Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded, survived!
Recently, I went with my mum and grandma to watch Six the musical at the Mayflower in Southampton. This was a Christmas present from my mum and we had a great time.
If you're not familiar with Six, it is a musical about Henry the 8th's six wives where they kind of take back the narrative as their own.
It started at 4pm, so we went for lunch in Red Dog Saloon, and did some shopping beforehand.
The musical
The musical itself was not as long as others I'd seen, and there was no interval which was quite good if you don't like to sit for too long.
Our seats were near the back of the stalls in row YY, but we still had a clear view of the stage.
One of my favourite things about the musical was the outfits! The costume department score a 10/10 on that one.
The singing and dancing of each of the queens was so impressive too, all 6 of them were amazing. Incidentally, the 6 queens were the only characters in the musical, the only other people that were on stage with them were the musicians.
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The storyline went chronologically about each queen, they would all tell their story and have a solo. This way, they were all the leading lady and they were reclaiming the narrative. This is because when most people think of the 6 wives, they think of them because they were Henry the 8th's wives.
Now, after watching the musical, I feel like they are way more important figures in history than just being wives of a king. Especially a king that beheaded them, divorced them, and all sorts of other evil things.
Should you watch Six in a theatre near you?
Yes! I would definitely recommend booking Six in a theatre near you when you can. It was educational because now I know which queen was beheaded, divorced, etc - great pub quiz knowledge! It was also funny, and very VERY entertaining with great vocals and dancing.
There were lots of families there with young children, although there were a lot of innuendos, I feel like these would probably go over the children's heads making it funny for adults and suitable for children.
If anyone needs me, I will be listening to the soundtrack until further notice. Warning: the songs WILL get stuck in your head.
Related: 9 to 5 the musical at the Mayflower
What's the best musical you've seen?
So as you may know from my recent Comfort TV Shows blog post, one of my favourite TV shows to watch over and over is Pretty Little Liars. This is pretty much because I started watching it as a teen and grew up watching it.
Related: My top 10 comfort TV shows
I have only recently started getting into reading, I had to read at uni so I didn't really want to read for fun in my free time too. So after watching all the PLL series over and over, I thought why not try reading the books?
At first, I was only going to read the first one just to see what it was like in comparison to the TV show, and here I am a whole series later.
Pretty Little Liars Book Series
The PLL book series was written by Sara Shepard and there are a total of 16 books in the main series. Yes, I read them all pretty recently.
I don't want to give too many spoilers in case any of you would like to read them after this but what I will say is that it is so different from the series.
The first couple of books are a little similar to the first episodes in season 1 but after that, the stories get so different with all kinds of different characters that weren't in the series. For example, Caleb is such a huge character in the series but he's not even in the books at all.
The massive difference is what made me enjoy the books so much because there were so many twists and turns that I didn't expect so it was great to be able to experience those again because I can't with the series now really as I've watched it so many times.
Related: 5 reasons why books still matter
In terms of more differences, I feel like, in the book Aria, Hanna, Spencer, and Emily are heightened versions of themselves. Like their personalities are way more dramatic in the book than what we see in the series.
As the books came out first, and then it was made into a TV show it felt like I had kind of done it back to front by watching the series first. But it was interesting to see the original bits in the book that I could tell the producers had based scenes off of.
It was also interesting to see how they changed storylines in the series. Throughout the books, each chapter is from the different perspectives of each liar. For example, one chapter will be based on Emily, and the next will be about Aria, etc. Therefore, the story kind of went a bit slower because everything was so in detail, but it's not like that with TV so they had to add so much more into the storylines.
Should you read the Pretty Little Liars books?
If you are like me and you loved the series, I would definitely recommend reading the books. I know they are primarily aimed at teens but it doesn't make it unenjoyable for young adults. And, the books are quite short so you can get through them quite quickly. I think I read the last one in 3 days because I wanted to see how it ended so badly.
Also, it is the same but different. It's still the Pretty Little Liars we know and love but so different and it's so interesting to see how their lives differ from the book to the series. Also the whole A storyline is quite different and A is a completely different person. I'm not going to tell you who it is though!
There are 16 books so it is quite a lot to get through but it's good as like a background series that you keep coming back to when you don't know what else to read. I think they took me about 6 months to read and I read some others along the way too.
Related: Books I read in 2021
Have you watched Pretty Little Liars or read the books?
I am currently writing this through my tears from holiday blues. OK, I'm not really crying but I am NOT happy about being back from my holiday. If you follow my Instagram, you can probably tell because all I'm posting are holiday pictures, and I don't plan to stop any time soon.
I recently went to Corfu with five of my friends from uni and had the best time! Not only was it just an amazing time anyway, but my last summer holiday abroad was in 2019, and because of Covid I haven't been able to go on another one until now, which made it even more special and I feel like I appreciated it so much more. It really is a privilege to be able to travel and I can't wait to travel more whenever I can - it's my favourite thing to do.
Traveling to Corfu
We traveled to Corfu on a Thursday morning from Gatwick Airport and our flight was at 8:25am. In true Lauren Kenny style, we got to the airport 3 hours early but there have been so many staff shortages at the moment you never know how long it's going to take! And we wanted to sit down and have breakfast (and a beveragini). Luckily, there weren't any major queues, just a short delay to our flight which was fine.
The flight time on the way out was about 2 hours and 30 minutes, and on the way back it was around 3 hours and 5 minutes. I may be wrong but I feel like Corfu is the closest Greek Island to travel to from the UK? If not, one of the closest.
We landed in Corfu after 3pm I think because of the 2-hour time difference there, but our transfer to the airport was quite short so we still had some pool and sun time when we got there.
The hotel
Related: 10 European cities you need to visit
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Related: A week in Sorrento
Overall
Let me start off by telling you what a comfort series is and why I'm writing about it. A comfort series is a series that you watch over and over again because it brings you what? Comfort. You can have comfort films too, my comfort films seem to be Disney films a lot of the time because I watch them a lot to make me feel happy.
Why do we watch comfort series' over and over?
Watching a series over and over usually brings us comfort because it brings an element of predictability to our lives, especially at times that are unpredictable in our lives. For example, when the pandemic first hit, I took comfort in watching old series that I love because it brought stability in a time when I didn't know what was going to happen. Not to mention the lack of Covid in the series distracted me from the Covid in real life.
We can always rely on our favourite TV shows to bring us comfort, laughs, and even cries when we need them most.
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There are probably a lot of psychological reasons why we find comfort in watching TV shows over and over but for me, I just feel like I can't beat my favourites.
I am ALWAYS trying to find new TV shows that compare (I don't always watch old ones), and it is very rare that I find any that make me feel the way my favourites do.
My top 10 comfort series
Related: A-Z list of movies you need to watch
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