The weekend report.

It's Monday morning once again and I'm not at work. The only reason I know its Monday morning is because Mr. R has gone off to work. It could easily have been Tuesday or Saturday. I've lost track of the days - and that's how a vacation should be.

Mr R and I have had a good weekend. Friday evening we went to see an open air performance of Romeo and Juliet at the monastery nearby. To add a modern touch, Juliet was a girl of Indian origin, they had 'chamma-chamma' and 'Dola re' (from devdas) playing as part of the entertainment for the party where Romeo and Juliet first meet (and the brochure said "classical Indian music"). Mr.R and I didn't know WHERE to look, but the rest of the audience seemed to enjoy it. Crazy really. Juliet wore kurta's throughout the play and some other male characters wore Indian dress too.... It wasn't a 'great' performance, a little OTT sometimes and they failed to take advantage of the setting. The ambience was terrific though and many people came along with their kids, blankets and wine glasses and generally had a good evening.

On Saturday we took my first trip into London. London's really like any other place - could be Bombay for all you know, just more white faces around (and a little cleaner, of course :) We went on a guided walk when we got there - they have these "London Walks" scheduled in advanced, everyday for a particular place. This Saturday it was the Kensington walk which took us thru the district of Kensington with its gardens, streets where well known people once lived (incl Churchill, TS Eliot etc etc) - all these houses have little blue plaques that tell you that someone of note once lived here, which I think was a nice idea. The houses are now private residences. Anyway, the walk took about 2 hrs and ended in the Ken. Palace grounds. After the walk, we walked to Royal Albert Hall to see if we could get seats for that evening's BBC Prom concert. It was all sold out, so we've booked in advance for the 30th. While walking around Trafalgar Square, we saw a candle-light concert being advertised in a church called St.Martins of the fields (so many churches have concerts, it's amazing!). We had dinner and went for that and I can honestly say it was an experience of a lifetime! This was my first 'live' concert, not counting the little one at the local church on Thursday and it was amazing, really. We got seats on the first floor balcony just above the musicians and it was a treat to watch the different instruments coming to life at various points in the concert. Things really fell into place suddenly and it was delightful. The musicians were good too - and if Mr.R thought so, then they must have been better than I thought. Absolutely lovely and I'm not making this up!!! A great way to introduce a beginner to the joys of classical music and I'm glad Mr.R is letting me enjoy this at my own pace.

Sunday morning we took a boat cruise to Allington Lock where the Museum of Kent Life is situated. This is a HUGE open air museum on the farm life of Kent in the centuries gone by. An interesting concept - maybe I can replicate it in Mangalore someday, when farming has gone out of style and you MW's can bring your grandchildren to show them what a real cow looks like :) They had chicken, cows, horses, donkeys, pigs, rabbits for people to see. Can you imagine, people come in droves with their kids, or just adults too, to enjoy unadulterated "countryside" life! There are 21 different places on the farm, each with detailed history - like the barn would have details of the instruments used, the farmers house had each room done up as it would have been in that period, if in the 50s then complete with radio broadcast and music of that time playing, clothes of that era lying around for visitors to try on for fun. The place is done up with 'period' details for every exhibit. Well maintained and researched, though Mr.R wasn't too pleased with the grammar and punctuation on some of the exhibits. Check out their sitehttp://www.museum-kentlife.co.uk/ for more.