Entertainment

Since there's really not a lot of entertainment to be had in the food in London, and since we could not get out of London until Monday, we decided to have some different kinds of fun over the weekend.

Saturday is a huge shopping day in Regent and Oxford Streets. Shopping seems to be a main recreational activity for Londoners; there are so many people everywhere, it's a bit overwhelming, really. And you do not want to go into any of the big stores, like TopShop. It is mayhem. Truly. Since it's quite wearying having to fight to spend your money in the shops, instead we wandered the streets, and it felt quite festive in a way. The Christmas decorations are up everywhere in London (talk about early!) and with everyone all rugged up in their winter clothes, this is about as close as I've ever been to a white Christmas. Or a winter Christmas, even.

Regent St was partly blocked off on Saturday for a big vintage car rally. The cars were all laid out on display in the middle of the street. They were beautiful; some of them like pieces of sculpture. At the same time, in Trafalgar Square, was a huge rally demanding action on global warming (the Stern Report was released this week; a massive UK government report basically saying global warming is going to cause global economic crisis if nothing is done to curb greenhouse emissions. There's a surprise). The irony of these two events being on at the same time did not escape us.

As we walked we decided, what could be more London than a West End show? We took the plunge and got last-minute tickets for Saturday night at the ticket booth in Picaddilly Circus.

Spamalot is, as you might guess, the Monty Python musical. It's a new hit at the Palace Theatre, and was written by MP original, Eric Idle. I'm not a huge Monty Python fan, or a musical fan actually; many of them are too cheesy for words, if you ask me. All that emoting and screechy singing. But Sandy is a fan of musicals and Monty Python too, plus he assured me that a West End show is a thing to remember. So I thought well, OK; it'll be a bit of a chuckle.

But of course it was far more than that. It was hilarious! And very clever, mocking and parodying the whole Musical genre. Sandy said he hasn't laughed so much in years. Super clever. We had a reasonable dinner at quite a nice restaurant across the road from the theatre beforehand, and a glass of champagne in the Polo bar at our hotel afterwards. It felt very London.

The fun continued on Sunday, when we rounded off proceedings by heading across town to Twickenham to watch the All Blacks play England. We were part of the largest ever crowd at the ground; 82,000 people. About 80,000 of them were England fans of course, so we felt quite outnumbered. It was a strange feeling being the only ones singing the anthem. I finally memorised the Maori anthem words; I've felt bad for years that I didn't know it all. Good old Hayley Westenra did the singing at the ground, which, while sweet, was extremely high! So I got a bit screechy myself.

We were relieved, in fact, that we were there at all. We'd bought the tickets on eBay and frankly until we were in our seats we were both skeptical. Of course our Black boys did us proud and, frankly, slaughtered the English. Which was fun. But the weird thing was, the English fans were all incredibly polite and gracious, or at least the ones around us were. Sandy and I were going crazy cheering the ABs, and there was a lot to cheer about. Sandy was looking for friendly banter, like you'd have from the Aussies, but every time he made a comment (which everyone could hear, since the Poms were pretty quiet) the English fans would all go: yes, you're right, well played, etc. On our way out, after a 41-20 defeat (the largest ever defeat of England at Twickhenham, it emerged) people around us actually shook our hands in congratulations! "You'd think I was the coach or something", Sandy said.

Poor Sandy didn't really get any post-match banter either; at the pub where we ate dinner (forgettable) the fans were all pretty pissed, Kiwi or English. But on the train on the way back into town, we ran into some die-hard English fans, who, believe it or not, thought the All Blacks were "lucky" to win, and that their boys really did quite well. It was as if they had been at a different game. Well. This was the catalyst for a reasonably intense debate, you might say. As you can imagine. And I think it could have gone a different way if Sandy hadn't been smiling broadly as he made his own personal post-game analysis. (Afterwards he told me he was glad his puffer jacket made him look bigger than he is. One of these guys was rather large). But it ended with handshakes all round and good wishes for our travels as our new friends got off the train. Although I don't think they had been persuaded the ABs were a better team. They were true, blind fans. Perhaps reading the next day's papers they may have been swayed, which all unanimously echoed Sandy's assessment (which was that he All Blacks hardly got out of first gear). Sandy thought the rugby writers must have been on the train listening to him.

Also on the train was a young American from Boston, for whom this was his first ever game of rugby. He was extremely drunk, but very very funny. He could not get over how friendly us rival fans were; he said if he, as a Bostonian, had hopped on to a New York train after his team had just thrashed their team, they'd throw him off the train. "I like your husband", he said to me. He was impressed that Sandy seemed to be bagging the English team to a bunch of English fans, but managing to do it with a smile and without getting his teeth kicked in. I was impressed with that myself, actually. When we hopped off the train, Sandy gave the American his black NZ beany to wear in to the office the next day. We had fun imagining him on Monday morning, and the look on his English colleagues' faces.