Christmas 2024 Favourites – Part 2

Happy New Year! I hope you had a lovely time over Christmas!

Following on from Part 1 of my festive Favourites that I posted on Christmas Day, I’m now going to talk about a free exhibition I was given a tour of, give an update on events at home, and trawl through the many things I’ve been watching and listening to. And while the tour was courtesy of a PR invite, there have been no other incentives for anything to appear here, and all opinions are my own regardless.

So let’s dive into this bumper post, with an accompanying video that also features everything I mentioned in Part 1. I hope you enjoy!

Continue reading “Christmas 2024 Favourites – Part 2”

Live 8 Review

Back in March I posted a review of Live Aid, the iconic concert from 1985 that united people from around the world to support the victims of the famine in Ethiopia, to coincide with this year’s musical at the Old Vic that celebrated the occasion.

For a long time it seemed like such an event would never happen again, but 20 years later Bob Geldof and Midge Ure got together once more to organise Live 8. Ten concerts were held worldwide on 2 July 2005, viewed by 3 billion people, plus a final one on 6 July, to put pressure on the leaders of the countries attending the G8 summit to take stronger action to make poverty history. There had also been a 20th anniversary version of Do They Know It’s Christmas? the previous December as well.

Of course, how much of a difference the event actually made will always be up for debate, but it certainly changed things to an extent, with some commitments made with regards to increasing African aid and cancelling debts. But there will always be much more that politicians can and should be doing, and a discussion on that side of things is far beyond my expertise or the scope of this post, so I won’t be going into that here.

In any case, the concerts featured a huge variety of artists, and whilst I felt it was much more of a mixed bag compared to Live Aid, it was still a lot of fun. I had also been far too young to see Live Aid when it took place, which meant I only got to watch it when it was released on DVD many years later, whereas I was able to see Live 8 when it was actually broadcast, as I recalled in my journal at the time.

I also bought the DVD box set of Live 8 that was released in November that year, presenting a wide selection of tracks, and that’s what I’m going to review in this post, along with some online videos that fill in the gaps. I’ve also created Youtube playlists for the UK concerts and the rest of the world, with lots of performances from the official Live 8 Youtube channel (where they’ve uploaded quite a few that were omitted from the DVD set), plus a selection of other clips. I’ve linked to a lot of the videos during this post as well.

So without further ado, and as a sequel to my earlier Live Aid post, I hope you enjoy this run-through of the different concerts and my thoughts on some of the performances!

Continue reading “Live 8 Review”

October 2021 Favourites

Finally. After all the pandemic restrictions and my recent health problems, it’s such a joyous relief to be out and about properly again, doing the things I enjoy.

So there’s quite a lot to mention in this month’s post and video, as I’ve been attending theatre shows for the first time in ages, taking nice walks, and enjoying a mixture of films, dramas, comedies and music at home. Plus I bought the new iPhone 13, which I’m very happy with as explained in my review, so the photos and videos you see going forward will be taken using that.

Apart from the theatre show States Of Mind, for which I was given complimentary tickets to go along and review, nothing else in this post involves any gifting or sponsorship. And all opinions are my own throughout. So I hope you enjoy!

Continue reading “October 2021 Favourites”

Thank You Tokyo – Olympics & Paralympics Review

They did it. After all the delays, controversies and restrictions that threatened to scupper their hopes and plans, Tokyo successfully managed to host the 2020 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, a year later than scheduled. It’s not been without understandable criticism in these extraordinary times, with suggestions that it should have been delayed further, among various other issues, and there were a few athletes and other personnel who tested positive for Covid both before and during the competitions. And the absence of spectators, along with the widespread use of face masks, hand sanitiser and other safety protocols, gave the events a very different feel to usual.

Nevertheless, they still went ahead, and turned out to be a great success, treating us to a lot of incredible sporting action as a result. And it’s all the more impressive given that the competitors haven’t been able to train in the usual way over the past year, often being stuck at home instead of using the normal venues and facilities that would otherwise be available to them. Congratulations to all the athletes and teams who took part, and well done to the event organisers, staff and volunteers for making the events happen.

So I’ve really enjoyed watching the Games – especially the Paralympics of course, but the Olympics were great too. It’s all given us some welcome escapism from the pandemic, despite the constant reminders of its presence and impact. And so I thought I would share some of my favourite highlights in this post, as well as a Youtube playlist. I’m not sponsored by any organisations or people mentioned here, I just want to acknowledge and celebrate a few of the many amazing achievements of the athletes who I enjoyed watching.

Continue reading “Thank You Tokyo – Olympics & Paralympics Review”

Journal – March 2011

Welcome to another set of journal entries. This has been quite an eventful month, with Mum and I finishing off the legal stuff relating to my Dad’s passing, the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan that’s dominated the news, I’ve bought some more DVDs, and I saw Comic Relief on TV, among other things. And then at the end of the month I had a lovely long weekend break in Guernsey with a mate. So I hope you enjoy looking through it all.

Continue reading “Journal – March 2011”