A very busy weekend

On Friday afternoon my friend Claire came round for tea and then we set off together to Save Jess-tival :D I wore my new black leggings (didn't realise quite how thin they were til I was walking through London on a chilly Oct night!), my new purple slightly fluffy long sleeved top and a nice necklace :) And I wore one of my hooded tops on top to keep me warm while outside. We managed to get the 6.11pm train we'd planned to get despite Claire missing the turning to the train station! It was meant to get into Kings Cross at 7.01pm but got in 5 mins late. We thought we'd be ok for time as Save Jess-tival was going to start at 7.30pm and a lovely friend, A, had said she'd try to save us seats as our tickets were for unreserved seating. Then we got on the slowest tube ever - it took 25mins to travel 4 stops (the same journey took 10mins on the way back when we weren't in a rush!). And we met some drunk men on the tube - it was only 7.30pm! So by the time we got off the tube it had gone 7.30pm, eek! We did a very fast walk from the station toward the venue and then couldn't find it despite having printed a map off the Internet! So we asked some very scary looking bouncers for directions, lol! Found it eventually, not sure of timings here but it was probably about 7.45pm, so we rushed in worried we would have missed the beginning. Luckily we hadn't. We showed our tickets, bought some raffle tickets (I bought 10 and Claire bought 5, but we still didn't manage to win any prizes!) and went to find our seats. The fantastic A had saved us 2 seats right in the middle of the front row, so we were really close to the stage! Wow! Said hello to A, sat down and then the festival began.

An upcoming singer/songwriter called Susanna Cork opened the night. She was fantastic! She played the piano and sang 2 of her own songs, Storm in a Teacup and Chasing. Her voice was fantastic! And then she sang Savage Garden's Truly Madly Deeply especially for Jess. That was beautiful.

Next was Ed Byrne. Claire was really looking forward to seeing him, but I hadn't heard any of his material before. We both thought he was great though and very very funny :D Kept the whole audience entertained.

The third performance was from the amazing Natalie Imbruglia. She performed Wrong Impression, Shiver (dedicated to Jess) and Torn (which everyone sang along to) as well as 2 songs from her new album. She was really really good.

Then a new musical comedian, Mr Robin K, performed. It was his first ever gig. His songs were very clever and his performance was great :) You can follow his blog here.

The fourth performance was by a comedian called Glen Wool. I personally didn't enjoy his act. It was rude in places and he seemed to have a thing about bankers. He'd also recently got divorced and seemed quite bitter about that, so his performance was a bit of an angry tirade.

And the final act was the Yeah Yous. I thought they were definitely a talented band, but I wasn't very keen on their style of music. I did however quite like their cover of Duran Duran's Ordinary World.

In between the acts and at the end there was a chance to wander around a bit. The venue (The Village Underground, Shoreditch) had a great atmosphere and was very intimate. There was a LLTGL stall where I picked up a Save Jess-tival programme, some organ donation ribbons and a LLTGL t-shirt (as my previous one I had ordered off the Internet and it turned out to be way too big for me!). I briefly spoke to Sarah, Holly S and Emily who had been key in organising it and making it a night to remember, but of course they were all very busy. I also briefly spoke to the very busy Holly C who was the official photographer. I didn't get any photos because my camera couldn't cope with the low light, but will try to get hold of some photos from elsewhere to share with you :) And it was lovely to catch up with Holly S' parents. I've also since spoken to Jess on Facebook because I didn't get chance to on the night.

Me and Claire both had a fantastic night :D We eventually left to head home and got into Kings Cross station at 11.20pm, knowing our train left at 11.22pm from the other platforms. We attempted to run to the correct platform, but Claire's shoes kept falling off, lol, and I quickly got out of breath. We made to the train doors just as they shut in front of us, grrr. Luckily we only had to wait 40mins for the next train, so Claire had a drink and I had a solid but yummy croissant and then we caught the 12.01am train home, finally getting in at 1am! On that train we met yet another drunk wandering up and down the carriages asking if anyone had a bottle opener for his bottle of beer! When we got home we told mum all about our fantastic evening before Claire left to go home and I got into bed around 2am.

On Saturday morning I got up at 10.30am and me and mum left the house at 11.30am to catch the 12.06pm train back into London. I decided to wear jeans instead of leggings and also took a coat with me because I'd learnt my lesson from being freezing cold when outside the previous night. The journey was uneventful and we had plenty of time to spare before the theatre, so we wandered through Covent Garden. I love Covent Garden :D We both loved looking at the arts and crafts stalls, but I resisted buying anything even though I saw some lovely jewellery. We then followed our map to the theatre, but ended up round the back at the stage door instead of a the main entrance. We soon found the proper entrance though so wandered inside and bought a programme and sat down for a drink because we had so much time to spare.

We had fantastic seats, in the middle of the second row back in the dress circle. The seating in the stalls seemed much closer to the stage than we were, but when the curtain rose and I saw the set I was very happy with our view :) The set was really clever as it was the inside of a terraced house with both an upstairs and a downstairs. So the people in the stalls would have got neck ache looking up at the upstairs part of the set. And the set turned round to reveal the front of the house and the street outside and then when the scene needed to be changed to a working men's club, another small set just slid down in front of the front of the house. Difficult to explain, but really clever. And our tickets were really reasonably priced (£26 instead of £46 each) because I follow Diana Vickers on Twitter. She was my favourite in last year's X Factor so I was looking forward to seeing her in The Rise and Fall of Little Voice. I've not seen the film that the play is based on, but mum has and loved it, so knew we'd both enjoy the play. Diana was fantastic and her voice sounded even better than it had last year on the X Factor. She was a great actress too and so were the rest of the cast. It was great and me and mum both really enjoyed it :D

When the play finished we were planning to walk back to the nearest tube station and get the tube back to Kings Cross, but we decided to walk back to Kings Cross instead as we both love London and wanted to see a bit more of it before returning home. That was lovely :D I spotted a Filofax shop on the way so got myself a 2010 diary for my Filofax for just £5 - bargain! And I saw a shop called Cinema Store which I'd never seen before. That was great and I loved looking at all the Pixar artwork books, but resisted the temptation and only bought a Wall-E badge for 50p :) We got back to Kings Cross and got a later train home than we'd been planning (6.36pm), so got into our local station at 7.45pm (it was a slow train). Luckily I got home just in time for the X Factor :D

I really enjoyed relaxing and watching Saturday night's X Factor after such a busy couple of days. I thought the twins were awful and Miss Frank and Lloyd weren't very good either. I really liked a few of them, especially Lucie, Stacey, Joe and Jamie. I quite liked Rikki for the first time, but still didn't see what other people see in Olly, I don't like him.

On Saturday night I went on the Internet for the first time in over 24 hours (which is ages for me) and got really frustrated with my laptop. I've had it for over 4 years, so it's getting quite old and usually freezes for a bit if I try to make it do more than one thing at once, which is annoying enough. But on Saturday night it was freezing when the only thing I was running was Mozilla Firefox, grr. I'm going to try to get it to keep going until January, so I can then get a new laptop in the sales. And hopefully by January Windows 7 will be out, so I can get a laptop with that on rather than Windows Vista.

When I checked my emails I found a lovely email from my donor's other sister, C. I've been in touch with J, my donor's oldest sister, via email since shortly after my transplant and she keeps her parents up to date with my progress, which she says really helps them. But I'd never heard from C before Saturday. She basically said that she loves reading my emails to J, so thought she'd send me an email herself :) I'm currently working on a reply, but I can't get it quite right, so wont send it til I'm completely happy with it.

And I also had a Little Boots email newsletter with a link to her new video. Her next single will be Earthquake (my favourite song from her album Hands) and you can see the video here. I think I like the video, but it's not quite exciting enough for me, lol. It's good though. I'm a bit disappointed with her outfit, as I really thought that she was going to be an artist who didn't feel that she had to wear low cut tops to impress people, but maybe not. Never mind. And now it's less than 2 weeks til I'm seeing her in concert, yay, can't wait :D

I didn't expect to be nocturnal on Sunday night after my busy weekend, but was awake til about 3am! I had a lovely long lie in Sunday morning til 11am though :D When I eventually got up I felt surprisingly good, but then the exhaustion hit! My Nan came round early in the afternoon and it was lovely to see her just like it always is :) I don't think I was very good company though because while we were all sitting chatting in the sitting room I lay down on the sofa and fell asleep! Didn't feel any better after my sleep, but I never usually do so that wasn't a surprise. Later I helped my Nan learn how to work her phone as she can do the basics, but couldn't access the photos that my cousin's partner had put on there of their little baby. So I helped my Nan find them and wow, is my little second cousin (who is just 8 weeks old) cute :D

After tea I managed to persuade my Nan and Mum to watch some of X Factor with me because they both wanted to see Cheryl Cole and Whitney Houston perform. My lovely Nan is 85, but really enjoyed commenting on the contestants and judges on the X Factor, hehe. She liked Lloyd and was commenting on how good looking he was. She also liked Rikki. And she decided that she strongly disliked Cheryl Cole after seeing her performance. Cheryl's performance was better than I expected, but I wasn't sure about it. Was she miming? I can't imagine she'd risk singing live, but if she mimed I think she did it well. I thought Whitney Houston's performance was good, but I was surprised at the amount of singing that her backing singers did. She was good to continue with her performance after her top came undone!

I was really disappointed that the twins weren't even in the bottom two, they're awful!! Hope the go out very very soon. I'm glad Rachel survived over Rikki, but think that the twins ought to have gone instead. Rachel must have taken such a knock being in the bottom 2 both weeks, poor her. She's got a great voice, but I don't think we've seen enough of her yet to make her likeable.

Last night I was quite nocturnal again so wrote the majority of this blog update. Thought I'd better check it through when I was more awake though, so didn't publish it last night, lol. Today I've been exhausted again so have mainly just been relaxing. I caught up on a few things I'd recorded off the TV yesterday including a channel 4 Alexandra Burke interview and a great Taylor Swift ITV 2 Hot Desk interview, she seemed lovely :) Can't wait to see her in concert next month :D

I received a Mika email newsletter this afternoon with a link to his new video for 'Rain'. Seems a little bit premature though seeing as 'Blame it on the Girls' hasn't yet been released! 'Rain' will be released towards the end of November and you can see the video if you click here and then click on the Rain video exclusive on the top left of your screen. The music and the video appeared very out of sync to me, but I'm not sure if that's just because of my dying laptop and/or Internet connection. If it is very out of sync then hopefully it'll be better when it's up on Youtube or shown on the TV. I like the video, it's definitely odd and very energetic :) What do you think?

Just heard from my friend R and hopefully she'll be discharged from hospital on Wednesday. I've not heard any more from K's mum recently, so I'm assuming that no news is good news and that's she's continuing to improve.

This morning I received the lastest edition of the Official Nintendo Magazine in the post, so am off to read that now. Need to pop round to the surgery later to collect my ESA medical certificate too. And I'm looking forward to watching The Gadget Show and Life on TV later.

Don't forget to Ask Me Anything, see the bottom of this blog post. Thanks Jess and Emma for your comments so far, but more from other readers would be appreciated. Thanks :D