Fringe Fun

It's a bit of a family tradition that we go to the Edinburgh Fringe. We used to go every year without fail, but in more recent times we haven't managed it. So when we found a weekend that the four of us were free, we hopped to it and got ourselves up to Bonnie Scotland.

Bagpiping 'ell.

I love Edinburgh. It is without a doubt my favourite city in the entire world. The city is beautiful, the landscape is beautiful and you can get an IrnBru anywhere at any time of day. 

Scott Monument or Maleficent's castle???

We only had a few days, so crammed as much as we could into that time. My personal favourite was seeing the legendary Romesh Ranganathan (Mock the Week), who was utterly hilarious.

Romesh Ranganathan

Pleasance Courtyard, one of the venues

There are a few things that are brilliant about going to the Fringe Festival:

1) You don't actually have to book anything - every day there are loads of shows that are absolutely free, both events in venues but also street performers on the Royal Mile that will keep you entertained for hours.

2) It is so multi-cultural. People come from all over the world for a laugh, effectively. 

3) It's acceptable to drink IrnBru with every meal.

4) You will see many celebrities. This year my sightings included Jeremy Paxman, and Jean-Paul from Hollyoaks (OMG!)

Some people go to extreme measures to get you to their shows...

And you do see some pretty weird things...

If you've never been to the Fringe, you haven't lived. Bold statement, I know, but it's honestly the most incredible atmosphere ever.

I think the best part of Edinburgh is Victoria Street. It has the best shops, including many crazy vintage shops, a fab joke shop and this really cute gift shop called the Red Door Gallery.

Victoria Street

The Red Door Gallery

A few minutes walk away from Victoria Street is a cafe called The Elephant House. This was the cafe that J. K. Rowling first started writing Harry Potter, and as a massive Harry Potter fan, it was sort of like finding the Holy Grail. When you go inside it's just a normal cafe, nothing special about it, but the real magic (get it?) is in the bathroom, surprisingly. Over the years, hundreds of fans have graffiti-ed the walls of the bathrooms with quotes and pictures - it's crazy!

Basically, get yourself to Edinburgh. 

DO:

• try haggis. It's delicious if you don't think too much about what it is.

DON'T:

• forget your umbrella. It is Scotland after all.

- Beth

Just what the Dr. Martens ordered (Volume I)

I am currently fortunate enough to work for Dr. Martens, in the Nottingham store, and over the past couple of weeks have become more and more excited about what AW14 has to offer. My relationship with Dr. Martens is a long one, moving past the giddy, honeymoon period of my early teenage years and blossoming into a true love. Each season there are the lovely, comfortable collections that just reinforce the connection, but there is also that spontaneous-breakfast-in-bed or romantic-weekend-away surprise shoe equivalent that reignites the flame.

I've taken a few snaps of some of my favourites of the season so far, but keep your eyes peeled and visit the website for more details. The pictures below show some of the quad retro, double-stack beauties we have in store!

Quad retro display

Jadon, Bryony and Bethan.

The rudeboy must-have, Marlie!

 As well as shoes, there has been some pretty sassy clothing in too, including tattoo-print dresses (seen above), gingham shirts, tartan shirts, and mohair socks! Here are some of my favourite men's shirts:

Oooh rugged and handsome

Tattoo, tartan and tasty!

The kids range is potentially the cutest thing I have ever seen, so bring the little monsters down to get kitted out or even buy some for your car as a fluffy dice alternative (yes that actually happened this week, what a legend), and whilst you're at it peruse the latest additions to the floral family!

Kiddie's Bruiser boots, everyone say "awwwww"!

Jaime monk strap and 101.

The ultimate mermaid accessory, a Pascal boot. Ariel, eat your heart out, love.

 And finally, I leave you with my favourite of the entire season, the Church monkey boot. This fine specimen of delicious leathery goodness has been pulled out of the Dr. Martens archive, and produced again to fill the monkey boot-shaped gap in our lives. I can't find the words to say how much I love it. So just look at the pictures. Enjoy.

Hello heaven.

Monkey boots feat. tartan trousers

DO:

• sing every song from the Little Mermaid until your mum if so fed up that she buys you the glittery Pascals just to shut you up. 

DON'T:

• say "What are monkey boots?"

There will be more to follow. Watch this space.

- Beth

Rekorderlig's Spirit of Summer

Yesterday I attended Rekorderlig's Spirit of Summer, a super fun event at Manchester's cool and quirky Black Dog Ballroom. Despite the weather being gloomy, the Rekorderlig team did an excellent job of bringing summer indoors with masses of cute, crazy and colourful floral arrangements artistically placed around the room. We walked up the magical stairs, through the enchanted forest (there were sensors that sprayed delicious scents into the tunnel when you walked through - fancy or what?!) and into the terrace bar. We were greeted with some snazzy sunglasses, flowery hairbands (of which Sandi Thom would have been very jealous), free cider and the soulful sounds of Davidian, the incredibly talented house producer from Nottingham. Check him out here!

Flowers

The rainy outdoors was kept well at bay by the cute little decorations dotted about!

More flowers

SO MANY FLOWERS

Davidian smashing it!

Rekorderlig has just brought out some exotic new flavours to make you foam at the mouth, and throughout the day we sampled these (perhaps a few too many for a Sunday afternoon) and made full use of the free photobooth. Much fun was had and the weather brightened up leaving us to enjoy the outside terrace and soak up some Manchester rays. Rekorderlig's event has been a highlight of my summer so far, and a great opportunity to catch up with some of my fabulous friends!

Vogue, watch out!

Short and sweet post today, but as the saying goes, a picture speaks a thousand words so technically I've waffled on for ages.

DO:

• say "One bottle of your finest passion fruit Rekorderlig please". Trust me, it's a taste sensation!

Mmmmm passion fruit 

DON'T:

• think you know the route to Manchester so well that when the tanoy tells you Manchester Picadilly is the next stop you ignore it and end up in Warrington, and then have to fork out 40 quid to get yourself back to Manchester City Centre. Well played, team!

Happy summery vibes,

- Beth

Photograpy Fix

Now I'm not pretending to be any sort of photography whizz or David Bailey here, but I really enjoy getting snap happy! My Dad lent me his old Pentax ME SLR a few years ago, but as exciting as shooting film is, it has its negatives (pun-intended). The romantic and annoying feature of using film is that you basically have no idea what the image will turn out like until you've got it developed. With this in mind, I decided to invest in a Nikon D3100 DSLR to ensure I at least took some semi-decent shots. If you were thinking of investing in a DSLR, you can pick these up for around 200 quid now, and I think they're pretty great!

My ever-so-talented uncle is a photographer and film producer, and a few years back spent an afternoon blacking out his garden shed and setting up a make-shift darkroom so that he could teach me how to develop film. It's an incredibly interesting process (science geek) and a lot of fun, albeit time consuming. If anyone out there has some kit they don't want, please please please send it my way as I'd absolutely love to set up my own darkroom.

As well as having the Pentax and Nikon, the same fabulous uncle bought me a Polaroid as my eighteenth birthday present, and I've loved it ever since. It used to be that you could only buy out-of-date film as it was no longer being made, however The Impossible Project launched in 2008 and you can get your hands on Polaroid film now no problem.They even have super cool black, gold, silver, colour and animal print film, which is great! I recently stumbled across an Impossible Project shop in Barcelona which housed rows upon rows of vintage Polaroid cameras, unfortunately I was already over my baggage allowance otherwise I'd have snapped some of those up (pun-intended)!

Me looking a bit grumpy at Palau Guell, Barcelona

Plaza de Ayuntamiento, Valencia

My beautiful sister being anti-social in Valencia

I've wanted to buy a negative scanner for ages, so a few weeks ago I picked up a pretty cheap one off ebay and have been fairly happy with the images I've got from it. The following three snaps are from Fujifilm Velvia 50 negatives I scanned.

Obviously I spent a lot of time photographing kitties

Parc Guell, Barcelona

My sister having a go with the Nikon D3100

Some of the negatives didn't work brilliantly, so I just scanned in the prints I had made from getting the films developed. The results can be seen in the following five images - I love Fujifilm Vevia 50, the colours are amazing! I haven't used Photoshop on any of the images on this blog post!

Plaza de Ayuntamiento, Valencia

Stealth mode photography

Chinese restaurant on Calle de Pelayo, Valencia

My sister outside La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona

Two ladies buying ham at Mercat Central de Valencia

DO: 

• go out and enjoy this unusually glorious summer we are having - experiment with taking photos, even if you're just using your phone camera! 
• get yourself on Instagram - there are some people out there who take the coolest photos! If you like what ya see, give me a follow using the button on my profile!

DON'T:

• spend crazy money buying things you don't need - you can pick up film from Poundland, so if you're just wanting to start experimenting get yourself down there and pick up a six-pack of Cadbury Freddos whilst you're at it.

Hope you've enjoyed browsing my photos. Any comments always appreciated!

- Beth