In 2010, while doing work experience at my local paper, I accompanied one of the journalists to interview Jessica Brown Findlay ahead of her first role as Lady Sybil Crawley in Downton Abbey. At the time we knew little about this new period drama or the success it was set to have.
“I can show you the world, shining, shimmering splendid…”
I was definitely transported to a whole new world a couple of weeks ago when one of my best buddies George took me to see the West End’s brand new musical, Aladdin – and shining, shimmering and splendid are three words that pretty much sum it up.
I got the tickets way back in December as a Christmas present – when Aladdin was still on Broadway and I didn’t even know that it had been made in to a musical. It was a lovely surprise because if I had known the producers of my all time favourite show, The Lion King, were bringing another Disney classic to the stage – I would have been first in the queue to see it.
There are now an estimated 2.5 million people living with cancer in the UK and this number is only expected to rise, according to Macmillan. Of those affected by this life threatening disease, around 160,000 will die each year and by 2020, almost one in two people are expected to get at least one of 200 potential cancers at some point in their lives.
On Sunday morning I was up bright and early, at a time that, to me, felt like the middle of the night. But, in reality it was just after 6am and this particular morning I was excited to be meeting my content colleague Jade at Peterborough train station – for a day we had eagerly been anticipating for several months.
So why were we up SO early on a Sunday you ask? Well, I won’t leave you in suspense any longer… we were heading to The Guardian in London for a workshop, where we would be learning how to write compelling features, with Freelance Journalist, Will Storr.
As the clock struck midnight and took us into 2016 I didn’t make any New Years resolutions for the year because, lets face it, who keeps them? According to this post that looked back on 2014 or “the year I became an adult”, I planned to learn to cook and that definitely hasn’t happened yet…