Big Night Out.

I went to see Wicked last night. Those aren't words I thought I'd ever write but it happened. In real life.

My niece won tickets for her and her friend to see the show and I thought I'd join them. I volunteered to go. No-one forced me. I decided, of my own free will, to buy a ticket for Wicked and use it. Well, I wish there was some single word modern parlance to describe Wicked because it was actually very enjoyable. I sat near a dog!

Blind people are so lucky. I had to leave my dog at home and there was this jammy bastard sitting two rows in front of us with her dog sitting quietly beside her. It's not fair but it didn't spoil the evening. In fact, it made the evening. Every time there was a boring bit all you had to do is look to the right a touch and you'd see a dog sitting up straight in a seat in the theatre. Worth every penny.

I have to say the show didn't start well. In fact, it started really badly. Two songs in and I hadn't a clue what was going on. Surely twirling and pointing couldn't be the plot? The chorus sang so loudly that you really couldn't understand a word plus there was a massive dragon hovering over the stage that totally stole focus. Shame it was never used or explained or even mentioned because it looked good.

The story is a pretty ordinary West End sugary tale you've hear a million times before. A green baby grows up and falls in love with a man who is shagging a fairy. But it gets better as it goes on, although it does seem to steal quite heavily from The Wizard of Oz which I think is a bit cheeky.

The main thing about the whole evening was, of course, seeing my niece. She's only been to London a couple of times but hasn't really seen much of the city so I was determined that she would see a bit more this time. You can imagine how happy I was to see her and her friend drinking in a train station bar. That's OK, there's plenty of time to show her the sights.

We went to another pub. It might as well have been the same pub. Still, she got to meet Johnny Candon and that must have kept her mind off how awful the pub looked. Not to worry, there's plenty of time after the show. London is an all night kind of town. The city that never sleeps. 24 hour party people. The bright lights. The big smoke. The city is our oyster.

After the show, we all went home. Young people don't have the stamina anymore. Not like in my day. In my day, you'd wake up at 5am in a puddle of your own puke, piss, shit, blood, sweat, tears, friend's piss and you'd reach for a drink, phone the boss, tell him you were sick, go to the Off Licence, argue that you've never heard of licensing laws, get some "pity booze", go to the pub, have a sandwich to sober up, pick up the kids from school, shout them to sleep, then go to a club until 4am. Lightweights, these days.

If only my niece had seen her Uncle Johnny when he turned up to my house at 3.45 this morning. I texted him to call me instead of knocking but Johnny took that as an insult to his skills as a door-knocker and basically smashed the door to pieces instead. I let him in. It took ages as he was using the outside of the house as support. I showed him to the spare room. He never made it. He slept with Jerk instead. Now that's a night out, niece of mine.

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