The Crucible by Arthur Miller is at the Gielgud Theatre till September 2023. A crucible is an ancient melting pot, let’s get that out of the way. Used for smelting metals, it must withstand very high temperatures, to make church bells, for example. The choice of title is an omen for the community trauma that awaits, as metallurgy involves melting down a solid substance, skimming off impurities…
Just going to a Def Leppard concert was beyond my wildest dreams (not so into Mötley Crüe). And yet they happened to be on a world tour and I happened to find out in time, at last year’s Slade Christmas concert. I checked out the venues and dates, and decided on Sheffield a) because the band was born here so I thought the atmosphere would be extra-electric; b) it’s a smaller…
Woooo!!! – Preparing for my first Glasto aka Glastonbury Festival with my son at 54 – My son has been saying for some years, ‘Get registered Mum, and I’ll put you in our syndicate’. I was quietly vey vey chuffed, my dear beloved son, who was ‘God knows where’ most of his teen years, inviting me to such a sacred place. Course I was. But did not take…
The Principal York Hotel: 4 / 5 stars.
Monica Costa and myself headed North to sample the joys of York and review The Principal York Hotel. The Telegraph gave it 4 stars and we concord with this rating.
For convenience / comfort
Adjoining York station, it really is spitting distance, with an easy-access entrance. For all its proximity, you never hear a train or smell one. It’s a delightful 10…
There’s fart, there’s shit and now there’s a helpful new compound word to clarify the subtleties of bowel incontinence – ‘shart’ – currently called ‘leaking poo’ by the NHS. It’s a lonely, unsettling and little spoken of place you go for 24 hours after eating an indian or some highly processed food, in which you can no…
The Sleeping Beauty ballet is backat the ROH on its 99th performance, and now accessible to all in a cinema near you.
Choreography / Dancing
The ballerinas, for it is a female-heavy ballet, were outstanding in their mastery of the steps. The men had a few fire-cracker moments too, such as the superbly springy blue-bird. I was GOL gasping-out-loud at the difficulty and their…
‘Get off the ****ing road!’ I bellowed across 3 lanes of traffic in my most ferociously loud teacher voice, only ever used for breaking up playground punch-ups. I’m petite so there’s the element of surprise. I’ve stopped footie fisty-cuffs in the tube at Fulham Broadway and a roly-poly drunken brawl on Putney High Street ‘Ya not our mum.’ one brother…
Bell-ringing for beginners: or should I say Bell-swinging.
Did you know there’s a book listing every belfry (‘bell tower’) in the world with 3 or more swinging bells and 95% of them are in England? Swingers have the knobs on stalks (‘clappers’, as in, go like the ) inside that clang as the bell goes horizontal. There’s solo and twin bells, but they aren’t…
Losing weight is always a dilemma. We’d all like to shed a few, no doubt. But we don’t. The crisps, the biscuits, the chips, the icecream get bought, get eaten. You don’t seem to be able to stop yourself. It’s not an education thing, you know the facts, you know your food groups and what you should be eating and in what quantities. You just don’t have the will power…
After my first blog on how to knit, here’s part 2 instructions and a recount of my progress.
Pulling it together
Once I had a few fistfuls of granny squares, the game was to work out how many I really needed to cover my upper body. I found a crusty imperial tape measure that kept crinkling back up, and noted my measurements.
Bloody unsquare. By my reckoning…I had to make 2 pieces of…