Last year, I spent Christmas in North Cyprus, doing very much the B list sites. I enjoyed the holiday, especially the hotel which was ideally situated just minutes from the little harbour in Kyrenia. But I didn’t want to repeat the same itinerary, which really did concentrate on some very minor sites indeed. So way back […]
Well, I certainly can’t fault Malvern Theatres’ determination to cater for a wide spectrum of audience interests. Last week was highbrow; a neo-Shakespearean study of constitutional crisis. This week was quite the opposite – a stage show based on the 1997 film The Full Monty, marketed in the theatre publicity as “Not suitable for polite […]
Yesterday afternoon I got myself a standby ticket to this week’s play at Malvern Theatres – King Charles III by Mike Bartlett. The performance was nearly sold out – I only managed to get a seat in row Q, much further back than usual. Normally the Saturday matinee performances are not much more than half full […]
I’ve been extremely busy at work recently, running an equipment trial that’s been the culmination of a two-year research project. It’s taken a huge amount of time to prepare and rehearse, and I’ve been working lots of overtime, with very little time or energy to do anything else for the past few weeks. It all […]
Whilst I was in Durham, a news story was prominent on the local TV about some human bones which had been found in an archaeological dig on Durham’s Palace Green. Seeing as it was so topical, I wondered what the local historians – both in the World Heritage Site visitors’ centre, and the guides in […]
I’ve spent a few days this week working on an equipment trial hosted by the engineering department of Durham University. The original plan was that I’d go up there by train (a 4.5 hour journey north, changing at Birmingham) after lunch on Wednesday, arriving in time for dinner, spend all day Thursday and Friday it […]
This week at Malvern Theatres they’ve been showing Talking Heads by Alan Bennett. I remember these monologues from when they were originally shown on the TV in the late eighties, so thought it was worth a punt for a standby ticket for the Saturday Matinée. The stalls were less than half full, so I was able […]
I’ve been fascinated by the Staffordshire Hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold weapon mounts since its discovery by a metal detectorist was publicised in 2009. Christopher and I went to see it at a temporary exhibition in Stoke mid-way through his chemotherapy treatment in 2010, and had a thoroughly interesting time looking at it. That weekend ended unfortunately, with Christopher […]
I decided this morning that I’d not been to Malvern Theatre for a while, and that it was about time I had a look at what was available today as a standby seat at the matinée performance.The play turned out to be Mrs Warren’s Profession. George Bernard Shaw is not one of my favourite playwrights […]
Even Mykonos wasn’t all bars and tourist traps. If you looked hard enough, there were faint signs of the small sleepy fishing village that it must have been before the cosmopolitan jet-set and the party-goers discovered it. This row of windmills is the iconic “picture postcard” view of Mykonos, and was between the harbour and […]
