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The sound was unmistakenly Pet Shop Boys, the visuals less so. We were at the ballet once more, although there were no sugar plum fairies or leaping nutcrackers last Thursday night. At Sadler’s Wells for a limited 10-day run, The Most Incredible Thing is based on a three-page Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale of the same name, is scored by Pet Shop Boys and choreographed by Javier de Frutos. The fable is based around a contest to produce ‘the most incredible thing’, with half the kingdom and marriage to the princess to be won.

What made The Most Incredible Thing that little bit more incredible, though, was in part the music – which was at times very modern electronic, and at others, very orchestral – and the film projection interludes, which helped the story along. Graphically styled to be very communist and Eastern European in flavour, the clips punctuated parts of the story where needed and helped break the performance into three acts. The score itself, was, like the ballet, quite dark and sinister in places, and very similar in flavour to the Battleship Potemkin soundtrack the award-winning pop duo made a few years ago.

Like other live show and soundtrack performances we’ve been to, at times you were wondering if the music was in fact being played live – especially the chugging, dramatic and sweeping electronic pieces – but live it was, booming into the undoubtedly modern Sadler’s Wells auditorium. You wouldn’t necessarily have believed there was a cast of only 16 performers, either, as costume changes were very swiftly done, while the 26-piece orchestra played Tennant and Lowe’s score in the pit below. Last night there was even a 20-minute on-stage informal chat with Tennant, Lowe and de Frutos, which comical at times, explained how the three-year creative process had come to fruition.

With a sumptuous dinner at Brown’s Islington beforehand (fish, chips and all the dressings for Nik, and calves’ liver with Sage and Rosemary mash for me), all in all, our Valentine’s Day night out was everything we could have wished for. And today, while the soundtrack plays out of my iMac’s speakers, thoughts turn once again to the ballet. Undoubtedly the most contemporary and modern one we’ve yet been to, The Most Incredible Thing was arguably the best one yet.

I can’t remember our last day out in London, and now he’s working at home, I bet Nik can recall it even less. Last Friday marked our first outing in the city for a while, and our regular January appointment with Cirque du Soleil. This time around, the show was Totem, a new production. Billed as ‘a fascinating journey into the evolution of mankind’, it was, as is usually the case, a spectacle for the eyes. Centered around a turtle and reed-decorated stage, macro photography projections provided some of the visual feasts, but the acts were again the stars.

From Bars, Hoop Dancers, and Unicycles and Bowls, to Foot Jugglers, Fixed Trapeze Trio, and Roller Skaters, 2011’s touring show acts seemed even more daring and spectacular than previous occasions. We were once again at the Royal Albert Hall, which I still maintain is the best place to experience Cirque du Soleil; it works perfectly in the round, as a traditional circus does. Guests in an Adobe box, I suspect the excellent nibbles and champagne at the magnificent venue in South Kensington no doubt added an extra element of enjoyment to the show.

An attentive breakfast at the Royal Garden Hotel done and dusted, we popped into the Kensington branch of the US Whole Foods Market in the fabulously Art Deco Barker’s Building. Literally a mammoth indoor market of organic and natural, environmentally-friendly food and products, I wasn’t expecting much. The largest of the company’s five stores in London (there’s also one in Glasgow; the first store was opened in Austin, Texas in 1980), there’s a cheese room, handmade chocolate department, 75ft butcher’s counter, restaurant, as well as the more regular fresh fruit and vegetable sections, but on a much larger scale. Well worth a visit.

Our final stop before meeting Pippa for lunch at Covent Garden’s Masala Zone was the Natural History Museum. I can’t believe that in 37 years I’ve never been to the 130 year-old establishment, and there was no way we were going to see all of its 70 million items on display. So, we skirted around the parts that we most wanted to see; the dinosaur gallery, the Large Mammals Hall (featuring the skeleton and infamous life-size model of a blue whale), then stuffed animals in the Green Zone, and the Earth galleries in the Red Zone.

We also explored the Darwin Centre Cocoon, but left feeling rather underwhelmed – all the preserved specimens in jars are housed in the Darwin Centre itself proper, which we couldn’t find on Saturday morning. All in all, an amazing place, and even though filled with faux-posh London parents and kids, it was both an enjoyable and educational way to spend a Saturday morning, contrasting nicely with the very entertaining way we spent Friday night.