Panto and party

Still playing catch-up on the festive season.

On the 29th, Nicky, Max, Pete, Joseph, Dominic, Max and I went to the Stockport Plaza to see Aladdin starring Coronation Street star... well the bloke who plays Jim MacDonald. I found it quite hilarious.

First there was the very large woman at end of our row who thought that the seven of us would just slip in our seats without her getting out of hers. She may have twisted her legs marginally to one side to facilitate our passage, but the effect was negligable. After the sixth time I barged past her to get coffee, sweets and take boys to the toilet I gave up feeling embarrassed and found her quite amazing. She had a face like a papier mache and never cracked a smile once.

Then there was Max - not our one, his mate. Now there's a boy that doesn't like musicals. Every time (not a few) that they burst into song, he trembled, inched his way a little further onto Nicky's lap and, even, shed a tear or two. Was it wrong of me to find that so funny?

And then there was the panto. Wow you can pack a lot into two hour and three quarter hours of live theatre you know. Yes - two and a half hours! There were magic tricks, there were custard pies, there were puppets dancing and kids up on the stage. There was a highly memorable rendition of Old Jim MacDonald had a farm, one of several nods to his role in Corrie which I had to explain all about to Dominic and Max in whispers because we don't watch the soaps and they wanted to know what the joke was. There was more. There were chase scenes, there was a flying carpet, there were more set changes than I've ever seen in a theatre and I don't think Widow Twankee appeared on stage in the same outfit twice. There were singers, there were dancers, there was even a ballet dance up on her blocks. It was, as they say, full on. Whether or not it was any good, I'm reluctant to say having found it all so wildly entertaining but since the boys sat through it all, it can't have been half bad (except the other Max of course who exited, trembling, at the interval).

If that wasn't enough excitement, we then hurried back home for a get together with the Goodridges, the Browns, the Bevans and the Jacksons. It occurs to me that in this picture it looks a bit like the children are drinking wine and beer but of course we all know that the bottle on the table that they were all really after was the Tomato Ketchup. After all, it was Chris' final barbie of 2007.