As You Like It!

My latest senior moment meant we nearly missed heading out to Pitmedden Garden for a picnic to see the Festival Players get their Shakespeare on. Too late for our once a year trip to M&S for goodies. Nothing else for it but a Dale Winton style supermarket sweep for some pretty sorry - in fact a wee bit boggin' - snacks from the co-op.

But back to the action and after the usual five minutes of trying to get my head into what on earth was going on on stage, we all settled in and enjoyed it. So too did Ben, the resident Pitmedden garden cat, who has perfected mooching by finely tuning his feline senses to seek out the poshest picnickers. So obviously not us then.

And there are really, really posh picnickers there. Tweeds and Dubarry ahoy! Picnic tables ......avec table cloths, waterproof capes with statement binding, luxury picnic seats with inbuilt soft furnishings, corks a popping every few minutes and an array of delicious frowning and tut tutting if anyone dares to block their view. The heathen in me likes to people watch.

With the small troupe of actors playing the women's parts as well, Dave unwittingly cameoed again. Last year, he was the unexpected subject of flirting all for the audience's amusement (and me and the kids, but not so much Dave), this year his beard was the star attraction. Next year he'll maybe dress up as a woman himslef just to avoid detection. I'm not very sure that Shakespeare liked women very much, given how they feature in his plays. Or maybe, he was a wee bit scared of them.

Kids loved it, as did we. So that's the annual cultural injection in the bag until next year. Back to Marvel films at the cinema in the interim. As we like it.