The Epitome of Cool

Since I last posted, the week has been fairly quiet. After sleeping 12 hours the first night after arrival, you'd think we had made the necessary time adjustment, however, Dalton promptly stayed up until after midnight the night before he went back to school. We were all pretty grumpy the next morning. We finally settled in, more or less, yesterday, and we're slowly beginning to try to clean up from the giant mess that happened when we opened our suitcases.

Still, today, as I believe many of you knew, we had tickets to go see Peter Pan - a pantomime, which was performed at a theatre out in Woking. For those of you who don't know (as I didn't) a pantomime is sort of a play, with a great deal more tongue-in-cheek joking and audience participation. Someone told me that they can be filled with blue humour, but this one was billed as one for the family, and, to boot, Henry Winkler was playing the role of Captain Hook.

Having grown up watching "Happy Days", Henry Winkler (aka "The Fonz"), was pretty much the coolest person alive for most of my formative years. So I personally was pretty pumped to go see him in the role of Captain Hook, even if it meant I was going to be sitting several rows away. I did manage to get a photo to come out - there was no flash photography allowed, which meant that getting the picture to come out decently was fairly difficult. Still, you can see him in action, with all his scurvy pirates, in the photo below.

So, we watched the panto, which we all enjoyed greatly - it was well done, I thought, and good for all ages. It had, of course, the obligatory nods to "Happy Days" throughout, and was just good fun to watch and participate in. Among other things, it had a pirate version of the Twelve Days of Christmas, pirates attacking the crowd with water guns, and a sing-along. Like I said, a bit more audience involvement than the typical play.

After the play, the kids were hungry and were yearning to blow some of their Christmas cash, so we headed to the Toys 'R Us store, where both kids proceeded to eliminate all of their Christmas funds in a few short minutes, and then to the Woking mall where we grabbed some fast food. We then proceeded to try to make our way back to the train station so we could go home - however, having never been in Woking before, and having been a bit turned about by making a wrong turn on the way to the theatre, we were reduced to looking for signs.

So, there we were, walking up the street towards what we believed was the train station (as it turns out, it was), when we walk by this little restaurant and I hear Michelle say what sounds to me like "There it is!" I'm thinking that there's some small little doorway that leads into the station and am a little confused, so I turn and come back to where she is standing. Then, I look through the window and see... Henry Winkler. After a bit of discussion, we go in to meet him, and I have to say that he was as cool in person as I could've asked for - he was very nice, he signed our program, he shook our hands, asked what we were doing in Woking, and agreed to take a photo with our kids. He even gave Maggie a kiss on the head. Now how cool is that?