Avatar

GG and I went to see ‘Avatar’ this evening in the cinema in Cardiff Bay. He’s been wanting to see it for some time so, thanks to the excellent babysitting skills of my friend Maria, I was able to offer to go with him.

There are many reviews of the film out there for you to read, so I’m not going to even try and write one here! Suffice it to say, I thought I’d made a terrible mistake for the first part of the film as it began in a very militaristic and combative way without really letting me make any connection with the characters. However, the plot warmed up after a little while, and once I began to feel some empathy with some of the people on screen, I enjoyed it much more. It was a good two and a bit hours into the film before I felt the need to look at my watch overwhelm me, and that’s the yardstick I generally use to determine how much I enjoy a film!

I’m glad I saw it, and glad that it was in the cinema (so I got to wear the really sexy huge 3D glasses!) but on the whole I don’t think I’ll be buying the DVD.

The Sound of Music on tour

I was lucky enough, last night, to go and see “The Sound Of Music” starring Connie Fisher and Michael Praed at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff Bay. I went with my best friend Maria and a few of her friends and family, and we had a wonderful evening. The performance was truly stunning – the Mother Abbess’s rendition of ‘Climb Ev’ry Mountain’ gave me shivers!

It was very well cast. Having watched “How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria” on the BBC avidly when it was originally on, I was delighted to have the chance to see Connie Fisher in the lead role. She didn’t disappoint. She really did manage to portray a Maria who might ‘climb a tree and scrape her knee’ and whose ‘dress has got a tear’! She was very believable as a young novice who isn’t quite mature enough at the start of the play for a life in the convent, and later on as a confused young woman who doesn’t quite know what to do with her feelings for Captain Von Trapp.

The children were really good, especially whilst performing the choreographed routines in ‘Do-Re-Mi’ and ‘So Long, Farewell’. Max Detweiler and the Baroness have much more to do in the stage version than in the film, including a coupe of songs.

All in all, the stage version was sufficiently different to the film that I didn’t feel the need to compare the two. All the performances were very good, and the evening passed incredibly quickly. Maria enjoyed it so much that she wants to follow the tour round the country and see more performances! However, we have more musicals to look forward to, as Maria has already bought us tickets to see ‘Les Miserables’ at new year, ‘Chicago’ will be in the Wales Millennium Centre in January, and, of course, there’s the Christmas pantomime to see as well!

World Wide Knit In Public Day

Yesterday was World Wide Knit In Public day. I had hoped to make it to the official Cardiff venue for it, on the lawn outside City Hall, but didn’t manage it this year. However, later in the afternoon yesterday, GG, the boys and Maria took me for an ice cream in Cadwalladers in Cardiff Bay, so I decided to make the most of it to hold my very own, one woman knit in public event! After finishing my very delicious passion fruit sorbet, I whipped out my knitting and got a couple more rows under my belt.

You can see the St David’s Hotel across the Bay behind me, thus proving that I did in fact take part in this knitting event! The only pity is that we missed the World Naked Bike Ride Day group visiting the Senedd in the Bay, as I could have got a photo of the two events combined!

Photo updates

To finish off my updates from the past few days, I have some photos to share.

This is of Pinky and Curly, sulking because we had taken their ark away from them while we were in the process of moving them to fresh grazing. They decided to nap on the straw that we had left behind and pretend that their pig ark was still there!

This wasn’t intended to be a picture of a pig’s bottom, but ended up being one by the very nature of what I wanted to show you. Isn’t the curl in Curly’s tail just gorgeous! He has the perfect pig tail, with the perfect twist! I love it, and couldn’t resist taking this picture!

Mama Silkie had three chicks recently, and this is one of them. Jo is hoping to get them to be friendlier and more approachable by handling them regularly as chicks, so this was me holding the black chick at feeding time one evening.

And here are the other two. Aren’t they just the cutest things? I really hope I don’t turn out to be allergic to feathers!

Obviously, this wasn’t taken at the farm, it is of course Cardiff Bay at night. Ten o’clock last night actually, when Jo, handsome and I were on a wild goose chase, trying to find out where the Doctor Who filming was happening. We didn’t find it in the end, which was disappointing for us all. We had been given a tip that the crew were parking in a particular car park in the Bay, and we found all the trailers and suchlike, but no sign of filming. So we thought we’d check the actual Bay area and the ‘Torchwood Hub’, but no sign. Ah well, c’est la vie!

And finally, this gorgeous boy has been my constant companion for the past few days while I’ve been diggin the vegetable patch, never leaving my side! He’s a lovely dog and it has been lovely to have his company. His name is Fabulous, and I really think he lives up to it!

Saturday – birthday present shopping and Earth Hour

Yesterday was a wonderfully lazy sort of a day. I had a lovely long lie in, then Cheeky and I went to town, shopping for Handsome’s birthday present. We were successful, thankfully, in quite a short space of time, so we were able to spend the rest of the afternoon ambling happily around the shops that we wanted to go to instead. We went and looked at the pet stall in Cardiff Market, so that Cheeky could admire the gerbils, then we went to the food hall in Howells to buy some chocolate. Cheeky has a cold and was losing his voice yesterday so the chocolate was medicinal! We sat in the public gardens beside the old library for Cheeky to consume a medicinal Lindt bunny, where I noticed this rather magnificent magnolia tree;

It kind of puts our little tree in the front garden to shame!

After we had finished ambling around town, we went down to Cardiff Bay to meet my friend and Cheeky’s Godmother, Maria. On our way, we stopped to take a quick self portrait in the mirrored water tower (otherwise known as the Torchwood Hub) outside the Millennium Centre;

We then went for a rejuvenating cup of hot chocolate and a piece of cake. Maria came home with us in the evening and we all observed Earth Hour together. We lit candles in the sitting room, and used our wind-up torch if we wanted to go to any different rooms. I did my best to talk about the reasons for Earth Hour with the children, but I think that they may have been too excited, having their Auntie visiting unexpectedly, to pay a great deal of attention! However, we let them stay up late to sit in the candlelight with us. We all found it very relaxing – Cheeky found it so relaxing, in fact, that he fell asleep on GG’s lap!

All in all, it was a lovely day, and one that I look forward to repeating, with minor variations, in a couple of weeks when I take Handsome shopping for Cheeky’s birthday presents. Having both birthdays in April was extremely bad planning!

Wordless Wednesday

A fountain with a rainbow, in Cardiff Bay yesterday.

2008 International Food Festival, Cardiff Bay

 Yesterday we visited the Cardiff International Food Festival in Cardiff Bay. We’ve been (I think) every year since it started, and thoroughly enjoy it every time. A couple of times we’ve got a babysitter and made an evening of it, but as I had the day off work we decided to go in the daytime this time, and take the children.

 For those of you who are familiar with the ‘Torchwood Tower’, I expect you’d be surprised to see strawberries all over it! However, strawberries are the fruit chosen by Cardiff Council to represent their Cardiff Summer Festival season, and so there are strawberries everywhere. There are even little Ford KAs painted to look like strawberries, with green stalks stuck on the top!

 The weather started out fairly threatening, with short sharp showers, but by the time we left the sky was clearing and an unfamiliar colour was creeping across the heavens – blue! I was so amazed at this unexpected and overwhelming improvement in the weather that I had to take a photo to chronicle it, and decided to capture the contrast in colour between the Millennium Centre and the summer sky. Fabulous! Long may it last!

After we had eaten our fill and inspected all the different stalls we decided that we were having far too much fun to go straight home so we went to the cinema. Now, the cinema complex is probably one of my sons’ favourite places, as there you can go bowling, eat pizza and ice cream (although preferably not on the same plate!), go and see a film AND visit the Doctor Who exhibition (which you can see in the background, behind the ice cream cafe!). What more could two Doctor Who obsessed small boys want? Unless…

 …oh I don’t know, you were to find a real life proper road sign featuring a Dalek?! This is indeed a real road sign, dreamed up to advertise the way to the Doctor Who exhibition and is positioned just outside the entrance to the Red Dragon Centre in Cardiff Bay. I’m told that there are other such signs around the country near the other Doctor Who exhibitions. But seriously, a question to all ‘TARDIS’ fans out there, if you saw a sign telling you to turn right towards Daleks, surely a true Gallifreyan’s initial reaction would be to ‘turn left’ and run – ‘gotta love the running’! (Sorry for the two really bad Series Four references there, but I couldn’t resist!)

My little pavement buddy!

This may seem like a strange picture to post, but I thought I’d share it with you today. I was sitting on the steps outside a Cardiff office block recently, and this little guy/girl (do lady-ladybirds look different to gentleman-ladybirds?) came trundling past. Given that there was no greenery within twenty or thirty yards I’ve no idea why he stopped by me, but he did and I felt the need to take his picture. The photo doesn’t really do credit to the glorious scarlet of his wing cases, or to his glossiness, but this was the best that I could do. Thinking back, I must have looked really miserable for that five minutes, as I spent the whole time observing him as he paraded past me. Then I must have looked completely crackers when I took my camera out and, to all intents and purposes, took a picture of the pavement! It’s a wonder that a padded van didn’t dash up and carry me off really! 

I’ve had two more extra days at work this week, and yesterday (a really lovely hot and sunny day) myself and the committee chairman spent a couple of hours around Cardiff spreading the word about Cancer Research UK Relay For Life in Cardiff (30/31 August in the Millennium Stadium, in case you haven’t read my other post about it!). We visited a fair few offices and made a good start with distributing posters and leaflets about the event, and we are hoping to visit some businesses in Cardiff Bay soon. I’m looking forward to the teams beginning to register in the next week or two, so that we know we’re on the right path to hosting a great first year Relay For Life.

Birthday (un)party and the excitement which was the return of Doctor Who!

My son (in his extremely rare wisdom which he must have inherited from his mother, or else how else could he be so wise at such a young age) decided that it would be cruel to subject his parents to the torment which is a party for a large group of seven year olds, and settled upon a trip as a suitable replacement for said party. He wanted to go camping in London (by Hamleys, to be precise). However, once we gently disappointed him by telling him that the London Metropolitan Police probably wouldn’t like us to pitch a tent under Eros, he asked if he could stay in a hotel for a night instead. His reason for this was, and I quote, “because I want to see whether you can get toast with jam or marmite in hotels at breakfast time”! So, not being entirely Scrooge-like in our ways, we suggested that he combine his night in a hotel with two days in Legoland. He was reasonably excited about the idea, and so, last week, off we went. It coincided nicely with school holidays as well, so we were still able to keep our weekend. (I don’t like going away for weekends as, if you go away on a Friday after work and then come back on a Sunday evening, in a strange way it feels as if you’ve missed out on your weekend altogether. I’m just a bit strange like that, I suppose!)

We were really lucky with the weather, which was dry but overcast on the first day and then sunny on the second (really didn’t want to have to carry the coats around all day on the second day, but it seemed like far too much hassle to trudge all the way back to the car!). Two days seemed a really nice amount of time to go around Legoland. We basically walked around all the first day without much of a plan, but really going where the spirit led us. The second day then, organised Husband consulted the map and took us to all the bits we missed (apart from the wet rides – it wasn’t warm enough for those, and I didn’t fancy sending two little boys back to school with streaming colds!). It worked well. I really don’t think we missed much at all. And it seemed that we had managed to take the boys at just the right age. I’m not sure how impressed my younger one would have been a year or so ago, as I think he would have been too young for most of it, but if we’d left it another three or four years, chances our the older one would have found it all too young and tame for him. I suppose as they get older the next place will have to be Oakwood and Alton Towers, although I’m waiting a couple of years for the latter, at least, until they can put up with queuing with a little more patience than they have now!

As you can see, we took plenty of pictures of Miniland in Legoland (I’ve got about another forty pictures of this bit on my memory card, but I thought I wouldn’t torment you with all of them). I’ve just put on the most recogniseable landmarks, although I also have pictures of the Sacre Coeur, the Moulin Rouge and Canary Wharf complete with Dalek half way up one of the office blocks (I may post that later, if I do a post about Doctor Who). In case you aren’t fully aware of what a Dalek may be doing in London’s Canary Wharf, may I refer you to the last two episodes of Series Two (of the ‘newer’ Doctor Who sagas) wherein we find the story of the Battle of Canary Wharf where the Doctor loses Rose (AKA Billie Piper) to the parallel universe. My older son is a Doctor Who ‘fan’ (in inverted commas because the word ‘fan’ doesn’t even start to cover it!) and so as soon as he saw the sign referring to the model of Canary Wharf he was already scanning the area for signs of Time-Lord activity! To his credit, he spotted the Dalek straight away (which was impressive, given how tiny it was) which only confirms his obsession! This is the boy who in normal circumstances can’t see his shoes when he’s falling over them…but I’m veering off topic again. I apologise. Anyway, speaking of veering off topic, this leads me nicely on to the second part of the birthday story.

My son, being such a huge fan of the Doctor, already owns most of the available merchandise. However, this did not discourage him from asking (in conjunction with his brother who, as I’ve mentioned previously, shares the same birthday month) for anything outstanding that has ever been made in relation to Doctor Who (I’m not really exaggerating much!). So we bought him the pin-striped suit (justification – he can wear at least the trousers even if not the jacket for smart meals and family occasions), the fob watch and some of the DVDs which he didn’t already own. But then, the icing on the cake came when the BBC announced that on his very birthday they would be screening the first episode of the new series! I wish I could have shared the look on his face – it was just the definition of pure joy! And so, for the week leading up to his birthday he announced to everyone he met that it would be his birthday on Saturday and that Doctor Who was coming back, in the same breath and with the same level of excitement! I’m not kidding, he couldn’t decide which he wa most excited about. Oh, I can’t resist – here’s the picture of the Legoland Canary Wharf;

Can you spot the Dalek? I’ll give you a clue – it’s black (Dalek Sek, maybe?). No? OK, I’m taking pity – here’s the zoomed-in version of the photo;

Wasn’t that a clever idea of the people at Legoland – I wonder if I missed any other references like this? As you can see from my pictures above, there was definitely no Slitheen spacecraft slicing bits off Big Ben, and neither was there a space-Titanic hovering dangerously close over Buckingham Palace. Maybe they weren’t subtle enough!

Anyway, back to my boy’s birthday. We arranged a bit of a gathering in Cardiff Bay on his actual birthday so that his older friends and relatives would get to wish him many happy returns, and he insisted on wearing his new suit and on carrying his new fob watch and his old (second version as the first wore out!) sonic screwdriver. He does a pretty good ‘Doctor’, if I do say so myself, and got quite a few glances cast his way by people passing by who obviously realised who he was supposed to be (the red Converse boots would probably have helped too!). He was even filmed by a small boy who was enjoying watching my boy save the world outside the Torchwood Hub (otherwise known as Roald Dahl Plass). And my boy was loving the attention! We even took some poster-style pictures of him in front of the Millennium Centre, as he wants to try to get into the Doctor Who Adventures magazine in the feature called “Doctor You”. I wish I could share them with you, as he is such a great little actor, but I set myself strict rules when I started this blog that I wouldn’t share too much information about my family, and that would be stepping over my self-imposed line. Sorry! You’ll just have to take my word for it that he looked great, and thanks to the blue skies with very artistic white clouds skudding across, we got some great pictures.

So anyway, to wrap up in as few words as possible (I’ve maybe written a little more than I planned in this post!) he had a great few days celebrating his birthday, loved his presents, cake and excursions, and the new episode of Doctor Who was a marvellous way to finish his day.