Weekend Visit from Don & Cathy

Don & Cathy were in London on business last week and came to spend some time with us over the weekend. We did married couple Christmas things; for example, Cathy and I went holiday shopping while D and Don drank beer and worked on fantasy football picks at the pub... We did reconnect, though, to take part in a very British Christmas tradition -- we attended a Christmas Pantomime. Pantomime (usually shortened to "panto") is a musical comedy theatre production done at Christmas in the UK (it's not "mime" that we think of in the US, where people act with no words, just body motions). British pantomime incorporates singing, dancing, slapstick, inside jokes, and lots of audience participation. (In fact, there were a lot of audience members there in costume.) There are a number of traditional story-lines, usually based on children's plays; we went to the Horsham Theatre's production of "Peter Pan". It was geared towards families, so it was a pretty tame production, but we had fun. They didn't exactly say it, but we're pretty sure that Don and Cathy will cross the English Channel from Brussels next year to do it again, but this time in costume. Hmmm...