Follow my blog to read about the life and times of a twenty-something living in Southsea...

Friday 27 January 2012

Are you moving house?

Just a very short post to direct you to a link about a TV show that is seeking participants.
If you are moving or know someone who is, then check out this new Channel 4 TV show. If you are chosen to participate, the production crew will move you and give your new house a make-over.

http://www.aboutmyarea.co.uk/Hampshire/Portsmouth/PO6/News/Reviews-and-Features/214841-TV-Show-Seeks-Secrets-Movers

Wednesday 25 January 2012

Thinking of visiting Les Arcs for the first time? Read this for some honest facts about the French ski resort.


Les Arcs is a great place. I should know I've spent enough time there. In fact, it's almost like my second home. We have just booked another trip to Les Arcs in March so I thought I would take the opportunity to pass on some honest opinions about the resort for the benefit of anyone thinking of taking a holiday there.

Don’t stay in Les Arcs 1800 if you want alpine beauty. The resort was built mostly in the 1970’s and many of the apartment blocks are outdated. Large blocks like the Belle Challes and the Nova have lots of tiny apartments filled with bunk beds that gives a prison feeling to them. From the outside the blocks look more like huge cruise ships than quaint alpine chalets.

Do go on the torch lit descent from L’Arpette restaurant. The mountain restaurant holds an evening meal most weeks of the winter season. Meet there after the lifts close, drink lots of wine, eat lots of cheese, dance on some tables and then ski down in the dark. It truly is an experience that you don’t want to miss.

Don’t expect to go home with much money. Les Arcs 1800 is expensive. Lift passes are expensive, the bars are expensive, the restaurants are expensive, car parks are expensive, even the supermarkets are expensive. Embrace that fact, go prepared and don’t let it ruin your holiday.

Do drink a shot of Genepi. Les Arcs 1800 has excellent nightlife. The bars shut at 2am and the nightclub goes on until dawn. There are plenty of bars to choose from - Bar King Mad for the younger, trendier crowd and Red Hot Saloon is a student haven. Visit Before CafĂ© for some cheesy pop music and a shot of Genepi, Chez BouBous for a nice mix of French and English and L’Etranger for a truly French experience. Whatever you do, you will know if you’ve had a good night by how much is missing from the kebab you don’t remember buying.

Don’t miss out on the slopes. With all the nightlife it is tempting to just drink the night away and spend the next day in bed. As any experienced skier/snowboarder knows, nothing cures a hangover faster than a few runs. As Les Arcs is in the Paradiski area, the ski area is massive so you will have plenty to choose from. If you buy a full Paradiski pass you’ll certainly be pushing yourself to visit everywhere on the two mountains in one week. The Les Arcs area itself is a big area and there are plenty of different runs to suit all levels. Visit the snowpark for some good fun and later on in the season, take on the Altiport swimming pool for a challenge. 

KIMBERLEY BARBER

Me on the slopes in Les Arcs, France

Monday 23 January 2012

When quiz nights turn sour…

Bullies come in all shapes and sizes and this woman clearly thought she could bully me. Maybe she was threatened by my youth or jealous over the fun we were having, whatever her reasons, it didn’t get her anywhere. It just made her look ugly, frustrated and vile. 


Competitiveness is not necessarily a bad personality trait. My competitive streak has often to lead to good things.
The desire to be top has transposed itself on to many aspects of my life. It is the reason that I work in sales and is definitely the reason I went back to university as a mature student.
Being a competitive person means that my ears prick up at the slightest mention of the words ‘quiz night’. 
I’m not the brain of Britain and my general knowledge is severely let down by my lack of interest in most mainstream sports but I do read newspapers daily and am quite good with other subjects like geography, food, word meanings and music.
Last week while staying with my Dad, I went to the local pubs weekly quiz night. As the pub is in the darkest depths of Cornwall, mobile phone signal is non-existent - making cheating impossible and the quiz night more interesting.
The quiz was going well and our team ‘I’m not a gynaecologist…’ had swapped papers with another team to mark. On marking their answers it was clear to see that we were competing against a professional pub quiz team.
Not only were the answers nearly all correct, they were written clearly and neatly. Unlike our scrawled and doodled-on scrap of paper, there were no crossings out.
As the night rolled on, pleasantries were swapped with the team and it seemed everyone was having fun. One member of our team kept saying the answers loudly and I’m sure that a few members from their team had a sneaky peak at our answers when they were conveniently ordering their drinks next to where we were sat at the bar. We had no chance of winning but we played along anyway.
On marking the music round, one of the answers the other team had given was ‘My Town’. The actual answer was ‘White Town’ so I marked it wrong.
That turned out to be a big mistake.
When they collected their results, one of their players saw the cross and was not happy with it. The woman, who throughout the night had been pleasant and smiling, turned into an ugly character. Probably in her fifties, she looked nicely dressed and well presented, so the telling-off I received was rather unexpected.
She snatched our paper back and took a point off of our team for answering ‘Gonna Get Us’ when the song title was ‘Not Gonna Get Us’. We had already got most answers wrong so the impact to our score was minimal but the way she berated me at the bar and quibbled over a point has shown me that competitiveness can be a bad personality trait if taken to the extreme.  
Needless to say we didn’t win the quiz. I rather lost interest in it after she had made me feel so uncomfortable.
Surprisingly, they didn’t win the quiz either so that was at least some consolation. Perhaps they lost because I marked that answer wrong. But you know what? If I had to do it again, I would mark that answer wrong every time.

KIMBERLEY BARBER

Sunday 22 January 2012

Why life is so much easier in the country...

There is something magical about Cornwall and the Cornish way of life. Last week I got to experience it first-hand while at The Newquay Voice on a weeks work placement.
Staying just outside Newquay in Holywell Bay, I had a great week away and have now realised just how stressful living in a city is.
In Cornwall there were hardly any cars on the roads and the 6-mile drive took exactly fifteen minutes. Parking, even in Newquay town centre, was a doddle and free.
In the supermarket I rarely had to queue and was often spoken to about town by strangers. In the village, I was chatted to in the local pub and never once struggled to find a parking space outside my house.
Everyone at The Newquay Voice was friendly and welcoming and the week flew by.
I understand that January is a quiet month for Newquay and that the situation is very different in the summer, but those winter months must be bliss for the local residents.
One morning on the drive to work the sun was rising behind the hills and you could see the silhouette of the wind farm. Even something so modern and ugly looked beautiful in the light of the Cornish sun.
I’ve definitely developed a taste for country life and maybe one day I’ll be able to live there, but for now it’s back to the rat race.
The view from my bedroom in Holywell Bay, Cornwall
Arriving home at 1am Saturday morning, I had to park two streets away from my house. After work today I’m going to face the supermarket queue. Tomorrow I’ll be stuck in rush-hour traffic going from Portsmouth to Southampton and paying £5 for the privilege of parking in some dingy car park for the day – that is if I’m lucky enough to find a space.


KIMBERLEY BARBER

Friday 13 January 2012

What happens when you go back to netball after 13 years?


After drinking a few glasses of wine on Saturday night, I was full of confidence. When my friend mentioned that she was thinking of joining a netball team to boost her fitness, memories of my competitive netball-playing days at Barton Court Grammar School came flooding back. 
Filled with nostalgia, I jumped at the chance to go with her to the next netball session being held by an association that she had found online.
Thinking that this would be a fun and friendly way to keep fit and meet some new people, we turned up on Wednesday night at the Shooting Stars netball practice. Walking into Mayfield Secondary School, we made our way through the school corridors to the sports hall. First-day nerves began to set in as we entered the cold sports hall to find that some girls had arrived and were already practising shooting.
Suddenly the netball hoop seemed to be a lot smaller and the court a lot bigger than I had remembered. The girls were all very slim and tall with long, toned long legs. They were wearing matching Shooting Stars hoodies, one with ‘Shooting Stars On Tour Malta 2010’ emblazoned on the back.
This is when I realized that this wasn’t going to be like the keep-fit classes at the local gym.
Standing there in my cobbled together yoga-come-gym outfit, I felt very out of place. I haven’t played netball since secondary school and here I was, 13 years later, being thrown into the deep end.
Lots of girls came flooding in, which to my relief, included a few other ‘older’ ladies. The whistle was blown and the ‘trials’ were announced and suddenly we were all doing circuits.
What I thought would be a small group of women in their 20’s and 30’s, playing netball on a school court, laughing at each others mistakes and having fun had turned out to be an intensive trial to make the top teams.
Chatting to one of the other new members, she informed me that this was the top team in Portsmouth. She had come from a lower-ranked team and was trying out to make the grade with Shooting Stars. Her passion and dedication to the sport was clear to see. I felt like a traitor. I didn’t share her passion and in fact, could barely remember the rules.
There was nothing I could do. Not wanting to seem like a spoilsport, I joined in. When instructed, I threw the ball against the wall, chest-passed, shoulder-passed, defended, caught the ball in the air, through my legs, from behind, I did everything asked and with full effort.
After what seemed like an eternity (probably only an hour) we were broken into teams. I thought that I might die. Looking at the other girls, they had barely broken a sweat.
My old trusted WD bib was handed to me. I was never able to shoot at school and I’m sure that 13 years later this ability has not improved, so Wing Defence was the best place for me. For those of you unfamiliar with netball, the Wing Defence position cannot enter the goal circle, the ‘D’ shape by the goal ring.
I had barely caught my breath and I was up there, competing in a full-on match.
Playing against the tallest and slimmest teenage girl in Portsmouth, the whistle was blown and I was playing my first netball match in over a decade. The ball was passed like a bullet, the girls sprinted around, shouted at each other and the whistle kept on blowing. What was going on, I had no idea. I had forgotten just about every rule and broke at least two of them, meaning that the other team were awarded penalties. I ran into our Centre position and nearly knocked her out. I was knackered, my fingers hurt, my face was bruised and I thought those 15 minutes would never end.
When the whistle finally blew, I noticed how disappointed some of my teammates were to have been trounced so badly. The girls shook their heads in disappointment and I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole.
I had let everyone down by being slow, podgy, old and stupid.  
Reading this, you’d have thought that I’d be crazy to go back. However, my friend who had encouraged me to go along in the first place had a great time. She assured me that I wasn’t as bad as I’d imagined. She reckons I’ll get better once I’ve learnt the rules. Me, I’m not so sure.
What I do know is that there is a competitive voice within me that refuses to let something like this beat me. That’s why I was on all the teams at school - this strange narcissistic desire to get better at the things that I can’t do.  
I just need to get quicker, loose some weight, practise shooting, learn the rules, improve my fitness and buy a hoodie. Easy.

KIMBERLEY BARBER 

For details regarding Shooting Stars netball team go to http://www.shootingstarsnetball.org.uk/

Picture from kentsport.org

Monday 9 January 2012

My New Year's Resolution

Happy New Year! As 2012 comes around with full force, my New Year's resolution is to update my blog more often. As I'm in the third year of my Journalism degree - I seem to be forever chasing some piece of coursework or trying to write something to get my name in print. Since the work pace stepped up a gear, I left my blog and got caught up in the world of Twitter and Facebook (please follow me! @kimberleybarber).
Now here I am, back with both guns blazing!
Follow my blog to keep up with all my latest reviews of gigs, theatre, comedy and nights out in the Portsmouth area. I'll be avoiding 'jim-jam' journalism and writing about some of the best places to visit and things to do in the local area. I'll also be writing about my experiences of pubs, bars, restaurants and cafes - Carol Godsmark watch out!

Kim x

P.S. I haven't forgotten my snowboarding posts - you'll be able to read all about my latest snowy adventures too.

Pic from www.sodahead.com