Grimm Night Out

John Clare's garden.

If you stay at home, not much can go wrong, but you don't get many surprises that way. (At least we don't.  If you do, please let us know more!) If we venture out, unexpected things often happen to us and that's good, isn't it?

A musical number.

Of course there's lots of chores to keep us at home and our teenage son Dan is really hard to shift, but even a trip to the shops gives him exercise and you never know who we will meet.

Kiss the frog!

Last week we drove north to the recycle centre, PC World and B&Q in Peterborough, then went looking for a tea or a beer in the beautiful countryside on the limestone ridge near Stamford. They do a nice tea at John Clare's old cottage in Helpston, but we arrived just as they were cashing up. A poster for a forthcoming story telling evening caught our eye and we decided to book it up.

We found a farm shop for tea and watched the resident swallows go frantic as kites, buzzards, kestrels and a hobby falcon flew by. Seeing our interest, the lady in the cafe put us onto a secret nature reserve called Swaddywell Pit that was just across the road. It turned out to be a wild flower paradise with hundreds of pyramidal orchids in flower. Then we drove home through the attractive honey-coloured stone villages of the area. It's like the Cotswolds in miniature.

Thespian.

One village is dominated by a great gastro-pub and some tastefully converted stone barns that border the roadside. Outside one of them was a stack of garden furniture which I thiought was the remains of an afternoon party, but Hanna was convinced they were for sale. We made a swift Uey and I was dispatched to ring doorbells. It turned out that the furniture was not for sale; it was free! My grandpa-van has a roof rack and a big luggage space, so we were able to cram it all in and take it home. It needs some restoration, but I'll report on that later. The point is, we went to B&Q to buy a table and chairs for the garden, but they didn't have anything nice. We got a decent set of hardwood furniture just for going out and being open to opportunity!

The best bit of our adventure was that we went back to attend the story telling session; and that was free too.

Sibling rivalry?

The John Clare Trust had booked  a touring theatre company to come and perform "Grimm Fairy Tales" outdoors, but the tour had been dogged by bad weather and poor attendances. It's been so wet here that people just don't risk buying advance tickets for an evening outside, preferring to see how it turns out on the night. The troupe had been booked, but ticket sales were non-existent so the organisers took the brave step of opening the doors and letting anyone in who was interested.  In the end about a dozen families and some leather-clad bikers had a brilliant night out in the orchard behind the cottage, with delicious cakes and coffee from the Trust, and beer from the pub next door.

Happy Dan.

The show took us through a short biography of the Brothers Grimm and half a dozen of their stories, illustrating that the Grimms were just as derivative as Disney when it comes to story telling. The cast were agile, relaxed and humorous and everyone was bewitched for a couple of happy hours on a sunlit evening in lovely surroundings. Dan loved every minute and I had to keep re-playing the video footage I took during the show.

Please check out The Pantaloons to see if they are performing near you. Don't miss them, even if you have no kids.