Category Archives: Life & Style

THEATRE REVIEW Captain Flinn and the Pirate Dinosaurs: The Magic Cutlass: Paul Vates

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at the Spiegeltent, Leicester Square Gardens, London

 

‘the chance to see a walking, talking, singing T-Rex’

Based on the popular books by Giles Andreae and Russell Ayto, Les Petits Theatre Company take over the Spiegeltent every afternoon to bring this story to life, using energy, noise, colour, puppets and props.

 

Miss Pie is trying to do a school play, but the children are playing up a bit. After a few false starts, she storms off – leaving the cast (Flinn, Pearl and Tom) alone on stage. A quick nod to each other and they play it out ‘for real’. They are brave pirates on the sea – until one by one they are kidnapped by Mr T the T-Rex, the captain of the Pirate Dinosaurs. All because he wants The Magic Cutlass from the bottom of the sea. So, threatening to turn Pearl and Tom into sausages, he forces Flinn to dive down to the sea bed to retrieve it…

 

Strangely, it is quite a complex story for the eager audience. Billed for ages 3 and above, I do think it is better for 6 and above. The books may be for the youngest of children, but brought to life, the characters are brash and loud and the dinosaurs are full-on for a small child to take in. I would suggest smaller kids sit at the back … even though they are keen to see a dinosaur when they enter – but when Mr T is there, he is huge and scary!

 

The cast are amazingly energetic – and arrive with a real bang! Mark Middleton, Ellie Pawsey, Tom Myles and Stephan Boyce (with supportive crew) deserve a huge pat on the back.

 

Director Hal Chambers hurls the story at the audience, seldom giving us a chance to breathe. The songs are, sadly, forgettable and there is nothing for us to join in with. The production is ‘for’ the children, not ‘with’ them – so, somehow, it is lacking in charm. A great shame as, technically, the staging and design have brought the books to life in such an imaginative manner.

 

Towards the end of the 60-minutes show the toddlers were getting restless, but for action, sound, lights and the chance to see a walking, talking, singing T-Rex, this is a manic, energetic show that does not conform to traditional pantomime. It is a seasonal production that doesn’t even mention Christmas. Such a relief…

 

 

 

Photographer    Gail Harland

Producer           Les Petits Theatre Company

Adapted by       Oliver Lansley

Director            Hal Chambers

Composer         Jack Graham Thomas

Puppet Design  Max Humphries

Set Designer     Zoe Squire

Running Time   60 mins

Ages                 3+

Performances   until Sunday 5th January 2020 – at 3pm

Venue               Spiegeltent, Christmas in Leicester Square, Leicester Square Gardens, London

WC2H 7NA

Tickets              Available from Christmas in Leicester Square at Tel: 03333 444 167 or online at

www.christmasinleicestersquare.com – priced from £8

Twitter              @PetitsTheatre, #FlinnCutlass, @LeicesterSqXmas

Facebook          /LesPetitsTheatreCompany @LeicesterSqXmas

 

A free Captain Flinn Activity Pack can be downloaded from www.lespetitstheatre.com

 

Burnham on sea’s first Christmas food festival finds flavour and favour with our West Country Correspondent, Natalie Jayne Peeke

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On Saturday the 7th December food and drink traders lined the streets of Burnham on sea high street. It was the first Christmas food and drink festival. The big man himself was even there to greet children.

With many sellers offering Christmas special products such as mince pie flavoured vodka , warm and extremely tasty mulled cider and even a Christmas dinner nap which consisted of Turkey, Cranberry sauce, stuffing and bacon. What more could you possibly want.

EAT organises food festivals throughout the West Country and recently Festive Food festivals have been organised and this year was the first one in Burnham on sea, lots of locals attended to support local producers. Everyone was in high spirits and one couldn’t help but to get into the festive spirit (the mulled Cider and Christmas Carol’s certainly helped)

I attended the festivities with my parents  however it was completely family friendly with lots of activities for children and it was free to attend. I do hope that the festival is a annual event.

Organisers.

Stall holders:
Twisted Cider La Grande Bouffe  MARINADA FOOD LTD   Maiseys Bakery  Quantock Steamers
Glede Brewing  The Unusual Pork Pie Company  Robert Hawker Venison Ltd Bath Soft Cheese   Sea & Sky – King Alfred’s Young Enterprise Co  The Crepe Cart   Country Bumpkins Catering Passion & Smoke  World food   Kinori / Not Just Sushi Ltd
Kumbites  Souvlaki Panormitis    GingerBeard’s Preserves  Intents Catering Ltd  Fenny Castle Vineyard
Blu-Fire Pop’s Thai Kitchen the mighty soft shell crab  Marion’s Del  National Trust  Pitchfork Ales / 3D Beer  StrEat Pizza
Sweet Gin & Fizz  Wild & Rustic   Into Coffee  Cake Bar  Lishkins  Somerset Charcuterie Limited  Taylors of Bruton
Loaders cider   Boulton Spirit (Picture attached)   The Incredible Brewing Company  The Humble Pie Co.  Stefano’s Food
Black Bee Honey Limited  White Lake Cheese  Winnies Bakery  Nutts Scotch Eggs  Royal British Legion  Crumpet Cakes
Porlock Cider Mill  L’affinage du Fromage LTD  Plum Duff & Stuff  Griffin Cycles  Roast Chestnuts & Mulled wine  Dark Matters
Charles Taylor Trading  Mike’s Pork  Somerset Wildlife Trust   Greensdirect Glastonbury Cheese  INDIA IN A JAR
Cocoa’s  Hills Bakery ltd  Wesley Cottage Bees  Bath Culture House   Times Past Dairy  XocolaT  The Heart Shack
Wallaces   Nutcessity     Herby4   Highbridge & Burnham Foodbank

Emily Watson: Help Maternity Worldwide continue to save lives in childbirth

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maternal health, charity, Actress Emily Watson (Chernobyl, Apple Tree Yard) explains that not every birth is a time of comfort and joy.

Emily is encouraging people to donate to maternal health charity Maternity Worldwide this Christmas, after first supporting it as her chosen charity on the BBC Radio 4 Appeal in 2018. This year, you can buy an exclusive donation gift certificate for only £27 and help save a mother’s life. She says:

‘To me, Christmas means catching up with family and making time to enjoy each other’s company. Too many children in low-income countries will be without their mother this Christmas because of needless deaths in childbirth and the inability to access the standard of medical care we take for granted in the UK. Since 2002, Maternity Worldwide has been working to ensure that every woman, regardless of where she lives, can give birth safely and without fear. I would like to encourage you to donate to the Maternity Worldwide Christmas appeal, and help them continue to save lives in childbirth.’

‘As a mother, I am deeply concerned that in countries like Malawi, Ethiopia and Uganda pregnancy and childbirth are putting women’s lives at risk.’

‘There are still so many women who don’t have facilities close at hand. Maternity Worldwide needs your support to help save more lives.’

Every year 287,000 women die in childbirth. 99% of reported deaths are in low-income countries. Many women die after long, dangerous journeys, trying to give birth in makeshift buildings without the help of a midwife, and with no pain relief, antibiotics or proper sanitation. A modern-day stable in the UK may in fact be a warmer, safer and more comfortable place to deliver a baby than some of the facilities in sub-Saharan Africa.

Most deaths can be avoided easily and cheaply through measures which are readily available in the UK. But good quality healthcare for many of the world’s women is unaffordable or inaccessible.

Maternity Worldwide is a charity dedicated to saving lives in childbirth by helping women and girls in low-income countries access the high-quality maternal healthcare they need to be able to give birth safely.

Maternity Worldwide are asking people to donate just £27 to their Christmas 2019 Appeal, less than 1% of what a typical UK family will spend in the run-up to the festive season. Supports can donate online, support the charity by buying their exclusive Christmas cards and range of sustainable presents, or by buying Maternity Worldwide’s new 2019 Christmas Gift Certificate, priced at £27.

Maternity Worldwide works to ensure all women, wherever they live, can give birth safely and without fear. Founded by Dr Adrian Brown in 2002, over the past 17 years the charity has worked in eleven low-income countries and our projects have helped save thousands of women from dying unnecessarily in childbirth.

Your readers can help families like our modern-day Mary and Joseph and their baby Earnest by donating just £27 to Maternity Worldwide’s Christmas 2019 Appeal. A donation of any amount will make a huge different but the suggested donation of £27 is less than 1% of the amount a typical household in the UK spends in the run-up to Christmas. This small sum could make a big difference by:
Covering the cost of a safe birth for a mother at a health centre and follow-up care such as a preventative course of antibiotics
Sponsoring a student midwife’s training for a week
Contributing towards the cost of a caesarean delivery for women experiencing difficulties
Helping cover the cost of a bicycle so healthcare workers can reach mothers in remote villages

Please encourage donations to our Christmas 2019 Appeal via the dedicated JustGiving page: https://justgiving.com/campaign/Maternity-Worldwide-Christmas2019

Maternity Worldwide is working to reduce maternal mortality by training midwives and skilled birth attendants, improving access to health centres and hospitals, providing communities with maternal and newborn health information and empowering women to become financially independent and decision makers about their own sexual and reproductive health.

Our mission is to work with communities and our partners to:
identify and develop appropriate and effective ways to reduce maternal and newborn mortality and morbidity
facilitate communities to access high-quality, skilled maternity care
support the provision of high-quality skilled care

Maternity Worldwide is a registered charity no. 1111504 and our registered address is Community Base, 113 Queens Road, Brighton BN1 3XG.

Michael Rowan bags a space saver and stops making a spectacle of himself with the Lensrappa

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It’s rare gift indeed that can bring harmony to the Rowan household, especially at Christmas, so I am particularly indebted to Dundas and Burgun for this clever spectacle holder.

When we go out, my wife presents me with an edict in something of a double bind, ‘Make sure you bring your spectacles’ she instructs, followed by, ‘what have you got in your pockets they look ridiculous bulging like that?’

Now until recently I have suggested that I simply pop my reading glasses into her hand bag risking a withering stare and exasperated sigh, but now that small clutch bags are on trend, my wife has announced that enough is enough.

Happily  and just in time for Christmas, comes this stylish leather wrap around that protects the glasses but takes up very little space in your pocket, handbag or Christmas Stocking.

The Dundas & Burgun Lensrappa, is a thin leather glasses case design to fit any spectacles and stay as thin as possible. They come in 6 great colours and make a great Christmas gift or stocking filler.

Lensrappa £20 from https://dundasburgun.com/

Available to order online and will arrive before Christmas.

 

Not read The Biggest City You’ve Never Heard of – by Dr Andy Wynn? Well, give it a try. Fascinating. Reviewed by Annie Clarke

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A story of personal growth through the challenges of life in modern day China

 

Frost Magazine is fortunate. The reviewing team sometimes receives a book for review that we fight over.

The Biggest City You’ve Never Heard Of by Dr Andy Wynn is one of these. Imagine this:

A new job, a new town. The thing is, the town is in China. It proved to be an eye opener for the author and his wife, Julie and in this memoir, written with verve, insight, humour and respect  Wynn reveals the day to day cultural experiences to which they had to adapt. Experiences which sometimes revealed uncomfortable (at first sight) norms which challenged their western concepts. Actually, delete ‘sometimes’, I think probably ‘invariably’ might fit better.

They were forced to look into themselves, accept A N Other and open their own world to the people of China, and step into theirs, living and laughing along with them.

As I read I found myself alongside Wynn, learning to swim and navigate through, and ultimately into the Chinese world,  peering, albeit second-hand, into my own inherited norms and culture, just as he did.  I realised that one is so familiar with the nitty gritty minutiae of one’s own life life: behaviour, manners, and humour that to sink into this difference is exhausting, challenging, and ultimately uplifting, and broadening. It creates  change within a person.

I found this turbulent, throbbing world fascinating, since my first and last view of China was reading The Small Woman by Alan Burgess, about a missionary, Gladys Alywood living in China in the 1930s and 40s  during massive upheaval. Indeed, she came to speak at our school, and was small, and impressive, and enthralling. You might remember the film, The Inn of the sixth Happiness. (Actually her hostelry was called the Inn of the Eighth Happinesses)

So it was high time Frost Magazine explored the changed Chinese world. So glad I bagsed the book.

Written with great thought, panache, an eye to detail, humour and above all imbued with honestly and insight  – this is a book to be savoured, enjoyed and one which will leave you pondering your own norms in this increasingly global world.

The Biggest City You’ve Never Heard Of by Dr Andy Wynn https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1081867035

Annie Clarke is the author of the Home Front Girls series. (Arrow)

SISTER SCRIBES: KIRSTEN HESKETH IN PRAISE OF WRITING GROUPS

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Writing can be a lonely business and much has been written about writers seeking out other writers online. I’m a member of several online writing groups. I’m writing this article as one of the Sister Scribes; five writers who met through the RNA and banded together to become – hopefully – more than the sum of our parts. Then there’s the LLs – aka the Literary Lovelies – a group of writers who met through Twitter. Over the past four years, we’ve chatted most days, virtually cheering each other up and spurring each other on in our quest for world domination … er, publication. Geographically we’re scattered from Devon to Scotland via the home counties and Wales, but everyone makes a real effort to get together for lunch in London and the occasional retreat. Then there’s the informal support group that sprang up during Nano, another one that vents about politics, writers that met at the RNA conference, others that met during a virtual editing course … Wow – reading back through that lot, it’s a wonder I have enough time to do any writing at all!

All these groups have several things in common. We are all novelists- mostly writing romance or sagas or women’s commercial fiction. We are all – with a couple of honourable exceptions – woman. Most are seeking a publishing deal. And we are all – or mostly – ‘of a certain age’!

Which is partly why I love being part of my local writing group. I’ve been a member of Reading Writers for the past three years. It meets on the second and fourth Wednesdays of the month and it is gloriously diverse …. in age, gender and writing predilections. People are writing crime and thrillers, fantasy and sci fi and genres I’d barely heard of before. Many are busy with short stories or flash fiction or poetry or memoir. Lots have – or are planning to – self-publish. Some are biding their time while they learn about the craft of writing.

It all makes for a wonderfully vibrant and exciting group, one that pushes you outside your comfort zone and makes you look at your own writing though fresh eyes. I’ve written before about our ad hoc writing sessions in Coppa Club where a small group of us will meet for a morning to put our writing worlds to rights – before cracking on with the wordcount. A workshop on poetry and another on writing using all the senses really encouraged me to reassess my prose. The one on plotting had me stocking up on multi-coloured Post It Notes. Everyone other meeting is a ‘manuscript night’ where you are encouraged to submit 1,000 words of your WIP – the feedback is robust but invaluable – for example, last time, the 20 and 30 year olds in the group told me exactly why and how the online dating world is not how I had described it #imadinosaur #whoknew?. There have been book launches and pub visits and days out and going to the pantomime that one of the members had written.

And the competitions! Twice my short stories have come second – anonymously judged by external authors or journalists – and both times it was genuinely thrilling – the first and only times my writing has ever won anything. The certificates still have pride of place on the fridge.

All in all, it’s a fabulous group and I’m very proud to be a member of it.

The current treasurer’s a bit rubbish though 😉

 

Living with Alzheimers – A Typical Day by Chris Suich

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chris-bob-suich-living-alzheimers

Bob wakes up at 8am today. His head has moved from his pillow to mine. How did that happen? I always put his head squarely in the middle of his pillow so how does he move to mine? He tries to get as near to me as he can because he needs the warmth and reassurance of my skin on his, even my breath when I breathe. It is a bit claustrophobic but I understand.
‘Are you Gary?’ he asks
‘I hope not,’ I answer
‘I’m Chris. ‘
‘Yes, you’re Chris, my number one’
‘I’m your wife. We’ve been together forty years’
‘I love you.’
This will be the start of 50 ‘I love yous’ throughout the day. Then it’s straight into the routine- helping him out of bed and toileting him, then the bath.

‘I’m not going in there.’
‘You are, but I will help you. I’m making it bubbly and warm ,and you’ve got your magic mat in, so you won’t slip.’
‘I’m not going in there!’
‘But I want to make you look lovely and smart, and make your lovely silver hair shine with my special shampoo.‘
He considers for a moment. ‘How do I get in? I’m going to fall.’
‘No, you’re not, because I’ve got you.’
‘Okay,’ he relents. ‘Just for you.’

I place Bob’s hand in the sink tell him to lift his leg up and guide it into the bath water. I tell him to hold onto the bath handle with his other hand and he cautiously and shakily lifts his other leg in. He won’t sit down though, so the bath is not happening.
‘Sit down , I will help you.’ I hook my arm under his arm pit and guide him downwards.
He sits.

‘I’m all wet now!’
‘Yes, well you are getting washed.’
Then onto  the trauma of the wash and the hair washing. I’m as quick as I can be because Bob wants to get out as soon as he gets in. I guide him out and dry him. He has no idea how to help. His limbs are heavy and leaden. I have to push his arms into the sleeves and lift his legs into jeans and shoes. All clean and fresh.

Next is the pills and shave. I’m knackered already and it’s only 8.45am.
First go with the pills and he spits them out. I pick them up and we have another go. ‘All swigged down.‘

Now the shave. But Bob is having none of it.
‘No, no no,’ he says
‘I’ll be quick. ‘
‘No. I hate it!’
‘Don’t be cross,’  I say and give him a kiss.
He melts. ‘Okay, just for you.’
So I get my way and he has his wet shave. I’m getting better at it, and quicker.

My lovely handsome husband. Aftershave Jo Malone, only the best!

The Last Minute Christmas Gift List

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nana hot and not duvet

We cannot recommend the Nanu Hot and Not Duvet enough. You can customise it so one side is hot and the other hot. You can do with this various degrees. I cannot believe no one thought of it before. Martial harmony for Christmas? Yes please.

Available here.

hey grandude. paul mccartney's

This children’s book from Paul McCartney, and illustrated by Kathryn Durst, is lots of fun and visually stunning. My children loved the story and I have now read it to them more times than I can count. Highly recommended.

Available here.

luvabella newborn doll

This Luvabella Newborn is a wonderful toy for boys and girls. It is great for imaginative play and teaching children how to care for babies. It is well made and comes with great accessories.

Available here.

moft laptop stand

This Moft Laptop stand is a great, and stunning, design. It is easy to use, has adjustable height and attaches and detaches with ease. It is small enough to fit into a stocking making it a perfect Christmas gift.

Available here.

beats solo pro ivory

Beats Solo Pro. Sigh. I love beats. You have not heard a song properly until you have heard it through a pair of Beats. They are the headphones of music lovers. These ones in particular have brilliant noise cancelling and they are wireless. This along with 22 hours battery life? Love.

Available here.

Are you watching book

Vincent Ralph has written a stunner. A lot of crime thrillers just have women being brutalised and murdered in them. This book is different. Yes, there are murdered women, most notably the murder of the main character’s mother. But this is a feminist crime thriller. It is a modern tale and a riveting read. I could not put these down. My favourite crime book this year.

Available here.

The bear in the fifth floor flat book

Written by John Foley and Illustrated by Alice Hawthorn, this is a brilliant book and on top of that, all proceeds go to Mencap, the UK’s leading charity for people with a learning disability. A must buy for two reasons.

Available here.

perky pear tit tape, lift and shape tape.

Perky Pear is the original life and shape tape. It is perfect for Christmas parties and beyond. Sweat proof and waterproof, it is made of cotton. It is easy to use when you get the hang of it.

Available here.