(Southend-on-Sea, England, U.K.)

November 25 was my final night in Cambridge. As noted in my previous blog posting, I spontaneously bought a ticket to see a musical put on by Cambridge University students.  I knew nothing else about it.

The musical had the somewhat postmodern name “[Title of Show]”; it is “a musical about creating a musical about creating a musical”. This odd premise really makes your head spin at times, as the distinctions between performance, reality and time gets blurrier as the show progresses.

It was a very intimate theatre with a capacity of about 100 people (although this mid-week show attracted significantly less than that), so there was no chance of feeling distant from the stage.  In fact, the stage was on the same level as the front row of seats.

While it was not as polished as a Broadway production, the show was amusing enough and set the stage (heh) for the professional musical performances that I’ll be watching over the following 4 nights. In fact, I even made my British theatrical debut during the Cambridge musical: one scene required the actors to have an audience member film them for a YouTube video. I happened to be closest to the stage and was thus drafted without warning into the non-speaking role of “videographer”. I was handed a cell-phone and completed my role without incident.

November 26 saw me travel by train from Cambridge to Southend-on-Sea for the Paul Carrack concert I discussed a few posts ago.   The Cliffs Pavilion in the Westcliff district of Southend is the theatre hosting the show and my cozy B&B is precisely 1 minute and 25 seconds by foot from the Pavilion.

I wandered around both Westcliff and downtown Southend during the afternoon.  It is a decent-sized city that also doubles as a seaside resort…at least during the warmer months.  Its claim to fame is having “the longest pleasure pier in the world” – it stretches out more than a mile into the North Sea.  There are rides, unhealthy food, games of chance, tacky trinkets…the sorts of things you would hope to find in a place like this.  While it is the off-season and Southend looks a little deserted in places, there are also some very nice neighbourhoods in the city.

I am also pleased to report that I managed to acquire some vinyl records at a well-stocked store near the pedestrian-only High Street.  The street was full of Christmas shoppers and Christmas trees with blue lights.

As my B&B is so close to the theatre, I had dinner at a fish restaurant just a few steps away.  I rarely eat fish but thought that this would be the best time to have some, because this is the closest I’ll get to the sea during this trip.  It was a cut above your typical “chippy”: my haddock (and chips) was almost all fish and no batter, rather than the other way around.  I felt properly English, having upscale fish and chips with a nice cider by the sea.

Stay tuned for a review of the Paul Carrack concert!