This year I turned 28. I know, I know, I don’t look it – I definitely don’t feel it either. But, alas I am.
So, to celebrate / commiserate turning yet another year old, Dan I headed to Cambridge for the weekend. Since moving to Peterborough, Cambridge is only 40 minutes from me and having never visited before, I have now taken 2 day trips there to do a little exploring. It is the most beautiful city, so I was very excited when Dan told me this is where we would be spending my birthday weekend.
“I can show you the world, shining, shimmering splendid…”
I was definitely transported to a whole new world a couple of weeks ago when one of my best buddies George took me to see the West End’s brand new musical, Aladdin – and shining, shimmering and splendid are three words that pretty much sum it up.
I got the tickets way back in December as a Christmas present – when Aladdin was still on Broadway and I didn’t even know that it had been made in to a musical. It was a lovely surprise because if I had known the producers of my all time favourite show, The Lion King, were bringing another Disney classic to the stage – I would have been first in the queue to see it.
We often head abroad, to exotic countries, in search of a breathtaking backdrop – but, while we spend a lot of time complaining about our own country, particularly due to the weather, it is easy to forget that we actually have some incredible scenery right here on our doorstep. And, a couple of weeks ago, I was spoilt by it – with added rain, of course!
There are now an estimated 2.5 million people living with cancer in the UK and this number is only expected to rise, according to Macmillan. Of those affected by this life threatening disease, around 160,000 will die each year and by 2020, almost one in two people are expected to get at least one of 200 potential cancers at some point in their lives.
On Sunday morning I was up bright and early, at a time that, to me, felt like the middle of the night. But, in reality it was just after 6am and this particular morning I was excited to be meeting my content colleague Jade at Peterborough train station – for a day we had eagerly been anticipating for several months.
So why were we up SO early on a Sunday you ask? Well, I won’t leave you in suspense any longer… we were heading to The Guardian in London for a workshop, where we would be learning how to write compelling features, with Freelance Journalist, Will Storr.
The last few years have seen many Disney classics, not just remade, but reinvented, thanks to a little help from state of the art CGI, including the likes of Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Sleeping Beauty and most recently The Jungle Book.
Creating a live-action version of an animated Disney film is not entirely new – in 1996 101 Dalmatians was brought to life with an all-star cast and a lot of adorable real life dogs! But what these films are doing now, is taking fairytales, that were a huge part of our childhood and giving them a whole new lease of life with a modern twist.
When I went to university the last thing on my mind was life after it or my career. I had primarily gone as it seemed the natural progression from school. But I actually had no idea what I was working towards, and I spent the majority of the three years searching for direction and an end goal.
At 17 years old as we sit in our Sixth Form block it is extremely difficult to know for sure what we want to with the rest of our lives, which is no small decision when we will potentially spend the following 3 or 4 years and thousands of pounds preparing to do it.
In the summer of 2009, between finishing my second year of university and starting my third, I spent 6 weeks in Thailand with two of my best uni buddies.
I had never been travelling before and I can genuinely say it was 6 of the best weeks of my life.
Whilst we were there we met several people who taught English in Bangkok during the week and spent each weekend on a different island. Heaven! Due to the low cost of living, they could experience absolute luxury come Friday, on a shoestring budget – staying in beach huts, eating massaman curry and drinking their weight in Chang beer and Sangsom buckets, all for less than the price of a single night out in England.
A year after baking cupcakes for the very first time, I decided it was time to have a go at a full-sized cake. Having used Dan’s sister’s birthday as a reason for baking for the very first time, I thought the occasion, a year on, called for a bigger and better one! Continue reading
As the clock struck midnight and took us into 2016 I didn’t make any New Years resolutions for the year because, lets face it, who keeps them? According to this post that looked back on 2014 or “the year I became an adult”, I planned to learn to cook and that definitely hasn’t happened yet… Continue reading
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