on reflection, a very good day

This week I got miracled by my downstairs neighbour who had an extra ticket to go see Monkey: Journey to the West at the Royal Opera House this evening. The opera was a spectacular combination of modern dance, circus acrobatics, martial arts, pantomime, Gorillaz animation, and looked and sounded amazing. The way the music and the huge animation tied some of the scenes together made it feel like we’d all been sucked into the real brain of a marvelous video game, like we were progressing up through the stages, but much more real and immediate than anything on a computer screen. My favourite bits were the mountain of fire and the final huge blue Buddha glory scene. The peach banquet part with the contortionist was brilliant but also made me feel a bit queasy. I think I worry about these people too much, that they’ll hurt themselves, which is probably very silly.

Earlier in the day, Stuart and I met up with his cousins in Borough Market and had way too much fun with a certain tea pot while eating a huge lavender meringue.

We also had to take a photo of cousins with the mountain ‘o brownies:

Then Stuart and I went to see the BP Portrait Awards and fell dead asleep for an hour on a very comfy sofa on the top floor of the National Portrait Gallery and I left a trail of drool down his shirt. On the way to the opera house, I got another glimpse of the huge airship I keep spotting all over town. I’m geekily keeping a record of my blimp sightings over on Dave’s blog here, just because it’s so much fun to pester him with airship photos.