Christmas – Well Eye Never

Christmas 2023 Favourites – Part 2

Happy New Year! I hope you had a great Christmas, and that you have a prosperous year ahead as well.

This is the second, bumper part of my festive Favourites, as the first part covered the month of November, where I had a free Christmas meal, explored a trail of snowmen sculptures and saw some of London’s displays, among other activities.

Since then, in December and early January, I’ve met friends in both London and Devon, seen four incredible theatre shows, explored a museum I hadn’t been to before, had some lovely meals in restaurants, ate far too much food at home, celebrated the 60th anniversary of Doctor Who, watched lots of comedies on TV, and enjoyed some music as well.

So once again, as with every Christmas, this is a bumper post and video. One of the meals was a free PR invite for my journalist friend Emily to review, but as usual I’m not sponsored or affiliated to write anything here, and all opinions are my own. I hope you enjoy!

Palladium Pantomime – Peter Pan

Christmas has been a bit extended for me this year, as it’s only just come to an end this past week with my trip to see the famous Palladium Pantomime for the first time, complete with a touch tour and audio description. And it ensured that I ended the festive season in style, because it was an amazing, hilarious, musical, magical experience.

Christmas In Devon

It seems hard to believe that it’s well over a year already since I was made redundant from my previous job in Torquay, and that the first anniversary of my new job in London is just a month away. But I still keep in contact with my former colleagues and friends down in the Westcountry, and last week I popped down there to see some of them again for a Christmas catch-up. So I thought I’d do a little write-up about it, as I have some festive photos and video clips to share as well.

Christmas 2023 Favourites – Part 1

Seasons greetings, I hope your preparations for Christmas are going well, November always feels a little bit festive, but for me it was even more so than normal this year, because I’ve already explored a variety of London’s displays, seen a bunch of snowmen on a sculpture trail, and had a free Christmas dinner courtesy of a PR invite. On top of that I’ve also seen a couple of theatre shows, while at home I’ve been enjoying some more TV and music as always.

Consequently it makes sense to treat this as a festive Favourites post and video, and spread the joy over 2 months. It’s not too early as far as I’m concerned. So with the usual disclaimer that all opinions are my own, including for the free food, let’s crack on with it, and I hope you enjoy!

Walking With The Snowman

Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without The Snowman on TV. The animation, based on the book by Raymond Briggs, is such an adorable and moving story, brought to life with wonderful imagery and music, that it quickly became a perennial favourite for millions of people, and last year it celebrated its 40th anniversary.

And now you can see the iconic character in person, courtesy of a sculpture trail called Walking With The Snowman. It began in Salford in 2018, and then in every year since then (except 2020 when nobody could go anywhere) it’s been at multiple locations over the festive period. So this year the trails are taking place at Hillsborough Castle & Gardens, Knole House and the Fleet Street Quarter. And I recently explored the latter in London.

It’s been put together by Wild In Art, who were also behind Morph’s Epic Art Adventure that I enjoying looking at in the summer, and indeed 7 of the artists from that trail have contributed to this one as well, alongside a few others. So here we get a dozen snowmen, themed around the Twelve Days Of Christmas, each one painted in a beautifully distinctive and interesting way.

The sculptures will be in place until 5 January 2024, so there’s still plenty of time to see them. I went on a midweek afternoon, so it was nice and quiet, but I imagine there will be a lot of children keen to see them at weekends and during the Christmas holidays, which might make it harder to take photos of them.

There is a PDF map on the website, but it’s more about pretty design rather than accuracy, so it only gives a very rough visual sense of where each statue is. I found it a lot more reliable to use the list of statues in the bottom left corner, typing each road or place name into Google Maps to find them. And even then, there are some major roadworks going on in one particular area that added to the confusion and sent me off track slightly. But I did find them all in the end, it took me about 2 hours to do the whole trail. People with full sight would be able to do it much quicker I’m sure, but it’s very rewarding in any case, as they do look great.

So here’s a little gallery of the Snowman sculptures in central London. This isn’t sponsored or affiliated by anyone involved with the project, I just enjoyed hunting them down, and I hope you enjoy looking through them!

Christmas 2022 Favourites

Happy New Year, I hope you had a lovely Christmas! I know that various things including finances, strikes and the weather all conspired to make things difficult, and the economic woes will continue during this coming year, but I hope you were able to enjoy the festivities in whatever way your circumstances allowed.

Fortunately, despite my recent redundancy, my mother and I are in a comfortable and stable position, so we were able to enjoy Christmas in the same way we do every year. I went out to see a musical and a variety of festive displays, and at home there were plenty of things for us to eat and watch.

It hasn’t been entirely without issues though. The railway strikes and the snow in December prevented me from going down to Devon to see my ex-colleagues for a Christmas meal. And now, in early January, my mother and I have finally caught Covid, after 3 years of successfully swerving it. I’ll write more about it in a later post, once I’m sure we’re clear of it, suffice to say being fully vaccinated has clearly helped, as we’re recovering pretty quickly. Plus I’ve still been able to put together the traditional video that accompanies this post.

So let’s get into it. This is an epic bumper post, as festive roundups tend to be, and none of it’s sponsored or gifted. I hope you enjoy!

Oxford – Art, Academia, Jools & Jimmy

Last weekend I had a nice little getaway in the beautiful historic city of Oxford, which I’ve never visited before. I spent the daylight hours visiting a museum and going on a walking tour, while in the evenings I attended a concert and a stand-up comedy gig, so I made good use of my time there. None of it is sponsored or gifted, and I hope you enjoy this review of what I got up to!

Christmas 2021 Favourites

Well, we made it through another odd year. We finished 2021 in a stronger position than 2020 in some important ways, and step by step we are getting back towards a sense of normality. But we still to be careful and patient, as opposed to carefree and complacent, and hopefully the situation will continue to improve during 2022.

In any case, despite the various restrictions we endured throughout the year, along with my own battle with sciatica and back trouble over the summer, I still got out and about quite a bit and found plenty to enjoy, as you’ll have seen from all of my Favourites posts. The latter half of 2021 was particularly busy, as I was interviewed on RNIB Radio’s Happy Hour by fellow blogger Holly Tuke from Life Of A Blind Girl, had the opportunity to interview visually impaired actor Gillian Dean about the premiere of a new play, finally got to attend a live performance of the Rocky Horror Show, and had an audio described tour of London Zoo, among other things. And being able to meet some of my friends after so long apart has naturally been the biggest delight of the year.

This Christmas has also marked my 5th anniversary of living in London! Granted, much of the past couple of years has been a bit of a write-off, but that just makes it all the more amazing how much I’ve achieved and crammed in so far, with public speaking, TV and radio interviews, podcast appearances, student documentaries, theatre visits, museum tours, the charity abseil, so many new friendships and connections, the attention my blog’s had in general, and many other things that I would never have imagined happening or being successful at before moving here. So in that sense, the lockdowns have been strangely beneficial for giving me a chance to relax and reflect on all of that, as well as giving me all the more impetus and confidence to expand my horizons even further going forward. So if you’ve played any part in my London journey so far, whether it’s just reading these blog posts, or chatting with me, or getting together with me in person, thank you so much! It always means a great deal that people take such an interest in my adventures and my ramblings.

So before I find out what 2022 has to offer, it’s time to wrap up 2021 with a traditional bumper post and video looking back at what I’ve been doing and enjoying during December and the Christmas period. As usual, nothing here is sponsored and all opinions are my own. I hope you enjoy!

Roaming In Rochester

Earlier this month I had a lovely time exploring Rochester, a historic town much loved by Charles Dickens, with friend and fellow blogger Emily from Fashioneyesta. It was great to see each other again, having not had the chance to meet up for quite a while, and it was wonderful to meet her new guide dog Rosie too. So we had fun looking around together.

November 2021 Favourites

Hello again, hope you’re all keeping safe and well despite everything going on at the moment. I’m happy to say that I’ve had my Covid booster jab, which really helps to further educate and strengthen the immune system, and thus greatly reduces the chances of severe problems if you do get ill with the new variant. Plus Mum had both her flu jab and Covid booster last month, and I’m hoping to get my flu jab at some point. So we’re as well protected as we can be for the winter now.

The latest developments haven’t stopped me going out and about and being generally busy either, as I’ve been making the most of my time. So during November I was interviewed on another national radio show, had lovely days exploring London Zoo and the Illuminated River project, enjoyed stage and film versions of a Dickens classic, watched the latest series of Doctor Who, saw various comedies, got absorbed in the new Beatles documentary, heard ABBA’s new album, and celebrated Freddie Mercury’s life on the 30th anniversary of his untimely passing. And none of it is sponsored or gifted as usual. So I hope you enjoy my latest post and video roundup!

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