Christmas is coming... and I wanted to share a couple of things I've seen on friends' facebook pages recently, and maybe start a conversation about the sorts of presents we give and receive ( Read more... )

Last week, I came across a very interesting programme on Radio 4 inspired by a book published ten years ago. The blurb for the programme begins as follows:

"Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, is probably the most influential popular science book ever written."
That’s quite some claim! ( Read more... )

This weekend, I have been thinking (and reading) a lot about the chicken and egg industry. You may have heard of Lucy Gavaghan, the teenager who started a petition calling on Tesco to stop selling non-free-range eggs. She's received lots of media coverage, and amazingly, the petition was successful. Having signed the original petition, yesterday I ( Read more... )

I'm sitting here with a big grin on my face, having just got back from a most enjoyable performance of HMS Pinafore at Birmingham's Crescent Theatre ( Read more... )

Started the day with the church service at St Peter's, led by Canon Stephen Shipley and Very Rev. Ian Bradley. I was a little surprised to discover that neither Gilbert nor Sullivan were regular churchgoers (especially considering Sullivan's hymns and sacred music, and also in the light of the religious references which I'm sure came up in the ( Read more... )

A full programme for us today ( Read more... )

Friday was a bit of a 'day off' for us. The original plan had been to take the train to Knaresborough, which we'd been told was very pretty, but the unremitting rain made this option seem not so attractive. Instead, we swung by the Utopia Pavilion (where I purchased a copy of Diana Burleigh's G&S quiz book), and then headed off to the Bean & Bud ( Read more... )

Our first venture up to the festival's other venue, the more intimate Harrogate Theatre, for Southampton University's gender-swapped production of Iolanthe. This was a real little gem, bursting with youthful exhuberance and a great sense of fun and mischief. The setting was brough forward 100 years to 1982, so we had male fairies dressed in leather ( Read more... )

In the morning, we watched the 1953 film 'The Gilbert and Sullivan Story', described in the festival programme as being 'nostalgic, romantic and at times probably inaccurate'. I should have heeded the advice to 'bring a hanky' as there was definitely a tear or two in my eyes by the end ( Read more... )

Having finally resolved the technical difficulties which prevented me from getting these posts online sooner, here's the first part of my musings on my first experience of the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival in Harrogate ( Read more... )