We have a wonderful ice cream parlour, quite close to where we live called The Orange Elephant! When you drive along the dual carriageway, near to the turn off, there is an orange elephant statue with an ice cream in its trunk! Martin, my husband, and I have often commented on it in the past, never realising the significance of it 🤔 We only found out last year and it has become a place we like to visit on special occasions.
What better place to go to on your birthday then?! 🍦🍨🍦
I have to admit I was a little worried about how I would be feeling over my birthday period because we had been to London just a couple of days before. We had been up to the London Colosseum to see the live action show Spirited Away.
For anyone who doesn't know, Spirited Away is a Japanese animated film that was released in 2001. It was created by Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli and it is a most wonderful film. There have been many films released by Studio Ghibli and they are all beautiful but Spirited Away has always felt special to us.
When Martin found out that they were bringing the live action show over to London from Japan, we were very excited and decided that we would try and get tickets, if we could. We found out that there was a dedicated phone number for disabled customers and we were ready to phone the minute the tickets went on sale! We thought we might have trouble getting through to someone but we were very lucky and got through quite quickly.
We had bought our tickets, they were in a box as I knew I would need to go in my wheelchair but, I decided that I would transfer to my seat as I thought it might be more comfortable and convenient.
We had booked tickets for a Wednesday matinee as we live such a long way from London. First of all we had thought that we would go up and back on that day but after thinking about it, it is about a four hour drive from where we are, we decided to book a Travelodge outside London so that it would break up the journey for Martin, who has to do all the driving. I haven't renewed my driving licence as I have to have a medical licence that only lasts for three years and as Martin loves driving, it's not a problem.
We are both so happy that we got tickets for the show as it was amazing. It was beautifully done, using puppetry to bring some characters to life. That was so clever and I didn't look at the people operating the puppets, they were just so convincingly performed!
Martin and I are both theatre nerds, as that is how we met, we were both performing, having trained in London! We also both worked in theatres in London before we moved down to where we are now, and it was only four years later that I had my diagnosis of MS. I'm so glad that we are living here and not in London because even though it is better, London is not disabled friendly 😔 But we were very lucky when we drove up because we managed, quite by accident, to get a disabled parking space just a couple of streets over from the theatre! We were right in the centre of London, so someone was watching over us that day!
We had a wonderful time and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. It was a great treat for us both and, as our birthdays are only eleven days apart, we bought it for ourselves as our birthday treat and what a treat it was ☺️
XxXxX
As always, I will leave you with some special Rosie love! 😻
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