Bob’s blog 2: Bob, shares his experience of a special night out

Regular visitors to Leuchie know that guests go on two trips during their 11 night break.

In May I said to the group that I was going to be back on 19 November. Jackie, another regular guest, who is an avid theatre goer, found out that Motown The Musical was commencing a run at the Playhouse on 20 November. After a very brief discussion some of the others decided they would change their November dates to the 19th. Eight wheelchair places were booked and five were immediately snapped up. Iain managed to get funding for a break then too so that was a sixth taken. In August the rota for Leuchie’s care assistants was posted and there was a big rush to be our “pals” for the night!

I told my friends about the plans and I’ve been eagerly anticipating this holiday for months.

On the afternoon of the visit, I had a brilliant idea to have Motown music on the bus to get us in the mood for the performance. Suitable CDs were selected and it was only then that I found that I was seriously out of date with my technology. (Despite having mastered my iPhone, see Blog 1). The new bus doesn’t have a CD player but is equipped with bluetooth and there wasn’t enough time to download music onto the iPhone. So we just had to make do with BBC Radio 2.

We arrived at the theatre early enough to have our photoshoot courtesy of Jo. Then we got to our spaces in time for the care assistants to open the goody bags and hand out sweets, crisps and bottles of water to set us up for the evening.

The performance was ear shatteringly brilliant! The dancers put Strictly to shame, and the highlight was a young Michael Jackson lookalike who stole the show for me.

The only disappointment was the size of the theatre. But maybe I'm being a bit harsh as the last time I had seen a musical it was Cats in the West End in the early 80s! Every year our company's sales conference was hosted by the MD of a different European subsidiary. When it was the UK’s turn, our MD always wanted to out-impress his colleagues, so we got the best seats - I’d hate to see the cost!

Our social secretary, Jackie, has already organised our theatre trip for May 2019 – Thriller Live. This time we’ll have the music ready for the bus!

Photo: Bob with Leuchie's Bookings Manager, Jo, at Motown The Musical at the Edinburgh Playhouse