days out

Date night ideas if you have chronic illness

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Date night ideas if you have chronic illness

When you have long term chronic illness and pain it affects you daily whether you like it or not. There will be days when you desperately want to do all the things, but its just not accessible to you due to pain or fatigue levels. It’s frustrating. So date night ideas when you have chronic illness need organising, or adjusted around what is accessible to you that particular day. Disabled dating is all about keeping it accessible to you.

Dating is an an absolute minefield at the best of times. I’m no longer in that dating minefield. I have been married for over 25 years. I wont pop on my rose tinted specs and tell you those 25 years have been a breeze. I’m a realist so I can tell you they have been worked hard for. That’s one thing I have learnt over that time. It wont be all sunshine and flowers but that makes it all the better when you do have sunshine and flowers.

It’s all too easy to fall into the trap of popping the telly on and scrolling on your phone. But I doubt that will get you anywhere in the dating world. Dating is all about connecting after all. So, even after being together for so long date nights, or days, are a great way of reconnecting for us.

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My 50 things before I’m 50 list

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                 50 things before I’m 50 list

50 things before I'm 50

**UPDATE** Due to the lockdown I have extended the time limit on my 50 things before I’m 50 until the end of this year for obvious reasons……….and I hope I will be able to achieve a lot of what I have listed (fingers crossed!)

This is a 50 before I’m 50 list with a difference. Not a fantastical bucket list of amazing things to do, but rather a ‘make time for the smaller things’ that will make your day or weekend special list. I’ve also added a few extra special events thrown in that I wont need to win the lottery in order to fulfil them.

I’m due to turn the big 5-0 in July this year. Most of the lists I see for people hitting milestone birthdays are pretty epic and in fairness they give themselves a year or more to do them.

I, on the other hand, only really thought about it recently when it dawned on me that my 50th birthday is in fact this bloody year……………I still can’t quite believe it.

For me though, I feel I have a lot of things I could easily do at any time and yet I don’t actually set the time aside to do them. I’m not really talking about big holidays or jumping from a plane, my body could no longer cope with that. In any case, I have wing walked twice ( on the original Crunchie plane, one of which was at an International Air Display). I’ve also been dangled out of Sea King rescue helicopters too many times to count,so I think I’ve done my daredevil bit when I was much younger.

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Blitz at The Union Theatre – Review

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Blitz at The Union Theatre – Review

Blitz is just one of the shows at The Union Theatre that is part of the Phil Willmott Company’s Essential Classics season 2020: V.E DAY – 75 YEARS ON.

It is based during WWII in London where both the Jewish Blitztein family & the cockney Locke family live. When the children from these opposite families fall in love a wonderfully poignant wartime romance starts to unfold.

Blitz at The Union Theatre London

This classic style musical from Lionel Bart has an instant feel of being a much bigger show. The songs tell the story and the dance routines portray that old fashioned  ‘good old knees up’ atmosphere that gives a sense of inclusiveness with the audience being so close. The set is bustling and busy with lots of individual connections between the characters going on, whilst the main premise of the story starts to develop. The space is cleverly utilised not only to create the claustrophobic feel of being stuck on an underground tube platform but also the winding feel of the  narrow lane aspect of the area at that time.

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The Canterville Ghost at the Unicorn Theatre

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The Canterville Ghost at the Unicorn Theatre

The Canterville Ghost has always been one of my favourite stories from when I was younger, along with the play The Rivals which I studied when doing my A Level In English Literature. Both have stayed firm favourites as I have grown older. So I was really curious to see this adaptation at the Unicorn Theatre near London Bridge. This was my first time visiting this particular theatre and I was impressed with the actual working theatre space inside. The Unicorn is the UK’s leading theatre for young audiences and has an extremely wide programme for children up to 18 yrs old.

So for anyone who isn’t familiar with the Oscar Wilde piece,The Canterville Ghost is a story about an American family who move to a castle that is haunted by the ghost of a deceased ancestor. Sir Simon Canterville, killed his wife and was then starved to death by her brothers. What makes it different from other ghost stories, is the fact that it’s funny rather than scary and the characters are not frightened by the ghost at all.

Although the story itself is set in a time gone by era, the humour in this adaptation is most certainly modern. It’s directed towards the younger audience of today (and us that are young at heart) and definitely captures their interest right from the start.

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At Last at Lion and Unicorn Theatre

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At Last at Lion and Unicorn Theatre – Review

I’ve had a lot of firsts for me this year on the blog and now I can add Fringe Theatre to that list.

When someone says Fringe Theatre what do you think?

I literally had no clue what to expect when I was invited along with another theatre lover to see the play At Last at the Lion and Unicorn Theatre in the Kentish Town area of London, to see this production by Proforca Theatre Company, written by James Lewis and Alexander Knott and directed by David Brady.

At Last

 

The pub itself looks as though it has been quite newly refurbished and was inviting and welcoming inside. The theatre is upstairs and reminded me of my son’s blacked out school drama theatre, so think small and intimate and as a guesstimate there was about 45 of us there last night (give or take a few). So it was a sold out performance.

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London Escaped Vampire Slayer Review

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London Escaped Vampire Slayer Review

First of all I want to make it clear that this was my very first time in an escape room ever. So this review is based solely on that one experience rather than a comparison to other escape rooms of other styles. I was lucky enough to be asked to go along to London Escaped Vampire Slayer to review.

London Escaped have a couple of different rooms to experience such as the Da Vinci and The Prisoner. I went with a lovely group of escape room veterans via Love London Pop Ups to give their new Vampire Slayer game a try.

As someone who hasn’t been to an escape room before I was literally going in blind with absolutely no clue of what to expect. I knew there would be clues and puzzles to work out and obviously you are under a time pressure to ‘escape’. We were a group of 7 people and for this game they advise between 2-8 people. But it can accommodate up to 10 people if necessary and it lasts for 60 minutes. We were there for a 4pm start and at that point in the reception area it wasn’t busy. It was great opportunity for a novice like me to get a sneak peek into some of the other rooms.

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Buck Buck Games – The Hunt for the Smoking Caterpillar

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Buck Buck Games The Hunt for the Smoking Caterpillar

I was recently invited to attend a new immersive theatre game. The Hunt for the Smoking Caterpillar, by Buck Buck Games, held in their residency at The Owl and the Hitchhiker pub on Holloway Road, London.

I’ve never really attended anything immersive theatre, or escape room related before. I literally had no idea what I was walking into. The Buck Buck Games website describe it as ‘ Our event games and characters combine escape rooms, immersive theatre and murder mystery with fun fuelled challenges’.

So I thought I would take my husband along for unique evening out.

The pub itself is a complete hidden treasure in itself and it’s quirkiness is apparent as soon as you walk in. It has hairdryers all hanging from the ceiling above the bar. There’s a table tennis table around the back of the bar and there were a group of people playing card games at one of the tables. We even spotted couple playing monopoly. Not your typical pub in any sense.

They have a great menu. Our plan was to eat before we played but unfortunately the traffic was not on our side that evening and we didn’t have enough time. But it  included an extensive vegan selection. Although we didn’t get the chance to eat, the food that was coming out of the kitchen looked very good.

Anyway, on to the games. As we arrived and got a drink we could see more groups turning up and congregating at the bottom of the stairs were the games were advertised.

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Our weekend celebrating in Dublin

- TracyB 2 Comments

In April this year my eldest son turned 21 and it was also our 25th wedding anniversary. Instead of having a big family party for both ( which my son would have hated, and my husband would have hated) we decided to do a shared celebration with just us four. I’m not being funny but with the amount you spend on a party ( with food, drink and decorations etc) we have always been the type to put the money to a better use ( for us anyway) to go somewhere and have an experience instead. The amount of effort involved with food alone would put me under pressure illness wise and by the time I would have done all the organising for it I would probably be too exhausted to actually enjoy it! Anyway, we decided before Christmas that  a weekend in Dublin was our plan and so we all had something to look forward to.

I’ve been to Dublin many years ago with a group of friends and had a great time, but as I’m from Belfast myself it’s always been a place I wanted to take my boys and we agreed we would wait until they were old enough to drink legally! So we decided we would combine the celebrations and take ourselves away for a long weekend there as a family. We were actually looking forward to going away with our boys who are now 21 and 18 years old, it’s a whole other experience when they are this age. Less arguing, less faffing, less stress, more fun, more easy going and well, more enjoyable!

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Biggin Hill Festival of Flight Air Show 2018

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Biggin Hill airport is literally 30 minutes from where we live and yet in the 22 years we have lived here we have never gone to the airshow. We are both ex RAF (it’s where we both met) and love this sort of thing and have often been to Duxford Imperial War Museum and other similar places when we are on holiday.

This year was no different, to be fair, until a friend said she had booked tickets to go and so we jumped on their band wagon and booked tickets literally the day before we went. The planned displays sounded good and my friend, who has always wanted to see the Red Arrows display, was excited to hopefully see them.

The weather when we arrived was pretty rubbish with fairly low cloud, and although the forecast was to improve, we weren’t holding out much hope for the Red Arrows display ( I’m ex air traffic control………….so have a fair idea of judging whether they can display or not). Although they took off to display at Eastbourne they were quickly returned due to the weather. Fortunately for us their planned display was not until the end of the day so we just kept our fingers crossed.

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So, what’s next for Mrs B?

- TracyB 2 Comments

I’ve certainly been asking myself that for a while now. I’m a mum of 2 boys but they are now 20 and 17 (almost18), finding their own independence, as one is at uni and the other is at 6th form and also working a part time job. I have been married for 24 years and my hubby is a shift worker so that means I now spend the majority of my time alone! Due to my illness and chronic pain I’m no longer able to work a conventional job (I was a driving instructor), but I’m lucky that blogging and running social media accounts can be done in pj’s even on a bad day if necessary.

Yet when the boys where younger my life was busy (illness or not) with after school clubs, kids parties, meeting up with friends in the holidays etc, and although I am still officially a taxi service, a cook and a bank, my life is much more subdued. That in itself gives you time…………………..LOTS of time! Time to ponder and think about your own role in life. Yes I am still a wife and a mum but I am also ME. So, with 48 looming very quickly (and my hubby turning 50 last year!) I am starting to think about my time. How do I want to spend my time now my kids are off doing their own thing most of the time? Read more