A Right Royal....Occasion

Hard to believe there's a huge event attracting tens of thousands of fans and there's not a ball to be bowled or a tackle to be made. They're an odd lot these Brits! Anyway, completely out of my depth on this one so handing over todays' blog to Jeanette.

Yesterday was Grant's pick for a good day out, my pick was already on the calendar, so off we went for a 45-minute walk to Buckingham Palace to join the hoards of Royal fans and a small pocket of rowdy protestors that are adamant King Charles is not their King.

Another pleasant day to walk thru Hyde Park, but once we got to Hyde Park corner to cross over to the Wellington Arch, we got the first sign it wasn't any ordinary day - Police, police cars and crowd barriers were everywhere. I couldn't work out 'why here' as Trooping the Colours -The Kings official Birthday Parade started at Buckingham Palace then headed along the Mall to House Guard Parade for the inspection of the Guard by King Charles.

We decided to ask one of the 10 police officers hanging around if the parade comes past here. It was a bit of nudge, nudge, wink, wink moment when he replied, "There will be a movement taking place in a moment if you want to wait here". It turned out to be very good advice. We got a great view of Prince William and his family driving by on their way from their home at Kensington Palace to Buckingham Palace. Very excited was I as I managed to get a quick picture of them through their car window. Bonus picture for me I love Will and Kate.

We then had to take some detours and fight through the ever-increasing crowds around Green Park, along the way we saw an amazing larger than life bronze sculpture monument to the fallen fighter pilots of the second world war. The closer we got to Buckingham Palace the more the crowds grew. We knew we wouldn't get a good spot to see the parade as you would have to have been up with the birds for that. As much as I like the royals I'm not that much of a fanatic. It was days like today that I wished I was at least 6ft, tall but my camera helped heaps, so I think I didn't do too badly under difficult circumstances.

The main parade had moved on to the House of Guard Parade where King Charles inspected the troops, there is a public ballot to see who can sit in the stands to witness this event. The booby prize must have been 2 tickets (interjection from Grant)

Fortunately for Grant there was a gap of a couple of hours between the official proceedings and an RAF Fly Over to further mark the celebrations. Despite the distraction of the royals there was still a test match to be won! We headed off to a nearby pub to watch an hour or so of the 4th (and last) day. As we walked through the door of the Three Crowns Pub the devastation on Grants face was clear. Having thought he had escaped the royals for an hour or two and could relish the countdown to a great and glorious South African victory he discovered every TV in the pub was locked on the Trooping of the Colours! However, a potential disaster was averted when the nice lady behind the bar offered to change one of the TVs to the cricket! South Africa needed about 50 runs to win when we arrived and 18 when we left (with 5 wickets still intact). Win secured and a nice little cameo to break up all the Royalness .

We left the pub early so we could get back in time for the second part of the Trooping of the Colours - watching the Royals on the balcony - listening to the 21 gun (unfortunately for Grant not the Green Day version-it just wasn't his day) salute and watching the famous Royal Airforce flyover with the grand finale being jets streaming red, white and blue trails as the boomed across the surrounding area and over the Palace. That was a really spectacular end to the celebrations.

We had a real change of pace when we went to see the West End show The Book of Mormon in the evening. It's not a show we would have gone to normally but the Aussie beef farmer we watched cricket with at the pub raved about it. He reckoned it was the funniest thing he had ever seen, and he still laughed every time he thought about it. Note to future self - don't take advice from anything cultural from an Australian!!

Back to the show, we checked out reviews and they were 85% extremely positive. There was a small but very vocal number of reviews that were strongly critical. Across all review types there were mentions of people walking out at the interval disgusted by the content.

The show was the story of 2 young Morman's sent to do missionary work in Uganda. It was a musical and the standard of choreography, dancing and singing was exceptional. The quality of the actors was exceptional.

The show was written by the people who write the South Park TV show and perhaps unsurprisingly they pushed things to the very limit. Humour is obviously a very personal thing and for us the show just wasn't that funny - humour generated from obscenity has never really been my thing. To be fair most of the audience disagreed and there was a lot of hysterical laughter and a standing ovation at the end. I can definitely see why the show would appeal to an Aussie sense of humour so I'm not blaming beef farmer guy and I console myself with the sure and certain knowledge that by winning the cricket we at least had the last laugh!