Have you been to Thaikhun in the Metrocentre yet?  I didn't even know it was there until a couple of weeks ago when I randomly ended up at the Metrocentre on a Saturday afternoon so when they asked if Looby, Abigail and I would like to go along to sample their Thai street food delights I couldn't refuse.

If you've never been to Thaikhun, they specialise in Thai street food straight from the heart of Bangkok, if you've never had a Thai red or green curry then Thaikhun is a pretty good place to start, the restaurant is dark with ambient lighting meaning it's not the best place for photography but then that's not the reason that people go to restaurants (or in this social media based world, perhaps it is?)

When we sat down we were given a pot of bugs, yes bugs, with every kids meal you get a pot of bugs, I think perhaps just a couple would have done, Looby and I dared each other to eat one, well let me just tell you, they taste like death, I'm not sure who's idea it was to give children chargrilled bugs in pots, it's certainly an interesting talking point but for me, well I won't ever forget the taste of chargrilled bug for the rest of my life and no, I shan't be in a hurry to source some for my cupboards.

Now I should state at this point that there have in the past been a few disasters in my taking the kids out for food and so I'd like to state the following, Abigail had heatstroke, she'd been doing every single event in the school sports day, a whole day event and she'd not worn a hat, suncream or drank nearly enough water and so for the most part Abigail lay with her head on the table and looked particularly ill, in fact she was so ill that her daddy had to come and pick her up and take her home!

I should also state the following - Looby has now worked out that if you get a sauce with your noodles it's probably a good idea to taste the sauce before you pour it all over your noodles just in case you're not so keen on the sauce.  I don't need to tell you the rest of the story...

and in conclusion to my tales of woe I should also state that when it comes to spicy food I am a big girls blouse so when I was exclaiming to the waitress that I needed water, water and more water to cool down my tongue from the burning sensation caused by the Tom Yum sauce she told me that some people don't even think it's hot enough, are those people the spawn of satan, have they no tastebuds?

So at this point you're probably thinking we weren't the biggest fans and shan't be going again but you know what, the food is delicious, the starters were amazing, there's a good selection for the veggies amongst and even Abigail in her ill beyond ill state liked them, she followed by having a veggie pad thai and loved the little that she ate.  Looby loved Abigail's dessert that she didn't want and I loved the starter of tempura prawns, the Tom Yum soup before it all got too much for my tastebuds and the pudding, I'm always a fan of puddings and there's a large selection of puddings you just wouldn't get anywhere else.

Abigail went again this week with her daddy and had a really lovely meal and an enjoyable experience, Looby said she would definitely go back, she wouldn't put the sauce on the noodles and she definitely wouldn't be eating bugs again!  I will go again but if I'm honest I'll probably just leave the kids at home and try one of the steaks which looked amazing on the menu.  The one thing we all loved was the Thai iced green tea, probably the best green tea concoction I've ever had, I also loved the cocktail I had which came served in a Thai takeaway box.

I'm relieved that all we paid for was the desserts, If I'd had to pay £68 for meals which didn't get eaten through no fault of the restaurants I might have cried, in fact I was on the verge of dismay by the time we'd finished anyway!  It's all just proof that even professional writers have disasters when combined with parenting efforts but as always I maintain professional honesty too so I recommend you go and try it yourself and I hope it's not a catalogue of catastrophe or you might just need to sample several more cocktails to get through it.

37 Sleeps until Barcelona!!

Finally it's the end of term, just this one day to go and then my lovely daughters should be home by early afternoon, I am on a mission to catch up with work, get ahead even so that no barriers stand in our paths.

Last night, Harriet came over, my children see her as a piece of the furniture anyway, it's great they think like that, I'm sure it's far more fun, mum having friends than worrying about mum having boyfriends, well kids, I can reassure you right now, mum isn't likely to get a boyfriend any time soon, mum is happy, having too much fun, mum loves being single!!

Here's the thing though, you're the first to know, after the next few weeks of visiting Yorkshire, Perth, Stratford upon Avon, York, Edinburgh and Northumberland, Harriet and I are jetting off for 5 nights on our own to....Barcelona!!

I couldn't be more excited about this summer, I'm going on a holiday with a friend and without my teens, I've never done that before, sunbathing, culture, food, adventure, exploration, Gaudi.  It's somewhere I've always wanted to visit and Barcelona airport just didn't cut it when I was there in November flying home from the Norwegian Epic cruise.

I did have a moment of parental guilt but I figured the girls should spend some time with dad this summer and I was already giving them weeks of different experiences,  in truth I try to give them new and interesting experiences as often as I possibly can because life should be about memories.

For the next six weeks I'll be working from home at a much easier pace, well at least that's the intention,  Iain is now well trained in the art of admin, dog sitting, home sitting and indeed cat visiting, in fact we've even talked about him going out into the world and joining Trusted House Sitters so he can see the world whilst being paid to care for others houses, pets and belongings as well as Pokemon hunting, I can't tell you what this app has done for my son, he's getting up in the mornings, he's going out with friends every day, for the first time he wants to be out there travelling, it really is the good that tech can do.

4 sleeps until Yorkshire

10 sleeps until Perth

26 sleeps until Stratford upon Avon

37 sleeps until Barcelona

Truly the best summer ever has begun.

The summer of adventure, the summer of freedom

The summer of adventures, the summer of fun, the first real summer I've felt completely free, no one to answer to, no one to judge me just friendship and freedom.  I feel like I've come so far and for the first time in my whole life I feel complete and yet for the first time in my life I am truly single, when you think about it, we spend our whole lives looking for our other half and for me I feel like I've done things in reverse.  I was married for the first time at 21, for the second time at 25 and I gave birth to Iain when I was 22, I never had the freedom of my youth, the travel or adventure and I don't resent those choices I made for even one moment for I have three of the most amazing children and I've known true love and I've had the kind of together where nothing else matters but to my children I say, do everything when you are young, travel, experience life, be successful, be happy and be free for as long as you can.

You can forge the deepest friendships and you don't need anything else or at least I don't feel like I do, perhaps because I've already had my children and my only hormones are artificial, if I had got to my age without children or love or success maybe I would have felt differently.  I feel on one hand that I have fought through pain and angst and hard times so I feel justified that life should give me a slightly easier deal now and I'm so thankful for that.

I get up every day now and I smile, I work in a job where it genuinely doesn't feel like work at all, today I have trekked with Alpacas, I have herded sheep and I have climbed Roseberry Topping, this is not a traditional career and it takes self control to sit and write when my whole body feels heavy with exhaustion, it's happy and satisfied exhaustion though, in beautiful surroundings with my wonderful friend and of course my soul mate in dog form, Holly Bobbins.  We have laughed today, we have sworn when climbing up a particularly steep part of Roseberry Topping and we have high fived when we reached the peak, something I don't ever think I could have done a few years ago.  I am fitter now, I can run for 25 minutes non stop, I don't think I was quite prepared for the amount of stamina climbing a mountain would take, my legs wobbled like jelly as we made our descent and I realised that I was a rookie explorer, I must have been, I'm fairly sure trail runners don't eat creme brulee before ascending a mountain and I'm also fairly sure that they remember to take a bottle of water with them!!

As an aside as we got up to the very top we found that there's a Pokestop at the very peak of Roseberry Topping, it's just a shame that my phone kept crashing!

So our first day of summer holidays, our first day of big adventures with many more to come, I shall battle to complete as much work as I can whilst completing many trips and reviewing attractions and accommodation.  Blogging can be done from anywhere but I do wish I could blog in advance, but then that wouldn't be me because I write with all of my heart when I feel inspired but now dear friends as dusk falls heavily melting into the night skies, now it is the time to sleep and dream of tomorrows great adventures.

Smart mums travel for less this summer

We are on the final countdown, just a few more school days and then my alarm will be switched off for 6 glorious weeks, my summer work schedule is interspersed with glorious getaways and marvellous mini breaks, some of which have been utter bargains, next week, we're going to stay in a luxury lodge in a nature reserve for a night, I persuaded Harriet to join Airbnb which meant that she got £20 of travel credit and so it ended up costing us £20 each for a night away for Looby, Abigail, Harriet and I!  It's proof that you can enjoy travel on a limited budget and I have a few other tips and tricks.  What's more because Harriet signed up, as soon as she's taken her first trip I'll get £20 of travel credit and so our next break will be cheaper too.

I won a gift card earlier in the year from Virgin Experience Days and so I've waited until I could book the most possible travel for my £285, I've managed to book a 2 night stay to Perth and a 2 night stay to Stratford upon Avon but it gets better, our train tickets to Perth were a total of £40.85, that's £30 for first class travel there and £10.85 for our tickets back, we've got a family railcard and it does mean that if you look carefully the bargains are most definitely there, it makes up for the fact that our tickets to Stratford upon Avon cost an eye watering £88 for Abigail and I but as we're not paying for the accommodation it didn't hurt quite so much.

One thing we always do wherever we go is when we arrive at our destination we go straight down to the local tourist information, often if you look for leaflets of the various attractions you can get a few pounds off via vouchers on the back of the leaflets.

Another way to save money is to take a picnic, often the most expensive part of a visitor attraction is the food and I know that some won't let you take a picnic in but I have a fab picnic backpack which isn't too heavy to carry and if I can cut down on the £25 it usually costs for lunch for the girls and I well it's more money to do things later on at other places.

I also recommend the Virgin Red app, loads of discounts including sometimes 20 or 30 percent off train tickets, you can use the codes in conjunction with your railcard and get some really cheap bargains like a return trip to York for less than £10

If you fancy a last minute getaway to London then it's not going to be cheap for train tickets however if you go at weekends or on a bank holiday you can usually get a return for an adult and a child using a railcard for just over £100 which is a lot better than if you look at lots of the scary peak time weekday prices.

If you've left it until the last minute to book your summer holidays you might just be in luck, lots of holiday companies now have summer sales, Sykes Cottages have some amazing special offers on cottages with huge bargains to be had as have Holiday Cottages and dear old Haven Holidays, I've linked to their latest special offers in all 3 cases to save you time and hopefully some extra pennies too.

I still have a week at the end of the summer holidays where I'm hoping to book a lovely cottage in the Lake District but it's quite hard when your weekends are taken up like mine usually are which is why I love Airbnb, it means I can book for 4 or 5 days and in my experience even just going away for a few days feels as good as a two week holiday and if the weather stays link it is outside my window this morning, well we might just be in for the biggest summer of fun yet!

I love Staycations, I think they pump money back into our economy, they support small businesses and some places in the UK are so Mediterranean that you feel like you are visiting far flung shores, my favourite is the Southwest Coast of Scotland which has a similar climate to cornwall thanks to the jetstream.

Whatever you choose to do this summer, I hope it's your best ever, I am going to attempt to blog a couple of times every week but I doubt I'll be able to keep up blogging every day, you can however always keep up with me on social media as I'm never too far away from my phone!

Love Yourself and Each Other Like You Love A Small Child

Yesterday I was sitting in the car talking to Harriet about the very thing I'm writing about now and she told me that I must write this article so here it is.  We were talking about an adorable 3 year old I'd just photographed and I commented that really we all just want to be loved in the same way we love our children and here's why...

We love our children in an unconditional way, when tiny children do the smallest things we celebrate, we tell them how amazing they are, we show them how proud we are of the littlest things, I've commented before in passing that I want to be a 2 year old so that everyone would cheer just because I ate a piece of fruit or put my toys away!

Now imagine if you will that you have a partner, someone you adore, what if they came home and said they'd had a great day at work and you used the same psychology, what if you told them they were the most amazing person because they were so unique to have done what they'd done, what if you treat the person you love with the same love as a small child?  If they in turn started to treat you in the same way you'd end up with the most amazing partnership with utterly unconditional love where you celebrated even the smallest joys and when there were sorrows you took that person you love in your arms and you comforted them in the same way as you do with that small child?  It's my theory that you would end up being happy for the rest of your life, now I'm not saying there won't be times when your other half wouldn't annoy you but then there are times when a 3 year old will drive you to want to lock yourself in a cupboard for half an hour, you know 3 year olds, they're a force to be reckoned with.  But what I'm saying is go out there and love your husband/wife/lover in the same way you love a small child, nurture them, comfort them, celebrate them and you will have yourself the most magical relationship you could have ever imagined.

You see we all just want to be loved and nurtured and comforted and celebrated the way our children are and me included, in fact I won't give up my solitude for anything less than I've described because I've seen it from the other side, I really truly did love in that same way I've described but if it doesn't come back, well you can see why that wouldn't work.

Let's take this further, to be loved and accepted just like I've described it starts with you, yes you, right there, it starts with you loving yourself in the same way, treat yourself as you would a small child, celebrate your victories, comfort yourself in the hard times but truly cherish the amazing unique person that you actually are.  It's fair to say that if you don't love yourself you are not going to be in the right mindset to be open to unending and unconditional love and I know that in all I have written this is the hardest thing, to truly love yourself, how many of us can say we even know what that means, it's taken me so much time, but you know what I think I am there, I think I can accept that I'm pretty bloody unique and perhaps that is why for the first time in my life I am so happy to actually be single, I joke to Laura and Harriet that I haven't even got time to have a relationship now because I'm out there every day working hard, having so much fun and doing the best things with my friends, I'm sure one day someone will come along but if they're not prepared to love me like a small child or to let me love them in the same nurturing unconditional way then I am not even going to be interested.  Oh and this whole theory of mine, you should go out there and love your friends in the exact same way and then you will have the best friendships for the rest of your life because everyone no matter how young or old they are all want to be loved and cherished in the same way we love and cherish a small child.

Pokemon Go, A Hack, Essential Kit and Pokestops and Gyms in Heaton, Newcastle

Pokemon Go is a worldwide smash, the app has become the most downloaded app of all time and every where you go people are playing it, it appeals to young people and parents alike and it's such a simple concept but then all of the best ideas are.

Last night when we were out for dinner at a restaurant which also happened to be a Pokestop someone had set a lure so the place around us was full of wild Pokemon, I spoke to the manager and said he could really benefit from this as other food and drink businesses who are a little marketing and tech savvy already have.  The whole concept seemed to be completely lost on him which left the marketeer in me puzzled and bemused.  Honestly if I could come up with a way for it to work in my photography business then I definitely would and lets just say that I have some ideas so watch this space.

In the last couple of days I have done more walking with my teenagers than ever before, yes, parents, if you let your kids play Pokemon Go they will want to go for walks with you, even better than that though,  because Pokestops are around landmarks you can now hear your children cheer as you announce to them that they're going for a day out at a historic monument!  The National Trust and English Heritage never seemed so inviting!

Here's some essential things you'll need - 

The Pokemon Go app is not exactly easy on the power for your smartphone but I've found a power pack (I have one and my son has one and Looby now wants one for her phone/tablet) which charges your phone up to 6 times or 2 at once for 3 times presumably and it's only £13.99, less than half the price of similar powered chargers.

Soon the Pokemon Go Plus will launch and this will sit on your wrist connected to your phone by bluetooth and it will just vibrate when you are near a Pokemon so you can save a bit of your battery with that!  I've found the best one on that link which will ship as soon as it launches on August 1st!

You might also want to think about getting a cheap data bundle, get a free GiffGaff sim card  and their data plans are pretty unbeatable, in tests it's been recorded that the app uses approximately 10mb per hour that you play the game.

Finally, a cheap tablet that works great, well Looby has this Huawei MediaPad from O2 and she's never complained about it yet, hers came with 3gb of data for £15 a month and the tablet was free so it's worth seeing what offers they have on, it's certainly a little more sturdy for kids than an iPad mini etc and she can switch between the app on her tablet and phone as she's also got an android phone.

Now, I've been thinking about ideas to make this more interesting if you have kids and want to plan some fun activities around the summer holidays so - 

Why not plan a Pokemon themed picnic or party?  Party City has the coolest Pokemon party supplies around and shipping to the UK is not a problem.  Alternatively Amazon also have a great range of Pokemon party supplies.

Now, if I was a business expecting an influx of kids this summer, I'd be planning a lot of Pokemon themed cakes, activities and other various things and if I was a business that was a Pokestop then I might just consider paying for lures in the app to make people come to my business and then maybe offer a free drink or cake with every purchase, remember a board outside with your Pokemon Go related offer...

You remember a couple of years ago when Loom bands completely took over the summer?  Well this is about a million times bigger than Loom bands ever were, even at their peak and I for one wish I'd been the one to invent this app!

Where to catch Pokemon in Heaton, Newcastle?

We have some super cool Pokestops and Pokemon Gyms right on our doorstep in the east end of Newcastle, there's one just next to us at the Molineux football court, there are 2 Pokestops on the top part of Heaton road where the old Heaton bingo is now the Newcastle dream centre, there are 2 gyms nearby too, one right at the top of Heaton park which is at the temple lookout and the other is just as you come into Armstrong park where the shoe trees are.  What you really need to do if you want water Pokemon is go by the sea ;)

Oh also when your first Pokemon appears walk away from it four times and you'll then get yourself a Pikachu, I got Charmander because I didn't know this hack

Parents, if you are booking photo shoots with me you'll be able to tell your kids that everywhere I shoot has Pokestops and Pokegyms nearby.


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Why we must take action to heal our world right now.

As I sit here, it's late on Friday night, it's been a pretty good day, I've photographed lovely clients, I've championed my business, I've fought against Facebook and their algorithms, they won of course and I paid for some advertising, oh and then there was the 10k walk to hunt for Pokemon with Harriet and Looby.  If that all seems surreal it's better than real life currently, horror in Nice, breaking news of a coup in Turkey, our world is really falling apart right now, there's so much hatred, so much terror and not enough love.

I worry about the kind of world my children will be adults in but I also have hope that they will be the generation that brings about more tolerance, acceptance and love.  Isn't it time in our world that we just define people by what they do and not by their skin colour, sexuality or religion, haven't we yet reached a point in our civilisation that we can accept our differences and celebrate our similarities, can't we just embrace the uniqueness of every individual who lives on our earth?

I don't have any answers but I think we can bring about change, each and every one of us, there are great historical figures who embraced this ideology, the Jewish talmud says "The man who changes one life, changes the world entire" and so for my whole life I have lived trying not to judge anyone on anything but their thoughts and actions, yes it may be that I have misjudged once or twice but then we all have, I'm not at all, not even for one moment suggesting that I am perfect but I do have love in my heart and I guess that's what I'm saying here, I'm saying you, yes you, the one reading this over your cornflakes or cup of tea, I'm saying you can be the change, you see when you go through therapy the first thing they tell you is that you can't change others but by changing and understanding and healing yourself you can bring about changes in others.

So here's an idea, a small idea, something to take to your children and your family and your friends, lets all 30,000 of us who read my blog every month, imagine that if we all went around and we spread this message, if we just lead by example that we give love, we don't judge on anything other than actions and that we try to embrace our own uniqueness whilst understanding the differences in everyone else in our own society.  30,000 might not be very many people but it's more people than live in some cities, imagine that, what if we told just 1 person and they told one person, we could truly make a change.

Just remember, you only have to change one life, if you teach this to your children, they will accept it with such openness that maybe they will be the game shakers, the life changers and you by your own small action will have changed the world for better.