Magical Lion King Minch Day

This was an exciting day in our lives: a day of much joy. We spent the morning packing for our trip to Ireland the following morning (are you, dear reader, not excited for us to move on to another country? For we are, indeed!) and then headed off to London Town to do some things.

Where is the tiny cyclist?

If Bryony had her eyes open in this photo (an unlikely occurrence), we are sure it would be right at home at ASOS Marketplace. Tiny alleyway in London, and what?

In our wanderings around the West End part of town, we accidentally became entrapped in a street magician's performance when Bryony volunteered to be his Lady Assistant. She had no idea what she was getting herself in for.

Her little innocent face filled with the joy of magic at the beginning of the performance. The magician man had bet those two other gentlemen twenty pounds (seen being held by Bry) that he could escape some kind of Houdini-esque chain contraption in less than three minutes.

Magician dude, who claimed to be Australian, but looked like Nigel Kennedy (that magician who did kids shows and stuff when we were children) and totally had a NZ accent, explaining to Bry the Rules of The Trick. Given the quality of his show, we think he was maybe doing NZ's reputation a favour by pretending to be Australian.

For some reason, The Trick involved him taking off his suit and revealing this very revealing outfit. At least Nigel kept the hat.

Bry was forced into this miniature velvet tent thing to prove to the assembled public that there were no bolt cutters or anything of the sort inside. It was here that Nigel would perform his Miraculous Feat of Escaping the Chains. Bry is definitely not already regretting volunteering.

Bry takes a bow, while Nigel admires the view. This is when it got creepy and Bry wished she hadn't volunteered.

Creeped out face while Nigel chills in chains.

"Dear God, what have I gotten myself in for?"

Bry is asked to keep time, which made her happy again. It's just like refereeing netball, but with less clothing and more metal.

Nigel hops into the little velvet changing room, to prepare for The Trick With The Chains.

Bry gets really into counting down the time. We would like to point out that it was SO COLD on this day in Londontown. So cold.

Bry looks unsure again. Nigel was perhaps telling some of his bad jokes again.

Voila! Nigel is free! (More's the pity. Just kidding. Sort of.)

After that invigorating experience, we were off to The Lion King! The Pottses back home had recommended we see it, and had given Ally some Ca$hM0n@y for her 21st to buy tix (thanks, Pottses!) And it was AWESOME. The way they did the animals was so cool, like the giraffes were on stilts on their hands and feet, and there were people with antelopes on a kind of bike thing... Ok, this is a terrible explanation, but basically they were extremely complex human puppet costume things, and it was incredible. The little Simba and Nala children were so cute! And the scenery, oh the scenery! We really liked it. And the songs were like in the movie, so we knew all the lyrics. The only bad part was when Bry spilled her almost full bag of M&Ms all over the floor. That part was sad. And since there were young children sitting next to us, she had to set a good example and not eat them anymore. But for health's sake, that was probably a good idea anyway.

The Lions at the Lyceum. 

It was a day of shows, for after the "Magic" Show and the Theatre Show, we were off to a MusicComedyAwesomeness Show. For those of you who don't know, Alex is a normal fan of Tim Minchin. She thinks he is awesome and talented and funny and good looking. Bryony is another league of fan. She stalks him on the internet and stuff (but never in real life) (geography is a sad restriction) (but actually, we kiiiinda tried to stalk him after the show) (that's different though, we didn't, like, go to his house or anything) (anyway, back to the story). And this was a very good thing, because he wasn't supposed to be doing any shows while we were in the UK, but when Bry was doing some routine stalking one day, he had just announced a small show in London. While we were there. And because she was awake in NZ and all the other crazy fans were asleep in the UK, we got tickets! Ally awoke to about a million messages on facebook announcing the purchase of the tickets. It was exciting.

Anyway, we got the tube to Elephant and Castle (officially our favourite name of an area of London) to go see TIM MINCHIN AHHHHHHH. We made friends in the suuuper long line to get in, with these two awesome girls from Essex. They had seen Minch many times before, including at this alpine music/comedy/skiing festival thing in Austria or somewhere equally as exciting. Because he wasn't famous there, they bumped into him at the bar and whatnot, and are basically his bffs. So jealous.

Minch was late on because he was worried the people in the line would miss out if he started on time (how thoughtful), so the opening band started like an hour after they were supposed to. The opening band was Tim Minchin And His Band. The real show started when he went offstage and then came back on without his shoes, ready to perform comedy. He played so many of our faves, and Brybry (who is the weird stalkery kind of fan) even knew all of the obscure early stuff he played in the warmup set. Look him up on youtube, yo.

Some classy Tiger Beers at the pub/thai restaurant called The Elephant and Castle, in Elephant and Castle, which was across the road from the gig.

We suspected some Thai Mafia involvement in the pub, as they dealt exclusively in cash. 

Alex pretended to take photos of Bryony, while actually trying to take sneaky photos of how dodgy the pub was. Still, there were some people wearing collared shirts, so it can't have been that bad. Unless they were The Mafia.

It was at this pub/thai restaurant/mafia den that we were treated to what is possibly the best pick up line of all time. A highly intoxicated man who had tried to talk to us when we were ordering drinks walked all the way across the room to approach us at our table, pointed to the bowl of fries on said table, and said simply "chips". Then stared at us expectantly as we processed this witticism. We affirmed that the foodstuff on the table was indeed "chips". He smiled knowingly. We were in love at once, and fought over the right to be his bride. 

Oh hello there, handsome blue man.

Such flowing ginger locks. 

We're pretty sure he was serenading us personally. Can you see anyone else in the picture? No, didn't think so. The song was just for us. We would legit fight over the right to be HIS bride. Sadly for us, he already has one. But there's always polygamy. 

Tim Minchin is SO F**KING ROCK.

After the gig, we waited around with our New Friends in the hopes of getting to have a wee chat and a cuddle with Minch (he likes to do that, especially the cuddles), but it was freezing cold, and we received realtime intelligence from proper stalker-type Minch fans that he had stuff to do, so wasn't coming to say hi. So we caught our very first red bus, and went home, happy in our hearts that we had, against all odds, been to a Tim Minchin gig, and had stood about a metre away from him (thanks to Ally's crowd-manoeuvering skillz - sorry well-mannered Minch fans who don't think crowdbarging at a rock gig is normal, when it is actually so f**king rock) and seen his pretty, pretty face in person. This was a good day.