Tonight's The Night! (or not in our case)

It was our 33rd Wedding Anniversary on Friday, so we thought it worthy of a bit of a celebration so I planned us a fun day out! I bought tickets for Birmingham Hippodrome theatre to see 'tonight's The Night' the musical based on Rod stewarts music. It was to be followed by a meal in Ciello's a rather upmarket Mediterranean restaurant in the heart of Birmingham.

All was going well, apart from the weather, we arrived in Brum and started a little light shopping, Simon called us to say he was in town so we arranged to meet him in Starbucks. As we strolled up New Street arm in arm under our umbrella singing the song of the same name ( a sixties song) and laughing as we went, a young man in a suit popped out in front of us to ask us to take a stress test! I asked him 'Do we look stressed?' that phased him a bit and I added 'No mate I've seen your lot on the news' he disappeared into the throng of shoppers at that. He in fact was touting for business for the Scientology Cult and his little entourage had featured on the previous nights local news.

After our bucket of coffee, what happened to cups and saucers? With Simon we headed of for a light lunch and then to the theatre.

The first half of the show was great, excellent cast with great voices, a bit of comedy, a few scantily dressed ladies with legs up to their armpits, good dance routines. We were loving it! We had nothing against the first half of the performance at all, sadly nor did they!!!

We returned to our seats after the interval and eagerly waited for the second half, we waited, we got a bit wriggly, we looked at our watches and wondered what had happened. A few Manager's seemed to be rushing out behind the stage, then a stage hand came onto the front of the stage and took away all the lights and wiring. Now we were worrying that if they did not start the now 45 minutes late second half soon we would be late for our table at Ciello's.

Eventually a Manager came onto the stage and said that due to technical difficulties they could not perform the second half,(they could not lift the Iron curtain) instead they were going to put chairs in front of the iron and perform the songs concert style! Not even Margaret Thatcher had that much trouble getting the iron curtain up!

I was livid, having paid a considerable amount of money to see a musical I was not going to accept a few singers on a row of dodgy looking chairs. I also reasoned if we did indeed stay and watch this debacle we were in fact accepting the alternative and would have less chance of recompense.

I and many other disgruntled people made our way to the ticket office where many heated discussions took place. We were treated abominable and no-one was prepared to take responsibility for the problem apart than we would all have to write to customer services and each case will be looked at individually. Well I tell you now, I will get my money back even if I take them to the small claims court to do it!

The evening ended on a high thankfully after I had calmed my temper and my disappointment. We met up with boys who both looked amazingly handsome (Rob looked kind of pretty in a boy kind of way, he has grown his hair longer and it suits him very well, he also had on a pink stripe shirt, strangely pink suits his coloring)
Simon as usual was very smart and gorgeous, of course I am biased! Jaime who has just moved to Brum joined us as well, she really is a joyful larger than life lovely girl.
Dinner was more a work of art than food, dreadfully expensive but worth every penny, it more than made up for the afternoon. Not one of us could fault anything at all, it was lovely to finish the meal with my favourite Limoncello liqueur.

We went our separate ways after, the boys and Jaime to go to 'The Living Room' (a bar, not their house) to celebrity spot, we made our way back to the station to get the train back to Cov, composing a letter to the Hip as we went.

We had to take Ta-shi on a marathon of a walk on Sunday as the poor boy had been left so long on Saturday. It was so long that he sat down after four miles as if to say 'Ok enough, its not fun anymore'. He perked up when he met a Jack Russel puppy and had a bit of a gambol with him and found a second wind.