Harry Potter and the live orchestra

Yesterday we made another trip to the Royal Albert Hall for a showing of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone with the soundtrack played by a live orchestra.

Our train brings us into platform 10 of King's Cross Station, which is obviously right next to Platform 9 3/4. This shop is always really busy. There's a trolley embedded in the wall there where you can have your picture taken and there's always a queue for that. Years ago they had it somewhere else and it wasn't as commercialised.

We had some time to spare, so we walked up the road to the British Library. We've been meaning to go in for years. It's a massive place with the deepest cellars in the UK full of books, maps, papers and all sorts of other materials. It was full of students using the wifi and taking up all the tables in the cafe. They have various exhibitions there, but we just went around their free 'treasures' exhibit. It's a darkened room full of display cases containing many wonders. These included music written by Bach, Mozart, Handel and others, original handwritten lyrics by The Beatles, the Magna Carta, the original Beowulf manuscript and many bibles, qurans and other religious books going back over 1000 years.

The library is right next to the iconic station hotel that features in some of the Harry Potter movies.

We met up with some of the family and made our way to the venue. We are lucky to sometimes get use of a box right next to the royal one, but the Queen was not there this time. There was a massive screen where they showed the film as the orchestra played. I have to say that you tended to forget it was live music as you were absorbed in the story, but they did do a great job. They are doing the whole series, but I'm not desperate to go to more of these. It was fun anyway. My sister's family all dressed up as characters, but I didn't see as many in costume as I expected. She has small kids who went as Harry and Hermione. They loved it.

It was a fun outing. I count myself lucky to have access to such amazing venues just a couple of hours from home.

I'm Steve, the geeky guitarist.

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