice as the first take wasn’t loud enough! They pre-record the professional dancers show dances for Sunday night and the singer and all the announcements. It is very odd to see how it is all done and then how it is pieced together for the TV. The Sunday night singer was Alice Cooper. An old “has been” from the seventies! Verity didn’t know who he was! I was never in to him at all.
Finally, once they had all the pre-recorded stuff out of the way the show actually got under way and it was very, very good. The standard really is quite high. We loved Ann and Anton for the sheer entertainment. I think we both agreed that Scott and Natalie were the best very closely followed by Kara and her partner. We both loved Gavin Henson’s body!!! I don’t much like his face and he can’t really dance but Wow, the body!!!! He was very close to us so we had a great view!
The show lasts 2 hours and when they had all danced we were finally released and escorted back to the foyer where we were finally able to get something to eat and drink. Neither of us had eaten since breakfast. We had intended to get something when we arrived and then join the queue at 3.30pm. If we had done that we wouldn’t have got in. There was a thirty minute break before we were once again taken back to the studio.
They were still setting up things for the results show so they had a little dance off competition while we waited. 3 couples from the audience had to dance against each other. During that time the judges returned. As they entered Craig Revel Horwood (the nasty one) did some absolutely amazing pirouettes, really, really fast! Jaw dropping. You forget that he is actually a professional. Bruno also did some amazing dancing culminating with him doing high kicks on the judges table and undoing his shirt. He was good and very funny.
Soon it was time for the dancers to return for the results. They were eliminated one by one and it was weird being so close to them that you could actually see them shaking and see the little glances going on between them. The result was a bit of a surprise. We had guessed that Michelle and Felicity would be the bottom 2 and that it would be Felicity to go. In the end it was Tina and Felicity and it was Tina and her partner Jared who were out. She was better than Felicity but of course it is down to the public.
Everyone is a better dancer than Ann Widdecombe but the public love her in the way they loved John Sergeant. She is a game old bird and very funny. She actually made a good attempt this week and did do the dance steps. We thought she was good........for her. I think she will still be there for a few weeks yet. I don’t think she will win though.
So that was it, our “Strictly” experience. As I said earlier we did enjoy it and we are glad we went but I wouldn’t do it again. Simon had managed to get parked just along the road from the main entrance opposite the tube station and was there waiting for us as we came out. He had left home at 8pm and it took him 2 hours so he had been waiting for half an hour. He knew how concerned I was about travelling on the underground late on a Saturday night so he insisted on coming to get us. I must admit by that stage we were quite tired and it was lovely to be driven home rather than a whole load of messing around on trains. We got in at about a half past midnight. Of course our clocks went back so we gained an extra hour in bed so it wasn’t too bad.
Yesterday got off to a fairly late start. We had breakfast and then Steve arrived to collect Verity. Once they had gone we left to go over to Sam and Lisa’s house. Simon was taking our trailer to Sam as he had a lot of garden rubbish to go to the dump. It took them 3 trips I think. I stayed with Lisa and Ellie. Once they were done we walked to a pub in their town centre where we had lunch. Ellie was a really good girl. We set off for home about 5pm. By the time we got in I was pretty tired and had bad indigestion so I spent the rest of the evening reading in bed while Simon did school work ready for today.
We had half hoped that we may hear from Sam and Lisa as Lisa had developed back ache and twinges during the meal. Haven’t heard anything so far and it is 24 hours later now! Guess it will come soon enough.
Right I have been on here way longer than I should have been and house work is now calling. I had best crack on. Later today I will do my photo a day challenge which if I remember correctly is a photo of my front door.
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