A Trip & A Tag

Ooh what a lovely weekend it's been.

Despite having to get up at an ungodly time for a Saturday, I was in London by 10am and, feeling very girl about town (am very much enjoying feeling more confident navigating my way around London), headed off to meet Margaret of Penny Dreadful Vintage fame. We had a little charity shop mooch, wandered around in the sunshine and then had coffee in a tremendous little cafe. And I'm pleased to report that she's even funnier and lovelier than I expected. Enviably dressed too! Isn't blogging fab? I am always a proper wuss about meeting new people but find when I meet fellow bloggers that I'm much less shy. I suppose there's already that sense of friendship there from all the chatting and commenting.

The original point of the jaunt to London was for Lee and I to see In A Forest Dark And Deep starring Matthew Fox and Olivia Williams. We very much like to get tickets for plays that feature our favourite actors and they're both high up on his list. The play was, well, hmmm... not very good. The acting was great - no complaints whatsoever in that department - and we had 3rd row seats which meant we could appreciate them up close (close enough for Lee to get hit in the foot with a prop can of Bud that fell off the stage). I just thought the dialogue and characterisation, particularly in the female character, were really poor in parts. The plot was a bit all over the place as well with lots of little things suggested and then never followed up on, and I saw the big dramatic moment coming a MILE off. The lady sitting next to me did not and let out quite the overly dramatic gasp when it happened.

We'd planned to meet one of Lee's pals in the evening for drinks but she couldn't come and working on the assumption that we'd easily spend £20 each in the pub, we bought tickets to see Flare Path starring Sienna Miller, James Purefoy and Sheridan Smith instead. I am SO glad we did. Despite the fact that we were sitting right up in the heavens and obviously didn't get to see any of the subtleties, I absolutely loved it. Mind you, it would have had to have been pretty bad for me not to. I love fiction and drama set in WW2 and have a real soft spot for RAF centred things, especially those about Bomber Command. But this really was great. Very funny in parts, very sad in parts, full of jolly 40's slang, really enthralling and with fab costumes and set design. Sienna (who admittedly I don't like very much) was much better than any films I've seen her in but Sheridan Smith was the winner for me. Such a sweet, emotional subplot.

Oh and we stayed in an EasyHotel. The hilarity. The orangeness. The lack of anything except a bed (seriously, wouldn't have killed them to put up a shelf or something). The bathroom was quite nice though.

Self with the perfect late night accompaniments - wine straight from the bottle, fake Pringles, a vegan Mars Bar and some roasted broad beans. What a classy bird I am.

I was terribly cultured today though. Lee's coach left about 3 hours before mine so I took myself off to the V&A for a look round. Oh my. I could have spent days in the place. I restricted myself to one little section and didn't even have enough time to do that properly. I was in my element in the British Galleries 1500-1760, with a very short dash through the 1760-1900 section as I realised I was running very late and had to scamper to the exit. Bliss, especially all the 17th century clothing and the Elizabethan room. The Hilliard miniatures are just exquisite - I stood gawping at them for ages. I didn't go to the Yohji Yamamoto exhibition but there were pieces dotted all around the rest of the exhibition rooms which I thought was a very nice touch.

Then just to round the trip off nicely, by strategically selfish bag placement I had a double seat to myself on the coach on the way home. Hurrah.

And finally...the tag. It's The Handwriting Challenge which the ever-lovely Char posted about the other day. I adore looking at other people's handwriting so do have a go at this yourself if you want to. The rules are simple, write down the following:

1. Name and blog name
2. URL
3. Write 'a quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog'
4. Favourite quote
5. Favourite song
6. Favourite band(s), artist(s)
7. Anything else you wish to say..

So, using a scrap of paper from my brilliant Edward Monkton notebook:

Didn't realise that I made the word "crap" look so much like "oap"!