Day Out

Today was Katie's birthday day out! We had a steady morning. Almost too steady as we had to run out just realising it was time to go! The first activity of the day was a birthday present from me- tickets to an Opera North music and drama workshop based on L'enfant et les sortileges. The workshop was great- fun and also a really good explanation of the opera. Katie's read a book of the story that B lent her and has listened to the music but this explained it in a great way. And she loved learning Le Dance des Rainettes (dance of the tree frogs). Using green squishy balls, exactly as they do in the show! It was our first opportunity to visit the city's refurbished theatre which just reopened after a long and hugely expensive renovation- we were rather impressed.

I took Katie for a treat lunch in a lovely coffee shop. Bless her, before the workshop I had said we'd get lunch after it and she said "if we can just find a cheap egg and cress sandwich that will be fine". She was chuffed to bits to go in the cafe and choose what she wanted from the menu, have a pot of tea for two and take time over lunch together.

The second bit of the day was her birthday present from my sister. Tickets for the performance of L'Enfant. In the stalls. Not up in the gods where we often sit at shows. The performance was fantastic. Opera isn't really my thing usually, but this was great fun. The staging was brilliant. The story telling was a perfect combination of funny, moving, dark with a beautiful ending that brought tears. Before the show, Katie went to look in the pit as she normally does at a show. She was looking at the clarinet section and talking about the fact they all had two clarinets with one mouthpiece. The whole section turned and waved at the enthusiastic little monkey, then one of them picked his clarinet up and "played a hello in music", as she described it. She loved it! She very much enjoyed the bassoon playing in the performance - the contrabassoon played as the creaky old chair coming to life and was hilarious. Both the bassoons and the clarinets had quite prominent parts. She told B later that the contra was "contrabassoonitious".

We had brought Katie's remaining birthday money with us so she could have a bit of time shopping after. It was the first time she's done it. Until now, she's handed all her money to me to spend as I see think she'll like. This time, she's said she wants to spend most of it on tickets for something, which she was happy for me to choose and surprise her with later (I booked that today). But she took the remaining money and gift voucher with her today. She chose exactly the tshirt I would have gone and bought for her and a fab looking bath bomb in Lush. She didn't especially enjoy the shopping experience. She didn't like much of the choices and what she tried didn't fit her. But she came away with her tshirt and I bought her new dance leggings & top. She'd got a voucher as an apology from the toy shop for screwing up ordering her birthday monkey. She used it to buy ANOTHER monkey!

We then had a great time exploring some of the new City of Culture things. An exhibition of mosaic birds in the station, a city centre screening of video shorts imagining life in 2097, playing the new loan grand piano in the station.

We finished the day off with her eating a giant pile of sushi as we headed home. A happy Katie.