7438/19958
We went on a day trip to St Albans today. On the way there we drove through the town whose under 8 football team had been beaten by Phoebe’s team yesterday. “Oh dear,” I said, “This lot must be hurting after yesterday.” I rolled down the window and shouted “6-4” at a random group of old women. “Look how upset they look,” I said. Some people outside a cafe also got a reminder of their humiliation. “We’ve got one of the victorious team in the car!” I shouted. “Look at them, trying to pretend they don’t know what I am talking about. Pathetic.”
It’s good to be a winner. Having supported York City all this time, it’s not something that I’ve been able to experience before.
We were heading to the park in St Albans to see some ruins and have lunch and see what else cropped up. I’d wanted to go to the museum, but they’ve taken the extraordinary decision to close on Sunday. Even Sundays during the school holidays. Surely Sunday is the big museum day? The park car park and cafe and the park itself were teeming with people, some of whom would surely be at a lose end and would have paid to go to look round the museum. But St Albans museum would rather leave that money on the table than open up at the weekend. Phoebe said that maybe it was staffed by people who wanted to spend Sundays with their families. As if anyone who works in a museum has managed to find a partner, let alone have any kids. The building with the mosaic in was also closed, though you could at least look in at the window and see it. It was pretty impressive and the Roman Wall could not close, mainly because it had fallen down and so they couldn’t shut the gates. But even if they’d shut the gates and it was still intact, you’d still be able to look at it from outside. It was exciting to stand at the place where the London Gate had once been and see where people would have been coming and going from St Albans two thousand years ago, as well as to imagine what might have been going on inside those walls.
We scooted across to
the Roman theatre, which I’d only found out about during an internet search and which I wasn’t expecting too much from. It’s no Colosseum and of course not comparable to the theatres in Pompeii, one of which, on a solo trip, I sat in and imagined the performers of 2000 years ago and felt vaguely connected to (
nearly 20 years ago, but still within the bailiwick of this blog), but it’s still an impressive site (and if I read correctly, the only remaining Roman theatre in the UK). The sign said that 7000 people could watch the shows there, though Catie in particular was sceptical about that. Maybe people sat on each other’s knees. It didn’t seem big enough. Definitely the kind of sized venue that I would have been booked into, rather than the Off Menu podcast. Even better we avoided the £10 entry fee (that would have been for all four of us), as the lady was only accepting cash as her machine was broken and we had no cash. She kindly let us come in as that wasn’t our fault. Take that Rome. There was also the outlines of where some shops that were burned down by Boudica (though probably not personally. Pretty cool.
On the way back the kids joined in with shouting 6-4 out the windows and called the people of the town “Suckers”. It’s great to be a winner.
