Bedroom Farce and Inception

Amongst our search for a house to pur­chase, in Brighton or Hay­wards Heath, we’ve been out a cou­ple of nights this week to relax. Firstly, at last, to see the new Chris Nolan movie, “Incep­tion” at the old school Dukes of York cin­ema in Brighton. And sec­ondly, to Brighton’s The­atre Royal for Alan Ayckbourn’s “Bed­room Farce” star­ring Maxwell Caulfield.

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Sushi Sunday

Sam and I have been mean­ing to make our own sushi since my birth­day, but what with get­ting mar­ried, hol­i­day­ing and Sam’s stud­ies, we hadn’t found the time.

We had all the ingre­di­ents ready; sushi rice, sushi vine­gar, the bam­boo rolling mat, a ten pack of nori and some­thing tasty for the middle.

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Honeymoon part 2: Chiang Mai, Thailand

Part one of our hol­i­day was over, we checked out, returned the rental and took an Air Asia flight north, to Chi­ang Mai.

With a com­pli­men­tary air­port trans­fer we arrived at Rimp­ing Vil­lage, our next port of call. Unlike the pre­vi­ous resorts, this was a small, per­sonal and homely place — all rooms over­look the pool, and the grounds are dom­i­nated by a grand Banyan tree. We traded in lux­ury for warmth, friend­li­ness and new friends. We loved it, the guests and the staff.

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Honeymoon epilogue: The journey home

Our jour­ney home started with­out a hitch, up at 5:15am, packed, checked out and whisked to Chi­ang Mai air­port via our transfer.

After hang­ing around amongst thou­sands of mos­qui­tos wait­ing for the check-in desk to open, we deposited our lug­gage and ate our packed break­fast — hearty tuna sand­wiches. In the lounge we rem­i­nisced about our hol­i­day, sad that it was all over.

We took the 8:25am Air Asia flight to the famil­iar Suvarn­ab­humi air­port in Bangkok, touch­ing down an hour later. Pick up bags, drop them off at Thai Air­ways check-in, through secu­rity and into the realms of duty free once again.

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Prague & Dresden, 20th May — 31st May

I’m cur­rently sit­ting on a train, trav­el­ling from Prague through to Berlin, we’re get­ting off at Dres­den for a day trip. It takes about two hours. The rolling green scenery and river Vltava are going past, bask­ing in glo­ri­ous sun­shine. A group of sleepy Amer­i­cans sur­round us.

Wak­ing at 3:45am and fly­ing from Lon­don Gatwick at 6:45am, we touched down in Prague (after sleep­ing through the flight), in the sun. Here we were greeted by Rebecca, our host, adorn­ing a sin­gle flower for Saman­tha, she bought us cof­fee before guid­ing us through the pub­lic trans­port sys­tem; bus, Metro and tram.

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Norman Conquests and Sleeping Beauty

A much belated part 2 of time spent in the West End and other fun places, I think I was meant to post this around Decem­ber 20th, looks like that didn’t hap­pen. I rounded off the last post with a trip to see Zorro.

Next stop Alan Ayckbourn’s trio of plays “Liv­ing Together”, “Table Man­ners” and “Round and Round the Gar­den” (seen in that order) as part of “The Nor­man Con­quests” in the round at the Old Vic — a the­atre trans­formed for a 360 degree view­ing expe­ri­ence. Being under 25 offers us the nice lit­tle perk of much dis­counted tick­ets, £20 for each play instead of £40–60, or there­abouts, a bar­gain. The six strong cast con­sisted of Amelia Bull­more, Jes­sica Hynes, Stephen Man­gan, Ben Miles, Paul Rit­ter and Amanda Root.

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