In the dying hours of half term, I’m sure we’re all decompressing and being glad that June is now with us. But May was a pretty crazy month for me, even before half term and I’ve got some stuff to share with you that might not even be child-related (shh! don’t tell anyone!). So, what *did* I get up to May, aside from trying to say intelligent things on conference calls while tween girls scream at “A Hat in Time” next to me? Well, early on I took an epic road trip with C’s Mum and met up with some of the other BLWers. We were all heading for Devon and a beautiful wedding at Ilfracombe’s Tunnel ..read more

I’m actually kinda reviewing not one but two exhibitions today. But I only physically went to one of them, which was the one in the title of this post – “Science Fiction: to the Edge of Imagination” . I mean, that’s long enough as blog post titles go so if I’d tried to fit in “The Fans Strike Back®: A Star Wars Fan Exhibition” then I think the URL would have been so long that I might have broken the internet. And no one wants that at the start of half term, do they? I’ll explain a bit – it was the Star Wars thing that first caught my eye as a possible family outing for Bank Holiday Monda ..read more

We have a bit of history with this particular production. When I received the invite, I had a weird feeling of deja vu and when I checked back, my suspicions were confirmed – we were due to go and see this at Little Angel in March 2020. Reader, we did not. We did pick up a copy of the book at Little Angel when we went to see The Paper Dolls in February 2020 and, as I was dithering over Eva really would be brave enough for it as a very sensitive 7-year-old, lockdown fell. Now, there was no question – as a just-11-year-old she’s not much braver than she was before but she does think that all ca ..read more

Ever since the movie version of “Matilda: The Musical” came out earlier this year, Eva has been kind of obsessed with it. So for her birthday, I promised to take her and CousinZ to the theatre show. It was only after I’d booked the tickets that I got a well-targeted sponsored ad on Facebook for a singalong version at the Prince Charles cinema which was the same weekend. I dithered a bit about whether we could do both and then i asked Eva, who assured me that there was no such thing as “too much Matilda”. So with CousinZ in tow, we headed to Leicester Square on Saturday lunchtime and did some ..read more

OK, I’m finally ready to blog about Sunday night. It’s been a busy old week with the Globe on Monday, office and an overnight visitor on Tuesday, Twist Museum on Wednesday and trying to catch up on work on Thursday. So today, when all I’ve had to do is sit in a reclining seat and watch heroic types beating up monsters, I finally have a bit of brainspace to tell you all about the Musical Theatre Rave. I know – digest that for a minute. It’s not a concept I was familiar either but it’s what it sounds like  – a clubnight where the only tunes played are from musicals. This is definitely my k ..read more

Photography by Manuel Harlan, taken during an integrated BSL performance   I’ll start this post by saying that I am very, very tired today. I’ll explain the reason in a separate post because it definitely deserves a separate post but needless to say, it was a very tiring reason. But nothing bad, don’t worry. Still, I needed a lively kind of show to keep me awake this afternoon and luckily this production of The Tempest promised punchiness. It’s a kid-friendly version (Year 5 and up) which comes in at a pleasingly economical 90 minutes. I’m not super familiar with the original text  ..read more

That sounds grand, doesn’t it? Well, I should clarify that I have not been asked to contribute to the future of London and that’s probably for the best. I seem to be managing several projects at the moment and none of them are going well. If I can’t plan a bathroom, how can I plan a city? Still, that doesn’t stop me from sticking my oar in. You may well have seen the announcement today that TfL are planning to detangle the London Overground ball of string and name each of its six component lines a proper tube line name. What are the six, you may wonder? Well, I wondered that too and am extreme ..read more

OK, here’s the misleading second post I promised you. We didn’t actually spend a day in Sweden – it was pretty much just a morning in Sweden. But it matched the last post so there’s that consistency you’re looking for. One of the reasons we went to Copenhagen was the prospect of being able to shoehorn an extra country into a very short trip. Reuben has a scratch-off map of Europe that gathered dust during the lockdown years and we’re determined to try and get it filled in. So a holiday where we could just nip over to Sweden for the morning seemed ideal. Besides, it was raining in Denmark. It ..read more

I’ll admit that this blog post title is a bit misleading but don’t worry…the next blog post title will also be misleading so I’m being consistent. We didn’t actually go to Denmark for a day although Nathan and I have done that before. We learnt the hard way that a four-hour visit to Esbjerg Fish Museum does not make up for 24 hours on a very rough North Sea ferry. Doesn’t Nathan still look a bit green in this photo? This time we flew and the whole enterprise took more like three days than one. But I thought it was a catchy title and I’ll explain as I go along. The first few hours away from h ..read more

Happy New Year! It’s not been a very exciting January (is it ever?) but I knew we had something fun lined up for last night as we had Nathan’s Christmas present to go to. It might have been a bit of a present for myself as well.  I wasn’t going to review it cause sometimes I like to go to the theatre without having homework to do afterwards….but the writer and sole performer Brendan Murphy asked us to share our thoughts on social media and who am I to refuse? First off, the venue! It was my first time at Wilton’s and it’s an amazing venue. An old music hall, tucked away near the Tower o ..read more