Scattered Strawberry Summer

Such a busy weekend I had. I went to London with my friend to the Holi Festival of Colours. So it is based on a religious festival, but as you might expect, this was anything but religious. 

It was in the Olympic park, it took as 2.5 hours to get there. It;s been many years since I set my foot in Stratford, they really done it up for the Olympics, I couldn't recognise it.  We got there early, maybe a bit to early as we had nothing to do until they started the countdown, however people who turned up later had to wait in the queue for hours. ok, so we paid a fortune for the tickets, I'm not sure why it is so expensive, especially because once you're in, you still have to pay for everything and it was very expensive. and you couldn't actually use cash, you had to buy tokens, seriously, it was ridiculous. I spend only £20 inside, but I have nothing to show for it and left still rather hungry. All that aside, I loved the actual experience, they did a countdown every hour and it was magical,  the colours look amazing and yes the powder does get in everywhere! However, it quickly looses it's colour, you are left with sort of white powder. 

It started raining though and it was not nice, it poured really badly, we weren't prepared for this!!! There wasn't any shelter, we ended up buying one of those disposal raincoats, it helped a little bit. Thankfully, it stopped raining but it did make the powder mix into awful shade of brown. 

There were a lot of stalls of different kind of food, I had pizza, it was actually quite nice. We left before 6 pm, as there was not much to do between the countdowns and we ran out of powder.  The music was not great, they had a few good tunes but they cut them all short. Overall, I do not regret going, it is something to be experienced, but seriously they need to reduce the prices but no chance of that happening, both days were sold out.  We got a few free goodies- some Indian tea that smells vile and some make up and wipes.

 Music Wednesday post is long over due!

Neko Case- I wish  I was the Moon Tonight

I like to watch The Big Questions on Sunday mornings even though most of the time it gets so infuriating. For non- UK readers, The Big Questions is a show where they ask ethical questions, most of them are religious. Well,  it shouldn't come to you as a surprise that I'm an atheist, why do I watch this then? The debates are really good, and by good I mean they invite people with such ridiculous views, that I find both funny and infuriating, I do shout at the screen sometimes because there is too much stupidity coming from someone's mouth. The other evening I watched an hour feature on "Are religions unfair to women?". You'd think the answer is pretty obvious (like most other questions on The Big Questions).

I find it astounding that  god debate aside, women follow religions where women are always second, a property and generally considered lower than men, they are considered unclean,etc. Some even believe religion empowers them, that being required to be submissive to their husband means women &men are equal.  It makes me do this face:

I guess it just proves that indoctrination is very powerful.

One of my favourite regular guests on the show is Kate Smurthwaite. She's good, I mean really good. A clip called Atheist Bitchslap went viral a few years ago:

I've spent a whole evening watching Kate Smurthwaite videos on youtube. She's very outspoken,a  feminist, an atheist and she's very funny, what's not to like? Dear Kate, please write a book, I want to read it and can you record it too because Kate, I would listen to your stuff for hours.

    A blast from the past- this is me when I was 17, the mysterious man  with painted nails is my SO.

We finished a bit earlier but I had to wait an hour for my train, I was tired and I had a headache, at least on my way back I got to go first class (the ticket was very cheap). Never went first class before, so it was somewhat exciting. The carriage was very quiet, got offered drinks on several occasions (including alcohol,but I  refrained from it), had lovely dinner (though rather small portion), but free food and drinks aside, there's not much else to it. I don't know what I was expecting.  I came back home 10pm, it was a really long day so no wonder the next morning I felt really exhausted and a tad grumpy, 2 cups of tea and 1 cup of coffee away, I finally was myself again.  

                                          This reminds me of a song by the Beatles- I'm so tired

I turned to pinterest for inspiration

Summer has officially started, folks! I woke up on Saturday to the sound of thunderstorm. I thought the day has been ruined but,no, it was perfectly nice day. I met up with Marta, we had lunch at the Kiosk, right at the foot of South Downs. There is a path to the side of the kiosk which leads to the downs and is much more manageable than the main path. We chilled out in the sun for ages looking at beautiful views.

But what's a sunny day without ice cream? We went to Fusciardi's for some proper Italian Ice Cream. It was good but I probably should have chosen different flavours, I got overwhelmed with so many choices!..

Today I got much later than usual, it seems I lost the ability to sleep in long time ago. I guess around the time I started working full time. I didn't realise it was actually  very warm outside until I checked our thermometer, I didn't expect to see 25c  when it's not even noon yet! Good weather and on a weekend is rare here so I treasure it. I went to a beach to sunbathe for a couple hours before we were due for a social engagement. The sun was lovely but I wasn't prepare to open the swimming season just yet.

Happy Friday everyone

here's a video to get your weekend off to a good start

I recently received an email from The Works about an opportunity to write a review of a book. You get to keep the book too, so naturally I applied. I'm not sure which book I originally selected, it was one of Karl Pilkington's, they didn't have that in stock but they send me " Further Adventures of Idiot Abroad". It is based on the second series of An Idiot Abroad. 

If you know who is Karl Pilkington, you know what to expect. I'm quite a fan of Karl Pilkington and his ramblings so I was looking forward to reading this book.

Ricky Gervais and Stephan Merchant sent off Karl to  experience what other's may put on a "bucket list", he gets to travel to wonderful places to do very exciting things and yet he moans and whines most of the time. He chooses which things to do and gives reasons why he is not interested in doing the others,  his reasons are rather funny. Ricky tried to make him to do bungee jumping but Karl went out of this way to avoid this to the point that he had to spend £2500 and make a member of the crew to jump for him with this hat and lie about it to Ricky. It was hilarious!..

 Good thing about the book is that rather than just plainly retelling the things that were in the show, Karl has fill in the gaps about things that weren't shown, more thoughts on his adventures.  It is very easy to read and it's not hard to imagine Karl writing it as the editors have chosen to leave the accented writing style. The book made me chuckle quite a few times, Karl views world differently than most people and he often comes with very funny insights. It's a good read but I'm not sure if it's not just easier to watch the show, they tried to bridge the gap between the book and show by including many pictures from his adventures but not sure if it was enough, I think some of the comic effect has been lost as a lot of it comes from his face reactions.

When reading his books or listening to Ricky Gervais Show podcasts, it's hard to say is Karl truly an idiot or just genius. I'm not sure. But what I'm sure about is that he's quite extraordinary.

The book is only £4.99, I think it's a steal! If you also want to review a book for  The Works, apply here

       here is the artist and my SO hiding behind her