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Hello!  It is me!  Wilfred!  And can you even believe that my great London adventure with my two dads has come to an end?  For the last six months, we have been living life in the UK, mostly in the great city of London.  Though six months seems like a long time, it is amazing how fast 26 weekends go when there is always exploring and something new and interesting to do. 

This week, I will start where I left off --  in the West End of London -- and Dad and Poppy's promise to take me to my first ever West End show. 



Me with Poppy outside the London Palladium

We took the Piccadilly tube line from Gloucester Road to Piccadilly and transferred on to the Bakerloo to Oxford Circus.  Then, it was only a hop down Argyle to the London Palladium and Andrew Lloyd Webber's new musical of "The Wizard of Oz".

A smash West End or Broadway musical is a big show with lots of great unforgettable songs (usually connected by a few so-so, kind of forgettable ones, says Dad).  That is why the Wizard of Oz was a sure bet as a full out musical, because it started as a famous movie that already had a lot of great unforgettable songs (all Lord Webber had to do, Dad said, was add the so-so ones).  It also has a tornado, flying monkeys, a wicked old witch, a little girl with a big voice and a real live dog on stage.  Boy, was I excited!

The London Palladium is maybe the most famous theatre in London.  For a hundred years, some of the best known performers in the world have played there.  It has 2286 seats and ours was in the very middle of the front row of the balcony and I was all set with a booster, so I could see over the rail.  And was it ever A-mazing!



The lights dim in the Palladium

From the moment the lights went down and the orchestra began, I did not take my eyes off the stage for one second!  You should have seen the TORNADO!  It almost missed Auntie Em's farm, but then it CAME BACK!  Poor Dorothy and Toto (actually played by four real-live Westies and a few stuffed ones, according to Poppy).  The house whirled around on a tilting, revolving stage that lifted up while wind howled and fences flew apart and cows blew by (sometimes it was hard to tell what was real and what was projected on a see-through screen that in the theatre is called, a scrim).  There was lightning and crashing noise, and the orchestra played like CRAZY!!
 
The show had lots of other surprises -- the Wicked Witch entered through the ceiling, thirty feet above and dangled right in front of me, and monkeys flew out over the audience -- and when the lights came up, I could not EVEN believe it!  I said, "But Dad, doesn't Dorothy ever get home!?"  And he said it was not over.  In grown-up shows, they take a break in the middle, so that ladies can line up for the bathroom, and in British theatres, you can buy ice cream to take back to your seat for the second half.  (Note to self: chocolate ice cream - hard to eat in dark with little plastic spoon and new shirt...).

All I can say is, if you are a kid, for a show that has no train, The Wizard of Oz is about as good as it could get.

This last London week has mostly been about closing up our life here and checking the final few "to do" things off our lists. 

One of the things people always think of when they think about England is having tea.   They think of what is sometimes called, "afternoon tea" -- which is what Dad and Poppy had in the Palm Court of the Langham Hotel (supposedly where some Duchess invented it 150 years ago, and they have tea sommeliers, and blah, blah, blah.)  That is where you spend all afternoon eating little fussy sandwiches, scones with jam and clotted cream and all kinds of CAKES and DESSERT! 

The Palm Court at the Langham Hotel

Bijou tea for two

Sounds like something I'd like to do, but Dad says it is one of those traditions like drinking beer in the sun at a ball game -- it only seems like a good idea at the time...

Actually, to most English people nowadays, fancy afternoon tea is pretty much a treat for tourists.  Lots of Londoners spend their tea breaks at Starbucks drinking lattes, and when they say they are going home to tea  -- they mean home for supper.  At Ravenstone Preparatory, if you stay after school for "tea", it means that you stay and have a big snack in the dining hall (what the English call the dining "hole") before the homework club (for kids whose parents pick them up later) or one of the other after school clubs - like choir or karate or ballet.  I got to stay for tea this week so I could have some extra play time with my friends.  We played games and ate cheese in a tortilla wrap...



Me in the dining hole with Riley, Thomas and Vladi

I am going to miss my Ravenstone pals.  This week, the kids in Form Two presented a play about saying, good bye.  I am going back to Canada, Mir Ali is going back to Kirachi, Bella is going to an all-girl school -- there are lots of changes for us, so Miss Saunders had us say what we would miss about our friends we are leaving behind and how we might stay in touch.  Afterward, the headmistress, Mrs. Heath, said we did an excellent job, and that for the first time at a Ravenstone assembly, she had a tear in her eye.


Mrs. Heath even got a little bit choky

Tomorrow, Daddy and Poppy are going along as adult helpers on our class trip to Kew gardens.  That will be my last thing I do at Ravenstone -- except for our final assembly when I am going to get a certificate for having 20 stickers for good behaviour!

For our last night in London, my family is planning to head down to Trafalgar Square -- maybe on the Number Nine bus!  -- to take part in the July 1st, Canada Day celebrations... listen to Blue Rodeo play and maybe have some poutine.

We are coming home, Canada.  It is time.  But it has been so great being here and doing everything we have done.  Can you even believe it?

For me and Poppy and Dad, the UK has been the best time EVER.  But like Dorothy says, there is no place like home.  C U  soon, Canada.

Bye, for now, Wilfie