An A-Z of Me - T

Theatre - I love theatre. The plays, the musicals, the atmosphere and especially the buildings themselves, complete with all the old history and architecture you can shake a stick at. The earliest shows I remember seeing are The Important of Being Earnest and A Midsummer Night's Dream back in the late 1980s. When I was young I used to keep all my old ticket stubs as well plus a notebook detailing what I'd seen, when and where but now I have it all on a spreadsheet. If you include all the theatre shows, musicals, comedians and gigs I've been to, the total comes to 359 theatre visits (although with gigs, if you included everyone I’d seen at Glastonbury, it would be much higher). I'm sure there's a few I saw when I was really young that I can't remember as well. Last year we went to the theatre 41 times and it's been roughly the same amount for the last few years but almost of half of that comes from stuff we see at the Edinburgh Fringe in August. One more thing (that probably makes me seem really sad); because I was keeping track what dates I'd seen shows on, when I was at university I thought it might be interesting to see what days of the year I'd been to the theatre. So using my spreadsheet I can work out things like the months we go to the theatre most often (Jan, Feb, Aug and Oct) and the day of the year that's most popular for me to see a show (Feb 7th - 5 times). It's become a little pet project to try and see a show on as many different days of the year as possible. At the moment I've done 185 out of 365 days - about 50%.

 

 

Travel - One of my favourite activities is the journey to or from a destination, I love staring out of windows watching the world go by and it's fascinating how much you notice when you're not concentrating on anything else. I don't own a passport (although I do have an expired one), instead me and Andrew spend our time exploring what's in our own country. There's so much to see in Britain and Ireland (which (providing you're not flying there) you don't need a passport for) and I always find it really sad when people say they've seen so much of the rest of the world but never really seen any of their own country - I just feel as if they're missing out on so many wonderful things!

 

 

Tim Minchin - I think he's one incredibly talented guy, an expert wordsmith and if you've ever seen him perform live, the speed at which he plays the piano (and also sings, acts and chats to audience at the same time) is just incredible. Matilda the Musical has such a fabulous soundtrack and I do think he talks a lot of common sense, both in his songs and in real life.

 

 

Tap Dancing – My grandmother used to tap dance when she was a girl back in the 1920s and 1930s and it's something I always fancied doing when I was young. There wasn't really any classes nearby though so I never gave it a go. Somewhere in all my grandmother's paperwork she had a programme from a dance school concert that took place in 1930; she was second on the bill doing a short tap dance and would have been only 4 years old at the time. Not sure tap dancing is something my ankle could really stick now though!

 

What 'T' things sum you up?

For the rest of the alphabet click here!