Trooping The Colour: Chinooks, Wes Anderson & Goth Pizza

 

I started off my airshow season on a beautiful summer's day in London for the annual Trooping The Colour flypast. Unlike most years I had company with my lovely and long-suffering friend Hilary joining me to celebrate our passions for Chinooks & day drinking!

On the train

Arriving into London

After being distracted by the cute stationary shop in Victoria Station we headed down to The Mall to watch the flypast.

And to take the most epic selfie ever with the Chinooks!

Clearly the coolest people on The Mall

Hilary patiently endured the next 10 minutes of my autistic info-dumping of the aircraft that were flying over us. 

The aforementioned Chinooks

Battle Of Britain Memorial Flight Dakota

Phenom & Texans

 

Voyager & Typhoons

Globemaster

A400M

Rivet Joint

Poseidon

Typhoons

Red Arrows & F35s

I like how the F35s are framed by the Red's smoke

After a pit stop at the Eros statue to eat our Tesco salad bowls (lunch of kings) we went across to the Design Museum for their Wes Anderson exhibition. We're both fans of his quirky but charming films and it was really cool to see props, costumes & his drawings. 

Costumes from The Royal Tenenbaums

Costumes from Moonrise Kingdom

Stop motion puppets from Fantastic Mr Fox

My favourite Wes Anderson film The Grand Budapest Hotel

We had a walk through the lovely Holland Park before heading to Camden.

There's a vampire-themed pizza restaurant in Camden called Lost Souls Pizza that I've been dying to try (pun fully intended) for ages now and it didn't disappoint!

It's decorated with loads of cool horror-movie posters and artwork. 

Clearly my room needs this

I fit into the aesthetic very well 

The pizzas were even black!

An accidental sub-theme of the day was my managing to match all my drinks to my eye-makeup

Our next stop was the decor polar-opposite of Lost Souls Mr Fogg's Botanical Tavern. There are loads of different Mr Fogg's locations across London (Vana and I went to the 'Antique Emporium last year) and it's my goal to visit all of them. 

So pretty

Not quite so pretty 😅

It was another decor 180 when we went down to the next door Hidden Society cocktail bar which had cosy 'old library' vibes.

I feel low-lighting is far fairer on everyone around me

They had a crazy cocktail menu inspired by works of art which lead to Hilary having a tomato soup flavoured cocktail inspired by Andy Warhol's soup can paintings. 

As the day drew to a close it was time to head home and leave London to it's beautiful sunset. 

Thank you so much to Hilary for putting up with me for a whole day!

Now we're into the airshow season I have 2 in a row with Headcorn this weekend and Duxford's Summer Airshow next weekend. Naturally there will be aviation related spam, sorry content to follow.

Love Jen

XxxX

Raging for change with Delilah Bon

Last week I went to see the fantastic Delilah Bon in Leeds at her charity gig to raise money for causes supporting the people and animals in the US affecting by the horrific ICE raids - The Bond Between, ACLU and the Women's Foundation Of Minnesota. The show was scheduled around the time that Delilah was supposed to be touring the southern states of the US but due to safety concerns for her & her band and the audience she was forced to cancel the tour. 

I've been raving about Delilah and her music for a couple of years now, her Evil Hate Filled Female release was my favourite album in my 2024 Music Blog and after seeing her for the first time last year (read my blog about it here) I was determined to see her again as soon as I could. So off to Leeds I went for an adventure. 

The train journey was nice and simple and a really quick 2 and a bit hours from Kings Cross to Leeds. Once I arrived I decided that a pit stop for lunch was needed and helpfully found a Wetherspoons under the flightpath to the airport ...

Lunch in the sun

I stayed at a Premier Inn and loved the purple bathroom 😆

After a tactical nap it was time to get ready for the show. I wanted to look cute so I wore my spikes (someone in the crowd told me I looked like "an emo statue of liberty" I now consider this the greatest compliment ever paid to me!).

I got chatting to some really nice people in the queue (applause please for the autistic person speaking to strangers!) including the lovely Mila and a couple of girls (I never got their names 😓) who had made some awesome signs to fit into the protest theme of the evening. 

Shout it loud!

More signs at the sides of the stage -

Before the show I had the chance to meet Delilah and she was so so nice. She was so patient with my Autistic/ADHD mumbling and took the time to listen to me when I thanked her for her music and told her that it was helping me through my PTSD from being bullied for being a 'freak'. I told her that I wished I'd had her music when I was a teenager and she told me "You have me now" which just meant the world. My only regret was forgetting to pose for a photo with her as I was so overwhelmed meeting her. I did manage to get a selfie which may also be one of the worst photos of me ever taken 😂

The support act was Crae Wolf who I'd been wanting to see for ages!

She has a really unique sound of 'Baddie Metal Core' and a beautiful voice. 

As you'll see from the photos from the rest of the show I was so close to the stage.The photos and videos are all from my phone and only a tiny bit zoomed!

She was the perfect opener and got the crowd dancing and hyped up. 

Delilah came on with raging energy and for the rest of the show she and the audience barely took a breath. 

In these times of hate and danger to so many vulnerable communities, such as the LGBTQIA community, Non-binary and Transgender, People of colour, Disabled and the scary racketing up of threats to women both worldwide and here in the UK, Delilah screams for change and we scream with her. 

Princeless Princess is always fun to scream along to!

There were two incredibly special moments of the show for me. The first was during 'Not The President' (already an incredibly emotional song written in response to Trump's re-election back in 2024) where Delilah holds the hands of the audience members to reflect her promise in the song to hold the hands of us Bon Bons. 

As she came along to my side of the stage she actually held out her hand to hold mine and sang to me too 💓. I've been on the hunt ever since for any photos or footage of the moment which has lead to me laughing at several photos where my, er, 'gig face' has been immortalised ...

Aaaand now back to the show with my favourite photo I got of the evening. 

The absolute highlight of the show for me was during the performance of 'Maverick' (my favourite Delilah song) when Delilah and her band joined the crowd right next to me to dance together. 

Please excuse the video angle, my technophobe brain can't work out how to turn it landscape on my photo or laptop 🙇

I do however adore these screengrabs I got from the video. 

Delilah shared this shot on her Instagram a couple of days ago, you can see yet another flattering shot of me above the cameraman in the bottom right of the photo. 

At least my make-up looks good!

After a final dance to 'Bush' the show was over.

And it was time for a rock n' roll cuppa back at the hotel!

I still have so many emotions a week after the show. It was both humbling and inspiring to come together with people from all walks of life to both rage and protest for change but also to celebrate how special we are. It was a warning that those who abuse their power and other people will be held to account. It was a promise to scream for the rights of women to decide how they live their lives and to have control of their bodies. It was a promise to scream for the right to love who we want and to protect the trans and non-binary communities. 

Most importantly it was a reminder that love and kindness screams louder than hate. 

Love Jen

XxxX