After realising daughter was all set for another weekend slumped in front of Sabrina The Teenage Witch on the small screen, I decided to introduce some culture into her life.
"Come on," I said on Saturday morning, "let's go to London."
"Oh goodie," said daughter, "lots of shopping!"
"No," I said, "'not shopping at all, something else called culture. We are going to an art gallery."
"Looking at boring pictures?" she asked aghast.
"No, looking at interesting wonderful and famous pictures and sculptures," I informed her.
I decided the Tate Modern would probably more to her taste than the National Portrait Gallery.
She still looked unimpressed, so I said we could go to Covent Garden afterwards for a quick look round.
We got the bus to the station and bought our tickets before discovering there were no direct trains to London, so we had to get a coach to Three Bridges, then the train.
Having finally got there, daughter actually agreed some of the paintings were quite good, particularly the David Hockney pop art type stuff.
As daughter is definitely going through a 'Kevin and Perry' phase it was, of course, totally uncool for her to actually express any enthusiasm about anything. The highest compliment she would allow was an encouraging grunt.
Still, I had a brilliant time.
After that we went to Covent Garden, had a late lunch and daughter spent more of her Christmas money on bits and pieces.
Reluctant to go home as we were having such fun, I decided to max out the overdraft and buy tickets for a show.
After queuing for an hour waiting for returns and cancellations, we managed to get front row seats for Cats at what I was told was a bargain price but seemed to me exorbitant.
However, I have always wanted to see the show and it was great.
Managed to get the 11pm train home. It only went as far as Three Bridges again, so we had to get a coach to Brighton via Haywards Heath.
Finally got home just after 1am, having had to get a taxi from the station as the buses had stopped running by then.
"That was fun," said daughter the following day. "What are we doing next weekend?"
After calculating how much we'd spent, I told her. "Staying in and watching the telly."
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