One of my favorite things about this time of year are the wild seals that turn up on the beaches to have their pups. It's usually a very busy beach at any other time of year, but everything just comes to a complete stop for a few weeks to give the seals their peace.
I went to London Comic Con this weekend, it was a bit of a last minute decision but I obviously haven't been able to go since 2019 and it felt really important to get out and do things I enjoy as this year has felt a bit weird and isolating. And I think I enjoyed it more than last time! I always feel really comfortable at cons, I really love people who are passionate about stuff as I can relate. I'd like to get a table and sell my illustrations there someday, I've never sold at cons before but I'd love to meet the people buying my art instead of the anonymity of online sales. The whole experience was really inspiring and I came home brimming with ideas for future illustrations and things to make!
I obviously had to go in cosplay, and as it was October and a bit chilly I decided to go as Anna from Frozen. I went as Elsa last time so it only felt right!
Because I had to stay in a hotel I made a proper weekend of it and went to see a couple of shows. On the Friday night I saw the new Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cinderella, which I didn't know a whole lot about before going other than it was an updated retelling, but as I love fairy tales so much I wanted to give it a chance. And oh boy! I really hated it!
I especially like the original story of Cinderella because it's a really important story about abuse, grief, and hope. Cinderella loses both of her parents and is enslaved in her own home by her legal guardian while she's a minor, and her step family attempt to completely erode her feelings of self worth out of sheer spite. Even when she goes to the ball, whether in the Disney version or the original folktale, she never went there hoping to meet the Prince, she didn't even recognize the Prince, she just wanted a night out to go dancing and forget her troubles. She never dreamed a Prince would come and save her, she just hoped that one day she might be in a better position to be able to leave her step family behind: "No matter how your heart is grieving, if you keep on believing, the dream that you wish will come true." And I hate this modern "empowered" interpretation that she just waits for a man to save her because she never once does that. And while I knew this musical was a retelling I was hoping it would still have some of the spirit of the original, but unfortunately they just went down the "not like other girls" route instead.
It's set in the town of Belleville, where everyone is basically like the Plastics in Mean Girls except for Cinderella who is a tomboy 'Goth' (because an outcast always has to be a goth 😑) and Prince Sebastian who is nerdy and introverted. Naturally they're both hated by the townsfolk for being so different, and they've been friends their whole lives despite coming from entirely separate social backgrounds and are secretly in love with each other. It's just so boring and predictable that I was rolling my eyes the entire time. Some elements of the show are so over the top and ridiculous that it almost feels like pantomime, but it also takes itself far too seriously and straddles this really weird line where it can't decide what sort of story it wants to be. Even the Fairy Godmother is entirely changed; originally she's the literal embodiment of Cinderella's faith in her own abilities, now she's a plastic surgeon who Cinderella goes to and pays so she can look like everyone else. And this is such a horrifying message and not anywhere near as subversive as it thinks it's being!
This next bit is a huge spoiler, but the 'twist' at the end is that Prince Sebastian's older brother Prince Charming isn't actually dead like we're told throughout the musical, and naturally he interrupts Prince Sebastian's wedding to announce that he faked his death to avoid an arranged loveless marriage to a woman because he's actually gay and in love with the Duke. Which could have been an incredible social commentary on the whole royal thing, except it's the punchline. Also it's immediately accepted by absolutely everyone in the town, including the Queen who is thrilled with her gay son and accepts the Duke, so why exactly did Prince Charming feel like he had to run away in the first place? The plot line has no substance because there was seemingly never anything to overcome, it's like the writers just thought to themselves "what do young people like right now? Ah, the gays!" and just slapped something in to look woke. Especially when compared to something like the recent Netflix series Young Royals which genuinely dealt with a storyline of a young Crown Prince realizing he's queer and dealing with the consequences of that in a very realistic way.
On Saturday night I saw Frozen, which felt appropriate as I was cosplaying Anna that weekend (not at the theater though!) I saw Frozen when I went to New York in 2019, and I didn't think I was going to get to see it in London. It's changed quite a bit from it's Broadway run, so I'm glad I got to see it before. The London theater is larger so some of it's been restaged, they've included references to Frozen II which I was less happy about, and they've included a new song and cut and shortened some others.
Anna's lost her only solo song True Love, which was one of my favorites and one of the moments where Anna has the most growth so I was really sad to see that go. It's always been my complaint even on Broadway that the betrayal scene between Anna and Hans is far too rushed, and unfortunately it's even more so now True Love is gone. I've also always felt like they missed a trick by not giving Hans his own song here - a mocking reprise of Love Is An Open Door would be absolutely perfect detailing how vulnerable and easy to fool Anna was. It's the linchpin of the whole final act so I've never understood why it's so hurried, but they have at last given Hans a couple of lines to sing if not a full song, and it's yet another reprise of his Hans of the Southern Isles track. I don't know why I'm surprised, they always do Hans dirty.
Overall I really loved it though! I loved Oliver as Hans, and the Duke of Weselton is always a character I don't take much notice of but he was wonderfully slimy here, and Samantha Barks is an absolute powerhouse and it was very exciting getting to see her live! I know it's not important and coincidental but I feel like she even looks the most like Elsa too in her face shape and features. And I always love seeing different interpretations of the character - on Broadway I saw Charissa Hogeland who played Elsa very anxious and timid, whereas Samantha was much more proud and you could feel the weight of her duties on her. The cast performed it with American accents too, which I appreciated. Wicked is performed as British, and it always feels really jarring to me as Oz is an American story and I'm so used to the OBC, and although they could technically get away with British accents for Frozen with it being European I'm glad they stuck with what sounds more familiar to the characters. I definitely need to see it again!
I last saw Phantom of the Opera back in August as I knew it had been updated, but when I saw TodayTix were having a sale I bought a cheap ticket on a random date. I didn't think much about it, I literally just bought the best ticket at the best price, so I was floored when I arrived and saw they were filming it for the 35th anniversary and it was some huge event! There were roses on every seat with a note from the Phantom, and we were each given complimentary glasses of champagne (it was handed to us in a mini bottle with a glass on top, so I put it in my bag as I don't really drink and I didn't realize it didn't have a lid. Yikes!) I think I enjoyed it all even more because it was all so unexpected!
I kept getting really overwhelmed throughout the show, and I'm gonna say it, I think Lucy St Louis is the best Christine I've ever seen? It's hard to even comment on the other actors because I can't help but just watch Lucy whenever she's on stage. Her singing is flawless, and her acting is just phenomenal. I appreciate theater actresses have a lot to deal with in every show, singing and performing the same character eight shows a week, but Lucy just seems to feel the role with every inch of her. It's incredible to watch honestly.
I was trying to figure out if I enjoy this show as much as Wicked, and decided that I can't really even compare them. Although I love Gaston Leroux's novel and the musical of Phantom, and I love theorizing about Erik/the Phantom and what drove him to become what he did, that's kind of the extent of it for me. Like it doesn't exist outside of that, and I don't find myself seeking out different versions of the story. Whereas Wicked just inspires me. It inspires my illustrations and I often come out of the theater drawing thumbnails, I love the characters individually as well as together and I enjoy building on them, I love the whole concept of Oz and all of the lore surrounding it, so it's kind of much more than just Wicked to me by now. I probably enjoy both shows about the same I guess, I just have very different relationships with each of them.
I love finding mushrooms. I don't pick any as I'm still learning to identify them. I was taking a photo of the big mushroom shelf growing from the side of this tree stump, and didn't even notice the tiny little wispy guys on top until I was looking at the photo.
Although I’ve been interested in vintage for absolutely years I’ve never really been drawn to the 1940s and WWII side of it until more recently, and a lot of that new found interest is due to Eden Camp. I’ve been to this museum before, I’m pretty sure I even posted about it, but honestly it’s probably my favourite museum in the whole world and I love going whenever I can.
Eden Camp was originally a Prisoner of War camp in North Yorkshire, and has since been turned into a WWII museum. Which I know sounds super boring, it certainly did to me the first time I went, but it just frames it in a way that I’ve never seen before. I worry how amazing it is and how it makes me feel can never come across in photographs, especially as I don’t know how to get across in words the profound effect it has on me either, so you’ll just have to trust me that ITS AMAZING!! Even more so than I can describe!
Because it’s based in a former Prisoner of War camp it gives the museum an authenticity that a lot of these kinds of places usually lack, but it’s surprisingly not somber, if anything it really brings the human element to what happened instead of it seeming so detached. It’s set across the original buildings, with each hut dedicated to a different aspect of wartime life with reconstructed scenes that even smell like 1940s Britain. One minute you’re wandering through a blacked out street, the next it’s the Blitz, then in another moment you're with evacuated children being loaded on to steam trains, or sheltering from the bombs on the London Underground. It’s so immersive that it’s hard not to feel swept up in it all and admire the lengths these people went through. I feel like most things about the war focus exclusively on the army or the horrors of the Holocaust, which is what’s always put me off as it feels a bit like an excuse for glorification of violence instead of empathy for what these people were actually put through, you know? And that’s exactly what Eden Camp doesn’t do. It covers all aspects of the war from the home front and how the people left behind were affected, as well as the wider picture of what was happening around the globe.
When you look at this stuff and the things that made up peoples lives and the way society was, it feels like such a huge difference to today. Like I know it was 80 years ago, but the world changed so very much just between 1940 and 1970, and 1970 doesn’t seem as long ago, you know? And yet it’s only 30 years apart. Which is the same equivalent as 1991 is to us today, and yet the difference between 1991 and 2021 doesn’t seem as vast as the differences between 1940 and 1970. It just really fascinates me how quickly and how much things changed, both in terms of social attitudes as well as more superficial things like how stuff was made and what was available to people. Like even when there was extreme rationing, things were still well made and expected to last and made of proper materials and the government took steps to ensure that no one was overcharged for these things. Like, can you even imagine???
I meant to post about this sooner, but I went to the antiques center last week! I last went in December 2019, and I always love taking photos and seeing how much it's changed every time I go. Especially this time as you can imagine with the whole pandemic it felt very different! I used to come out of these places with armfuls of things, but I'm definitely more chill nowadays and I just really like looking at quirky old stuff and seeing how things have changed over time (or not!) and thinking about the kinds of people who maybe owned it before. Especially as these places always get me thinking about consumerism and how much old stuff exists and how much new stuff is constantly being made, and how all of these lovely old things often end up in garbage dumps or left to rot in attics and how unsustainable it all is. Which really bums me out so I try to only buy stuff that I want to give a forever home.
I'm really into bears lately, and I love old carved stuff like this that looks handmade.
I've been admiring this painting for years! It used to be at another antiques place locally, now it's moved to here, and I swear I've been looking at it for about 6 years so it always makes me really happy to try and spot where they've hung it up this time. I'm going to be so disappointed when it sells.
I love old packaging design, and this iron was tiny. I did think about getting it as it would literally be perfect for travel, but it was super heavy which isn't airline friendly.
I've never seen canisters specifically for different types of sugar before.
I traveled to London yesterday to go to the theater and I can't believe how long it's been since I've been able to type that!! It all felt a bit weird and surreal all day as I haven't been to London since coming back from Japan. I haven't been much of anywhere really and I did feel anxious and a bit of reverse culture shock because I've become so used to navigating Tokyo and Japanese etiquette and customs that things kept taking me by surprise and I found myself unsure of what to do. I posted about it on my Instagram stories and I had a couple of my friends from Japan messaging me to say they've felt the same since returning home so at least it's not just me!
I went to see Heathers which is a show I've wanted to see for years as I really love the cast recording. To be honest I'm not often drawn to musicals based on movies, there's been a lot of them lately which is kind of it's own gripe. I think Heathers works better as a musical though as it's such heightened reality anyway, although to be fair I've never much liked the movie so it's not too hard for it to be an improvement to me. The issue I often have with musicals I've only ever listened to and not actually seen is because I'm such a visual person I kind of make up my own version of it in my head because I don't know how it's staged (I don't like bootlegs personally, watching something through someone's shaky phone camera where they're constantly zooming in and out is not a fun time for me). So sometimes actually seeing the show can be a bit of a letdown compared to what I pictured, but this wasn't and I really enjoyed it!
