She's a wonder!

100cm x 100cm - early stages of an acrylic on canvas

Spotlight

The Spotlight Showcases took place in July this year. On the first night I took Lloyd along. He seemed to enjoy it although in most of these pictures he looks as miserable as sin.

The second night, as Lloyd was working, I invited Paul along.

Julie's Birthday in Balham

Was not a sober affair. It was, though, a fancy dress. I went as a San Francisco Daddy circa 1972....mmmmm

An English Country Garden

It may not be the most elegant garden on the block but it has been very successful this year already.

A Flying Rip-off

Well, the holiday has been booked! What a palaver! Never, under any circumstances book a holiday with flydeals.co.uk - they are a bunch of lying shisters out to rip you off. Without going into too much detail, they phoned the day after confirmation to say that the Credit Card had been declined. Jules has a huge balance on her card so she was rather confused by this. They took her Debit Card details instead and then advised her:

a) The Debit Card payments were subject to charges
b) The price of the tickets had gone up by £10 each

When she got off the phone Julie called her Credit Card company to ask why they had declined her card and they advised her that no action had taken place. Basically, Flydeals simply held over the transaction for a day to get more money for the tickets.

Upon questioning Flydeals about this they refused to offer any explanation and said if she wished to cancel now, there would be a fee of £50. Furious, she called her bank and put a stop on any withdraw from Flydeals. She the bought tickets on the same flight for the same price through another company – who couldn’t have been more helpful.

The next day Flydeals had succeeded in withdrawing the total amount from her account and would only return it minus a cancellation fee of £50. There was nothing we could do except swallow the theft and tell the obnoxious Manager Helen – to f**k off!!!

For anyone planning on booking a flight, please don’t use them.

Oh Nathan.....

I couldn't possibly, I am dating.....!

Zorro!

For those of you reading my blog you will realise I am not uniformly kind to every show I see. I like to think I approach each play, musical or cabaret with an open mind. This week I found myself in the unusual position of reviewing a major West End musical 3 days after its official press night, so that I was free to cover the annual Spotlight Showcases at the Strand Palace Hotel. So by Thursday this week I had already had access to some reviews of Zorro, initially Michael Billington’s 4 star review for The Guardian but also The Metro’s mauling and in particular Mark Shenton’s turn of the screw on his Stage Website Blog. I felt I was not in for a great night. Upon my arrival I discovered that the opening was being delayed – badly delayed. 50 minutes later, with no real explanation, the show opened. I was not in the best of moods and had already sent texts to friends that I would have to cancel a date.

What took me by surprise was how good Zorro is. A real cracker of a show with a lively mix of camp humour, strong if a little sturdy dance routines, great musical numbers and an excellent story.

Mark Shenton continued his barrage of insults at the show and equally surprisingly began to harangue fellow critics for daring to like it too! I have an inordinate amount of respect for Mark’s place in the industry although I long ago realised our tastes differ to quite a degree. Quite where all this is coming from I am not sure but two of his commentators rally to his cause, in quite a ridiculous fashion, churning out the usual elitist rubbish Mark himself seemed to be hoping to avoid.