I hope everyone has had a Happy New Year. I’ve had a wonderful time relaxing over the holiday and enjoying simple things with my family and a few good friends. We celebrated the New Year with a short break in London.
Down In The KitchenWe visited the author Charles Dickens’ Museum at number 48 Doughty Street, well worth a visit, over five floors it was like walking back in time. Nicholas Nickleby was written there. His study was where he followed a self imposed strict regime writing between breakfast and lunch with no distractions. When he lived there in 1837 he wore his hair long in the Regency period style.
Books From Charles Dickens’ StudyHis wife had two Children at this house already having an older child and the then the family moved after a couple of years. The nursery of the house has a prison grille demonstrating the influence that his childhood experiences had on his later life. Being forced to work at 14 when his father was sent to debtors prison.
On a wall in the museum section was a quote:
Mr Micawber’s famous, and oft-quoted, recipe for happiness from David Copperfield:
“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.”
Dickens loved the Christmas period and wrote novels to coincide and remind people to enjoy the seasonal celebrations.
Outside Sadler’s Wells TheatreA special treat was tickets to watch the newly knighted choreographer Sir Matthew Bourne’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’ at Sadlers Wells theatre the music was quite sublime composed by Tchaikovsky, one of my favourite composers, It retold the gothic styled fairy tale by Charles Perrault, featuring fabulous costumes designed by Lez Brotherston and brought to life by fabulous dancers who retold the story so well my Dad commented it was the first time he hadn’t missed speech in a piece of dance theatre. My favourite dance was Princess Aurora and Caradoc the son of the dark fairy Carabosse truly fabulous dancing.
The cast was :
Aurora – Ashley Shaw
Leo – Dominic North
Count Lilac – Christopher Marney
Carabosse – Adam Maskell
Caradoc – Adam Maskell
We hadn’t realised we required tickets to watch the New Year fireworks at The Thames and all the viewing points were sold out, but there was a great atmosphere down on The Strand and we had quite a crowd to count down to the New Year and we just saw the top most fireworks explosions so it all turned out well.
I hope you all have a fabulous New Year with good health and happiness.
