Journeys Are My Diary

Life, Adventures, Entertainment and more - A little bit of everything blog!

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat

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Recently I’ve been finding it hard to make time for blogging. In the day time I work and due to not being fully recovered from this horrible illness, by evening my mind is a mess and there is no hope in hell for concentration. I have a list of so many things I want to catch up on, but every time I turn my laptop on, I just can’t be bothered – and that’s a horrible feeling. However, this morning we have an electrician from jlkelectrical.ie round to check our electrics – all part of completing the sale on our house. He has taken over the dining table which is where I usually work and so I’m a bit lost for what to do. Then it hit me, that I could actually use that time to go on my laptop and blog – until of course, I realised that he’d turned off multiple plug sockets, including the one the router is in! So I’m sat here, typing this into notepad, hoping that I may still find time to place it on my blog later. After all, I’m going away for a few days tomorrow and if I don’t do it today, it may never get done!


Anyway, I’ve completely side-tracked from the post I was going to make… and that was about the musical “Joseph and the amazing technicolour dreamcoat”. Theatre has always been a massive passion of mine, especially musicals but really all genres. Ever since I was old enough, I bought a programme from every show I ever saw and I still have them all to this day. Wicked and Phantom of the Opera are my favourites, having seen Wicked three times and Phantom twice. I also love Starlight Express which I have seen three times too. I won’t spend forever listing all the theatre shows I’ve seen but needless to say I was really excited to hear that Lily’s school were going to tackle Joseph for their Y3/4 play this year. When Lily was cast as the Pharaoh I was even more thrilled. In the end, I made the technicolour dreamcoat for school and Lily’s pharaoh costume. Neither were anything special but school seemed pleased with them and the play was pretty good too.

Since Lily took such an interest in the play (she watched the DVD I bought her three times, before doing the performance) and loved all the songs, I decided I would look to see if Joseph was still touring, as I knew it had been last year. Sure enough, it was doing a new tour for 2017 and Joe McElderry was still playing Joseph. Funny enough, we had nearly gone to see the play last year, because my mum likes Joe McElderry so much but in the end we had decided not to book. Anyway, there were a few options to book, one before Lily’s play and a couple afterwards. A part of us wanted to watch it before, because she felt that would help her act it better, but I also knew the school play would be nothing like the real version so instead she could just continue the enjoyment afterwards. In the end we booked for Easter Weekend in Skegness, which fell about two weeks after Lily’s play.

When we got to the theatre, I bought a programme – it was only £4. We found our seats and they were pretty great to be honest. Lily ended up almost centre of the stage, with a good clear view. The play itself was really enjoyable. Lily sang along and danced in her seat and my enjoyment definitely came from seeing her enjoy it. I have seen Joseph three times before, so this was my fourth. I’m a little sad to say, that it was probably the “poorest” version I have seen, but unfortunately you often find that with touring shows as they have to keep a budget, make it easy to travel etc. That said, the cast was great and if you forget about the fact that people play multiple characters, it wasn’t really that bad. Lily loved it and that was definitely the most important part.


Though we had traveled in my mum’s car for the most part, we had driven to my mum’s in my car and so as soon as we were back in my car – the Joseph CD went on (Lily had convinced me to buy it at the intermission) and we sang along all the way home. When we got back, Lily asked for the CD and headed to her room to keep on listening, while lying on her bed and playing on her iPad. Once the Easter holidays ended, we put the CD back in the car and now listen to it most drives to and from school. All in all, Joseph was a great success but I do hope that it becomes a West End fixture again at some point as I would love for Lily to see the full quality version.

Do you like the theatre? What’s your favourite show?

Happy 9th Birthday Lily

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Just a quick update from me today and I also know I’m yet to do my February Round-up. However I couldn’t let today go by without wishing my youngest daughter Lily, a Happy Birthday. We’ve had a lovely day that’s involved opening presents, muffins for breakfast, building Lego, eating at Pizza Hut for lunch, catching up with family and then chilling out. I’m actually quite sad the day is over but I think some of that is knowing tomorrow is Monday and the school run begins again!

So once again, Happy 9th Birthday Lily. I can’t believe how much you’ve grown and what a beautiful, funny and smart girl you’re growing up to be.

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Lily had a Roman dress up day this week and looked really sweet. She was supposed to be a goddess but wasn’t keen on any of the white dresses and instead picked this black one. Megan got changed after school that same day and since she had something aggravating her neck, I put her hair up for her. I couldn’t get over just how grown up she looked.

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Camping trip number 2 – Chichester

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tent

Last weekend we headed off on a very last minute camping trip down to Chichester. We were loaned a brand new tent (a Vango Airbeam Evoque) my friends got at a wall tent shop, which we needed to pick up on the way and didn’t arrive until 10pm. We had huge amounts of fun, putting up this brand new tent, in the pitch black, with only my car headbeams to light the way. However the tent is awesome – did you know you could get fully inflatable tents that don’t require poles?!

Anyway after pretty much arriving and going to sleep (it was midnight by then mind you), we woke around 7am the next morning and got ready for a day at Chichester Marina. The girls grandparents have a boat there and they had invited us all down for the day. We just had to change the boat batteries and then it’s ready for an adventure.

I have to admit I always feel at home with Bob and Andrea (the grandparents) even though I’m separated from their son. After nipping out to the nearby village and getting some cash out (to pay for camping), we arranged to travel to the marina and meet Bob and Andrea. We parked the car and boarded the boat for the day. We saw many used pontoons at Chichester Marina.

boat

The day was beautiful and the water was really calm, at least until we got out of the main marina area. We spent quite a few hours just “driving” around, before mooring up and having some lunch. Andrea made a fab spread and I was given a glass of prosecco and wine too. It was so relaxing. Next we moved the boat slightly and the girls went crabbing off a dock. Lily wasn’t really sure she was up for the idea but I persuaded her into it and both of them seemed to enjoy themselves. After what seemed like ages, Megan finally caught a crab and Lily freaked out and refused to fish for them after that. It was pretty funny. We named the crab Kevin and fed him bacon lardons, while trying to catch some more. However we were unsuccessful and in the end just placed Kevin back in the water.

crab

Finally we headed back towards the marina to dock the boat and go for dinner. The girls both had a go at steering, as did Chris. However when we got near to the marina, Bob took over. Sadly there is a lock that you need to go through and there was a queue, so we ended up delayed for about an hour. In the end we moored up and headed to a place called The Boat House Cafe. Bob and Andrea had already told us it was there treat so it was lovely to enjoy a nice meal out. Chris, Lily and I all had burgers, while Megan had BBQ chicken breast. There was lots of wine flowing and it was such a pleasant evening. Lily ended up playing Pokemon on my phone, while Megan drew on the serviette. It was just very relaxing. Click here to check out more details about boats

We headed back the campsite and relaxed for a while before grabbing an early night. The next morning we were up early again but this time we needed to pack up the tent and head home. It took quite a lot longer than we expected so it was around 10am when we set off. We stopped for food on the way home, but ultimately we were getting back for my sister’s house warming party so we didn’t have much time to spare.

It was a very rushed trip and a long way to go for the weekend but we had a great time. I’d love to go again next summer, but maybe for a week so we can see more of the south coast.

Our Harry Potter Convention and Ball experience

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Not this weekend just gone but the one before, myself and my best friend Nat took Megan and Lily with us to Nottingham, to a Harry Potter convention and then followed by a Yule Ball. We’d had it booked since about February and we were all looking forward to it. We had a hotel booked for the night, but also so we could get changed in between the convention and the ball. Although we had a weekend ticket for the convention, we had pretty much decided we would only attend on the Saturday (unless it was really good and then we might go again on the Sunday morning). However in the end we actually decided to only go Saturday after, checking into the hotel (Premier Inn) first and then walking around.

bows

In the morning I still needed to work but while doing that I made us all bows. Megan was Ravenclaw, Lily Gryffindor and since I sway between Gryffindor and Slytherin, I picked Slytherin. Nat is Gryffindor too so she decided on a Deathly Hallows inspired Gryffindor bow. We all wore Harry Potter t-shirts too. We set off for Nottingham around 2pm and were there for about 3pm. We checked into the Premier Inn and then walked the 10 minutes to the convention.

premierinn

When we got to where the convention was (Nottingham Conference Centre), there was a blue ford Anglia car outside and a replica of Hagrid’s bike. Sadly I don’t think either were genuine. We headed inside and there definitely wasn’t much of a wow. Outside were some owls, inside were some stalls (both upstairs and downstairs). Apparently there were some workshops and special effects stuff but there was no timetable or map to carry around so we just looked at stalls. Megan bought a watch and Lily bought a pokemon (yeah not HP related). We spotted a reptile area on the way out but otherwise we spent about an hour looking at stalls and nothing else.

watch

We headed back to the Premier Inn, grabbed a cup of tea and sat for a while before deciding we should get ready for the Ball. Nat curled Megan’s hair, while I did Lily’s. We had attempted to do Lily’s hair beforehand with the help of some Curlformers I’d bought but sadly they had mostly fallen out. It took about an hour to get them both ready and then about the same again for Nat and I. We put on our dresses and makeup, heading out of the hotel around 7.30pm (the ball was due to start 6.30pm but we didn’t want to be too early).

ball

When we got to the conference centre, it wasn’t really that clear where to go so we asked. There was a bar and the ball upstairs and a hog roast outside. We headed for the bar first and got drinks, then into the ball which was like a wedding no one wanted to be at. There was a band playing but everyone was sat down looking miserable. After about five minutes we decided to head out to the hog roast instead. Luckily, this was amazing and sitting outside was nice too. After not being there long, a string quartet started up and it was quite enjoyable to sit there and listen.

hogroast

Though to be honest, Nat and I could quite easily have left at this point, Megan was all for it too, Lily asked if we could go back into the Ball. As we headed inside there was a photobooth (pretty rubbish at that) so we had a picture taken and then went back up. Lucky that we did really as a few people were dancing and we bit the bullet and joined in. Within 15 minutes everyone was up, the live band were back and the lights were dimmed. This last hour was the best of all and thanks to Lily we ended on a high note. Though we didn’t stay quite till 10, we made the most of the evening and enjoyed it despite its lameness. I’m glad we went but it wasn’t worth £25 each.

We headed back to the hotel, got changed and climbed into bed. It had been a pretty nice evening but really we had made it enjoyable between the four of us, rather than the event itself being good.

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