The sunniest place in Britain - Bognor (Sat)

Sorry slow in blogging this...

Its Sat the 23rd and off we go to Bognor. Nic's 1 act play "Chinese Whispers" had won 3rd prize in the Bognor Regis playwiting competition. In my opinion yet another stunning acheivement, to think that in such a short time Nic has had so much success. We discovered on the night that the Judge was a well respected local author Beryl Kingston, not someone i was aware of but as she has sold over 1 million books and has in excess of half a million library borrowings every year,  i guess ill accept her decision to give Nic 3rd instead the obvious first i would have given.

We set out at a reasonable around 8.30, for the 3.5 hour trip to Bognor, which apparently has the most sunshine of anywhere in Britain... we can hardly wait for that :) I have put a pic i took of Nic as we drove unfortunately it doesnt quite show the 2 rugs etc that she has to put round her to suvive the non heated Rover on the early starts... however you can see the jacket, gloves and just assume the 4 layers beneath.

Our first stop was to have a look at one of the Lilliput lane houses (Best Friends) that Nic has in her collection, we had looked online and seen where it was and thought why not lets have look, when we got there it was most interesting to see the difference between reality and Lilliputia, in fact we saw half a dozen houses along the beautiful country lanes that could have easily been used as models for LL, its no wonder they use this area to get inspiration..however, the house itself was surrounded by cars and wasnt quite as the model would make you think.

From here it was onto the giant White Horse carving into the hillside and the Uffington castle and fort (fear not, the castle doesnt exist and the fort is mostly earthworks etc, so no raving about thick walls, or what were they talking about). It was a beautiful sunny morning and the pleasure of driving along the country lanes as the blossoms begin to pop out reminds us how lucky we are to be experiencing all of this

And so the giant horse... well.. we think it was, lol, it wasnt quite as clear as perhaps the photographs we had seen would suggest... well, that or we desperately need a Helicopter. We then took the long walk up the hill to the castle and around the horse, the views were breathtaking... or, we were just out of breath, either way..fantastic.

and so onto the Bognor, we can hardly wait to stroll the sunny beach, feel the sand between our toes, dip our feet in the ocean. Of course no trip can happen without James playing his regular joke with us, so when we program the hotel in.. he doesnt recognise it and cant tell us where to go, fortunately Fanny remians in my pocket and a little fiddly with her and we are in the hotel without too much trouble and a lovely hotel it was, clean, large room and just across the road from the beach, we moved in.. had a cuppa and headed out...

The sunny beach... tick...

The sand between our toes... umm...maybe not.....

Feet in the ocean... well, will shoes do?

But it was a beautiful sunny afternoon walk...

So back to the room and then off for the performance at the Bognor Regis Recital Hall, As it was to be a rehearsed reading, rather than a full performance we werent expecting too much but fortunately as Chinese whispers  is very simply set they didnt ned to much in the way of props or staging etc.

The three performance were fabulous (obviously Nics was the best but i may be biased) The performance was brilliant, particularly the femaile lead who played the part almost flawlessly and really brought the words to life. The crowd obviously enjoyed it, laughed appropriatley and applauded enthusiastically at the end. We were treated like visiting royalty as we had "come all the way from Birmingham". At the end Nic was presented with a certificate by The judge who was fabulously complimentary about Nic's writing, the meanings and challenges posed within the play, all in all a brilliant night.

A verrrry big file of a bit of the performance...