Mamma's Day

As you'll all know it was Mother's Day yesterday! Now usually, I would make my mamma a card, by her a present and run upstairs with a cup of lemon tea in the morning. Being nearly a legal adult, this year was a little different.

After forcing myself to watch Flight (with Mr Washington himself) all the way through– it dragged, a lot– it was pretty late so I toddled off to bed with a tummy full of jelly's and chocolate raisins (and possibly a few peanuts). We're in the process of buying new beds and swapping bedrooms, so after a few days of merry-go-round beds it was my turn to sleep in the mamma and pappa's. Which just so happens to be a rather lovely water bed– you can even change the temperature!

I hoped in full of joy and was then rudely awakened at 3am by a mysterious shove that managed to kick me onto the other side of the bed. On waking the next morning (or being woken up to be more precise) I find that the shover from 3am was my mum, who couldn't stand sleeping in my bed. Considering it was mother's day this was a preeetty cute surprise, but I was too tired to get up. An hour and a half later I summoned the courage to go and get her card and make the usual cup of lemon tea and my traditional english cuppa, then we got dressed to go out shopping! The new T K Maxx in Newcastle is reeaaally nice. The old one was horrid and I practically lived in there, so you can imagine what I'm going to be like now. Lets just say I have my eye on a black Paul & Joe dress from the gold label section... And I may or may not have bought a new pair of shoes... (BCBG past season)

Anyhow, the best part of the day was the evening. I took (or rather my step-dad very kindly dropped us off) the wonderful woman who held me in her womb for 9 months for cocktails. After all, she's always said I was a cocktail baby!

Allard's is one of our favourite cocktail bars in Tynemouth. I bought us our first round, a Lynchburg Lemonade (lots of JD) and a Breakfast at Tiffany's (marmalade, lemon and gin)

Yes that is toast for dipping! (Delish!)

Halfway through these we ordered some tapas: fish goujons, spicy chicken strips and hand cut chips. Simple, but amazing. The chips especially are incredible.

Then we moved onto our favourites– a lovely merlot for mamma and a Butterscotch Beach for moi (butterscotch schnapps, chocolate liqueur and vodka with a worthers original in the bottom). I have far too many of these.

Last but not least the mother had another merlot and I opted for the mega-fattening Toasted Almond, with cream, Baileys and almond liqueur– oh so worth it. Paps came along to join in on the fun before taking us home. As we got up to leave, the incredible happened– It had started snowing! In March! England is a confusing country.

Tipsy chatter with my mum is hilarious and brilliant. We got home and started watching Mr Selfridge (addicted) and she complained of seeing double. Couldn't help but hoot.

Well, I shall not leave it so long next time and I will take more pictures!

Jensen

Bamburgh

Had a really great weekend. I spent most of Saturday auditioning for the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain (second time) which was a lot of fun! We had a full morning workshop and then individual auditions in the afternoon. I enjoyed myself that much in the morning that I completely lost track of the time and didn't even realise we'd been there for three hours and it was time for lunch. So off I toddled with a girl who asked me a question before the session, thus making us break-time buddies, as we didn't know anyone else. After a quick coffee and a good natter (polite word for gossip– what did you expect?) I had to head back for my one-to-one.

Now I'm not trying to sound big headed, nor am I trying to make out that I wasn't nervous, but I was pretty relaxed during my wait to go in and I tried my very best to give as much advice I could to the younger people around me. My lack of nerves was mostly down to the fact that this was my second time auditioning for the NYT so I knew what was likely to happen and I've been in audition situations a lot, from RADA to college assessments and screen testing for a detective series episode. Most of the girls I spoke to were about to have their very first audition, ever.

After chatting about points of focus, monologue choices and staging ideas, my time was up. I was called into a room with one of the morning workshop leaders and an NYT ambassador who was at my workshop last year too. We had a chat, I did my monologue and then I did a few exercises with the ambassador running around the room while I ran after him trying to grab his attention; when it came to answering more questions I was so worn out that it took me a while to get any words to come out of my mouth. Luckily Mr. Ambassador seemed to be in the same position (I wasn't as unfit as I'd thought).

Then.... It was camping time! My mum and stepdad picked me up around the corner in our lovely motorhome/campervan thing to whisk me off to Bamburgh. Here are some pictures from our little over night stay

Sherwood Forest coat, H & M scarf, Hunter wellies!

Refusing to look at the camera. Love this jumper from Oasis, and that's the vintage necklace I bought in Tynemouth from my last post (you can read it here).

Checking out some local art work

We visited the Grace Darling Museum, and the place where she was buried. An old weather man from Tyne Tees was a volunteer at the centre! Only took us a few minutes to realise, then of course my mum just went straight up to him and said "you were the weather man weren't you!" pretty loudly. Got to love her. That was Grace's stained glass window in the church.

My mums new jumper (paired with a scarf I bought her) is making me jealous. Might. Have. To. Borrow. It.

Pitty I didn't get a shot of our cream teas before we demolished them– they were pretty impressive. The tea room in Bamburgh is in the top 20 of the country, started up in the 17/1800's by two sisters. They bought the building for only £8000 (or close to that) but spent nearly £13,000 on the wooden paneling alone! Mental.

Couldn't have put it better myself.