Theatre

I am on the third floor of the beautiful Midland hotel, in a bedroom which is easily as big as a floor of our house, sitting most contentedly in a comfortable armchair listening to the sounds of the world wagging past outside.

In the end it occurred to us to travel here by train, partly because of the massive parking costs we incurred last time we were here, and some hasty calculations this morning indicated that it was probably marginally cheaper and a lot less trouble to travel by train.

I have no doubt that this would have been entirely true had we not got into a carriage filled with noisy round people having something of a Scottish party with bottles of beer and indigestion problems and a great deal of giggling.

I am trying hard to overcome my prejudice against the Scots on account of Gordonstoun, and unfortunately had I stayed in that carriage for very much longer I would have had a major prejudicial setback.

Within five minutes of leaving Kendal Mark had collared the gentleman with the tickets and five minutes later we were being ushered politely along the train to the first class carriage, which completely wrecked any economical benefits that we might have enjoyed from choosing this mode of transport, in fact it might have been cheaper to buy a car park.

It was jolly nice, though. A lovely kind gentleman in a waistcoat brought us coffee and sandwiches, and was terribly polite, and nobody in the entire carriage broke wind and then applauded themselves for the entire journey, and I thought that I had found my spiritual travelling home.

After the train we adjourned to our other spiritual home, the glorious marble floors and pillars of the Midland.

I love the Midland. When I win the lottery we are going to buy a floor of it and live there. It is the epitome of dignified elegance in an hotel, and Mark always tips really well, so the staff are lovely. There is no point whatsoever in being polite to somebody who is not clutching a tenner, as I can assure you from my own experience in a taxi.

In consequence we probably spend as much in tips as we do in dinners, because it makes me feel smugly self-important when people run round trying to be good at customer service for my benefit. This is not at all PC but it is true, when I first started driving a taxi many years ago there was an Irish dentist who came in his holidays every year who always tipped with a tenner. He practically had to eject the taxis from his bedroom, we would have let one another’s tyres down for the opportunity to take him anywhere he liked.

After that humiliating confession I can tell you that we drifted happily around the beautiful hotel trying to look middle class for a while, drinking glasses of wine in the lounge and eating Hotel Chocolats in the comfort of our bedroom, until it was time for the theatre

We went to the Opera House to see King Charles III.

It was brilliant, fantastical, shockingly magnificent, and I was breathless with the joy and horror of it. It was not at all gossipy, but about a political crisis, and we were spellbound and silenced by it, the sort of performance where you are speechless afterwards because you know your head is only full of trivia and wittering and you have just witnessed the thoughts of people who are asking revealing questions about profound and troubling things.

There were just a few of us in the audience, because of it being Tuesday, not even half the seats full, so we all clapped as hard as we could until our hands were sore and yelled our approval at the end so that the cast would not feel too disappointed at the small response to their colossal efforts.

Robert Powell was the lead. He was brilliant although he seems to have got new eyes since he was Jesus of Nazareth all those years ago. I had a minor crush on him then, and think I could quite easily have another one now, he was absolutely ace.

I am not telling you the plot. I think everybody should go and see it.

By the end of the evening we were star struck and moonstruck and gloriously tired. We had a late dinner at the lovely Topkapi restaurant round the corner from the theatre and went home.

It has been wonderful.