Matilda, the Musical

Photo taken from here

Last Wednesday, for my birthday, Stuart took me to see Matilda, the Musical at the Cambridge Theatre, London. When I was younger Matilda was one of my favourite books, and certainly my favourite Roald Dahl story. I was a bit of a book worm and I loved that Matilda was a precocious reader. I adored reading the book and looking at all Quentin Blake's illustrations as they really brought the story to life.  As I got older I watched the film version and although they had moved the whole story to America it kept all the magic of the book and I must have watched it hundred of times! Therefore it was only time and money that had stopped me seeing the musical version as soon as it came out.

I've been to lots of shows, and lots of theatres in London but I've never been to the Cambridge Theatre before. When we arrived I was pleased to see that despite being in the Upper Circle the theatre is relatively small so our view was good; I could see the whole stage which wasn't too far away so although I might not be able to see the actors facial expressions I would certainly be able to tell who was singing (strange I know but I've been to shows where I had no idea what was going on because I was so far away!). The next thing to check out was the set, cover in letters and books it was exactly what you would expect of Matilda. Then, before the curtains went up and the lights went down the worst thing happened. The row behind us which had been completely empty started filling up... with noisy school children. Now I may be a little Trunchbull here but I'm not the biggest fan of kids, especially in the theatre (I know, why didn't this cross my mind before we booked tickets for a show based on a kids book, with dozens of child actors!). However I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt that they'd shut up eventually so I waited patiently for the show to start. Then it started and all the child actors ran on stage to sing and dance their little hearts out. As this happened, I realised something that I had put to the back of my mind when I heard Matilda was going to be a musical, I realised I don't like kids singing! Shit! This was shaping up to be a disappointing evening! I'm not saying the kids were bad singers at all, but there is just something whiny or extra sugary sweet about kids singing that just gets my goat. This is the reason I have only seen Oliver! and The Sound of Music when I took my mum as a birthday treat. I know I am sounding like a complete Scrooge but I have to be honest. Perhaps my feelings were summed up best in the first song 'Miracle' where the kids sang about how their parents thought they were each a precious little snowflake. I don't know where this dislike of kids and particularly singing kids comes from, I'm going to blame it on the fact I didn't get part of Annie at our local theatre when I was younger....

Things brightened up for me with the appearance of Miss Trunchbull. In the books she is a vile person in every way, she is the perfect villain you love to hate and the show portrayed her just as I imagined. As we were quite far back it took a few minutes to realise she was played by a man - Bertie Carvel, who won an Oliver Award for Best Actor for this role. I loved her, she was evil, grotesque, and easily the best character in the show. I personally loved both her songs, and if you go look out for her ribbon dance!

Matilda & Miss Trunchbull - photo from here

Another of my favourite bits of the show is the story Matilda tells to the Librarian about an Acrobat and an Escapologist. Although this story isn't in the book I think it works perfectly to bring Matilda and Miss Honey's stories together. As Matilida's story builds so do the characters in it, I particularly loved how they used puppets and silhouettes to animate it.

Matilda's story - photo from here

Now although I don't like children singing there were some very good songs, I particularly liked 'When I grow up' and 'Quiet'. I really think I would have enjoyed this show more if the kids behind me had shut up (I'm not one to sit there and do nothing, I did turn round and ask them to be quiet, and they were  for a few minutes and then straight back to talking amongst themselves - does this school have no teachers!) and if the tickets weren't so expensive. Stuart paid £47 each for our tickets. This would be ok, if we were in the Royal Circle, but when you are up the the Upper Circle it seems little expensive. Normally I wouldn't pay more than £40 for a show and £30 for Upper Circle tickets. To have paid almost £100 and still have to put up with kids messing around behind you it kind of put you in a shit for the whole performance.

So in conclusion I would say Matilda is a great show, with some funny songs, a wonderful set and an amazing Miss Trunchbull but before you go make sure you are more like Miss Honey and a little less like the Wormwoods, you may enjoy it more!

Thought for the Day

I love science and I love knowledge but I'm not a Science Buff. I don't think my brain is (metaphorically) big enough to remember all the facts yet Stuart is a fully fledged geek and knows more things than I could imagine. Last night we got talking about the earth, and I wanted to share with you what I learnt. The earth is roughly 4.5 billion years old, that's pretty amazing in itself. Our sun will turn into a red giant & destroy the earth in around 4 billion years. However it is likely that earth not be able to support life in just 1 billion short years. We are living on the only planet in the known universe that can support life and are closer to the end of existence than the beginning. I don't know if turning 28 has made me start questioning my own mortality but that's pretty staggering when you think about it. Forgetting the fact that humanity may destroy themselves long before that, when you get right down to it, the earth that we know will not exist forever. It's kind of difficult to imagine. So when you go out today and enjoy the weather we're having in the UK look at the sun and think, that star is eventually going to expand and evaporate all the water off this planet and then engulf us completely but it is also the reason why life exists here. If earth was not in this little spot in the solar system it would not be able to sustain life, our ancestors ancestors would never have crawled from the swamps or wherever we originated from (note to self, next subject to talk to Stuart about is origins of life recognisable as precursor to modern day humans). I don't mean this to be a depressing post because you can read that and think well I better enjoy life whilst I can but I just thought it was information worth sharing. Happy Friday - I'm off to the Isle of Wight!

Bake Off Competition

This week was my turn to enter a submission to the work Bake Off competition. This competition has really gone off with a bang! We started it to try and get the two different sections of the office to be a little more social, and it seems to have worked. Out of about 25 of us 19 have entered the competition. This is great as not only does it mean we will have 19 different cakes over 10 weeks but when we go for after work drinks more, or different, people are joining us. I'm lucky, I'm one of those people who never knew what they wanted to do in life but I have landed on my feet in this job because it is so interesting. I'm really enjoying it. It can be ridiculously busy and frustrating at times as well but in my experience having good work colleagues helps you manage the stress and frustration so I like to think this competition is helping with that, but really it's all about the cake.

There are four different categories and will be one winner for each category.  They are;

    1. Taste

    2. Presentation

    3. Originality

    4. Patriotism  

Now as much as I wish I was good at baking I'm not. I don't leave things long enough in the oven, I make up quantities and my presentation leaves a lot to be desired, but as I am one of the instigators of the competition I thought I'd make an effort. After a few trial runs I decided to make Eton Mess Cup Cakes. I took the recipe for Vanilla Cup Cakes from here. To make them a little more patriotic I split the cake mix in half and put red food colouring in one half and blue food colouring in the other. When I put the mixture into cases I put the blue on the bottom and red on the top. I made up my own butter icing; butter, icing sugar, a little double cream (for smoothness) and home-made strawberry syrup (strawberries, a little brown sugar; heat, squash, cool, sieve) mixed it all together and when the cakes were cool iced them. To finish off I added a strawberry and some crumbled (shop brought) meringue. I tried making the meringues at home but they were a total failure so M&S saved the day. Popped on a poundland Union Jack cake stand and they were ready for tasting!

My Eton Mess Cupcakes

I don't want to blow my own trumpet but apart from those who suffered a huge sugar crash they seemed to go down really well. We'll have to wait and see in six weeks if it is enough for me to win any of the categories though. To get you really jealous here are a few snaps of previous entries

Patriotic Brownies!

Rasberry and white chocolate muffins - they tasted amazing and looked shop brought be we are assured they were home-baked!

Gold icing cake

Fat free (!) sponge cake with white chocolate icing

Battenburg - with a orginal take on the union jack colours!

And finally a fruity sponge cake

It's my Birthday!

Wooooo! It's my birthday and I am at work (I'm writing this on my break). I always said the year I had to work on my birthday would be when I knew I was really a grown up. I've been lucky enough to take a day or two off work for my birthday in previous years but not this year. So there you have it, turning 28 means I am now an adult. It's not all doom and gloom though, this evening Stuart is taking me to see Matilda, the Musical. I love musicals. The songs, the clichéd stories, the beautiful costumes, I adore it all. The main reason I choose to attend a university in London was so I would be able to go and see musicals and shows to my hearts (but perhaps not my wallets) content. The music and lyrics for Matilda, the Musical were written by Tim Minchin. I have a not so secret love and admiration for Tim Minchin. He is funny, clever, Australian and he can play the piano. He's an unapologetic atheiest who wears more eyeliner then I do. I would say he is close to being my perfect man. I'm trying to convince Stuart to let us play 'If I didn't have you' at our wedding but he's afraid some of the older generations wouldn't get it. Anyway back to Matilda. I have only heard great reviews for it, so I am really looking forward to it, if you are lucky I will review it for you!

Tomorrow after work I will be going for a few drinks by the river with my work friends. I then have Friday off so will be going down to my home town/island (the Isle of Wight) for the weekend, so perhaps having a birthday on Wednesday isn't so bad, at least I get to drag things out over the week!

As I am a twin it is also my brothers birthday so I will leave you with a couple of photos of the two of us.

Allan and me, around age 7

And again, this time we are both 24

Eurovision Memories

So it's the middle of May, that can only mean two things, firstly my birthday a matter of days away, and secondly Eurovision is nearly upon us.  I have a friend called George and she likes Eurovision even more than I do (and that is a lot).  Every year she hosts a party at her abode in honour of this great event. Very soon (ie after it has actually happened) I will regale you with tales about Eurovision 2012 but to get you in the mood I decided I wanted to write about the trip George and I took to Oslo, Norway in 2010 to watch Eurovision live, in all it's bewitching and astounding glory.  I wish to 'Share the Moment' with you...

When we arrived in Oslo I was pretty impressed, it is a lovely, clean, relaxed city.  I mean it didn't blow me out of the water, I've been to prettier, more impressive cities but I've been to some dirty, unpleasant cities that I couldn't wait to leave, Oslo was somewhere in the middle.  As cities go it was nice.  I don't like the word nice because I don't think it is descriptive enough but I'm afraid that is what it was; nice, pleasant, fine and dandy, if somewhat expensive  Seeing as we were in Oslo for a week, and we had days before the Eurovosion final George and I took some time walking round the city and going on boat tours.  Here are some of my favourite photos;

This was taken down at the harbour where you could buy your fish fresh from the sea!

Cute little houses we saw during our Fjord tour

All this walking and sightseeing is thirsty work!

Now as I have mentioned Oslo was expensive.  I believe when we went it was ranked as the most expensive city in the world.  Seeing as I have lived in London for the last 10 years I didn't think the prices for things would shock me, but they did.  Everyday we lived off super noodles for our evening meal and crisps and cheese spread brought from the supermarket for lunch.  The cost of living also meant that for once (ahem!) George and I had to forgo the luxury we are used to and stay in a hostel.  It was a lovely hostel with a beautiful outdoor space - and most importantly a giant chess set, what more could you ask for?  Well there is one more thing you could ask for, room mates that didn't snore.  Two years have passed and even now thinking about the snoring makes my blood pressure rocket.  You'll be glad to hear that the snoring did not come from George but a random lady who was sharing our room.  This meant on our second day we had to make an emergency stop for earplugs.  We were so glad to find them that they deserve a photo of their own!  Unfortunately there is not a happy ending to this story because even with earplugs and my headphones playing music at full blast I could still hear the snoring!  However the snorer was also visiting Oslo for Eurovision but they only had rehearsal tickets and we had finals so as evil as that makes me sound I felt slightly better (what can I say, lack of sleep turns me into a bitch!)

The second day was my favourite as we visited Vigelandsparken.  This park is just teaming with statues of naked people.  I had so much fun that if you return to this blog later I will dedicate a whole entry to Vigelandsparken.  For now here is one photo to tide you over.

Now each evening by the harbour the lovely Eurovision organisers put on some entertainment to get everyone in the mood for the up coming Grand Final.  It was here we were able to get some one off performances from the Eurovision competitors.

Josh representing the UK. 'That sounds good to me!' 

 Vukasin Brajic for Bosnia and Herzegovina - George's crush for the week.

My absolute favourite act, which has yet to be topped - The Sun Stroke project representing Moldova!

We had a few more days sightseeing before the competition here are some more photos, carry on reading, we will get to the final soon!

The Botanic Gardens, we took a bit of a detour to get here, but it was worth it in the end!

The Royal Palace

So it seems there was a contest happening where people had to walk through the city in one of these amazing contraptions, we found ourselves near the finish line so got to see lots of people falling over as they rushed up the stairs!

A fountain near the National Theatre.

Parliament Building.

Now you will see below that George is wearing her favourite Union Jack napkin as a hat, which means we are ready to head to the final - Hurrah!

'Oh, I wonder if the UK will win this year?'

An important part of Eurovision is making sure people know who you are supporting.  You think the Jubilee and Olympics made it cool to be patriotic?  Please! George and I were wearing Union Jack face tattoos long before you could find them in poundland!

After a drink or two of Baileys, (Terry Wogan's drink of choice) we left the hostel in our finest flags and glow sticks to get the transport to the arena.  We met lots of lovely people who were just as well dressed as we were and then we went in to find our seats!

Me in the arena as it starts to fill up!

The lights came down, and the music came up and Eurovision 2010 had started.  You don't need to look it up to know that the UK did terribly but I had a fantastic time.  It was a cheesetastic camp cheese fest!  I honestly liked everything about it, looking back even the laborious scoring was interesting.  I love Eurovision and hope to watch it live again sometime, or at least perform in it, but until then I will keep looking forward to George's annual party!

George getting in the swing of things!

You are invited...

Well to be honest, you may not be invited.  It's not that I don't think you're a nice person, we get on great, but we just don't know each other that well.  Anyway we've got off on the wrong foot, I should have said 'Some people are invited.... to my wedding!'

Yep there it is in print for all the world to see, I am getting married.  Stuart and I have been together for about 8 and half years.  One day, a few months back, we decided what the hell we might as well make it official in the eyes of the government and get hitched.  So what prompted this sudden decision after 8 years of happily scooting along?  To tell the truth I'm not too sure!  I have nothing against marriage but it's never been on my to do list (or my I do list - ha ha ha did you see what I did there!).  I guess the only answer is we got to that age where we thought we might as well do it.  It means we get a party after all.  

We have decided to get married on the Isle of Wight, where I grew up, rather than in London, where we currently live.  Because this means some people have a way to travel I decided I should send out STDs, or Save the Dates as they are commonly called, personally I prefer the acronym.  When my friend Anna got married last year she sent her STDs out as magnets.  I found this really useful.  I don't have a diary so the magnet on the fridge meant that I could double check the date easily enough whenever I needed to.  As I loved Anna's magnet idea so much I did what any smart person would do, I stole it.  Our STDs went out with Christmas cards and looked just like this;

I took a picture from my favourite film The Princess Bride added my text over the top of it and let the people at Vista Print do their magic.  The magnets were pretty cheap and good quality so I hope the recipients liked them.  So now my guest had the date the next thing on my list was invitations.

Stuart and I don't really want to spend too much for the wedding, so I decided in the name of budgeting I should DIY the invitations.  My friend (and Maid of Honour) George gave me a book for Christmas called The Vintage Tea Party.  Inside the book it had some invitation templates, my favourite was the seaside scene (quite fitting for our IOW Wedding).  We took the book to Stuart's parents house, scanned in the image, reduced the size to A3 and printed out lots of copies.  The next step was adding colour!  

This was the fun bit.  Instead of using paint I used this water colour crayons.  I've never used them before but they were great; you colour in with the crayons and then use a paint brush with a little water to blend.  It's really simple to do and it look really good!

The pictures half coloured in.

Fully coloured in with text added in the blank space on the front.

Cut out ready to stick on the background

The finished invite, coloured, cut out and stuck onto card.  

To finish the invites off I printed out an insert with details of time & location etc, stuck them in the middle and that was it.  For RSVP's I put in a postcard for guests to reply with.  Originally I wanted some of the cheeky old vintage beach postcards to go with our IOW theme but unfortunately I couldn't find a place I could buy these in bulk.  What I did find was a set of 1950s semi naked pin up girls postcards, and vintage comic book cover postcards.  As Stuart likes geeky comic books and I wish I looked like a 1950s pin up I decided to use them instead.  With these added to the envelope they were ready to go!  My guests should receive their invite in the next couple of days, and then it's just a waiting game to see who wants to attend! 

Baking on a Sunday

In the spirit of the Jubilee and the Olympics and all things patriotic my work is holding a Great British Bake Off.  This means everyone who wants to take part must submit a cake on their chosen week, and in return they get to eat everyone else's entries and score them.  It's pretty simple and it means the for the next two and half months we will get cake at least once a week.  This is a good thing, not too good for my 'healthy eating, aren't you supposed to be running a half marathon training' but I'll just cut out eating rubbish else where in my diet (honest).

I may have brought a few too many supplies!

I don't want to say I'm competitive or anything but I want to do my best, and we have had some great entries so far.  Therefore I spent Sunday testing out a few recipes.  It's a good job I decided to have a test run because some of my creations tasted awful!  In honour of this momentous occasion I brought a new muffin tray from Sainsburys.  Using this I tried two different recipes, one for cupcakes and one for muffins and they both  tasted bad, really really bad.  They had a terrible chemical after taste which, it goes without saying, is not what I'm aiming for.  I soaked and cleaned the muffin tray before using it so I don't know if I can blame the tray or if it is just my terrible baking skills.  I did redeem myself in the end though by making a red velvet brownie cake thing.  I took the recipe from the blog The Londoner and I have to admit it was pretty tasty.  I didn't have a brownie tray so I just baked it in a cake tin but it still tasted good and looked good too.

My red brownie cake (ignore the muffins in the background, if we can just pretend they never existed it would be great).

So far this cake is in the running to be my submission for the work Bake Off, but I may test a few other ideas out this weekend too, so you'll have to wait and see what I finally come up with.

Saturday at the Olympic Stadium

I'm just going to put this out there - I love the Olympics and I love that this year London will be host to the biggest event in the world.  I'm proud that my home city will be part of a historical sporting extravaganza.  One problem though, I have next to no tickets.  Now I know next to no tickets is better than no tickets at all but the tickets I do have are for sports that won't be at the Olympic Park.  Luckily I have been able to get tickets via the London Prepares series for 'Test Events'.  A while back I got to spend the afternoon at the Velodrome and get my first view of track cycling, and this Saturday I had tickets for the BUCS Athletics at the Olympic Stadium.  

Unfortunately I didn't take my camera with me but the stadium is a stadium, it's nice and all, but stadiums tend to look the same to me; big green bit in the middle, lots of seats. I went with a group of people from work and we had a whole line of seats to ourselves which was good, we were able to swap seats with each other for a chat and not worry about disturbing other people.  We were sat right at the starting point for the 100 metres sprint and I can imagine that these seat will be going for stupid amounts of money for the Olympics, as the view was great.  I've never been to an athletics event before so it was a whole new experience for me.  There are so many different things happening at once that at times I didn't know where to look.  Whilst people were racing round the track there were others pole vaulting, triple jumping and shot putting in the middle.  I decided if I had to try a discipline it would be pole vaulting.  I would be terrible at it, but it looked like fun.   For the whole afternoon there was always something to watch and even if I got very cold I didn't get bored.  

Included in our tickets was an event called '2012 Hours to Go: An Evening of Athletics and Entertainment'.  There wasn't a lot of information about this but I thought it would be worth staying in the cold for (honestly beginning of May and I had to take my scarf and gloves, what is that about!) To put it bluntly it wasn't worth it. It was terrible, badly organised and just down right rubbish.  We had a mix of Z list celebrities doing really crap 'fun' sporting 'entertainment', out of tune singers and a marching band that played 'The YMCA' and 'It's Raining Men'.  Don't get me wrong I love both those songs, and the marching band was good, but the stadium was huge so you could hardly hear the band.  To finish it off we had Seb Coe come down with some local kid to officially open the stadium.  What a momentous occasion I think, how will they mark it?  Fireworks?  Big Light Show?  A guitar solo by David Bowie on a big white cloud above us?  I'm afraid to say it was none of those. They pressed a big button and a few balloons were released from some netting.  Now I know they are saving the good stuff for the Opening Ceremony but I was disappointed; I had frozen my feet off to watch a few balloons float away.  All it needed was them to release a couple of dog eared doves to get trapped in the stadium roof wires and it would have topped off the disorganised, shambolic, boring evening.  So in summary, the sporting part of the day with the BUCS and UKA athletes was great, but LOCOG please keep the Z list celebrities away from the Olympics and let the sporting events speak for themselves. I for one, don't need the kind of entertainment I experienced Saturday night again.

I've 'borrowed' this photo from my friend to show you the view from our seats.