On the Wild Side

A couple of weekends ago I went to Longleat for the day! I've been saying I would go for years and for years I have lived fairly close by but I still never went. Tesco does a deal so you can swap your clubcard vouchers for deals and they are worth four times the value of the vouchers. One of their deals is a ticket to Longleat so over the summer I exchanged my clubcard vouchers for two tickets to Longleat, one for me and one for my housemate. Again we kept saying that we would go but never getting round to it! But finally we agreed on a date and although it was the middle of October it turned out to be a glorious day with bright sunshine.





We had a fantastic day and managed to get to do lots of things. It is not just a safari park but they also have Longleat House which is where the Marques of Bath lives, a huge Maze and lots of grounds. The animals were fantastic and I loved being able to get so close to them and seeing them in a way you don't normally get to do so in a zoo.






My favourite was the Gorilla. He is 49 years old, which in gorilla years is 98, and lives on his own because his partner died a few years ago. He lives on an island in a lake which you go on a boat to go around. There are seals and sealions in the lake but the gorilla doesn't like them and if they are being too rowdy he throws sticks and stones at them! He has a little hut on his island which has a television in. When he was younger he had an operation and had to be kept in for 6 months so to stop him getting bored they gave him a telly. When he got better though he wouldn't let them take the telly out so he still has it. In fact he has a better tv than me - it's a flat screen, HD, 32 inch, sky plus tv! His favourite programme is apparently Spongebob Square Pants! He looks like he is such a character and he reminded me of the old grumpy man in the disney film UP!






The Maze was also really good and we managed to get thoroughly lost as you should do in any maze worth its while! In the end we found ourselves back at the beginning and started again. This time though we used the technique that we both knew about how to find the centre of mazes but had never tried before. It worked and we were glad to know that some of those urban myths aren't actually myths but are true after all!

Edinburgh Festival

So as promised here is the first instalment of my new beginning! I have done a lot of things this year which is on my list but I haven't been updating this blog so I have a lot of blogging to do. I have decided to not try and bother to update it in date order but just to do it as the fancy takes me.

The next task that I'm going to write about is the Edinburgh Festival. This was something that I had on my list to do before I was 30 and I have achieved it! I have been wanting to go to the Edinburgh Fringe for a very long time and last year I managed to find a couple of friends who were wanting to go as well and then I talked my sister into it too - it didn't take much talking to be honest!

So the four of us set off on Friday 13th August and stayed in a hostel that I had booked way back before Christmas. It turned out to be a really nice hostel and the owners were nice and friendly. We had booked an ensuite dorm for four which worked out great. Just the four of us with our own bathroom. Breakfast was included which was basically help yourself to as much bread for toast and cereal as takes your fancy. The place was also at the end of Princes Street so pretty central. It's called The Edinburgh Nights Hostel and would recommend it to anyone who is looking for somewhere cheap and cheerful to stay in Edinburgh especially during August! It did feel a little surreal sharing bunk beds with my sister again. I felt like I'd flashed back 18 years!

We saw soooooo much while there and it's really hard to know what to write next! I'll start with the acts that we had pre booked way back earlier in the year when the programme first came out. These were Reginald D. Hunter (Black American Comedian of of Have I Got News for You), Al Murray (of of Pub Landlord fame) and Ant Dewson (not anyone we'd heard of before but was attracted by the description of comedy singing and entitled I bought Richard Hammond's pants on Ebay).

Ant Dewson was on our first day there and he was pretty funny. What made it funnier for me was he reminded me so much of my brother-in-law and I could see him sitting there behind the keyboard singing stupid songs that he had made up too. In fact he had done the same type of thing for a friend's wedding speech he was best man for! I think Ant Dewson had the same effect on my sister too who was already missing her husband and kids - okay maybe not missing them all that much after all it was only about 6 hours after she'd left them at the airport! What made this act even more atmospheric was the venue - a cave. Yes it really was a cave. A wet, damp, smelly, sweaty cave! There are so many acts going on that anything and everything becomes a venue. Little did we know that we would find ourselves in caves more than once over the weekend.

Flashing forward to our last day in Edinburgh (Monday 16th August), we hurried down the 287 steps of the Scott Monument and battled our way through the heaving crowds of the Royal Mile to get to the Al Murray lunch time pub quiz event on time. I think we were all grateful that we got there just as Al Murray was being announced and not a second earlier or later as it meant we didn't have seats anywhere near where Al Murray humourously and mercilessly heckled the crowd or too late to bring our attention to Al Murray. The event was called Compete for the Meat pub quiz and it did exactly what it said on the tin. The winners of the quiz won a frozen chicken and the runners up won a bag of sausages, square ones of course it being Scotland! Al Murray was funny throughout the entire hour and his impromptu gags with members of the audience were those only Al Murray could pull of and the people not caring (not too much anyway once they got over their embarrassment!). What impresses me with Al Murray is his entrance fees. Although he is what you could call a famous professional comedian the cost of this event was only £6 unlike the majority of other comedians of such fame who were charging along the lines of £16 to £20. One such comedian was Reginald D Hunter...

Saturday night brought us what we were hoping to a be hilarious hour and a half of the most famous comedian we were seeing at the festival (besides Al Murray). I think the other three would all be in agreement with me when I say that we left slightly disappointed. I did find him funny and I did laugh a lot but I he was not the funniest act we saw over the weekend. In fact I think one of the free events we went to was far funnier. Basically Reginald D Hunter was pretty average in a festival of thousands of comic events. I think what made it more disappointing was the high hopes we had which were increased by the cost we paid!

We obviously saw a lot of other comedy that we hadn't booked. Some we paid for some were free events. Some we went on recommendations from various people around Edinburgh, some we were given leaflets for while walking through the town and some we were just attracted to by the titles in the programme. My two favourite comedy acts were 'The Three Englishmen' (who were actually four not three!) and a west country comedian of the name Alan Sharp whose act was called Why I should Be Allowed a Gun. By the end of the hour long comedy we would have all been very happy to have given him a gun as he humourously and convincingly went through a list of people he would use it to shoot!

We had booked one other event that all four us went to and that I had been looking forward to going to since I was 10. The first family holiday I remember going on was to Edinburgh. It was during August although we weren't there for the festival. One event that our parents considered taking us to while there was the Edinburgh Millitary Tattoo held at the castle. Unfortunately other than there probably not being any tickets left taking a family of 6 to see the tattoo was too expensive for us to afford. After that holiday I remember sitting on our settee at home with our pet cat who we only got that day curled up on my lap watching the Tattoo. I play the clarinet and saxophone and have always loved wind bands. I love watching people march too so marching bands are great! My two friends weren't completely sold on the idea of the Tattoo but they agreed to come along to it and all four of us loved it! My highlights were the Imps, motorbikers from the age of 5yrs to 16 yrs olds, and the New Zealand Army band. The Imps were terrifying to watch. They went at a very high speed weaving in and out of each other looking like they were just missing each other by milimetres! They also did pyramid formations and other tricks. Watching 5 years olds carrying out such feats of skill and danger was amazing. It made me wonder at what age they first had to ride a motorbike to be able to do what they were doing! The New Zealand Army Band put on a performance with a difference. They came marching into the castle forecourt like all the other bands but once they got into the centre they launched into their rendition of Dance of The Sugar Plum Fairy. The trombones put their instruments down and then began to dance like fairies. it was great! My sister said that she could imagine the conduction saying to them "I've got some good news and some bad news. We've been asked to play at the Edinburgh Tattoo. The bad news....well I want you to dance like Fairies!" It really was priceless. After that piece they then treated us to a performance of the Hacker. It really was a first class performance. The atmosphere of sitting in the grounds of the castle at 9pm on an August Scottish evening was awesome. The lighting and the fireworks included in the whole spectacle just added to the feeling of magical amazement. Attending the Tattoo not only ticked of another of my things to do before I was 30 it far beyond expectations built up over 18 years of wishing I could go.

You would think that all of that was enough to fill a four day holiday but there is one last thing that I am to write about. We attended one event that we hadn't planned to do and bought tickets for on the Saturday just a day before we went. It is also on my to 30 and beyond list of things to do. We went to the circus! Not just any circus though, it was the Chinese State Circus. I have never been to the circus despite growing up in Gorleston, just 3 miles away from Great Yarmouth which hosts one of just two permanent circus premises in the country! The Chinese State Circus was the second spectacle of mindblowing expectations of the weekend (the Tattoo being the first!). There were unicyclists who were awesome at chucking bowls at each other in rapid succession and catching them on their head without any use of hands, there was a beautiful scene in which a guy and lady swung from gorgeous ribbons hanging from the ceiling, there were acrobats somersaulting through rings and martial artists performing from high standing towers. It has just wet my taste of the circus and I want to go and see another one as soon as I am able to!

So there you go 3 of the things I wanted to do carried out over an amazing weekend with good friends and my sister. The weekend was even better than I could have imagined and I am thinking about going back again next year. I would recommend it to everyone as there is so much going on whoever you are and whatever your tastes there will be plenty of things to keep you busy. All of that without mentioning the beautiful sights that Edinburgh naturally brings!

Hey I'm still here!!!

Ok so you've probably noticed that I haven't blogged for a very very very very very very long time. That is if you're still even there reading this!

I got disillusioned about this whole blogging thing because of my original blog which is called 30B430. That is the list of the 30 things I wanted to do before I was 30. I started to find that I got behind in the monthly tasks I had and then I realised that I probably wasn't going to do all the other things before I was 30 either so it made me give it all up.

Even though I stopped blogging over the last few months I have still been doing lots of things and quite a few of those things are either on my list on this blog or the 30B430 list. So my solution to the loss of motivation for the 30B430 challenge is to imalgumate/amalgamate/amalgumate(sp?!?!?) the two lists.

Here are the things that I have on 30B430 list which I am going to add to this list:

Go to the Edinburgh Festival
Go to the Edinburgh Military Tattoo
Do a creative writing course
See Jimmy Carr live on stage
Learn sign language
Work in a library
Visit Longleat
Be in a TV show audience
Try archery
Send a message in a bottle

The other things I had on my list I have either completed or they were monthly things that I am not doing for this blog.

So watch this space for feedback on all the exciting things I have done this year and things I will be doing in the future!