What Sophie Said

Now I've moved away from London, it has once more become a place for visits and day trips. I'm no longer doing a daily Central Line commute into Oxford Circus, and I no longer pop to Westfield Stratford mutiple times per week. Last month, my dad and I hopped on the train for my first visit back to the city since moving. I had mixed feelings of excitement and nerves - my reasons for leaving were tangled up with anxiety, so of course when I did leave, I was at the height of that. Fast forward a little and I'm in a different place, and the main nerves were attached to the train journey - another thing to add to the list of things I panic about (but am working through). I had booked us tickets to Rent the musical at the St James Theatre for my dad's birthday months earlier, and the day finally rolled round. My nerves in the week leading up to the train ride were high, but once we were on it and moving, deep breaths and podcasts kept me sane. It still amazes...

Today is #TimetoTalk day. Talking about mental health is so, so important to me and has been one of the most important parts, I believe, in my journey. I wanted to take today as an opportunity to share a potted history of what's been going on, where I'm at and why talking means everything. In my final year of university, I knew I wasn't ok. Realistically, it had been going on longer than that, but at that point, I started to struggle to a point it was affecting my life. Everything scared me. Everything was too much. That was a few years ago. The last few years have been a rollercoaster, to say the least. I've been through really rocky patches, and really positive patches, but throughout that the shadow of anxiety has remained. For most of this time, I've been able to function, to work, to see friends. When people would hear I had anxiety they'd say 'You? But you've always been so confident!' I was just really, really good at pre...

What a start to the year it's been.  My January has been intense. It was full of challenges, and accomplishments, and deep conversations, and appointments, and trying new things. 2017 is my year to work on healing properly, not just pushing on through the things I've been struggling with. It's time to face these issues head on, and really get to the bottom of my anxiety and work on making lasting improvements. January was a good start. February will be better. I'm now regularly going to pilates and doing yoga and mediation. I'm cooking more, eating three meals a day and trying to work up to reintroducing some of the foods I had ruthlessly been cutting out. I'm facing up to some things that have really been troubling me for a long, long time and coming up with ways to tackle them. In the past month, I've tested myself and been reminding myself I can do more than I think. I've had so much support from the people a...

Rent has officially taken the top spot: best performance of a musical I have ever seen. To put that into context, I averaged more than one a month in 2016 alone - I have seen an awful lot of shows in my 24 years! The current touring production of Rent, which I saw during its London run at the St James Theatre, is truly outstanding. I was slightly apprehensive before the show simply because I love the musical so, so much and have waited so many years to see it live. I was worried my expectations might be a little TOO high. There was nothing at all to worry about. We were on the front row, which for a show of this intensity was really quite incredible. We were almost under the feet of the actors, and right up close in their emotional moments. It takes a particular kind of skill, I think, to act in such an intimate setting. When your audience is inches away from you, you can't let things slip for a second. It was incredible especially in the bigger group numbers to ...

In her thank you card after Christmas, my Auntie included a sheet of A4 describing the 2017 Book Challenge, which had been circulated by one of her colleagues. I'm not sure who originally put the list together, but I'm taking up the challenge and reading a book per month, each based on one of the twelve categories. I do read a lot more than one book a month, but this will be a great way to get me picking some things I might not normally have come across. The best way to kick this off seemed to be to choose my twelve books. I won't necessarily read them in the order shown below, but I thought I'd share them to hold myself accountable. I'll then share my thoughts each month on whichever book it is I've read. My choices: A book written by an author with the same initials as you The Sorrows of an American, Siri Hustvedt A book recommended by a friend (by my friend Jenny, in fact) American Gods, Neil Gaiman A non-fiction book based on a popular or...

Like many, I was so excited about the release of La La Land, and finally went to see it last week. Telling the story of Mia, an aspiring actress and Sebastian, a jazz pianist, it's a beautiful story about love, dreams and the hard work that goes into making something of yourself. I have to admit that the first scene had me a bit worried. While I love the thought of people breaking into song and dance in a traffic jam, something about that opening number didn't sit quite right for me. I felt like the choreography was really at odds with the song, and the sound levels sounded not quite right, with the voices sort of getting lost in the instrumental. I didn't find it particularly easy to hear the words, and that made the scene feel quite long. From that moment on, though, I was sold. The overall look of the film is absolutely stunning. The colours are faded yet bright, and it really has that nostalgic feel of the old Hollywood movies. I'd also quite like to chan...

Recently, I've been getting into cooking again and have been trying to test out new recipes regularly. So it seems only right that some of these recipe posts return to the blog! Last week I took inspiration from Joe Wicks' first 'Lean in 15' cookbook, planning to make the 'Turkey Meatballs with Feta'. Joe's recipe, I suppose for speed, called for ready made turkey meatballs, of which there were none in the supermarkets near home, so I adapted the recipe with beef meatballs. After (mostly) cooking the meatballs - beef of course needed more cooking time than the turkey meatballs would have done - I chopped red onion, yellow pepper, green pepper and courgette.  Into the pan they went, and were joined by the beef brisket meatballs. Once the veggies were beginning to get to tender, I added a tin of chopped tomatoes and let it all simmer. We actually made some sweet potato fries to accompany the meal, as it was to stretch between three of us...