Jubilee Weekend

To celebrate the Queen's 60 years on the throne we have had two holidays added to our weekend to enable us all to have a four-day party for the occasion. I don't often see the Union Jack flying except for on important buildings, but this past weekend they have been everywhere; on homes, shops, street lamps, gardens, and my personal favourite...bunting! There have been thousands of street parties all over the country (imagine cream teas and party food, served on tablecloths of course!) It feels like there is a great sense of community and pride coming back, it's been a wonderful time.  We had a pretty packed weekend ourselves, we started off on Saturday to west Wales for my father-in-law's 60th birthday party. Strangely, the children love the four hour drive and their favourite part is going over the river Severn on the suspension bridge into Wales:

This is what the back of the car looks like halfway through the journey (Rosie is in the very back behind Ethan's head!):

Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of the birthday boy, but I did get a few of the cousins playing together, and Buzz making sure that wedgie was sorted out!:

The next morning we drove back to south Wales for the blessing of my new niece Isobel. It was a lovely day and mum was so happy to get some cuddles, it's such a shame we live so far away.

Aren't they a beautiful family?

On Monday James and I went to London to see Coldplay (my birthday present!) and it was so great driving through the streets and seeing all the wonderful shop displays for the Jubilee...Liberty of London was my favourite. James didn't look at the displays, he was too busy battling the traffic and trying not to kill suicidal cyclists/motorbikes! The concert itself was absolutely glorious, my favourite song was a tie between Charlie Brown and Paradise...they blew me away! Fix you and Yellow made me tear up as always, and the funniest surprise moment was Simon Pegg popping up on stage to play the harmonica!  The party tricks were well and truly out for the show, it started off with lots of fireworks and confetti...oh, how I love the butterfly confetti:

Then there were balloons and MORE confetti:

I'm such a big kid!

The most beautiful part of the show were these radio controlled wristbands that everyone was given:

They were turned on for certain songs and they looked amazing, it really made the audience a part of the performance. There were also inflatables and strobes galore....oh, it was a couple of hours of heaven, my face ached from smiling so much!

We got back to Devon at 3am and as mum had the children we indulged in a lovely long sleep to recuperate. We spent much of Tuesday watching the final parade for the Queen...we do pomp and circumstance so well! Long live the Queen, and thanks for the four day weekend Ma'am!

Won't You Take Me Where The Streetlights Glow

I had a great weekend in London with Dawn, we had planned months ago to see Coldplay at Wembley Stadium for their 159th show, the last in a 15 month world tour. It was a weekend of nostalgia for me, the first concert I attended was Bon Jovi at Wembley in the early '90's, my sister and I had not long turned 16 and it was our first trip to London on our own! Of course the stadium has now been rebuilt and those famous towers are gone, but the approach is still the same and it is beautiful! Dawn and I decided to 'do London for free' so I took Dawn on a little (er... long) march around the city to show her the sights she hadn't seen before. We started out in Kensington Gardens, a short walk from our hotel:

Dipped our toes in the Princess Diana memorial:

Marvelled at the hugeness of Prince Albert's memorial:

Walked around Kensington Palace and the gardens:

We wandered on up to Notting Hill....

...to check out the Saturday market and pretty houses:

Next we headed over to the stadium, here's the view of Wembley Way from the tube station:

Do you think there's enough beer?!:

The support acts were quite an eclectic mix, I really enjoyed seeing White Lies live... mocked Girls Aloud, and 'bounced' to Jay Z. (I must say, I never thought I'd be humming a line from Annie at Wembley!) Here's a picture of our view. We should have been right down there in the standing area but our ticket company let us down a couple of weeks before the gig and we had to find some last minute tickets for a sell out 70,000 ticket gig! Luckily we did, but it meant having seats at the top, it was so high I'm surprised we didn't have nosebleeds! The one advantage to seats is resting those weary legs after pounding the streets!

Coldplay were fabulous. It's hard to pick favourite songs but here goes: Lost, Yellow, Fix You, Viva La Vida (the singing from the crowd was AWESOME, much better than the usual football chants that echo around the stadium!), Lovers in Japan (it was beautiful, there were thousands of paper butterflies released during the song) and the closing song Life in Technicolour ii. Have you ever done a mobile phone mexican wave? They look great!

Next up was a stroll across the Millennium Bridge to the Tate Modern:

A walk past The Globe (we were sticking to the plan, no paying for a tour here!):

After lunch on St. Paul's steps we headed over to the Natural History museum, and started to wish our children were there to see the dinosaurs and all the other things they would have loved:

We had to go to Buckingham Palace, Dawn had never been there before:

We watched the Queen's Grenadier Guards marching and doing fancy things with their guns:

Our last stroll was via St. James' Park before heading back home:

I'll leave you with a little video from the concert. Chris was thanking us for missing X Factor to go see them (hmm... not really a hard choice!) and he thought it would be good if we auditioned for Simon Cowell. It's not great quality but you'll get the drift!:

Sunday morning came round a little too quickly, but after a hearty breakfast we hit the streets once again, starting off with a visit to St. Paul's Cathedral where the morning bells were ringing. It was such a beautiful atmosphere, most of the main roads through London were closed to traffic for the day to allow cyclists free run of the city (a cycle initiative the mayor was running) and it meant that much of London was unusually quiet! We couldn't climb the steps to the top for a view over London as there were services going on but we popped in for a while and heard some wonderful organ playing: