Moments: June 2016

Confession time guys, I have been really bad at keeping track of what I’ve been doing this month, so I might have missed stuff out. I blame Pride in London for turning my brain and body to mush, but more on that later. Here’s my month!

When Hayley came to visit we went on a muggle tour and it was so much fun spotting the locations and inspirations beyond so many key moments in the books and films.

When I went to Birmingham to visit Hayley for a bloggers city swap we headed straight here, the whole town smells of chocolate!

Obviously the Penguins were my favourite, I could watch them all day.

I asked Harry to pick my next book from my unread shelf and this is what he chose. To be honest, I’d been avoiding it as all the books in this series are pretty long and I didn’t love the first. This is much better and although it’s not a favourite it was enjoyable, albeit pretty bleak.

From one depressing novel to a famously depressing author – and another book I’d been avoiding as I expected it to be full of flowery language, actually it was the opposite. I enjoyed it and I love his writing style, although I don’t love reading about the military so those parts dragged a little for me.

I’ve always joked that I walk around with my eyes closed so I never normally spot celebrities at all, however this month I saw Morgan Freeman walking towards me outside the tube station, Julian Cary behind me in a queue for the theatre, Sadiq Khan and Jeremy Corbyn in Soho, and Philip Sallon was in my section at Pride.

I feel a little bit (a lot) in love with Mae Martian when I saw her doing stand up at the end of Russell Howard’s Good News. I drunkenly bought myself a ticket and it might have been one of my best drunken purchases ever, she’s just so good. Thank you drunk me!

A fun family show. It didn’t bowl me over but it was light-hearted fun, and great if you have little ones.

An amazing, heartfelt, powerful piece. Find me full review here.

An interesting story but this missed the mark for me . Check out my full review here.

You might recall I saw her perform last month but this time it was a solo show at The Royal Vauxhall Tavern. She is just too, too good!

In the Yelp event to end all Yelp events not only did we get to see this, but as an added surprise we got to meet the cast afterwards. Yes I stood on stage at the London Palladium and met the gang including Colin Mochrie and some guy from Nashville who my friends were very excited about…

This was my first fringe theatre experience since moving to London and it was so much fun. It wasn’t perfect, and some of the cast were definitely better than others but I came away laughing and feeling great and sometimes, that’s all you need.

A play based on one of my favourite books but unfortunately I came away disappointed. My restricted view seats meant I missed a lot of the action (I always get the restricted view seats but this is the first time it has had a big effect) and the play was a bit muddled and confused. It lacked power and came away a bit dull, I think this performance could have done with a serious injection of imagination.

There are a lot of really awful things happening around the world at the moment and I’ve tried not to go on about them here as it doesn’t feel like the place for it. What I will say is that this vigil, arranged in less than 24 hours, was so touching and full of hope. It was silence and song and emotion and power.

This is what took up almost all of my time this month. I actually cancelled almost everything else I had on in the later half of the month so I would have more time to devote to it properly. I was a Section Supervisor for Pride in London this year, which basically meant I had my own section of the parade to organise. Trust me, it’s hard work and very stressful. My section had 50 groups, thousands of people and 8 floats, and so on the run up to Pride there was a lot, and I mean a lot, of meetings and emailing going on, this is basically all I did for two weeks. The day came and the real stress hit, but boy was it worth it! This is probably one of the biggest challenges I’ve ever faced so I’m pretty proud of myself. This year Pride in London had over 40,000 people marching and over one million people watching on route, crazy huh? Every person who works for Pride is a volunteer, you can find out more about why I think you should volunteer here. It’s never too early to sign up for next year!

I know this might not seem like much but trust me, for me this is an achievement! I’ve been using the Couch to 5k podcast and I have to say along with running with Harry it really works! As of writing this however I haven’t run for 3 weeks as Pride took up all my time and energy so hopefully I can pick up where I left off.

I got some real bargains.

I miss the days when I used to spend my weekends browsing the metal section of HMV and picking up any album I liked the look of. With Spotify it should be easier than ever but I really do limit myself. I’ve been listening to a few new-to-me bands this month including The Hell, Creeper and Moose Blood. Hopefully I can get back into the swing of things.

The perfect treat after the theatre, it’s the second time I’ve had it and although it’s over-priced for what it is, I still enjoyed it.

We wanted to go somewhere local and we went to a chain because we are chickens. I’ll put a stop to this but I had my first corn dog and it was really good!

Now this was something really unique, with Yelp we headed out to a chef’s house and he cooked for us. It’s like having your own personal restaurant and my fears about the awkwardness of being in a strangers house were totally wrong, in fact it was the opposite. It was so relaxed and the chefs could talk through the stories behind each course. One of the best meals I’ve had in a long time!

I checked this out in Birmingham and it was the first time I’d been to one in a while. I had a burger that had Yorkshire puddings instead of bread buns and it actually worked pretty well.

Yet again, still the greatest chicken wings I’ve found in London.

Again when in Birmingham, I passed on the fish items and stuck to chicken and rice for a tasty meal.

What was your favourite thing you got up to last month?