Get Down Tonight

I think they’re trying to kill me at cycling. There’s 12 of us at the session on Monday and the derny is out again. The pace is blistering as I think are my knees.  

We’re at Colwick lake for the Harvest Moon swim on Tuesday while the Lad is fit enough to return to his training on Wednesday. 

Just as he has returned to fitness, we abandon him with Daughter as we hop on a train to London (First Class). We are in London so that we can get down tonight with KC And The Sunshine Band and L can relive her teenage years. 

First though we scout out something equally important, the location of Saturday’s Parkrun. The one we are targeting is in Battersea Park which we walk to across Vauxhall bridge and then come back via a different route across Chelsea Bridge. This takes us to our Holiday Inn which L remembers that we have stayed in before but I don’t. This was in 2018 when I ran the London Landmarks Half Marathon. 

 

We check in and then do a bit of tourism by heading to Denmark Street, the home of Cormoran Strike, where we take many photos. Before heading to another Strike location, the Tottenham pub which is now called the Flying Horse. We don’t drink there though, instead we head to the Lamb and Flag. This is a Fullers pub that sells both ESB and their Vintage ale at 8.4%. This along with a Jamaican meal from a eat-in takeaway fortifies us for KC. 

Get Down Tonight is a musical that is being hosted at the Charing Cross Theatre and it tells the story of Harry Wayne Casey. Although to be honest it doesn’t really tell us much we didn’t already know about a chap who notoriously keeps his cards close to his chest. 

The plot, such that it is, is that Casey decides to put on a musical featuring his songs but the actual story becomes an ongoing discussion amongst the characters on stage. What we do get is two deaths, a love triangle and twenty great songs across its eighty-minute runtime but not a huge amount of character development. 

Still, the cast are good, the music is pumping and the nostalgia is dripping off the walls as well as off L. She is in her element which is what counts the most. 

After a quick breakfast on Saturday, it’s Battersea parkrun which pulls 900 runners on what turns out to be their 1st birthday. It’s a two-lap course on flat tarmac that we then follow with a rather posh breakfast at the park cafe. After which we get the tube back to St Pancras and then the train home. 

We are back in time for a rather strange night out in the Plough. All the time we were there was a girl sleeping across the seats in the lounge and then they chucked us out at 9pm because it was so quiet. They blame the Beer Festival for this and not their visitor occupying the lounge. 

On Sunday we’re at Colwick for the swim and with Daughter. It’s cold and foggy with the water temperature actually being higher than the outdoor temperature, 14 degrees to 8 degrees but I’m still not tempted.

(Sunday 12^th October)