In a previous life ...
AntwerpIn one of my previous lives, and I've had more than a few so far, I used to bake, and to cook impromptu dinners for other people.
I loved it but it was another time, before the pressure of a long list of things 'I must do' arrived. Back then, I was a mother and a housewife, a dog owner, a wanderer but on a very small scale, while following my first husband's teaching career round the South Island of New Zealand.
I moved to Istanbul, the oven didn't work. No baking was done. Impromptu dinners were usually the stove-top cooked Persian Chicken. Two years later and I arrived in Belgium where I was introduced to strange and unknown idea of a gas oven and really, I hated it. Ours was a dodgy one. The first and the second.
Suddenly, due to an almost-Christmas-Eve oven failure, we have an electric one that almost works and voila, we're hosting Stephanie and Catalina tonight. There's a big fat tasty Shepherds Pie ready to cook, with sultana scones as a dessert. A 'dessert' fit for an Englishwoman and this homesick kiwi. And quite immodestly, I'm delighted with the results.
And it seemed, to me, like the perfect way to say thank you to Stephanie and Catalina for inviting us along to our very first English pantomime here in Antwerpen on Sunday afternoon. It was divine. So very much what I had read of growing up but never actually attended.
Tot straks from this kiwi in Belgium
Reader Comments (7)
Your first panto? Really? Did you join in with the audience participation, and groan at the awful jokes?
Cinderella in Monsterland sounds like fun, anyway.
Okay, now I'm reeeallly curious - curious enough to risk asking, 'What is an English pantomime?' Call me a crazy yankee, but I've never heard of such ... (Ummm ... isn't pantomime it's own language? )
I grew up, feasting mainly on literature and television from the UK and so I was familar with the Pantomime thing but don't recall really seeing one. Wiki explains, Barbara: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantomime
It's the first panto, billed as a proper English panto, that I recall attending. The concept definitely flavoured the New Zealand concerts I attended ... the cross-dressing and etc but yes, the first, Simon,
There used to be a classic pantomime every year in Wellington when I was growing up, just before Christmas. I don't think they do them any more.
I remember Cinderella one year and Dick Whittington another. With the pantomime dame played by a man and lead boy played by a young woman.
New Zealand was so English in some things, wasn't it Catherine? It doesn't surprise me to read this. I guess they were around in Dunedin too ... I just never saw them.
Thank you for the pant info link. It sounds like a most amusing art form, one I wish we yankees could see. I think a few elements might be present in some way, but nothing 'full-on'.
No worries. I was so sure that someone somewhere could give you a more complete description than I :-) Clearly, Barbara, you need to return to Europe one day soon.