The Clothes Show

Last Sunday I went to the Clothes Show Live for the first time. Perhaps I was being a tad naive when thinking it would be ideal for a pre-Christmas stroll round a good selection of stalls. I definitely had a fab time but if you haven't been before, take it from me that it's a) huge and b) incredibly busy. Not exactly the ideal relaxing browsing experience! If you sharpen your elbows there are some good bargains to be found though. I was super restrained and only came home with one bag - well if Models Own will do such amazingly good offers, it's kinda rude not to take advantage of them.



I was invited along as a guest of Echo Falls and had a lovely time catching up with two of my favourite blogging pals and saying hello to some new faces.



Turns out that although the NEC is enormous and perfect for an event of this size, it has terrible lighting! Sarah and Gemma's gorgeous faces are obviously not really this blurry but this was the only photo I had of them together and it doesn't feel right to have had such a lovely day together and then not show them in the blog post.



We spent lots of time oohing over the beautiful things on sale at Silly Old Sea Dog. The stock is just my cup of tea. It's Sarah's too, as you can probably tell by her happy face in the changing room.



I was very, very close to buying this gorgeous skirt. Maybe for next Christmas.

Alison's shoes were almost as tempting! Aren't they fab?




Gem and I had a fun 15 minutes watching the catwalk show featuring all the girls from the last series of Britain & Ireland's Next Top Model on the area right next to the Echo Falls bar. I have a massive weakness for model programmes. I can do without the unrelenting bitchiness but the photos fascinate me. How do they transform such normal looking people into such amazing images?




Watching catwalk in real life turns out to be an odd experience. Fun, but definitely odd. Some of them walk so weirdly! Look how far Angel back leans when she stomps.




I'm not a big enough blogger to be blase about this sort of thing. PRESS PASS! That's well exciting!


Tapestry frock - New Look
Cardi - Gap
Elizabeth I ring - Cheap Frills
Owl ring - present



Thank you, Echo Falls. It was lovely to be invited!

#BeMoreDog

Unless you've been living in a cave for the past few weeks, you can't have avoided hearing about O2's Be More Dog campaign. The tv ad is brilliant and the associated social media campaign has been equally fun with bloggers being sent off all over the country on a variety of exciting pursuits.

It all started with two locked boxes and one question. Did I want to be more dog or be more cat?



Despite being a massive crazy cat lady I succumbed to the lure of the unknown and the promise of excitement and thrills. I chose dog. I immediately regretted it. My dog experience was high wires and combat fitness, both of which would have made me sick, not excited. I'm odd - heights don't scare me per se but if I don't have a solid surface under my feet then I'm Little Miss Fainty Vom. High wires are my idea of hell.

I was in luck though. They were kind enough to rearrange it for something I could do and so this past weekend saw me crossing the border into Wales and going karting (or Cartio as it's known in Welsh. Much more fun!)


They go so fast they are a BLUR. Or I have a crap camera on my phone. One of the two.

I'll be entirely honest with you here: I was terrified when I got in the kart. Partly cos those seats aren't designed for ladies with hips and I had the horrors I wouldn't fit in it, but mainly because I was terrified I would stack it into a tyre wall and die horribly. The whole point of the experience was to challenge yourself though, so I swallowed the fear and hit the accelerator pedal.

My nerves were swiftly overtaken by WTF-ery when the kart wouldn't start. It then broke down three times on the first lap. I was too busy thinking "Oh FFS, this is typical" to have any time to be nervous. In the end, a man came and blew in a tube which magically fixed things. Clever eh?

Stats would later reveal that it took me 3 mins and 33.9 seconds to complete my first lap. Not an auspicious start. Once the kart was finally working I proceeded to zoom my way around the track, somewhat hesitantly at first but eventually picking up a bit of speed. It was still chuffing scary. I'm not a naturally fast driver and I must have had a terrified death grip on the steering wheel cos christ, did my arms ache the next day. But it got more fun as I went on and in the end I was doing some spirited wheel squealing round the corners and going much faster than I ever thought I was capable of driving.

Yes, I got overtaken quite a lot at first (I was racing against lads who'd clearly done it before and were much better than I was) but the important thing is that I DID NOT CRASH.

Fastest lap time in session 1: 35.713 seconds
Fastest lap time in session 2: 33.456 seconds

Woop! The important things to note are: a) I got better (I was tons faster overall in the second session), b) I didn't crash even though pretty much everyone else did, c) I successfully overtook someone and d) I came THIRD in the second session. And not even out of three. Out of SEVEN. Plus I beat my brother (he crashed, haha). Woohoo!!


The big loser.

Visiting London...On The Cheap

I used to be scared of London. Too big, too loud, too many bloody people.

That's changed though.  I visit it a few times a year now and I can wield my Oyster card and tut at annoying dawdlers with the best of them.

I know half of Blogland lives in London and will probably have no interest in this post but I never fail to be suprised by the amount of people in the real world who treat my London trips as some sort of exotic journey.  Maybe they're all scared to step foot outside the North West?  Maybe they assume it's horrendously expensive? I'm not an expert on everything our capital city has to offer but I think I'm quite good at planning cheap weekend breaks, so here are my recommendations.

Priorities

What would you rather spend your money on?  I know it sounds a bit grownup and boring but have a proper think about what the important parts of your trip are before you go and it'll stop you getting carried away and spending a shedload of money.

As a basic rule, I will happily spend money on an experience that I think is worth it but I won't waste it on things like hotels.  The only thing that was absolutely vital about this weekend was going to see Macbeth.  I was not prepared to be stingy over the ticket price for that so we paid £65 each, sat in Row C and it was wonderful.  All the other stuff wasn't as important, and in total (for return train tickets, my share of the hotel and a ticket for another play) it cost £65 as well.  Not bad, eh?  If you'd rather stay in luxury then you can sit in the crappy seats at the theatre and pay for a nice hotel room instead. The choice is yours.  If you can afford to do the whole trip in style then I shall graciously pretend I'm not envious.

Trains

I am such a fraud writing this section.  I hate train websites with a passion I only usually reserve for hating Fearne Cotton.  They boggle my brain, so I outsource this element of my trip planning and get my good pal Lee to do it for me while I organise other things instead.  He is most excellent.  Ask him for tips if you want cheap train tickets because I can't supply you with anything helpful.

There is technically a £12.50 standard fare from Liverpool to London but you'd be hard pushed to find many of them, especially at a reasonable time and at weekends.  Still, £19 isn't too bad at all and I didn't have to get up too revoltingly early.

Travel

Walk, especially if you're in central London.  It's the best way to get your bearings on the space around you.  I think a large part of the reason I used to dislike London so much was that I never knew where I was.  But guess what? It's really not that hard to navigate, especially in the central areas where you can't move without falling over a signpost. I am still rather vague about the further flung parts of the city but I'm not likely to need to go there so it's not a problem. I can walk from Euston to the Globe without getting lost and I know a few nice pubs and that's good enough for me for now. 

Or y'know, take the Tube. But get yourself an Oyster card. It's cheaper than day travelcards and you'll feel like less of a tourist.

Hotels

My advice is always this: stay in a Travelodge.  They're fine.  They're clean, they have a bed and a bathroom and a tv and a kettle and you can borrow an iron and a hairdryer if you need them. You will probably be in the hotel for about 10/11 hours, 8 hours of which will be spent sleeping. Why pay a fortune when all you need is somewhere decent?  The hotel we stayed in at the weekend cost £35 for a Saturday night and we've had different Travelodges for £18 a night before now.  Stalk their website a bit and grab their cheap sale rates, or have a look and see if anything is available when you want to go. This visit was only meant to be a day trip until we discovered that there were some cheap rooms available.  The same logic applies to Premier Inns which are basically the same but a bit nicer. They have pictures on the wall and everything.

ps - only stay in an EasyHotel for the hilarity factor or if you actually like sleeping in an alcove and/or having a floor space that is literally smaller than a bath towel. They're not that cheap and they're not pleasant. You can't even hang anything up! It wouldn't kill them to put some hooks up, would it?

Theatre

This is mostly what I go to London for. By theatre I mean plays, not musicals.  I'm sure there are loads of places out there that can tell you how and where to buy cut price tickets for the latter but we mostly book our theatre tickets a long way in advance so don't come to me for advice on last minute deals. What I can recommend is signing up to all the newsletters from the ticketing companies and theatres.  Whilst this may occasionally drive you mad (eg when we really wanted to see Our Boys but the timings did not work out at all and about a million emails came through going "Come and see Our Boys" "You know you want to" "What are you waiting for, you Northern morons? WATCH IT!"), it often pays off and you end up seeing some really interesting stuff for less than the cost of a cinema ticket. Case in point: on Saturday night we saw Old Times with Rufus Sewell and Kristin Scott Thomas for just a tenner. Bargain.  They have 100 seats for each performance at that price and it's very much worth it.

Tip - if you're seeing anything at the Harold Pinter Theatre, you still get a decent view on the back row of the stalls.  Unless you're desperate to be in the front few rows, it's a good option.

Booze

Well I don't know about you lot but I won't pay £6 for a glass of wine in a theatre bar. I prefer the rather naughtier (and massively cheaper option) of buying a mini bottle in the shop round the corner for £1.99 and stowing it in my handbag. Theatres always have plastic glasses on the bar so help yourself to one of them and voila! Just pour it out in a discreet fashion when the ushers aren't looking.

Food

You know the usual options for cheap food, don't you?  Of course you do.  Anyone that said McDonalds can go and stand in the corner.  I mean the usual things that work out well for evening meals - vouchers, offers from o2 Priority Moments, Groupon etc.  You don't need me to elaborate.  We didn't actually bother with any of those this time as we had limited time between shows, so we just zoomed to the Wagamama near Leicester Square instead. It's no more expensive than the ones anywhere else in the country and their food is lovely. 



When it comes to daytime eating, never have a hotel breakfast (unless you've ignored my above advice and are staying somewhere swanky). I mean, I love a good cooked breakfast but a) the ones that hotels provide you with aren't good and b) HOW MUCH? £7.95 for some lukewarm bacon and mushy tomatoes? I think not. My solution: £1 for a pot of fruit salad from the shop round the corner to tide you over until later in the morning.  Then, instead of the aforementioned overpriced breakfast, spend a few extra quid on enjoying a really lovely brunch in the company of really lovely people instead. Much more fun all round.



Lee and I met up with Chloe on Sunday and we went to Salvation Jane which was conveniently close to our hotel and really, really good.



Salted beef hashcakes with fresh spinach, poached eggs and smoked tomato relish. AMAZING.

And that, dear readers, is the nicest soy chai latte I've ever had. (I'm not a pretentious nobber btw - I just can't have normal milk)

It wasn't particularly cheap but I'm not into money saving for the sheer hell of it. I like to save money on some things so I can spend it on others.

Free Stuff

Speaking of saving money, go and do FREE STUFF. Free stuff is great and there is really quite a lot of it in London - Time Out has a handy list. I like to explore and could quite merrily walk around looking at roads and buildings and suchlike all day (it's all due to growing up around my mum who likes to go "Alex, LOOK, a chimney!"), but blimey, did you see the weather at the weekend? BRRRRR. We went for a good yomp around the V&A instead.

International man of mystery and his shortarse sidekick.

I love museums.  I can play my favourite game of Thing I'd Most Like To Take Home for hours.  This time I narrowed it down to:


A green Chippendale chair.

A green bonnet.

A most beautiful (and not green) piece of papercut art.

Next time we're going to the Natural History Museum to look at dinosaurs. Raaaar!



So, that was my cheap(ish) weekend in London and those are my suggestions for what to do if you don't want to spend a fortune. It can be done cheaper but I think you've got to strike a balance and I wouldn't have missed out on those Macbeth seats or that delicious brunch for anything.

Do you have any good cheapskate tips for visiting London, or any other cities?

My Weekend

Life is busy, busy, busy at the moment. Whereas February was hectic because of work, March and April are hectic because of FUN. Hurrah! I have all sorts of trips and excursions and very exciting things planned and I'm sure you'll get to hear about most of them on here.

Let's kick off with last weekend though.  Saturday saw me spending a lot of time on trains to and from Leeds, along with people who thought it was ok to eat BBQ chicken legs at 10am. Why do people do this?! It is not ok.  It is revolting.

Anyway, train snacks aside, I had an awesome day.  I was going to Leeds to see the Northern Ballet perform The Great Gatsby (click through that link for a little video excerpt - alas it's not of the cast I saw).  Oh my goodness. It was astonishing.  Costumes, music, dancing: all utter perfection. Go and see them. I can't recommend them highly enough.

They're so good that they end up having a completely contrary effect on me. Or maybe I'm just a contrary soul. Who knows?  Anyway, I spent most of this performance thinking "Noooooo Daisy, stay with Tom!" because John Hull was just mesmerising to watch. When I saw them do Beauty and the Beast last year, I didn't want the Beast to turn back into a prince, just because Ashley Dixon was so bloody good.

Photo courtesy of the Northern Ballet and Bill Cooper

The other aim of the day was to catch up with my amazing pal Lee, drink hot voddys and eat delicious food. I haven't seen him for an age, so we talked and talked and talked all flipping day long, including the entire train journey back to Liverpool.  Yeah, apologies if you were on our carriage and were scandalised by our conversation. He's a bad influence on me.

I was muchly please to have the opportunity to wear some new shoes. Yay new shoes!  Even if they are decidedly sensible...

The weather was dreadful at the weekend oop North but with the amount of walking I had to do, wellies were not an option. Sadly, with my oddly-wide calves, boots aren't really an option either. These Clarks beauties (c/o Spartoo) are the absolute perfect pair of brogues - super comfy, proper leather and no breaking in required.

When I arrived back in Liverpool it was mid-evening and time for a meal with my girls.  It's a rare occasion now when the four of us are all together again but it's always fab.  I just wish we didn't all live so far away from each other.



As for Sunday, snow stopped play.  The mothership and I were to meant to be out fence judging at a British Eventing competition in Cheshire but we got there to find it had been cancelled. Damn it! We promptly drove back to Liverpool and had a very lazy, sofa based Mothering Sunday instead.  I'd made a picnic for our day out so we just had a living room picnic instead. Not quite the day we'd originally planned but it was equally fun!






Admittedly not the most epic picnic ever, but she's gluten and dairy free and thus tricky to cater for. There was an amazing cake as well but we kinda ate that for breakfast...

Lions, and Tigers, and Bears. Oh My!

A lion.

And some (sleeping) tigers.

And a spectacled bear!

Oh my!

As you may be able to guess, I went to Chester Zoo at the weekend.  I'd never been to the zoo before that.  It wasn't that I had a deprived childhood or anything - it was lovely, just somewhat lacking in zoo visits and Disney films.  I've still only really ever seen The Little Mermaid and Robin Hood.

But at least I've been to the zoo now!  It was awesome. I went with my lovely friend Shell and young Jack. Poor Shell, she had two kids to put up with for the day. I spent most of the time there dashing around going "ohhhhhhmygodddddaGIRAFFE!!" and wondering if anyone would notice if I stole one of the bears.  She has a big car - we could totally have stowed it away in the boot.

Hi Shell!

Hi Jack!

Let the photo bombing commence:

I am now desperate for a pet giraffe.  Wonderful animals.

I was so tempted to steal him/her for Char.

I loved this orangutan. Totally reminded me of Ludo.

That's a Roulroul partridge and chick.

Look, proof I was actually there!

We're going to the aquarium next, and then the safari park.  And if I'm very good, I might get McDonalds on the way home.