You can't cancel Christmas....

....but that is exactly what the Echo arena tried to do this weekend, when they decided to pull the plug on their scheduled pantomime, Sleeping Beauty.

The Friday performance was billed as a preview, so while the cancellation of that performance was bad, there is always a risk that there could be teething problems. To cancel the Saturday matinee with 40  minutes notice was,  however, scandalous. It was our grand daughter, Ava's,  first ever panto and she was inconsolable as was her mother. Ava had on her Princess Aurora dress and tiara and had really been looking forward to going.  We were just one of hundreds of families who were in the same boat. Just what do you tell the little ones.

The panto had been rocked earlier in its build up, by the news that its star Andrew Lancel had been arrested for alleged child sex abuse claims. He stepped down to be replaced by Charlotte Milchard.
One line of reasoning for the cancellations was that she had not got up to speed with the part.

The setting for the performances is the riverside big top, and the technical difficulties for which the cancellation was blamed relate to the Christmas market and festival component of the tented village. It may be, of course, that they just hadn't sold enough tickets!!

So, off to the box office to get a refund, and I knew as I approached the window that it was not going to go well. Sure enough, as my name was not on the bottom of the tickets, I could not have a refund, 'they may have been stolen sir'. Liverpool really does let itself down sometimes, and it tries so hard to cast of the chains of its past.

The tickets are now in the post with a serious letter of complaint and claims for the £15 of parking charges which my party paid expecting to stay for 3 hours, not 30 minutes.

Santa was able to work his magic, however, and we managed to pick up tickets for the evening performance of Cinderella, at the Liverpool Empire. Ava changed into her Cinderella ball gown, the production was spectacular and at the end of the day we all lived happily ever after. Ho ho ho!