Christmas is a time for traditions and for me growing up, it meant being taken to a show, most often The Nutcracker ballet, which I went to every year for many years. I’ve started that tradition with the grandsons and have tickets again for just after Christmas. However, a new tradition has also come in […]
The Easter holidays have begun and I always like to take the boys – my son’s eldest two, Freddie (10) and Ben (7) – for an outing. It’s fun for me – and it always seems fun for them too! Of late, we’ve combined some kind of cultural – art/museum/theatre – visit with a meal […]
This is the kind of post that usually gets published around new year, looking back on the best of the previous year. However, I had a busy start to 2025 – family and work – and so a look back on 2024 passed me by. Now spring is on our doorstep (not officially with us […]
After lots of damp and foggy weather over the Christmas period, it was lovely to wake to a bright, sunny day yesterday. I had tickets to take grandsons Freddie (9) and Ben (7) to The Nutcracker at the London Coliseum. I took Freddie last January but Ben would join us this year. (There’s a minimum […]
‘A wonder to behold’ Telegraph ‘A joyful, bravura piece of stagecraft’ London Evening Standard ‘A magical revival’ The Times ******** My eldest grandson Freddie (9) is showing an interest in theatre, which is wonderful, and a few weeks’ ago I promised to find out what was on at […]
I love to take the two eldest grandsons, Freddie (9) and Ben (6), out for a treat in the holidays – they’re such good company and it’s so much fun to spend time with them. Today we headed into London in the morning for some art again (see last trip) and then lunch. It’s slightly […]
I had a bit of a gap between jobs – my publishing work – so I decided to take advantage of having some free time to head into London and go to an art gallery. One of my favourite things to do! There are a few things on at the moment I’d like to see, […]
It’s almost exactly a year since I last went to Chichester. I know it’s a very English thing to do, but I couldn’t help but compare the weather: the bright, warm sunny days a year ago, and the cold, very windy and wet days on this trip. I thought I’d gone prepared, taking rain gear, […]
It started with Ben (6) coming back from school a couple of weeks’ ago and wanting to tell me they’d been learning about Roy Lichtenstein and David Hockney in school that day. As he started a drawing, reproducing for me the Lichtenstein painting they’d be studying, he recognised ‘The Splash’ on the front of a […]
As a child, I was taken to The Nutcracker ballet at Christmas every year. I began ballet lessons at the tender age of three and carried on until I was 15. Of course, as I watched Tchaikovsky’s magical ballet, I wanted, like many other little girls, to be a ballerina … but I was also […]