Pirates of Penzance

A week or so ago, the Godalming Operatic Society brought the Pirates of Penzance to what used to be called the Thorndike Theatre in Leatherhead.

Rather than walk up from the river, we thought on this occasion to park in the Swan Centre, a car park which turned out to be home to lots of trolleys. But non-scoring trolleys as it was all regular and managed by the relevant trolley jockeys. Not strays at all.

While in the shopping centre adjacent we had the interesting contraption above. What sort of person would choose to pay to be made an attraction in it? In any case, what does it do?

Quick foray into the charity shop opposite the theatre to see whether they had any gents tweed jackets. Answer no, but they did have some near misses. Outside to inspect the tree hole outside, which struck me as being mildly dangerous. A drunk, a child or an older person could get a foot stuck. 

The theatre was busy, mostly with older people, but some children too, some rather too small. The audience also managed a fair amount of noise what with noisy chatter from behind us about productions we have known and sweet wrappers from further back during the performance proper. The curtain, snapped above, for some reason brought to mind the heavy interval curtains of my youth, designed to contain any fire on the stage and with a label saying 'asbestos'. Perhaps not quite the thing any more.

The show went off well enough, a credit to the society, although to be fair, not really my sort of thing, although I think I managed to stay awake. Slightly surprised to read afterwards that it had been one of the Gilbert & Sullivan hits of its day, up there with the Mikado, with hundreds of performances, plenty of piracy (in the US, copyright cheats in those days) and revivals.

We did not win the Stoneleigh wine, one of the prizes in the raffle. As it turns out, not the Stoneleigh near us, rather some place in New Zealand, where they grow the wine stocked by all decent supermarkets over here. See reference 3 - where they are not into the misty, rolling hills which a lot of wine estates go in for, but I do learn that they 'believe that beautiful things can happen when [they] let nature take its course'. Very eco. Also into falcons for some reason: maybe they eat the sorts of birds which eat the grapes.

We thought it best to take tea while the crowd dispersed and got their cars out of the rather cramped car park. Which gave us an opportunity to admire this interesting example of 1960's shuttered concrete, fashionable then and I have liked it ever since.

The rather small entrance to the theatre, snapped on exit. Presumably the modest size is some obscure consequence of the theatre being a converted cinema. Not that you know that from the inside.

The rather grand building at the bottom of the High Street. I had thought grand enough to be the Royal Arsenal Cooperative Society, but it turns out that the building has had a fairly chequered history, but starting out, at least upstairs, as offices for the Invincible Motor Insurance Company in the 1930's, having been the Swan Hotel for a long time before that. Hence the Swan above the door of what is now a Travelodge. Hence the Swan Centre next door.

The site of old, from the days when Cortinas were cars rather than heritage items.

While there is virtually no trace of the insurance company on the Internet, apart from its advertising plaques, now collectors' items.

While the Swan Hotel gets its plaque, even if the Invincible Motor Insurance Company does not.

A first sighting of the moon for a bit from the top of the Swan car park, top slightly right of middle in the snap above. Looked like a new moon to me, but described by the usually reliable reference 6 as 40%, that is to say near half. Maybe we have a cloud problem. But the altitude of 50° that it gives looks about right.

Home to tuck into the pressed bacon, purchased on the occasion noticed at reference 4. Taken with potato salad (not made with the most suitable potatoes for the job, but needs must) and green salad. Quite eatable, mild with plenty of fat - but I don't suppose I shall be buying it again.

Reconstituting the streaky bacon in this way does seem like a lot of bother. Perhaps it figures in the Polish diet in some special way. Google failed to turn up anything useful about pressed bacon, but it did turn up the introduction to factory-style bacon curing in Minnesota at reference 5. Lots of chemicals, some smoke.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/02/piano-66.html. A side-issue.

Reference 2: https://godalmingoperatic.org/. The company.

Reference 3: https://stoneleigh.com/. The wine we failed to win.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/02/new-bag.html.

Reference 5: https://nassaufoods.com/resources/basic-manufacturing-of-bacon/.

Reference 6: https://www.timeanddate.com/.