December 28. Day 363. Look behind you

The pantomime is a British Christmas institution. The British invented it and in my (limited) experience any attempt to recreate it elsewhere on the planet fails miserably (despite the fact that many an Aussie soap star has boosted his or her bank balance through the art).
Oliver finds the whole pantomime dame thing fascinating to the point that he wrote a university assignment on it.
So a pantomime was always on the agenda. We'd been told that to get the authentic experience it was best to travel beyond the big smoke, that the ones in the 'burbs had more soul than the giant arena ones in London.
So we went to Maidstone in Kent where the dame Mademoiselle Marmalade was being played by a bloke we met in Brisbane earlier in the year.
It was a fine choice, partly because the train trip into the English countryside was rather nice but mostly because the panto lived up to all expectations. And then back to London for show two of the day. There's no stopping some people.