Champagne Lifestyle on a Lemonade Budget - 2021

Wednesday2000

The furniture both looked fine LLily so I won't be doing anything to them. I will post a pic when I get them tomorrow. I really liked a lot of the stuff in that place, but I have been buying too many things since I moved here.

A lady I met today in the shop.:)

sugarbaby125

My Champagne moments yesterday evening and this evening:

I went to The Lyttleton Theatre at The National to watch Much Ado About Nothing yesterday evening. I was fortunate to get a ticket last Friday in The National's Friday Rush promotion where you can get tickets for current productions for only £10. My ticket was worth £66, so I made a really good saving. I love the actor Katherine Pearson and she was starring in this production as Beatrice. I was hooked as soon as the curtain rose. The sets were exquisite and so sumptuous. The detail in all of the costumes made the characters really come to life. There was so much humour, that I could not stop laughing. I did quieten down my natural laugh, as I did not think huge belly laughs would have been appreciated by the rest of the audience.     I absolutely loved this production. It was a 10/10 for me.     If I was not so busy I would have bought another ticket and watched it again.    

Neighbourhood Voices had another Masterclass this evening with Tenukie Van Der Sluijs who is the current Head of Artistic Development at The Young Vic. This was a really useful session. He was so informative about where we could take our writing. He said that just because we were not being paid to write, it did not follow that we were not professional writers. Obviously no one had informed him that more than half of our group are already professional writers who are paid to write, they just want their writing to take a new direction. 

Each of the Masterclasses have been invaluable to the whole group, but I have so much useful information to ensure that I write my play in a manner, that makes it likely to be staged at some point in my future.   

Wednesday2000

sugarbaby125 said:

My Champagne moments yesterday evening and this evening:

I went to The Lyttleton Theatre at The National to watch Much Ado About Nothing yesterday evening. I was fortunate to get a ticket last Friday in The National's Friday Rush promotion where you can get tickets for current productions for only £10. My ticket was worth £66, so I made a really good saving. 

That is a good reduction!:)

Someone was telling me that as I get PIP that I can get reduced opera tickets in London. I might look into that.

Wednesday2000

I got my bedside table delivered and put it in that alcove so at least it isn't wasted space. It is not exactly a thing of beauty, but it gets the job done. I could fit my jars of pasta, rice etc... there now too.

I have so many kidney beans as I ordered them during lockdown and obviously they last so long. I think I will have to make some homemade chilli when it turns cold in Autumn.:)

Before and after:

liberty_lily

Fantastic saving on your theatre ticket, Sugarbaby...sounds like a great production too 😁

That's definitely better use of the space, Wednesday - I love our larder (another ebay find!), it's great knowing exactly where everything is stored 🙂

My champagne moment today was starting to sort the stuff that will be going in the new baskets. I thought I had some ziplock clothes bags but they seem to have disappeared so I'll need to buy those. The baskets are a perfect fit - not just in their dimensions, but colourwise - for our Inchyra Blue shelving, although I definitely wouldn't have wanted to pay full price for them!

Tonight my amazing DH is starting to plaster the new stud walls...another step towards getting the existing ground floor rooms finished 😃

sugarbaby125

My Champagne moments today:

I went to the Blackfriars Settlement mental health and wellbeing discussion group from 11am to 12.30pm. We were all talking about our families. We all have very different experiences and sizes of family. We also discussed our upcoming day trip to Hampton Court next Thursday. 

I went from Blackfriars Settlement to The National to watch the play Jack Absolute Flies Again at The Olivier Theatre. I also got my ticket for this play in the Friday Rush promotion for £10. It was worth £56. So another good saving. This is a delightful quintessentially English Farce. Caroline Quentin was a fantastic Mrs. Malaprop. She is not only a very talented actor, but a very light on her feet dancer.  I also enjoyed Kelvin Fletcher's performance as Dudley Scunthorpe, as his comic timing was so good. Once again, I could not stop laughing. For me this play is a 9/10. I bought a copy of the programme and the book of the play. 

I had lunch in the restaurant in The National. I did not balk at the price, as I could afford to treat myself. I found my extra hot 6 chicken wings with skin on fries really tasty and satisfying. I washed it all down with water, my favourite tipple.   

sugarbaby125

Wednesday, 

The space looks so organised now. 

You should get yourself a CEA card. You can apply online. Once you have one, you can get a companion ticket for free in most cinemas and in lots of theatres in London. 

I get PIP and I got myself a CEA card.  It is another great way to save money on entertainment events and going to the cinema. 

Also check with theatres if they have cut price tickets for disabled theatre goers. When you receive PIP you are considered disabled, so get the Access discount in theatres if you are attending an event or performance on your own. 

Wednesday2000

sugarbaby125 said:

Wednesday, 

The space looks so organised now. 

You should get yourself a CEA card. You can apply online. Once you have one, you can get a companion ticket for free in most cinemas and in lots of theatres in London. 

I get PIP and I got myself a CEA card.  It is another great way to save money on entertainment events and going to the cinema. 

Also check with theatres if they have cut price tickets for disabled theatre goers. When you receive PIP you are considered disabled, so get the Access discount in theatres if you are attending an event or performance on your own. 

Oh thank you, that is very helpful as my friend was a bit vague about how you get the discount.:) I will definitely look into it.

sugarbaby125

My Champagne moments today:

Neighbourhood Voices had the usual Saturday session from 11am to 1pm, lunch break from 1pm-2pm then finish the session from 2pm-4pm. Ola taught us how to write a treatment for our plays today. The treatment is a prose description scene by scene of your play. Some of the people in the group really struggled with the writing exercises today, as their plays are still at the planning stage, they have not actually started to write their plays. 

We have to submit the treatment of our play and a short scene from our play has to be submitted to Ola on 1st September. Later in September he will have one to one meetings with us all with Kirk Ann and they will both give us feedback and criticism on our treatments and our scene. It will only be a 15 minute meeting, so they will be very concise with their comments. 

I got ready after the Saturday session in a different outfit and went to watch Ivor from our Neighbourhood Voices group do his comedian routine of old Jewish jokes at the Camden Comedy Club. Ivor was so surprised to see me in the audience. He was genuinely very funny, thank goodness.  He is off to Edinburgh Fringe for the month of August, but in September when he has a new date at the Camden comedy club, he is going to invite everyone from the Neighbourhood Voices group to come and support him.  

sugarbaby125

My Champagne moments yesterday and today:

I went to the Donmar Warehouse Theatre to watch the play The Doll's House Part 2 yesterday evening. It is such a great play. It has such incisive, witty dialogue throughout the play. Noma Dumezweni is a tour de force as Nora.  I got a cut price ticket for only £6.50 for a seat that should have cost me £55. 

This was my first visit to the Donmar Warehouse Theatre and it will not be my last. It is a modern, really well appointed theatre. 

My son and I each won £25 on our Premium Bonds this month