What I am getting excited about (and booking now): October

I know not everyone gets it (though, if you are reading this I will probably be preaching to the choir) but I very much like blogosphere. I love reading blogs and getting little snippets of other people's lives, especially those who live in my home city (Laaaandaaan!) and who give me great ideas of how to use it.

If I was to have one tiny squirm - and it is not really a proper squirm as I still happily devour those blogs too, as it plays to my nosey side - it would be blogs that regularly write reviews of things I can't go to. Because I am not famous or because it was a one time event, that will never occur again or not for like a whole more year.

Now, as I said, not a proper squirm, and I know I too have a penchant for writing about something that is an annual thing and I've just been to, hell that was the basis of my first blog post, but at the same time I do want my blog to have at least a few elements that are vaguely useful for other people than me.

In many ways, though I am not against getting a bit cleverer and trying to grow the number of you guys reading this, a lot of this is for me. I really enjoy the attempt at being creative, but mainly just the period of reflection on my life that keeping this little corner of the internet encourages, but I don't want it to become a wholly narcissistic venture.

One of my talents and shortcomings is I really like to plan, spontaneity can make me a little angsty. So I say, if you are reading this, take advantage of that, cos here I will show you what I am planning and what I am getting excited about- the sort of thing you really have to book now to enjoy later. That way, I won't just enjoy it and write a review, we can all enjoy it too!

My planning side does not enjoy that this does not easily sit in my blog plan to be filed under "loner" "lover" or "friend" but hey, maybe I am just feeling cray this Friday morning. Wreckless. Later I may dye my hair pink (I really might, I have been planning it for months, just I am not sure it will clash with my Autumnal wardrobe colour palette...)

I'll try and post something like this every 6 weeks or so (with less waffling about pink hairy dye), so it will turn into a little series and even better, encourage more planning!! Woooo. So with no further adieu: what I am getting excited about:

1. Chills in the Chapel - Escape from New York

As I have grown older I have really grown into Halloween. Very tempted to enter Lauren Conrad's Halloween costume competition even though I have very limited craft and costume making skills just to capitalise on all of that Californian Halloween-lovingness.

Probs won't do that. What I will do however is go to see Escape from New York with a live orchestra at Union Chapel in Islington. I went there a couple of years ago to see the Thing when I lived in Angel and it was a fabulous Halloween treat. Watching a scary film is something I do annually for Halloween only (the rest of the year I'm a romcom and musicals kind of girl, my boyfriend loves it). I like to watch said film it in a wonderful spooky location like in a church, or in the wigwam on the top of the Queen of Hoxton.

Union chapel has been one of my faves, but last year bloomin Time Out went and ruined it for me by announcing it the best thing to do in London for Halloween which meant suddenly all the tickets were bought. You are not getting me this year Time Out, I already have my tickets! You can book via Union Chapel's website here.

(My favourite ever Halloween outfit below. October 2011. I was meant to be evolution - fish at the top, woman by my feet, but it was too tricky so fish it was. As you can see, I felt very confident in it.)

Maybe I should enter this one into Lauren Conrad's competition? If I can find the hat.

2. Rules Restaurant at Christmas

For more about how wonderful Rules is and how it is the MOST CHRISTMASSY PLACE IN THE WORLD you can read my blog post from last year here. You can always try your luck with a drink in their fir trimmed fire roaring bar if you don't want to go the whole shebang and dine their, but if you do want to, and at Christmas you need to book by earlyish October for those days leading up to the big 25.

Book via Rules' website here.

3. Christmas Afternoon Tea at the Landmark

I booked to take my mum here yesterday, and they had already run out of all the earlier day time settings on the 6th December. If you want to enjoy Landmark's award winning afternoon tea, Christmasified, with you sitting next to a 100 foot (estimation and exaggeration but it is humongous) Christmas tree then book ahead!

You can book on the Landmark Hotel's website here.

4. Ice Skating at Somerset House

Sorry this is a very Christmassy post! I really do start getting excited for Christmas by early October, when you leave the house in the morning and there is that first chill in the air!
F
inally Ice Skating at Somerset House! With some of the other London rinks (Canary Wharf, Tower of London, Natural History Museum) you can leave it a little longer but if you want to skate round that big rink just off the strand, it is better to book sooner than later. It is one of my school friends and mine Christmas tradition that we've carried on well after we've left school, and I really love it!

You can book ice skating all over London via ticketmaster here.

Oh my giddy ants this post has made me feel very Christmas Christmas Christmas. So. flippin. excited. Have lovely weekends!

PS. If you are really into planning you might want to read my list of things to do alone to make yourself feel Christmassy and get your late November and December all booked up now!

Copyrights - top left - randomaniac.us
bottom left - landmarkhotelpress

I went to see Benedict Cumberbatch in Hamlet and he wasn't that good (Kidding! Made you look!)

Kidding!! Made you look!

As predicted he was excellent.

My amazing friend Lucy got Barbican membership and kept refreshing her screen for 7 hours over a year ago to get tickets to the crazily sell out production of Hamlet, starring oscar award nominee, and Laurence Olivier award winner (twice!!) Benedict Cumberbatch this year. I went with my 3 friends (btw by coincidence, all married and man that is a weird moment when you realise everyone else is going home to their huuusbaands - said in my head in a Beyonce accent - and you are suddenly like shit, I really am a grown up. The income tax and that mortgage isn't lying.) Anyhoo my point is, Hamlet in general and Benedict in particular were marvellous.

Be aware if you don't know Hamlet this post does have some spoilers!

I know a few Shakespeare plays quite well having studied him all the way through school and then my degree, and I probably know Hamlet the best as that was my A2 Shakespeare. I have always been a bit of a Shakespeare fan, at one point as a teenager I went through a weird obsession phase where I had a "Shakespeare notebook" with a picture of Shakespeare on the front (it came like that) and loads of my favourite sonnets and lines from plays inside, sometimes with clippings of Leonardo Di Caprio playing Romeo, or Joseph Fiennes playing Will himself (it did not come like that).

I have grown out of Shakespeare scrapbooking but in all serious, I do agree with Ben Jonson (who wrote a foreward to Shakespeare's collected works back when they were released in 1623) that Shakespeare really was "not for an age, but for all time" - for me, he really taps into what it like to be human, he has good stories, and his poetry is shit hot.

Back to Shakespeare today, (or last week for me) at the Barbican: the set was incredible, goodness knows how it was so big and I do not envy whoever cleared it up at the end of the night as there is so much going on on it. (And not because they have to clean up knickers that have been thrown by Cumberbitches, though apparently that does happen).

All the performances, not just Benedict's were spot on, and made me see the play in a different way. Polonius, who I have not really cared for before I found a really funny character, and I slightly warmed to his nosey busybody personality, and was dreading him getting stabbed. Ophelia, who - this sounds horrible but - I often see as a pretty weak and pathetic character, had so much dimension and I liked her too (in part because of her fabulous wardrobe of mustard yellow jumpers and cool lacey monochrome dresses which is sort of the look I am going for this Autumn too). When she commits suicide, it felt so poignant and so tragic. Even Claudius himself seemed both scarier than usual, but also still had that fear of being found out that makes a baddy believable. (Played by the King-beyond- the-wall Ciaran Hinds).

Having studied Hamlet all the way through my final year at school, and barely glanced at it since, it was interesting to revisit the play 10 years later (oh good grief it is 10 years ago that I was in year 13). It occurred to me a little bit of what Hamlet seemed to be having - aside from the death of his father, the ghost of his father, the marriage of his mum to his uncle, and the fact he is a prince - a bit of a quarter life crisis. The standard realisation that you are a grown up, your parents are just people, the relationship you are currently in may be the one you stay in forever, and you've inadvertently made a decision about what job you'll be doing the rest of your life. Ok, so there is a much more suicidal depression running along for Hamlet, but never the less it was interesting to visit it as someone a little bit older. The question of whether Hamlet is mad (did he really see the ghost of his father) is one of the key themes in Hamlet, but mad or not, looking at Hamlet now, I recognise he definitely had some serious mental health issues, very bad depression, and as a grown up I empathise with that far more than I did in school, and Hamlet (play not the man) gets a little more interesting because of it.

Yet despite all of this, the wonder of Shakespeare (and some great comic timing by Benedict Cumberbatch and the cast) is that there are still some bits that you laugh at, and you don't walk away feeling like utter crap and a bit sad face, but more pleased as punch you did something so damn cultural on a Tuesday night.

Ok, so it would be silly for me to be like "yeah just go and get some tickets" as they are difficult as hell to come by (and fyi they check ID with the name of the person on the ticket on the door so there is no point buying a super expensive ticket off ebay) but my main take away from this is I would like to see Shakespeare more often please. How lucky I am to live in the country he was born, and in the city where his plays are constantly on. If you are desperadoes to get tickets to see Benedict because you are a massive Cumberbitch, then you can try and get one of the on the day tickets, by waiting outside the Barbican before they open at 9 (though I've heard those go like hot cakes).

I was a good girl, and like asked by Benedict, took no photos of the show so I can't share them, but what I will share is this short clip of Beyonce and her huuuussband singing Coldplay, just because:

PS. More things for cultural cumberbitches.

Copyright for top photo - Evening Standard

Being in my late twenties, and going to Lewisham's Model Market

My mother's old hairdresser's Iranian father used to say the most important thing in life is to enjoy being the age you are. Not to me obviously, he said it to his daughter, my mum's hairdresser, who said it to my mum, who said it to me.

Ie. when you're 10, don't take slutty selfies and wish away your childhood hoping you were older. When you first go off to uni don't sit inside wishing you were home, or wishing you were full on grown up with a proper income. Embrace the lack of routine, and all the new people and have a fabulous time. And I guess (though I haven't been through this yet obvs) but when you are older and maybe you've had kids but they've left home, don't pine after babies wishing you could just do it all over again and hating the home without them, maybe do something similar to what my parents seem to be doing and take advantage of no longer needing to be responsible for other people, and spend all your time on extravagant holidays. They seem pretty content. You get the gist - enjoy being your age, I could probably have done it without the waffle, soz.

Anyhoo, so now I am 27, undoubtably in my late twenties, what does my age mean to me? (I say to me, as I know 27 feels very different to a lot of people. Some people want to get married and have kids, some people are still enjoying post uni whatshallIdowithmylifeness).

For me, my energy levels are much lower than when I was 21. Boy oh boy, I don't know how I existed going to bed after midnight everyday and having no bedtime routine. Maybe it is working hard all week, maybe I just don't have the same ability to wait for a second wind anymore, but I really like sleeping now.

I also now have a bloomin mortgage, and a relatively swishy and stressful job, so I have to be kinda responsible. And I have a long term-ish boyfriend, so that changes things a bit.  At the same time, I don't have kids or a cat or a puppy, I have enough mula left for cocktails and dresses left after my mortgage has come and out and I live in one of the world's most exciting cities. (I think anyway, London).

So with all that in mind this to me is what 27 will look like, and how I will enjoy it: it'll be a bit more balanced. I have a nicer flat now, which is all the way out in zone 3 of the tube network, both reasons means it is fine if I want to come home to it rather than going out every day like I did when I was 22. 27 is hosting a fabulous dinner party or boozy brunch every month to really get my money's worth in the place that is sucking it all up. And also cos I have enough glassware for 8 people now. I know, such a grown up.

But I'm not dead yet. (Not that dead people host dinner parties and enjoy matching glassware) but you know what I mean, I am still in my twenties dammit. And I have actively chosen not to buy a puppy, so if I am not doing that I should at least go out a fair bit. So every month, I want to go to something that is sort of "only in London" with my friends and with my beau. (Or my bae as the kids are calling it. I am still in my twenties I am down with the lingo).

And that folks is how I've come at last to my review of Lewisham's Model Market, set up by the people who did Street Feast and then everything in the east, and have taken their project south of the Thames (and to my new home borough, woop) to take over an old market in Lewisham and turn it into a pop up food stall, bar and dancefloor emporium.

I was a little tired that day as like the 27 year old I am, I had got up early to run some errands first thing and then spent the day brunching, baking gluten and sugar free banana bread and upholstering a window seat - I only stayed til midnight and not the market's closing time at 1:30am. That is my life now. May I also note whilst I am being such a grown up, that one negative thing I could say about the model market was that I believe it to be a slight fire hazard. It has these very cool (but in my opinion slightly dangerous) massive fire pits, which instead of being near maybe seated areas or cordoned off somewhere are in the middle of the dance floor! Literally under the disco globe. Every time you had to squeeze through the floor to nip to the loo it did feel like you were taking your life in your hands a bit.

Back to being a fun person again: it was pretty amazing (though for me a tiny bit sad) how Street Feast had barely touched the market before moving in. Will and I munched on delicious greek chicken pita wraps in a bar seating area which was in an old hairdressers. Tiles and mirrors hung on the wall still, in almost perfect condition but with no barber chair in front. Brownies and tequila coconut cocktails were sold from cute little pop up bars and restaurants which still had signs advertising "Ghanaian .....". An old records shop was turned into a wine bar "winyl" (I enjoyed that).

They'd also made a little rooftop bar, and obvs that is everyone's favourite in the summer. Basically night markets have really come on a bit since I went to my first one in Chiang Mai in Thailand in 2010 and accidentally ate a whole tray of deep fried spiders legs with sweet chilli sauce. (True story, I really will eat anything deep fried).

On a Saturday night Model Market was pretty packed in a "woah where did all these people come from maybe Lewisham really is up and coming" sorta way. I went on a little boozy date night with Will, but I think it would be a great place to go with a big group of friends, I am slightly pondering it for my 28th birthday if it returns for a 3rd summer. Although, just to cross off the other subject of my blog - "loner" - this place is good for with lovers and friends but I would say not on your own, you would seem creepy.

Final tip - do not google map the place as otherwise you will be like Will and I, poor little outlaws looking through the railings at hundreds of people who have found the entrance and are having a marvellous time but having no idea how to get in. Instead look for the 3 little roads coming off Molesworth street, and get to that point and you will spot it. Ok I'll shut up now!

Lewisham Model Market is open til the end of this month. No need to book or anything, though you do need to pay £3 if you arrive after 7pm

Never too old for a tequila cocktail filled coconut

PS. More philosophising that eventually leads to a review.