Back at Basquiat!

Last week I bought flights to London for Sat 27th of Jan as I planned on us visiting Boom For Real for a second time.

It was a bit silly but after booking the flights I went to get tickets on the Barbican website where I then discovered they were sold out!!!  Aagh!

I emailed the Barbican Centre to see if there was a wait list for cancelled tickets. They told me there was no cancellation list but there would be a small amount of tickets released on the day.

And so yesterday we flew to London and arrived at 8.40am and dashed to the Barbican on the Heathrow Express and tube.

We got there at 10.10am to discover a HUGE queue with easily over 300 people ahead of us.

After waiting in line for over an hour and a half it was hard to see if we were going to get in. There was very little movement and they were only letting in a handful of people every 15 mins. And although they were open until very late with entry up to 10pm, we had a flight in the evening so we were somewhat restricted by the latest time we could go in at.

We heard someone ahead of us mention that if you joined as a member there was an opportunity to get tickets for this exhibition as they had a different batch set aside for members.

Leaving Ciaran in the queue I went inside to suss out membership and see if they still had tickets available.

There was another line to set up membership along with ticket pickup for members so I got in to this and when I got to the top I was advised that if we joined as members we could get tickets for a 2.30pm entry.  I jumped at the opportunity! After travelling all the way from Ireland, it would have been a big disappointment to not get to see the show. 2.30pm was also the perfect time as we had plans to go visit a gallery in another area of London where we also planned to have something eat. We could then return, see the show and then head directly to the airport at about 4pm for our flight home just after 6pm. It was perfect!

And now we are members of the Barbican Centre we can get lots of other benefits on future visits.

The exhibition was just as good if not better on the second visit as on the first. The only thing is that I find Basquiat's art so immense that once I have seen a few of his works I begin to feel overwhelmed. So in actual fact I would choose to visit a third time if that was possible.  But of course it is not possible as it has closed now.

Hopefully it will open in another country and with any luck I will get to see it there!

I had hoped to buy some postcards of Basquiat prints but they were all sold out. However, I did buy my twin sister a little gift to say thanks for minding our dog while we were gone for the day - I got her this cute little enamel Basquiat crown pin. Thanks Amy!

"THE MALL"

Really enjoyed watching this 1980's report on a mall in Kansas. And then after this I started watching videos about abandoned malls in different parts of USA - strangely addictive!

Daytripper!

We are heading back to London this weekend. We will be making a dash to the Barbican to try get day release tickets for the second last day of the Basquiat exhibition that we visited a little while ago.

This time we are flying British Airways and once again I've booked the Heathrow Express.

It will certainly be hectic.  We land at 8.40am and then we need to get over to the Barbican to get in line at 10am. Fingers crossed we get tickets.

New Year, New Recycling habits.

One of my new year resolutions was to be more discerning in my recycling efforts. This was very timely as a new recycling list came out in Ireland.

The new rules lay out very specifically what is recycled and what is not. Soft plastics was one I was unsure about but now I can see that it is not acceptable to put in the green recycling bin.

My bin company are excellent.  They are City Bin (I've blogged about them before) and every month they send me a report of my waste disposal.

I enjoy receiving the report as it spurs me on to continue to separate my waste.

Going forward, I endeavour to loosely bin my clean recyclables in order to ensure that they all get recycled.

All my kitchen waste - vegetable peels, food scraps, etc goes in the brown bin and then the rest goes in the black bin.

To see the new recycling list go to www.recyclinglistireland.ie 

Further to all of the above I am also going to try not bring items home that need to then be disposed of.  One big way I am doing this is I am bringing my own reusable takeaway cup when I go for a cup of coffee in Starbucks. I have no issue doing this - once I remember to!

Meatza!!

I haven't eaten sugar and chocolate since New Year and I am very much committed to low carb eating (it's working - I'm losing the weight that I put on over Christmas!)

So this week I am all about "Meatza"

It's basically mince topped with cream cheese and a small bit of tomato paste and then grated cheese along with pepperoni.  Like pizza but minced meat instead of regular pizza crust.

It's seriously tasty!

I don't know if I mentioned this before, but one great thing that I have noticed since I put fat back in my diet is that my hair has stopped thinning and I am actually getting new hair all along my hairline - so much so that my hairdresser asked if I had just had a baby.  I say it's all down to Kerrygold butter!!

Aswell as making "Meatza" this week, I also made "Crack Slaw" - you can see a video here all about this cabbage based LCHF dish. I am not a fan of cabbage but Ciaran loved this and even brought leftovers for his lunch the next day after having it for dinner.

RIP Dolores O'Riordan

RIP Dolores O'Riordan

This amazing Irish singer will be missed worldwide

Sign her condolence book here

Halo Top has arrived in Ireland

Do you know about Halo Top?

It's an ice cream that is marketed as healthy due to it being low sugar and low calorie while being high protein.

It comes in a variety of flavours and it has just arrived on Irish shores.

My sister told me that it was available in Tesco so I went this afternoon to buy some. I reckon there had been a rush on it as there was only 4 left in the freeze. 2 vanilla, 1 mint and 1 chocolate.  

I bought the chocolate.

I sat down to watch The Jane Austen Book Club and cracked open the tub of chocolate. 

Well......my verdict was........ that it was good.  Not Ben & Jerry's good. But when you are off sugar you don't have much options.

I will say that I found it very sweet but I was able to solve that by putting a big dollop of whipped cream on top which took the edge off the sweetness.

So all in all a nice treat at the end of the weekend before the week ahead.