CBeebies Live

Posted on 2015/04/23 23:35:08 (April 2015).

[Sunday 5th April 2015]
Erika is a fan of Mr Tumble, and so I was pleased to notice that he was doing a live show with some other CBeebies friends. I'd decided it might be nice to go see this as just the two of us, so Chie could have a bit of a break.

It was a bit of an endeavour getting there, as it was at the Wembley Arena, and the Jubilee line was suspended. Apparently the best route in the morning for us was to get a national rail train from Kentish Town to Hendon, then a bus from there. The train part of the journey was pretty quick (albeit that we had a long wait for it), and the bus, while it took a fair while, wasn't too bad as we managed to sit at the front of the top deck, and Erika recently likes pretend she's the driver. I can't pretend the scenery (the rather grim residential areas 'twixt Hendon and Wembley) was particularly pleasant to look at, but Erika didn't seem to care.

We arrived a bit too early in the end - the show didn't start until 11, but given the uncertainty of how we were getting there I'd got us there for not long after 10. So we had an extended wait with Erika regularly asking "Where's Mr Tumble? What's Mr Tumble doing?" to the odd backdrop of Justin's album of party song covers (including most surprisingly his rendition of What Does the Fox Say?).

I think we both quite enjoyed the actual show - whilst the "plot" (if you can call it that) was a bit half arsed, there were moments of greatness - Mr Tumble's rockstar-esque first appearance on stage, a sly Spinal Tapp "turn it up to 11" reference, and for me the personal highlight was Justin's sidekick Robert the Robot dolefully breaking into a solo of Send in the Clowns which was delightfully out of place with the tone of the rest of the show.

When I asked Erika afterwards what her favourite bit it was when Aunt Polly showed up, and wandered round the audience nonchalantly spraying everyone with a large water pistol. That was good too.

Once it was all over we left, buying an incongruous Hello Kitty balloon on the way out, and decided to try the rail replacement bus for the return journey, which took us to Stonebridge Park to connect with the Bakerloo line. From there we had a long slow run back into the centre of London, and got off at Oxford Circus, where Chie met us with Erika's buggy, in which Erika promptly fell asleep.

Went for dim sum at Joy King Lau while Erika was dozing, which was delicious as ever, then headed home.

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