He's behind you!

I went to the panto at the Playhouse with Anders & Nick last week. Now, I've got to be honest, at about 2 o clock that afternoon I was feeling really tired and really just wanted to ditch the panto and have a night snuggled up on the sofa watching some dreadful TV and taking it easy. Partly this was down to the tiredness and partly down to my aversion to pantos. I've just always thought they would be bawdy, childish and get infuriated by all the "he's behind you" shouting. I think I went to see a particularly bad one as a child. I have a memory of tiny me all red faced and angry being made to shout "He's behind you" for about the fifteenth time. I used to hate it when people deliberately used to pretend not to know/see things. Sounds like I was an angry child. Weird.

Anyway, off we went to see Mother Goose, rather reluctantly, had a quick bite to eat at Cast (burger, very nice) and loaded up on sweeties for the performance. About 10 minutes in I think the first "Boo!" squeaked past my lips. About 20 minutes in I was laughing along at the one liners and ad-libs. Before the first act ended I was joining in with the singing, cheers and jeers with all my heart. I loved it! It was genuinely funny, the costumes and set were bright and spangly, the songs were fun and I didn't have to repeat chants 10 times to get anything to happen. They had a really nice balance between stuff for kids and adults, between playing it knowingly and getting involved in the performance and between the different characters. I've always been pretty certain that the panto wouldn't be for me, but I loved it and would recommend it to anyone.

On Friday we were hosting two gigs - one a proper Hello Thor gig at Spanky Van Dykes, with Injured Birds & We Show Up On Radar playing live - one a Broadway gig with Anders doing the organising, a celebration of Scandinavian sounds called Nordic Noise, with a Cardigans For Goalposts element thrown in.

Thankfully both  were a great success, with lots of nice comments and some awesome performances. I won't talk about them all, but just want to record that We Show Up On Radar played with their full band for only the 3rd time. They were great. Having a fuller sound just totally makes sense and gives the songs a proper setting in which they can sparkle. The full band brings a bit more power and confidence to the performance as well as the tunes and everything just seems really right. I can't wait to see them again.

Here are a few of my favourite pics from the evening:







See more pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hellothor/sets/72157625467734169/

This week I will be:

- Sewing tonight! Yeah! last one before Christmas

- Jumpers for Goalposts tomorrow - not at the Alley Cafe for one month only. Read more here: http://thesecretdiaryofjumpersforgoalposts.wordpress.com/

- Dinner at Angi & James' on Friday

- Daddy Bones' Birthday at Broadway on Saturday - This is going to be great. The Yeah I'll Play It Later DJs will be on the decks, lots of lovely people will be hanging out and dancing. FUN.

- Snoozing all day Sunday please.

See you soon!

Bex
x

Rene Gruau

Last weekend we went to visit Chloe & Jamie and see our other friends in London. On the Friday we went to see a 12 piece band who play DJ Shadow's Endtroducing through from start to finish and do all the samples live. I was really excited about that and thought it was going to be super cool, it turned out to be super lame. Lewis likened it to when his teachers formed a "rock band" at school. At times it was toe-curlingly uncool. Shame. However, we did get to go to Koko, which looks like this:

Lovely!

Over the weekend we also ate lovely food, caught up with Lewis and Emma, did a bit of shopping at a vintage market and went to see a great exhibition at Somerset House.

The exhibition was of work created for Dior by the illustrator Rene Gruau. His work is so beautiful and luxurious I just wanted to live in that world. You can imagine it feels like silk and smells amazing! He created pieces such as these:

His illustrations are incredibly stylish, yet minimal, confident and sophisticated. I could've looked at them all day. There were some 80's influenced ones which didn't really work for me so much (airbrushed style faces and angular cheekbones etc), but the 50s-70s ones were so good that didn't matter. Even his signature is beautiful. Look:

Anyway, enough wallowing in the glory of bygone days.

Stuff coming up:

2nd Dec - Studio sale at I Dress Myself to say goodbye to Han & Pete. I still can't believe they're leaving Nottingham, and so soon! They'll be missed.

10th Dec - We Show Up On RadaR @ Spanky Van Dykes. This looks set to be a great show and only the 3rd time they've played with their full live band in Nottingham. Look for the event on facebook for full details.

16th Dec - Jumpers For Goalposts @ Tether - For the first time we're leaving our Alley Cafe home and venturing out into the big wide world for a special Christmas edition of Jumpers to help Tether celebrate their final night of the studios. This is going to be FUN.

I reckon there's probably loads of other good stuff coming up too, but I can't remember everything!

Bex
x

Let's Get Quizzical

Don't forget!!

It's the mega one-off music quiz at Spanky Van Dyke's on MONDAY (16th August)!

I'm organising this superfun quiz to raise money for charity, so I'd love it if you came along and brought a team with you. It's all about music, different genres and different types of rounds, so hopefully there will be something for everyone. Test your knowledge, flex the muscles of your musical mind and tell us the answers to questions such as:

Q: Who teamed up with Nancy Sinatra for the 1971 hit 'Did You Ever'?


So, come along on Monday, 8ish at Spanky's and get quizzical! Your host will be the delightful Joey Chickenskin and live music will be provided by the handsome and talented Rory P McCarthy, who (with any luck) will also be providing us with a LIVE "name that tune"!

Thanks!

Becky

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A: Lee Hazlewood