Rantings

Can this be true? Actor John Simm, who plays DI Sam Tyler in the abso-bloody-lutely brilliant series "Life on Mars" is currently favourite to play The Master in Series 3 of Doctor Who. Excuse me while I have a major 'squee' moment.

Read the article here

Also appearing in Series 3 (from what I've heard) is Derek Jacobi (anyone remember I, Claudius?) and also (God help us) Timmy Mallet. The first person to say Wackaday gets hit over the head. With a pink inflatable mallet.

So, after the Doctor Who exhibition, we went over the road to the Millennium Centre. What a lovely arts centre! Stylish on the outside, stylish on the inside.

Also had my picture taken next to the water tower made famous by the Doctor Who spin off Torchwood. The Torchwood Hub is supposed to be directly beneath this tower under the streets of Cardiff. He he!





Lots more photos were taken, but I won't bore you with geeky details.

So, after we'd done the tour of Cardiff Bay we went back to Aunty Kath's and had time to chat and eat something before we had to get ready to go to the theatre. My Mam had bought an extra ticket online for Aunty, so we had to be there early to collect it from the Box Office. I'm not sure she really wanted to go to see a pantomime, but we all had a great time.

The panto was superb. One cheesy gag after another, lots of innuendo, a man in drag and a pantomime cow! What more could you ask for?! John Barrowman was hilarious, and on several occasions could hardly carry on with the show he was laughing so hard. Aunty Kath thoroughly enjoyed it, and after it was over we went round to the stage door to see if we could get an autograph and a photo. Aunty Kath said she'd never done this before and she was just learning how to be a groupie at 61! Heh heh! She likes JB, though, and is a big Doctor Who and Torchwood fan. Incidentally, it's reassuring to know that I am not the only one in my family that cried bucketloads at the last two episodes of Torchwood ... there were a few tears shed from the Welsh Contingent, also.

So, we got to the front of the queue and got our programmes signed. "Kath with a K", Aunty Kath said, and then, "The pantomime was great, but I bet you're shattered now, bless you!" to which JB replied "Uh-huh". I could hardly stifle the laughter because she'd come over all maternal on him, and I was wondering if she was going to then offer him a cup of tea and some fluffy slippers! Mr Lisa, incidentally, had vanished. I think he's actually quite shy and was probably terrified in case I got him to come and pose in a picture with JB.

I think we were some of the last ones waiting for autographs, and if we'd hung around longer we could have had our pictures taken with him, but we were all cold and it was late, so we decided to get back home and open a bottle of wine. The show had finished at least half an hour later than usual as it was the last one and they wanted to send the whole thing off in style. So, this is the only picture I got of JB on the last night.



To finish off, here are some of my favourite bits from the show:

JB - "I've never danced with a fairy before!"

JB to a small child from the audience - "How are you?"
Small child - "Petrified"
JB - Laughs. "Well it's not that bad. There are only a thousand people watching you and we're going to sing a song in a bit. Where are you from?"
Small child - "Erm ..." Looks into the audience. "Mum, where am I from?"

JB, upon seeing Dame Trot appear on stage dressed in the Welsh flag and a black curly wig - "I always knew my Mom was Shirley Bassey!"

So, as you can no doubt guess, I'm back home. And what a jolly good time we had!

We arrived at my Aunty's in Caerphilly around 10:30pm, and as we hadn't eaten since the afternoon, we had some soup and a roll and sat and drank wine while we chatted and caught up on family gossip. It must have been around 1am when we finally went to bed.

Needless to say I didn't get up bright and early the next morning which what I had planned to do. I had a list of places I wanted to visit and thought it was going to take up my whole day, but it all turned out fine. I just made sure I saw the best places first.

So, after breakfast, off we toddled to the Red Dragon Centre in Cardiff to see the Doctor Who exhibition. As we walked up to the entrance I'm guessing my face must have been a picture, because Mr Lisa said "the words 'kid' and 'sweet shop' come to mind"! It was certainly a visual feast, even if it was quite a small exhibition. Very enjoyable. Here is a small selection of photos I took:

Are you bored yet? There is more to come. Watch this space.

Right, this will be my last entry until Monday as I'm switching off the pooter and getting my stuff ready to leave at 4pm. As we will be returning on Sunday evening and going more or less straight to my parent's house for dinner I'm not even going to try to make time to write an entry until Monday at the earliest, but hopefully I will have lots of pictures to upload, so watch this space.

Right you Taffs ... be prepared to be invaded by the Geordie contingent! ;-) There's lovely, boyo! Haway the lads. Er, etc ...

I have to admit I'm getting pretty excited now. Yesterday I visited my parents who had just had a weekend in Paris, so they didn't know about my plans to go to Caerphilly/Cardiff tomorrow. I told them about the panto and said it would have been nice if I had three tickets, then I could take my aunty who we'll be staying with. I said I'd already bought a "just because" gift to take down with me ... rose and violet creams from Hotel Chocolat and a bottle of pink champagne ... so my Mum offered to buy an extra ticket! We did it online there and then and have to pick it up from the box office before the performance, and it's for a seat in the row behind us, so not too far away. It will lovely having my aunty coming with us!

So, Saturday ... the plan is to go out early to start exploring all the redevloped areas of Cardiff (eg the Bay area was all seedy docklands when I was last there over twenty years ago) and to visit the Doctor Who exhibition, then home to eat, shower and change and back to the Theatre for the show.

So, a busy weekend ahead of me. Here's hoping that JB is over his throat infection and able to deliver the goods for the final performance. :-) [major squee]

I was making a list of Dr Who related places to visit while I'm in Cardiff, and look what I found! A Doctor Who exhibition which is on currently at the Red Dragon Centre! Wahaay!

Mr Lisa is going with me. Yay! That means no coaches, we can go in the car. Also, he wants to go on Friday instead of Saturday, which means that we can go exploring round Cardiff. I know I'm such a nerdy geek, but I want to go and see some Doctor Who/Torchwood film locations while I'm there.

Squeeee!

I never thought that I would ever begin a blog entry by talking about the weather, yet here I am, breaking with tradition by asking what the weather is like in your neck of the woods.

So ... what's the weather like in your neck of the woods?

It's been really freaky here. Yesterday we had torrential rainstorms and the sky was so do dark we were working in twilight for much of the morning. Then, in the afternoon it stopped all of a sudden and the sun came out. This is was obviously intended to lull us into a false sense of security because no sooner had our spirits started to lift and the winds came. Gale force winds which knocked you off your feet and made a hell of a mess of your hair.

Seems they had blown over from the west where some folks have died in accidents caused by hurricane-strength winds. All very scary stuff and what the hell is happening with our weather anyway? Who did we give permission to mess with our weather? How dare they?

Wherever you are and whatever you do, if possible stay indoors and stay safe.

On a lighter note I have in my possession a pair of tickets for the pantomime, Jack and the Beanstalk, in Cardiff for the very last performance on 27th January which is next Saturday. As John Barrowman is in it, and he's my latest obsession, I really really want to go but I'm a bit strapped for cash. Driving all the way there is going to be just too expensive - I reckon £80+ in petrol alone, so I will have to get the coach if it is only going to be me travelling down. Thankfully, I have a lovely aunty in Caerphilly who will put me up, so no overnight hotel bills to fork out for. However, Mr Lisa hasn't decided whether he wants to go or not, and if he isn't going then I need to book a coach ticket and I have to do that at least 7 days beforehand, which kind of means I have to do it today, and he won't make a bloody decision! Yeeaargh! I get the feeling he's deliberately stringing me along as he knows I like John Barrowman and would love to see him live in the panto.

Bloody men!