Tenerife–Part One

I’m back from Tenerife! Ok, so if you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know I’ve been back for a couple of days, but seriously, catching up with work after a holiday is pretty energy draining. Add in unpacking and those enormous mounds of washing that holidays create, and I’ve only just got round to photo editing. I took about a zillion pictures of the amazingly blue sea, the mountains, the beach…loads, but I’ve narrowed down my pictures so you don’t die of boredom before the end of the post.
We stayed in a hotel in Costa Adeje. The above picture is the view from our balcony. The hotel was great. Totally enormous, nice staff, good pool and my God, the food! It was fantastic, and in vast quantities. Always a sign of a quality hotel. So, what did we get up to? Well, mostly, we plonked ourselves on sun loungers on the beach, with books. But we did manage some trips too.
We went to see Music Hall Tavern, a comedy drag show that is performed across all the Canary Islands and is new to Tenerife. Tavern landlady, a Mrs Titti Trollope (yes, really), and her performers, Courtney, Leona and Special K put on a stonking performance. The whole night was an absolute scream. The ‘girls’ were funny, and were great singers (especially Special K, who gave the best Cher impersonation I’ve ever seen). They performed as loads of fantastic Divas, including Alexandra Burke, Montserrat Caballé (who sang Barcelone with Freddie Mercury), the cast of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Diana Ross…

Cher…(this costume, by the way, was true to the video of If I Could Turn Back Time…thong and everything. And Special K totally rocked it)…

Lady Gaga (best costume of the night in my opinion)…

and, uh, Gloria from Happy Feet. Of course. So yeah, if you’re in Tenerife, you HAVE to see Music Hall Tavern. It was brilliant.

We did a bit of exploring round the resort (also known as, had a good nose at all the swanky hotels in the posh end of Costa Adeje). This is the beach we were on most days. Something I learnt while I was away? Volcanic sand sticks to you like nobody’s business, and gets bloody hot!

• Hat from Burton
• Sunglasses from Accessorize
• Muse shirt
• Shorts from H&M
• Bag by Nica (scarf added by me, of forgotten origin. Probably New Look).

I didn’t take much in the way of outfit photos, as I spent most of my time in my bikini with my Born In The USA album cover vest over the top, but here’s what I wore for our day of exploring. As you can see, I didn’t tan. I have the teeniest smidgen of colour now, but I’m not brown by anyone’s scale. Sadly for me, my Scottish ancestors passed down fair skin, which meant I spent my holiday covered in factor 50 to avoid turning into a lobster. Gutted.
Coming up in part two, a mountain, another outfit and…dolphins! I’m sure you can hardly wait.

Daisy Shorts

• Jumper from H&M
• Shorts from New Look

I think my lack of shoes says this was a sitting around at home outfit. These shorts are amazing though, so I couldn’t wait to wear them. It doesn’t show up too well in the pictures, but they’re high-waisted and daisy print.DAISY PRINT.I can’t wait to wear them on the beach on holiday.

I’m off to Tenerife with my mum on Friday and am beyond excited. Actual sunshine! I’ll take loads of pictures, but I doubt I’ll be able to post while I’m away. I’m sure you’ll miss me horribly.

I’m still suffering with cold and am main-lining hot squash with honey at the moment. I am already fed up of being stuffed up and sneezing. Colds are evil. Any cold remedies to share, wise people of the internet?

Pigeon-Toes

• Dress from Topshop
• Collar (it’s actually a t-shirt, sssh) from Next
• Socks from New Look
• Shoes from Dorothy Perkins

For somebody who owns as many shoes as I do, I have a few pairs on heavy rotation. These are one of those pairs.

So where were we? This weekend has been an interesting one, to say the least. We’re in the midst of a disagreement with the letting agent who deals with our flat about bills unfortunately. We’re being sent bills for before we moved in, and they’re being rather slow to do anything about it. But there we are, we’re sorting it out!

Last night, my flat-mate and I went over to the Hay Festival to see Bill Bailey, who was BRILLIANT. He’s such a clever comedian, and was on top form last night. I’ve never seen him live before, but love his DVDs. I’m pleased to say he didn’t disappoint. As always with comedians, the unexpected stuff was the best, with some genius heckling and even more genius dealing with it. I also rather enjoyed the Downtown Abbey Dubstep and West Country Death Metal (it was about badgers).

Tonight, I’m nursing the beginnings of a cold, unfortunately, just in time to go on holiday. I hate not being able to breathe out of my nose. Boooo.

We’ve eating horrifying amounts of pizza tonight and watching Ten Things I Hate About You, which is one of my favourite films. Kat Stratford is my hero. Plus, the pedalo/paint-balling date looks like the best first date ever. 90s kids, you agree?

Oh, and this? This is my best pigeon-toed, looking at my shoes blogger pose, in honour of this post and it’s follow-up, which are both hilarious and you should read as soon as you’ve finished reading this.

Go on, get.

Vixen

I’ve got some slightly random things to share today, I’m afraid. First off, I have a picture to share from the weekend that I forgot.

This appalling quality phone picture (taken at speed in the dark, I do apologise) is of a vixen, standing just off my Dad’s patio. She’s been stopping by to snaffle food intended for the birds. Isn’t she gorgeous? She stayed around for ages, standing on the patio and eating bread. She was totally unbothered by us watching her through the patio doors and fairly unphased by people passing by too. I’ve never seen a fox up close before, and was surprised by how small and delicate she was. I imagined them chunkier, I guess.

On Monday, we went into Cardiff Bay to see if there was anything interesting going on for the Jubilee. There wasn’t, really, but we did see the stage they’ve set up for the Lady Boys of Bangkok (scary posters) and there were some great street dancers around too.

I don’t know if anybody’s a Torchwood fan, but this is the tribute wall for Ianto. When Ianto died (sorry if that’s spoilers for anyone, but it is an old episode now!), people started bringing letters and flowers, which are all up on the wall beside where the entrance for Torchwood is shown as being in the show. It’s become something off a general Torchwood wall now, since the show was moved from being filmed in Cardiff to America. The people who look after the Bay have very kindly left the tribute alone, and there’s even an official plague up now, explaining what the tribute is about. It’s kinda cool.

These are nothing to do with the bank holiday weekend, but did arrive today. Look! New business cards! Aren’t they awesome? I’m chuffed to bits with them, and the fancy box they came in. Hooray!

Oh! What’s Occurrin’?

Guess where I’ve been this weekend? I’m in Cardiff at the moment, and yesterday we went to see the Wales v Barbarians game in the Millennium Stadium. Its ages since I’ve been to Rugby in the stadium, and it’s always so much fun. There were just over 57,000 people in there yesterday. That’s rather a lot of people all hollering and seeing Tom Jones all at once. Actually, the singing of Tom Jones at Wales games makes me chuckle. It always happens. He’s practically the patron saint of Wales, I think.

It was Shane Williams’ last game (although he’s on about his third last game now), and despite the fact he was playing for the Barbarians, there was still so much love for him, which was rather sweet. I like Shane Williams, even if he is over-doing this last game business.

As well as the rugby, we’ve been in Barry. Yes, the place from Gavin and Stacey. The front at Barry beach is pretty much the set, with the stop from Dave’s Coaches, Marco’s Cafe where Stacey works and of course…

The arcade is the genuine article, where all the scenes with Nessa working the kiosk were filmed. As you can imagine, there are pictures of the cast and Gavin and Stacey merchandise everywhere. We also spied the bus they do the Gavin and Stacey tours on, which is has been done up to match the Dave’s Coaches bus. At some point, I quite fancy the location tour. All the sea-front locations are really easy to find, but somewhere around are the houses used for Gwen and Uncle Bryn’s homes, and most of the Essex locations were actually filmed in Penarth.

As well as stalking Gavin and Stacey locations, we also played Pirate themed crazy golf, where I spied this…

…which rather appealed to my appalling sense of humour. Sadly, I am very bad at Crazy Golf, and came last. I have decided I was actually aiming for the highest number of strokes, and therefore was the winner really.

Right now, I’m half watching the Thames Pageant thingy for the Jubilee, while reading the tweets from the Queen of Twitter, which if you don’t follow, you should, because she’s hilarious. All the boats on the Thames are certainly impressive, but the poor Queen looks bloody frozen. Considering she’s in her 80s, she’s been standing about on that boat for ages. The display from the National Theatre as her barge went past was impressive too; they ran the War Horse horse along the top of the theatre. I’ve heard the horse from the stage is impressive, and it is. The movement is so clever.

Is everyone suitably full of Pimms?

Suit Up

• Shirt from TK Maxx
• Jeans from Dorothy Perkins
• Belt from Dorothy Perkins
• Socks from H&M
• Shoes from H&M

So we still don’t have internet. Sorry about that. I will be back and blogging properly soon, I promise. I’m worried about over-doing my mobile broadband by blogging too much with it, so for the time being, I might have to stick with posting somewhat sporadically.

Anyway, the outfit. I haven’t worn this shirt for ages. I really don’t know why, because I love it. I used to be all about these kinds of androgynous looks, but I haven’t gone in for them as much lately. I was off for a training event with work yesterday, which is wear I wore this, and I think it hit the right balance between smart for the event and comfortable for sitting on the train to get there. I do wonder how people who commute all the time manage it. Sitting in the train in standard office wear can’t be comfy. 

The weekend was a lot of fun. We’ve had a comedy festival in at work, so I was running about with the film guys to get a promo video made. Events like that are always fun, and it’s great getting the names in, but it does always raise the question for me about where I’m on duty and where I’m a fan. I stood about a foot away from Andy Hamilton, and ended up not saying anything at all to him, because I figured it wouldn’t be very professional of me to tell him I love him on QI.

I did talk to Tom Deacon from Radio One though, who was really nice. Some of the staff managed to get him out for a drink with them, which is cool.

On Sunday, I went to see Jon Richardson, who was great. He wasn’t side-splittingly funny, more witty. I’d recommend him though, definitely.

Anyone else been up to anything exciting?