Simone Reddington

It’s official. As I eat my advent calendar chocolate while watching the snow fall from my window, I can confirm that I am starting to feel a bit Christmassy now that the festive season has started. I’m not usually somebody who gets overly excited for Christmas, but after all the chaos that we have been through over the last couple of years, it does feel so good to see the festive traditions back in place and families make plans to see each other again.

Here are the things that I’ve enjoyed over this last month.

• Lumiere Festival- Over the last decade, my local city Durham has hosted the biennial Lumiere light festival, where eye-catching artwork is projected onto the city’s iconic buildings to create large-scale and spectacular installations that has captured the imaginations of thousands of spectators from across the country for ten years now. This year, as part of the event’s tenth anniversary, the organisers extended the festival to County Durham, rather than just the city centre, with art projected on buildings and scenery in various other locations in the county. One of these location was my hometown of Peterlee where our most well known landmark, the Apollo Pavilion, was transformed with imposing colours and patterns were projected onto it. I went to have a look while I took the dog for a walk and I thought it looked stunning and well worth visiting.

• Ben Sherman jumper- The best purchase that I made this month has to be the lilac Ben Sherman roll neck jumper that I picked up in my local YMCA charity shop for just two pounds. I absolutely love a roll neck for this time of the year and the colour is absolutely stunning. I wore it tucked into my mom jeans, and I felt like a really cool cast member in a Christmas film.

• Adele’s 30 album- Like nearly every other person in the world, I have been obsessed with Adele’s new album that she released this month. It’s the first album since her divorce and her music breaks your heart in the way that Britain’s finest vocalist can. The power in her voice and lyrics are as amazing as ever and reminds us all why she is the UK’s biggest selling artist of the 21st century. My favourite tracks are ‘Easy on Me’ and ‘ I Drink Wine’ but she is yet to release a bad song yet.
• The Vibe café- This month I also took a trip to catch up with my university friends in Liverpool. I may be biased as I lived and studied in the city, but Liverpool is an amazing city that I would highly recommend anyone to visit as there is so much to see and do, with hidden gems on every street. Every time I go, there is always somewhere new that has opened and one of the new places that I visited on my recent stay was ‘The Vibe’, a plant based café that opened at the end of last year. Veganism has become a lot more popular over the last couple of years with many more restaurants offering a wide variety of meat-free meals in cities across the UK, but I have not seen such a cool and trendy vegan café before I went to The Vibe. With it’s stylish green and pink colour scheme and gorgeous array of house plants, it is clear that their target clientele are the glamourous vegans who like to brunch, and it certainly rejects the outdated ideas that vegans are all hippies who are more focused on saving the planet to take pride in their personal appearance. The menu offered a wide variety of breakfast options, but I eventually chose to try their ‘Veggs Benny’ which was their take on an Eggs Benedict, with smoked jackfruit instead of bacon. I had never tried a vegan egg before and I was very satisfied.