Oh no! The clocks have gone back and now we are faced with the dreariest time of the year. Long dank and drear evenings and nights; fog, rain, frost, strikes, by-elections, world-wide atrocities and natural disasters. The list seems endless. Hang on, though! There is the beacon of Christmas and New Year! But afterwards? An even longer period of gloomy days and wet eve-nings with the added burden of those heavy January credit card bills. But as the Pythons sang “always look on the bright side of life”. At this time of year there are many days of note; admittedly some are sad in remembrance of bad moments of history, but oth-ers full of joy and happiness. In no particular order we have Thanksgiving; Bonfire Night; Halloween; Diwali; Remembrance Day; Eid; Christmas Day; Hogmanay; Hanukah; and even Black Friday, when we are jolted out of our winter doldrums. Days when we remember the good old days, which mostly weren’t very good at all. Days when we think how lucky we are to live in a safe land. Days when we suddenly get a new lease of life, and think I am going to get out of my chair; and do some-thing! But hold on, I am not that enthusiastic that I want to actually join a group; I just want to be entertained. During the winter months the Riverside is buzzing with entertainment and activ-ity to suit anyone. The Revelaires present an evening of song and dance to celebrate their 70th year. Laughing Chili give us several evenings of top- class fun at their Comedy Club, and for the more brainy they offer their Speed Quiz evenings. Come along and surprise yourself by realising just how little you know. Harold Steptoe once mis-quoted Shakespeare by saying that “Music don’t only soothe the savage breast, it gives headaches as well”. But not the music we offer at our concerts whether it be classical or soothing jazz rhythms, or more upbeat and seasonal with Zodiac’s “Holly Jolly Christmas” show. The young-sters of Starlight, IAMT and Riverside Youth Theatre show that their genera-tion is just as talented and hardworking as the oldies whether singing and dancing or acting on stage. But I would be expected to laugh or applaud, can I just not go and sit in the dark and snooze and watch a classic film on the big screen? Yup! We have that too. And the thing that brings all of those different audiences together? The annual Riverside panto in January. Oh, yes it does! For dates of all these go to our website www.riversidearts.co.uk or view the Riverside Presents advertisement on p21 in this magazine. There you will also find information on all those joining-in activities which earlier in the article I inferred you were too idle to join.
Riverside Arts Centre 57/59 Thames Street, Sunbury TW16 5QF www.riversidearts.co.uk 07796 531427 info@riversidearts.co.uk
Registered charity 272929