#Ihaveembraced

I'm kicking off with a film review today, hence the title! I'd heard of the film Embrace the movie a while ago, when Taryn Brumfitt appeared on BBC Breakfast promoting the film and the Body Image Movement behind it but didn't expect I'd get to see it. As it turns out a group of local women had arranged a showing at a cinema 10 minutes walk from my front door for International Women's Day, so I got myself a ticket and headed on down - I actually ended up sitting next to a work colleague, so although I'm not averse to solo cinema trips I was pleased to have someone to discuss it with afterwards. It's the only time I've been handed a tissue and herbal teabags on the way into a cinema!

The tissue was definitely needed - for a documentary, it's a bit of an emotional roller coaster, and eye opening too. Not all of it was new to me - I'd looked into the relationship between media portrayal of women and body image in young women as my honours project back in the 90's (anyone remember the era of heroin chic? Horrid) but alarming to realise if anything, things are a lot worse now that we're well and truly in the age of social media. It's a bit of a shame that a lot of women (and men) who could hugely benefit from seeing the film never will, but I'll continue to recommend it to anyone who'll listen!

One of the film and movement's slogans is 'My body is not an ornament, it is the vehicle to my dreams'. Now I'm not really into the language of self help/self care but I'm going to take the vehicle thing more literally than I think it was intended and say there is no better feeling than when you've got somewhere special on your bike, and you can stop and think 'I did that!', so I guess I'm already on team embrace!
It was really windy yesterday so I probably wouldn't have got the bike out at all had David not pointed out it was the first weekend of Spring/Summer opening hours at one of our fave cafes, Alibob Cafe.  It's 16miles away so is usually a pleasant 3 hour round trip for me. Thanks to the wind it was still 3 hours - it was close to 2 hours there and 1 hour back. Definitely felt like we'd earned lunch! Whilst a lot of my rides involve cake, almost as many involve a toastie when I think about it - yesterday's was haggis and smoked cheddar on onion bread, with home made potato salad, and was as tasty as that sounds!

On the way back I got some more pictures of the V&A. Here's one from a year ago, with some from yesterday - quite a difference!

Finally, I had a decent selection of beers this weekend. On Friday night I had a can of Full Fathom 5, a coffee, coconut porter from North Brewing Co in Leeds. Some people might say that's too many flavours for one beer - they'd be wrong though...

Jumping on the can photo bandwagon 😉

As I'm heading into photo essay territory here, if you like to hear about my other beer discoveries on Saturday evening I've reviewed them all on Untappd, where you'll find me and my porter habit as Cathybabes - don't ask!