deer, and king lear...

It doesn't happen often, but this humble blogger is almost speechless. I had such an amazing weekend.

I made plans on saturday with a friend to go down to Richmond, to take a wander through the town, along the Thames and through Richmond Park. I kind of thought the Park might be the size of the Treasury Gardens, but no - times that by about 200! We looked at the map at the front gate and thought we'd take a look at a couple of the old homesteads, a few lakes and ponds (and the amusingly named Spankers Hill), but got to the first place via a massive hill with awesome views and had to rest and stop for lunch! After that we kind of got a bit lost - cos the place was so bloody huge! - and walked a million miles through amazing parklands, foresty bits with lakes and swans, and eventually had to ask for directions on how to get out. Back the way we'd come, of course...

But I'm so glad we got lost, because we came across a traffic stoppingly beautiful herd of deer! The pictures don't do them justice. They had fuzzy little antlers and cute swishy tails...

I walked my little legs off that day, down to ankle stumps, but it was well worth it.

And I was so looking forward to sunday! A while ago I organised tickets to see King Lear at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. A bunch of us went, we had lunch beforehand, and headed to the Globe at 1pm. I wasn't sure how I'd go listening to Shakespeare, and the play was 3 hours long sitting on hard wooden benches (ok, I cheated, I hired a cushion for £1). But I can't tell you how amazing it was - sitting in the open roofed round theatre, with perfect seats facing the stage, and views of the audience on every level up around us, and 'penny stinkers' crammed onto the floor below (well, that's what they would have been called in the 1600's!). It was a magical atmosphere.

The play had the best Shakespeare actors, and the whole thing just gave me goose-bumps. I loved it. 3 hours flew by and then we were all being deafened by the applause. If you come to London, you simply must do this.

Afterwards we stayed at the Globe and had a bottle of wine or two, by chance sitting along-side some of the actors - then headed home.

Blimey, I wasn't speechless after all...!

And to show our broad range of cultural interests, Anna and I watched 4 episodes of Underbelly as well...

58 weekends down, only 2 to go........