Photo an Hour l 17th January

When I discovered that first Photo an Hour date was set for the 17th January I immediately thought to myself that I wouldn't bother. I knew that Saturday 17th January was going to be a fairly rubbish day for me. It would be the first day off I had had in thirteen days as I had gone straight from my first week back at work, straight through a week on-site in Barcelona, straight to another event in London.

In other words I was going to be absolutely shattered.

But I sucked it up and got on with it. After all, someone's day might be busy and someone's day might be lazy - what would mine have in store?

This was Saturday 17th January...

09.30 Quite the luxurious lie in compared to the days I'd had in the previous weeks but I was still shattered as I had not been to bed until gone 4am the day before. Not because I was being a huge party animal, but because other people were being huge party animals and I ended up taking care of some people - taking them to bed when it was time for the party to end, returning them to bed when they decided their party wasn't over...I was incredibly unimpressed. I felt I deserved a fry up.

10.30 In hindsight I should have just packed up and gone home. I left my house at 4.30am the previous Saturday and was keen to just get home, but being the nice person I am I was checking on people and making sure they were ok and helping them to get ready to check out, helping them pack their bags, ringing their rooms to make sure they were still alive etc etc. Oh I'm being serious. There were some real party people and I was rapidly losing my patience, wanting to be out of the hotel and on a train.

11.30 Everyone rounded up, in a taxi and finally at St Pancras station ready to return home.

12.20 Essential train snackagement.

13.30 No photo as I was train sleeping after train snacking

14.20 The best photo of my day. Finally back at home and finally getting to see my two little gerbil bums. I had missed them so much whilst I was away and you know what? I think they missed me.

15.30 Unpacking. A.k.a. chucking everything all over my bed and then sifting through the debris and putting a load of washing on.

16.30 Washing finished and hung up. On-site uniform is where super boring ugly clothes come to die. Black dresses, white shirts, black tights - bleurgh.

17.30 Time to catch up with The Archers after my week away. I could wait for the omnibus the next day but what would be the fun in that when the podcasts are downloaded and ready to go?

18.30 No food in the house. What better excuse than to order a takeaway...

19.45 ...which didn't arrive for over an hour. I was ridiculously hungry.

20.40 On the sofa beneath cushions, blanket and big wrap. I was not up for moving any time soon.

21.30 After a brief nap under my cushion/blanket/wrap pile I decided it was time to blow the candles out before I burned down the flat and take myself to bed where I promptly slept for over twelve hours.

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Many thanks to Louisa for hosting - check out her blog for February's Photo an Hour date and don't forget that you can join in on Twitter and Instagram using #photoanhour

Fancy London Town

Cast your mind back to May if you will and let's pretend that I wrote this blog post when I should have done, and not almost two months too late.

The Person and I had travelled down to London to the London Pet Show and had spent a lovely morning and beginning of the afternoon stroking cats and dogs and bemoaning the lack of gerbils at Earl's Court. However it turns out that even if you are a crazy pet person like I am, there is only so much London Pet Show action that you can take before you start to feel a little fatigued.

With a good few hours until we had to catch our train home there was only one thing for it...

Go exploring.

I am not normally a fan of exploring and aimless wandering around. I like a plan and I like to know where I'm going. The Person is much more of an explorer than I am.

But we were both a little stuck as we don't really know London well. I know London well enough for if someone was to ask me whereabouts I was in London I would reply;

"In London."

So we headed for the nearest map to see what we could see. I spied greenery and with no other plans we decide to head for Holland Park to enjoy the rare bit of sunshine we were experiencing.

The walk there was fab.u.lous. Streets upon streets with rows upon rows of gorgeous terraced houses like those in the picture above. I feel bad that they're all basically flats though - when I become a massive mega millionaire and decide I want to buy one of these houses it's going to be a right pain as I'll have to buy all the flat separately and turn them back in to a house again. Major pain.

I couldn't get enough of it as we wound our way through the streets and I secretly hoped to bump into a cast member of Made in Chelsea.

Eventually we made it to Holland Park which was full of all the people enjoying the sunshine. This also means it was the perfect opportunity to get a drink from the cafe, find some grass to sit down on and people watch until our eyeballs hurt.

There was no end of entertainment available. The Person wailed that the park was full of children who had no catching skills because their parents clearly didn't take them out enough whilst I spent a good thirty minutes laughing at groups of little kids playing football aka swarming around the football like a herd of angry bees.

Reluctantly we began to make our way back to the train station. So often I travel to London and end up mad and frustrated and tetchy because it is busy and heaving, but this weekend we seemed to find the one part of London that was just calm and peaceful.

Even the park was big enough to hold everybody without it feeling rammed and I was able to wander about the streets like an aimless soul, taking pictures willy nilly, rather than feeling shepherded to get to the next place as fast as humanly possible, carried along in a tidal wave of people.

Lucky old me, we passed a Daunt Books shop on the way to the Tube and the rule is, if I clock a book shop I have to go in. Even if it's just to breathe in the smell of paper.

And then it was back to the Midlands with us, with memories of pets, meeting Chris Packham and finding a beautiful quiet spot in London whirling around our heads.

Well played London. Well played.

BEDM Day 28: London Pet Show

So I appreciate that it has taken an ungodly amount of time to get around to blogging about what I did a couple of Sundays ago - made even worse that I left it on a complete cliff hanger and then just never mentioned it again. My bad.

Way way back at the beginning of the year The Person appeared to me with a gleam in his eye and said...

"Do you know there's a thing at Earl's Court in London called the London Pet Show in May?"

He didn't really need to say anything else. Train tickets and show tickets were booked and it was then a case of waiting for the weeks and months to tick by until the time came for us to get a daftly early train to London to get our Pet on.

Obviously we were attracted by the section called "Small Furries" given our beloved gerbils, so you can imagine how absolutely massively gutted we were to discover that there wasn't even a gerbil stall at Earl's Court. No gerbils in sight. Rats? Yes. Chinchillas? Yes. Rabbits? Yes. Guinea Pigs? Yes. Stupid Hamsters? Yes.

No gerbils = sad faces from us.

Good bloody job I love all the animals then isn't it?

The day basically consisted of me rushing about like a complete lunatic trying to touch and stroke as many animals as possible. It's hard for me to really explain what the point of the show is - I guess you could say it is an opportunity to learn about lots of animals before maybe deciding to bring one in to your home as a pet. However I would say that is an opportunity to touch as many breeds of cats and dogs as is possible.

And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that's a bad thing.

I saw big cats and small cats and cats with big ears and small ears. I saw cats with lots of fur and cats with no fur at all (sidenote: Sphinx cats win the award for being the most affectionate breed of cat we saw that day). And I saw big dogs and held small dogs and saw wiry haired dogs and dogs with soft coats and dogs with no coats.

This guy was only 10 months old and has more growing to do. MASSIVE cat.

And I held a rat and I stroked a chinchilla.

But going mad and stroking all the animals wasn't even the best part.

The best part is contained in this photo here:

Please note my absolutely ecstatic face and Chris Packham's pretty worried face. This is the photo that a very young me has been waiting for for a very long time. 

I have a terrible memory when it comes to my childhood. I don't know why, but where some people can remember what they did for their 4th birthdays, or that time they went to the beach, or this, that and the other, I just don't remember that stuff at all. 

But let's not pull at that thread.

One thing I do remember though is watching The Really Wild Show on the BBC and being mesmerized by a boy with peroxide blonde hair and very wacky shirts. Probably my first ever crush. 

And now I am 31 and instead of watching him on The Really Wild Show I'm listening to him on Desert Island Discs and behaving like a terribly uncool person right in his face.

Hurray for being a grown up.

Interesting January

As part of my Not Really Resolution for 2014 I said that I would aim to do one interesting thing each month. This was in an attempt to get me out of the house and seeing people and not sitting at home and letting myself fall into the Vortex of Doom.

January got off to a flying start thanks  to the chance to go to London for a work-related dinner. There was a point where I nearly pulled out as it turned out I was the only person going but I decided to be a very brave person and just get on with it. I'm 30 and that means going out and doing things out of my comfort zone, not sitting and whingeing like a baby that I can't do things by myself. Get a grip woman.

As it turns out I wasn't really alone, for I had with me my armour in the shape of my beloved Vivien of Holloway dress.

I bought this dress for our work's Christmas party - I've been hankering to own one for a long long time but didn't really have an occasion/reason to buy one. That's where working in corporate land comes in handy - black tie occasions. I swooped and snapped one up in a terribly sensible navy colour, but I bought a bright pink petticoat to go with it, I can't be totally corporate you know.

I love this dress more than life itself. The second you put it on you are surrounded by the overwhelming urge to spin and spin and spin. And spin. You also feel like a lovely lady which is not something I often feel like, being a little scratbag in jeans most of the time.

But most importantly, when I put this dress on it I feel pretty damn good. Good enough to walk into a cocktail reception on my own, with my head held high and network like a pro. Chat chat chat, booze booze booze. It's not so bad once you get on with it. And the dress actually helps - people like this dress, they want to comment on it and when they do, boom, there's your opener to have a conversation.

Good work dress. Good work.

My dress of armour/dessert/champage/late night hot dog - best idea ever

On it's own I feel like this one thing would have counted as my interesting thing for this month, but it just kept...getting...better.

As I knew I was going to be in London I thought to my little self "Who do I know who lives in London" and I hit upon it immediately - Chloe lives in London-town doesn't she?! A few tweets and texts later and we had a plan in place. Chloe took on the admirable task of feeding a fuzzy-headed, champagne-hanging me. I took on the admirable task of getting from Hammersmith across to the other side of London, in no way aided by the London Underground who had helpfully chosen that day to close the Tube to Chloe's house.

It's almost as if London Transport has absolutely no regard for my plans sometimes.

I feel bad that I didn't visit something whilst in London, I always feel like I ought to because it's so rare that I get to go there, but I count lunch with a friend and a Tube adventure as something interesting.

I also came into St Pancras International via a different entrance and was floored by walking smack bang into the biggest statue I've ever seen. I have absolutely no idea how I've missed it before, given the number of times I come into St Pancras because it is hard to miss.

Discovering something new I hadn't seen before in London? Counts as something interesting.

The Meeting Place/standard blogger photos of St Pancras International ceiling

But wait.

It doesn't stop there.

After coming back from London I dropped my stuff off at home and went to meet Char who was actually in my home town. I know. No-one comes here. No-one is ever here. Even I don't want to be here.

What do you do when someone comes to your home town? Well you suggest you go for dinner in a lovely bar which serves your raw burgers....No. Not my finest moment. Of course, in all the times I've visited this place and had the burger they've never been raw but the one time you bring someone there...

We were brave and resisted our British instincts to not make a fuss and just eat the raw burger and sent them back at which point they returned with a core temperature which was basically the same as the surface of the sun. 

Unfortunately, as the third exciting thing to have happened to me in 24 hours, Char didn't get the best of me but I managed to avoid faceplanting with tiredness onto the table thanks to a well-timed pint of Coke.

Most importantly about this meeting though is that whilst Char was waiting for me to get my backside back from London she took the opportunity to look around my home town and she is now my witness when I say that there is nothing here. So next time you hear me complaining and roll your eyes and go "It can't possibly be that bad" I'm sending you to Char who will confirm that yes, yes it is that bad.

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So there you have it. 2014 is off to a brilliant start - fancy dinner in London plus a meeting up of two special internet friends in two different places - good work January.

London with almost a plan

One thing you should never do in London.

Go without a plan.

For in a city with a myriad of opportunities it is impossible to choose anything to do when put on the spot.

One other thing you should never do in London.

Go when it's pissing it down with rain.

For in a city which is mired in a blanket of grey and misery it is even more impossible to choose anything to do when put on the spot.

Instead you will find yourself being pulled into the Tate Modern even though you know you're going to hate it because you're just not a fan of modern art and even thought you know that your significant other is going to hate it too.

It's ok though, you last about 20 minutes in there. The breaking point is when your significant other sees a piece of art which is some wood with stones hanging from it at varying lengths. It turns out that that is his limit when it comes to modern art.

You swallow your "I told you so" and trudge back outside into the gloom (after a visit to the gift shop).

This is why it's important to have a plan.

Instead of heading aimlessly over the Millennium Bridge towards the comforting glow of St Paul's Cathedral you head over it with purpose, laughing at the pigeons sat in rows, laughing at the fact that your hood is so big you can't actually see out of it and laughing at the fact that thanks to the wonder of Twitter and The Cafe Cat you know exactly where you're heading.

Responding to my plea for somewhere cool to have tea and cake she gave me more than one idea and one h happened to be close by to us, underneath the menacing clouds.

For we are headed to Bea's of Bloomsbury (the St Paul's branch).

We follow the directions on the website (when they say keep turning right they really do mean keep turning right) looking for the hanging teapot lights, foolishly thinking they're hanging on the outside. At the point where I'm about to lose my temper and the rain is really starting to wear us down, we spy a welcoming glow in the distance...

What better way to decorate a tea shop than with hanging teapot lights?

Bea's of Bloomsburys manages to do a difficult thing - be homely without being chintzy, be small without being claustrophobic and be cosy whilst still maintaining a sense of 'coolness'.

We somehow manage to pick the same cupcake from the vast array of cupcakes and cakes and general sweet stuff on offer. Normally the idea of getting the same thing as the person sat opposite me horrifies me but the rain and gloom have got into my soul and I just really bloody want that peanut and chocolate concoction that's begging for me to eat it.

We sit and we talk and we do that ever so British thing of rolling our eyes at a table of women who shriek at some unexpected news. We talk about the weekend ahead, which is going to be spent in Horsham, staying with some of The Person's family and we talk about this and that and a little of the other.

And then we decide to just head to the pub where we're meeting his family later.

Because we are in London without a plan.

And that's just fine.

Not Really Resolutions 2011 – Update 6

Time for an update my pretties. I know the last update was in September, but I’ve managed to tick a couple off the list since then. Exciting times I know.

1. Run a 5km race – All done, done and done. I would absolutely love to do more running and would love to add running a 10km race to this list but my continuing shin splint on my left leg seems determined to scupper my chances of running further than 5km. Ah well. I shall keep trying. Anyway, see this post  to see all about how I ran a 5km race.

2. Crochet a ripple blanket – Two blankets completed and hopefully by the end of the year I will have completed three of them. Ripple well and truly conquered. (Yarn Fairy Blanket, Jungle Ripple Blanket and Ripply Beast Blanket.)

3. Back up all my photos on to CD – Done and done. It’s fun to be super-organised.

4. Paint my plastic frog – Done and done

5. Go to the cinema on my own – A new one crossed off the list! Hurray. Just when I thought it was never going to happen, I got let down by a friend and had to spend the day in London on my own. I feel proud because not only did I finally complete this resolution but I did it in el capital. I know how to do it in style baby. Read all about it here

6. Complete Project 365 – Woo we’re at 3?? photos –the end is in sight! Have I mentioned a gazillion times already how much I hate the fact that it’s dark and I can’t take any decent photos? Well it’s true. It sucks. I can’t tell you how much I’ve loved and hated doing this all at the same time, but I guess it’ll get its own post in 2012 when it’s all finished. Feel free to check out my Flickr photostream for the evidence.

7. Make an album/scrapbook of my 2010 trip to France – I get increasingly worried that this is going to be the Resolution That Got Away. I so badly want to get it done but unfortunately we’re now entering in to the peak of Christmas crafting and smoke is starting to come out of my ears and I just don’t think it’s going to happen. I will try my best to keep the faith though, I promise. But hey, at least I started it didn’t I?! (See this post for more details.)

8. Go over to Belfast to visit my family – Woop! Another one bites the dust! Done, done and done at the end of October and you can read all about it here.

9. Read 12 classics throughout the year. – Oh. Yeah. Three resolutions crossed off in this update. Don’t feel bad to be around such brilliance. This has been one of my favourite resolutions, I’m so incredibly glad that I set myself this challenge because it has been so very interesting and eye-opening. You can expect to see this one again next year because there’s no shortage of Classics out there for me to read. You can read my thoughts on this particular resolution here, which contains links to the reviews for each Classic I read. Try to contain your excitement.

10. Cross stitch one Christmas card each month – Ack I could go for another one and have four whole resolutions crossed off in one update but I’m going to remain pedantic here. Far be it from me to be accused of cheating. Now I have now currently got 16 cross-stitched Christmas cards which means that I have surpassed my total of 12. But technically I’ve said in this resolution that I will make one cross-stitched card each month and as we’re still only in November I feel that it wouldn’t be fair to cross this one off the list yet. Read all about how it's gone here.

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What was that you say?

What? This face?

Oh yes. This is my smug face.

Only 3 things left to cross off my list. Hurray.

And the other face?

Yeah that’s the side of my face that I’ll be laughing out of when I don’t manage to make the stupid scrapbook/photo album of France by 31st December 2011.

September Flickr favourites

Good lord what a busy month. So much has happened. In fact this month is exactly why I really like that I've been doing Project 365 because when I looked back at this month I found myself going "God was that really this month?! I thought it was bloody ages ago!"

This month has been very busy travel-wise - I've been to new places and old, I've travelled on trains and Megabuses, I've been away on my own and with The Person, I've met people (and animals) for the first time and in and amongst all of this I've been packing to move house.

Crazy.

3rd September - Today was the day I struck out on my own and boarded a train to visit a SBF - also known as a Special Blog Friend (said in the style of The Inbetweeners). I went to go and visit the Heather in her home town which was amazeballs because,

a) I got to meet someone new, and 

b) I got to visit a new place

But anyway you can read all about it here.

12th September - Today was the day that I went to meet a new dog. My Dad and his wife have got a new goggie in the form of Max, a Golden Retriever and this was his first day in his new home, so obviously I was there, banging the door down to meet him immediately. He really deserves a blog post of his own so I won't talk about him too much.

22nd September - Well you all know what I did on this day - I went to London. All on my own. Like a right brave girl. This is quite literally the only photo I took that day, it wasn't really a photo taking kind of day. I took this after I'd been to the Museum of Childhood and the Gallery Cafe. Read all about my awesome bravery here.

25th September - I'm full on talking about Christmas now people. No holds barred, it's Christmas talk all the way. I'm afraid you're just going to have to deal with it. I've been on a Christmas tag kick lately because they are very quick to whip up meaning that you get pretty instant gratification. It would be easy for me to just keep making Christmas tags until the sun comes up and ignore the other projects I need to be getting on with. Thank goodness I have my Crafty Uber Geeky Gantt Chart to keep me on the straight and narrow.

28th September - Unless you've been living in a very deep and dark hole with the spiders for the past month you won't have missed the fact that I moved house. I picked up the keys on this day and got the second ever sight of my new space - the last time I'd seen it was when I viewed it before deciding to take it so there was actually a part of me that was a bit panicky that I was remembering it all wrong and it was half the size I thought it was. Thankfully it was as beautiful as I remembered.

30th September - Normally I'm pretty behind when it comes to anything related to pop culture. I don't know what's at Number 1 and I have no idea who the latest celebrity couple is. So when I saw these Screme Eggs in a newsagents in town I assumed it was yet something else that I was well behind the times on. However, having uploaded a photo to Facebook immediately, it turned out that I wasn't the only one who didn't know about these. They taste exactly the same as normal Creme Eggs but the centre is green instead of being yellow.

Not the best photo but the 30th September also happened to be ridiculously hot and it was melting in my hand!

I'm torn between being excited that I'll now be able to buy Creme Eggs virtually year round and being sad because I kind of looked forward to my first sighting of Creme Eggs each year.

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One more month down. I officially have less than 100 photos left to take. Wahey!

Wait.

That must mean that Christmas is getting uncomfortably closer....damn.

Striking out alone

I arrived in London, bright eyed and almost bushy tailed, just a little bit crumpled from my incredibly early start (5.30am anyone?) and 4.5 hour journey by bus and train down to London.


But I felt good. I had a plan. First stop? National Portrait Gallery.
Finally. Finally finally finally, an attraction in London that I love. Pictures! Photos! Paintings! Of actual people and not a blob on a canvas! I was really swept away.

I wandered amongst Kings and Queen, statesmen and scientists. I saw David Beckham sleeping and King Stephen looking a little bog-eyed. I saw the Olympic athletes of tomorrow and comedians from yesteryear.

Around every corner I spotted something that I have seen before on the tellybox or in a magazine. It’s easy to forget that those images that we see are real life portraits, living and breathing somewhere, begging to be looked at and admired. And so I did.

I saw pictures of a young Queen Victoria – I’m so used to seeing this jowelly old woman in black that I’d forgotten she was young once. I saw Marc Quinn’s self portrait, made out of his own blood. I saw paintings that I was convinced had to be photographs until I stood as close as possible and saw the individual brush strokes. And if I was ever going to feel homesick, this would have been quelled by the sight of a portrait of Amy Johnson.

I loved that place. Loved it so much that for the first time ever I actually willingly donated to a free attraction.

The great thing about being by myself was that I was free to wander as I pleased. If there were parts of the National Portrait Gallery I didn’t want to see I just breezed on through, and when I left and decided I was hungry I was free to go and get lunch wherever I pleased.

Normally I don’t go to chains when I go away because it’s a bit boring, you could go to them anywhere, but when you live in Hull, the prospect of eating at a chain is genuinely exciting because they are hardly ever in Hull. And so lunch came courtesy of Wagamamas –one of my very favourite places.

I quite happily sat and had lunch on my own – sending texts to people to let them know I was still alive, seeing what was next on my plans and generally noseying at the people sat around me.

Next was the Museum of Childhood, as recommended by The Curious Cat in Bethnal Green. Every toy you could ever imagine is enclosed in here, and I spent a happy hour or so wandering around looking at flicker books from the 1870s, playing with Zoetropes and Stereoscopes and generally pointing at the cases and saying in my head, “Oh my god I remember those!”

The gift shop in the Museum of Childhood is lovely, loads and loads and loads and loads of children’s books. Brilliant. I may, or may not, have bought one.

Around the corner from the Museum lies the Gallery Cafe, a vegan and vegetarian place that The Curious Cat had also told me about. It’s kind of a painfully cool place and I’m pretty sure that everyone in there knew I was a less cool northern imposter, even if I did try and look hip by sitting and scribbling in my notebook.

The menu looked delicious, but unfortunately I was so stuffed from Wagamamas that there was only room for a cup of tea and recharge – both of my batteries and my phone’s (seriously, Android phones? Batteries are rubbish, they need charging every night. Ridiculous.). The clientele was wide-ranging, from a Grandmother having a glass of wine and talking with her Grandchildren after they had finished school, to foreign students chatting, to people looking cool and hipstery on their Macs/netbooks taking advantage of the free wi-fi.

I was soon on my travels again and I made my merry way to Persephone Books which I had first heard about from Petit Filoux, many moons ago. I’ve been wanting to go ever since – I love the concept of a place that’s publishing women’s literature exclusively. And I had saved up enough pennies to splash out and buy three uber-stylishly bound books for £27.

When I was making my last minute plans for London, I’d looked up Persephone Books on Google Maps and, upon zooming in a bit further I discovered there was a cinema right round the corner. Perfectamundo or what? A quick look of the film showings and I had decided upon the 6pm showing of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and had even used Street View to work out how to walk from the shop to the cinema. I was very proud of myself.

It is beyond me why anyone in London goes to the cinema, given that it costs over £10 to do so. You peoples is crazy. But I was pleased with the cinema I picked. There are only 2 screens in this place and it is more of an arthouse kind of place. But the seats were gloriously comfortable and I settled myself down to watch what turned out to be an incredibly confusing film. I still don’t think I get what happened.

I think the whole reason that I had going to the cinema on my own down on my resolution list was to make myself be a little more independent. I am more than a little self sufficient but I sometimes really crave company and whilst some of that’s just my personality, I also think it can do you good sometimes to learn to be by yourself. To go places on your own and enjoy them on your own. To be in your own company.

Funnily enough I spent all this summer living alone so I was already pretty used to it and I think this trip as a whole served this purpose rather neatly – a couple of years ago I wouldn’t have come to London on my own at all. Silly as that might seem it would have been true. Not because I would have been scared of going to a big city, but I just wouldn’t have seen the point in not going and sharing it with someone.

Don’t get me wrong, it would have been nice to have had someone along with me at times – especially in the cinema – then I could have had someone to poke and go “What the hell is going on in this film?!” But overall, this was a good exercise for me in being a lonesome little bunny.
I ended up back at St Pancras, two hours before I was due to leave which was kind of a bum but my only other option would have been wandering the streets of London alone which I didn’t really fancy. But I sat in Costa and drank tea and had a nosey at people coming off the Eurostar.

The journey back was long. Very very very long. And although I’m good at falling asleep anywhere, any time there’s only so much sleeping on a coach you can do and by 2am, as we were leaving Scunthorpe I was begging and praying and itching for my very own bed.

But for £10.50 I’m not going to complain. I think I should make this a regular happening.

Hurray for me the brave little adventurer.

The best laid plans

I was really looking forward to last Thursday. For well over a month I had had a trip to London arranged with a friend. We were going to do London in a day and it was going to be very exciting. I was going to catching the Megabus from Hull at 6.50am, getting into London at 11.20am, having the whole day and evening to see what there was to see and then clambering back on the train at 10.25pm, arriving back in Hull at 3am on the Friday morning.


I was really looking forward to it up until Wednesday afternoon when my friend decided to cancel on me.

I was left with a few options.

a) Cancel the trip altogether, the tickets had only cost me £10.50 so I wouldn’t be massively out of pocket, and cancel the two days I’d booked off work.

b) Cancel the trip but keep the two days off work.

c) Go to London.

I decided to be brave. I was geared up for a jolly holiday and damnit I was going to have one.

Going to London in itself didn’t bother me at all, it’s not like there’s nothing to do there after all, but my main worry was the evening/night portion of the day – I didn’t particularly want to be trekking round the streets in the dark until 10.25pm.

I know a few people in London but none who were good enough friends that I wanted to contact them and see if they wanted to meet up for the weekend – there was only one person that I did contact and she had selfishly gone to Bristol for a new job.

And then it hit me. What could I do in the evening in London that would not make me a target for tramps and thieves but would be interesting?

*Cue lightbulb above head moment*

I could go to the cinema.

Those of you who have been reading for a while will know where I’m going with this. Anyone who’s new to the show, let me enlighten you. I made a list of Not Really Resolutions at the beginning of this year, one of which was to go to the cinema on my own. In the last update I was despairing of getting this one completed, mainly because I couldn’t for the life of me work out why I’d put it on there. I don’t go to the cinema at all so the notion of going on my own was, quite frankly, bizarre.

And yet, here it was, like a shining little beacon – coming to save my day in London. This is how I would fill up my evening in London and cross off something on my list. Useful and efficient – that’s the kind of activity I like.

With my evening plan vaguely sorted there began the quickest planning of a day in London ever. I didn’t want to go without an idea of where I wanted to go because I did that on 1st January and it was bloody irritating and I ended up not seeing anything.

In a couple of hours, and thanks to the Curious Cat and Google Maps and Street View, I officially had an outline of my day in London and it was going to look a little something like this:

National Portrait Gallery (I have still never been here in all the times I’ve been to London)

Museum of Childhood

Gallery Cafe

Persephone Books

Renoir Cinema

Home

And I will tell you tomorrow if all went according to plan...



The Weekend I Spent Mostly with Strangers

I seriously don’t know where to begin to tell you about last weekend. I keep sitting down to write this post and then my brain goes “Nooooooo, too much information to sift through....must...shut.......down.”

In these circumstances there is nothing for it to make a list of all the things that I want to tell you about.

1. Like how I met up with The Curious Cat. In real life, not just over the internet. Like person to person. I touched her! (Not inappropriately.) I really did feel like I was going on a blind date – I know this person but I don’t know this person, very odd feeling. Thankfully she’s not a freak and we had a lovely lunch surrounded by lots of people, but it was all cool, not everyone knew each other so actually in some ways it made things easier for me. There was lots of chat about blogging which was very interesting, talk of possible redundancy/job losses and the best way to keep partying until 4am.

2. I really should have taken a photo to prove that I met her. Damnit.

3. I totally met Mr Woo as well.

4. I went to Putney (and got temporarily lost but totally found my own way again – high five!) to meet another stranger – this time one of the hen’s bridesmaids who was putting me up for the night. By now I was well versed in talking to strangers so I wasn’t too scared.

5. Karaoke is possibly the most hilarious thing you can do on a hen night. 15 over-excited women in their late 20s/early 30s singing Wannabe? It was kind of special.

6. Floridita is nice. But. I would only go again after taking many salsa lessons. There is a teeny tiny dance floor and you can go on it if you can but you can’t really dance to salsa music in a big group, it doesn’t work. And you stand a real risk of getting whipped in the face by hair as someone gets twirled passed. Also quite a few lechy people on the sidelines wanting to start dancing with you. And all the time you’re on the dancefloor, you’re just getting stared at by the people sat around tables eating. Not sure how I felt about that.

7. The cocktails are good. But super pricey. Have the Eureka. Hello sloe gin!

8. I'm going to create a league table of all the hen dos I'm attending this year. One of the criteria upon which I will mark them is how organised the night/weekend was. This one is going to be virtually impossible to beat, those girls had taken care of everything.

9. The traffic in London at 1am is still bumper to bumper. How is this possible?

10. If you have been cocktailing all night some people would be dreading getting up at 8am to get ready to go to the Stitch and Craft show at the Olympia but I am not one of those people.

11. Only joking. By the time I got there I was ready for falling flat on my face and dying.

12. It really was a weekend of hanging out with strangers, I was there, along with the other Stitchettes at the request of Mr X Stitch who asked us if we’d come and hang out and volunteer for him, helping people to cross stitch.

13. Look that’s me with Mr X Stitch – he’s a very nice man. That’s me doing my excited face.

14. I helped a 70 year old man to cross stitch. He was called John and I loved him so much I almost kidnapped him and brought him home with me. I felt pretty proud when he stitched a ‘J’ all by himself.

15. I bought a load of DMC threads because they were only 60p and that excited me because I can only ever find them for 75p or more. And now my thread box is full and I’m kicking myself that I didn’t buy myself another while I was there.

16. I met Emily Peacock. Yep that Emily Peacock. Just call me awesome. She came to talk to us Stitchettes after she'd done a demonstration at the Crosstitcher Magazine stand. It was brilliant although I missed out on some of it because I was helping someone else learn to cross stitch - what can I say? I'm a good teacher!

17. When leaving any destination, it is always sensible to check that you’re on the right train, otherwise you’ll realise you’re on the wrong one and look like a complete twerp as you hurry to get yourself together and rush across to the other platform to get on the right train. And I’d like to point out that it was not my fault that we were on the wrong train.

18. Megabus is a brilliantly cheap option and I did get from Hull to London and back again for less than £20 but I really need to register the fact that the coach doesn't get back to Hull until 10.30pm and after all the goings on of the weekend, it might be a good idea to take Monday off work so you don't want to peel your face off the next morning.


And now I'm going to go AWOL until next week because The Person is coming to see me tonight and I haven't seen him for a month and quite frankly I've bloody missed him. No time to blog!

Inside my head...

...is a very odd place to be at the moment. My blogging has gone from frenetic to almost non-existent which is always an indicator that my head is too full of nonsense. I am hopeless at compartmentalising sometimes and although I will try, the contents of one compartment will gradually creep and spill into another without me really noticing, like some kind of fungus or rat infestation.
I also go from being almost insanely, creepily, good-god-shut-her-up happy to being ridiculously, crazily, good-god-give-her-a-slap sad. Or not even sad, just moody and withdrawn.

I’m still waiting to hear whether or not my job is secure. I’ve done all I can. I’ve pleaded my case. I’ve said what I think I can bring and now it’s just a waiting game whilst the puppet-masters look at budgets and decide my fate.

I am not well known for my patience. At all. I may, or may not, have complained to my sister-in-law that she was taking ages to have her baby when she was pregnant with my niece. What was I supposed to do just sit there and wait for her to be born? 9 months is a long time, imagine what I was like if I was an elephant, I couldn’t wait 2 years for a baby.

Stop imaging me like an elephant.

This lack of patience does not sit well with my near obsessive need to be organised and have a plan and know what I’m doing. I can’t make a plan if I don’t know what’s going to happen. So instead my mind takes off at a million miles an hour and comes up with different scenarios of how my life is going to go.

I’m now up to about 1205 different scenarios that range from “I get to keep my job” down to “I lose my job and then my leg falls off.” My favourite scenarios are the ones where I get a huge wad of money for doing relatively little i.e. winning the lottery (even though I don’t play it), random old relative I’ve never heard of dies, mystery benefactor a la Great Expectations. I also quite like the violent scenarios where I take out my frustrations on those responsible for my demise, telling people exactly what I think of them.

So as you can see, my brain is full at the moment. Those 1205 scenarios take up a hell of a lot of room and I’m adding to them all the time.

But there are exciting things to look forward to and occupy my mind whilst I practice the art of patience.

For instance.

This weekend I’m going to London town for hen do number 1 of 5 this year. This is for an old friend from uni whose wedding I won’t be attending in May because it’s going to be in Israel (she’s recently converted to Judaism which might make that choice of destination seem a little more normal). She doesn’t know any of the plans but we are going to a karaoke bar and then to Floridita, which sounds rather exciting.

But there’s so so so much more.

On the Saturday I will be meeting a real life blogger in person. I know. Terrifying. My choice of victim? The Curious Cat. So if you never hear from me again she’s probably the first suspect you should look at (kidding, kidding, but seriously, I haven’t told my mother what I’m doing, she wouldn't understand and her head will fall off in worry).

And as if a hen do and a blogger meet-up weren’t exciting enough, on the Sunday I, and my fellow Stitchettes, will be going to the Stitch and Craft show in the Olympia. But it gets even better. We’re not just going for a jolly old visit, we’re going to help out the Mr X Stitch I mentioned in my last post and we will be there all day, encouraging random strangers to get their stitch on, you can read a little more about it here. So if you’re planning on going then come and says hello to us!

I’ll be back next week when my brain has calmed down.

Ooh now wait, scenario number 1206 – I lose my job, then, engrossed in what I’m going to do with the rest of my life I get knocked over by a bus...

Bad planning

Train fares are ridiculous aren’t they? When scoping out the prices of trains from my beloved Hull down to my beloved’s Bognor I was bloody outraged a little dismayed to discover that it was going to cost me £104. Or rather it wouldn’t have cost me £104 at all, because I would have had to have stayed at home and cried into my pillow.

My saviour came in the blue and yellow form of Megabus who promised to take me all the way from Hull to London for just £9 one way. Then it was just a hop, skip and a £35 train fare to the seaside.

I came back with That Person (that can be his name for now I think) as far as London, at which point we parted ways, him to the wilds of Preston and me to the sanctity of the Humber Bridge. However I had rather a long wait in London until I was transported back home. As in 5 hours.

I decided this would be good. I would have some me time in London and be brave and go and do something. Except in the post-Christmas haze my brain just couldn’t think of anything it really wanted to go and see. I settled on a trip to the Tate Modern and after putting my luggage in storage (Well recommended if you don’t want to lug your suitcase round with you all day. £8 for 24 hours and they’re in most of the London stations I think. Although man are you guys getting ripped off again, I could have put my luggage in storage in Manchester Piccadilly for the same amount of time for £5. Ridiculous. Did you know your Boots Meal Deals are more expensive than up here too? SCANDALOUS.) I made my way there. I had already thoroughly planned and memorised my Tube route – I’m still a little scared of the Underground you know.

I got to the Tate and saw the latest exhibition in the Turbine Hall. My tiny little brain simply could not comprehend what I was seeing. This whole space is filled with sunflower seeds made from porcelain? Each one hand crafted in China? Really? Nope sorry, now I must explode. Kaboom.

Ai Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds - mind boggling

I started to walk around and then it hit me. I’m really not that big an art fan. I’m sorry I feel like a terrible person saying it out loud but it just does nothing for me. Particularly the ‘modern’ stuff. What the hell was I doing in there?! This was stupid, I would wander around, not appreciating it and then spend money I don’t have in the gift shop.

Plan aborted.

New plan: Go to St Paul’s. You can handle that, you can see it from where you’re standing for goodness’ sake! Trot across Millennium Bridge, get into St Paul’s, realise that yeah, it’s a big church and you can’t see the good stuff without paying money. Light a candle and hope that Jesus doesn’t hate me.

Plan aborted.

Get out of the way annoying tourists!

I stood on the steps for a while feeling a little bit lost. I still had a few hours to kill but had no idea what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go or how I would get there. This is quite a problem when you’re in London. I tried to just blindly walk into the City but got The Frights and scampered into the Underground at St Paul’s for safety. I did my best navigating-the-Tube-all-by-myself-on-the-cuff ever and got back to Victoria where I picked up my suitcase and went to St Pancras where I sought out the comfort of a seat with some tea and a sandwich and read my book for a couple of hours before heading Hull-ward.

Just call me Mistress of the Underground

On the whole? Not a great success. I could have done a lot better. But this Megabus revelation has opened up a whole world to me – I could totally go to London for the day for £18! I’d arrive at 11.30am and leave at 6.00pm but that still leaves 6.5 hours in London, which to be honest is probably all I could take. Now I just need a better plan with what to do with my time.

Anybody have any suggestions? Or does anyone wish to squire me about town for an afternoon and prove to me that London is amazing?!

I was confident

Yesterday I was an intrepid explorer. I left the comforts of Hull to travel to one of my most hated destinations.


London town.

(Apologies to my London readers.)

I don't know why but whenever I go to London something traumatic always seems to happen to me which then taints whatever fun I may have had. This time however I was determined everything was going to work. I’m 27. I can handle the Tube. I am a strong, capable woman. (I told myself.)

I made sure I was well prepared – I printed off a lovely little map, I strategised, I knew what I was doing. It was going to be easy, I was going to get a tube from Kings Cross to Euston (yes I know they’re terribly close but walking in London means getting lost in London and I wasn’t going to take any chances) and then it was just a walk in a straight line to Tavistock Square. Everything was sorted, I was confident.

I was confident up until the point where I began to panic about my complete inability to wake up in the morning. My alarm usually goes off at 6.30am but I’ll rarely rise until after 7am such are my snoozing capabilities. I was going to have to get up at 5am to catch the train from Hull. Cripes. This panic made its way into my sub-conscious and I had the most horrific missing-the-train dream ever. When my alarm did go off at 5am I was so relieved the dream wasn’t a reality that I bounded out of bed immediately. I would make the train – hurrah! I was confident.

I was confident up until the point where I ended up in a herding pen at Kings Cross underground due to extreme over-crowding on the underground platforms. I stood patiently and tried to curb my mounting panic as people began shuffling ever closer together, causing my claustrophobic fears to escalate to new heights. I held my ground when the barriers finally were opened and everyone surged forward as if these were the last trains leaving London. But I got on the right train, I got to Euston in one piece and I strode out of the station, clutching my little printed out map. All I had to do was walk in a straight line. I was confident.

I was confident up until the point when I realised that although I was walking in a straight line, this straight line happened to be in the wrong direction. I was officially lost in London. I tried to ask for help but annoyingly London lived up to its stereotype and not one person stopped when I asked for help. I hate it when stereotypes are proved right, I don’t want to believe that all people in London are like that but I have never in my days seen somebody who’s lost in Hull get point blank ignored. It made, and is still making me, incredibly angry. I didn’t want to completely freak out but I had a feeling that the time to panic was drawing near so I decided to retrace my steps back to Euston and start again and as luck would have it saw where I needed to go and started heading in the right direction. Hurrah! I was confident.

I was confident up until the point when I realised I was 20 minutes late to the conference (which might as well be 2 hours late if you’re pathologically early like me) and would have to walk into the hall while the keynote speech was being delivered. It’s ok I thought, you can creep in the back. Oh no, this marvellous room had the doors at the front so I had to walk through, past the keynote speaker, in front of the entire audience and scrabble around looking for a chair.

*sigh*

And all this for a conference which turned out to be really rather pointless.

Stansted vs Rodez

I am back from my jollies and while I wade my way through the billion photos I took whilst I was away and try to find a spare moment to try and remain relaxed and feeling holiday fresh (bit of a fail when you consider I got back home at 11.30pm on Friday and was on a bus to York at 9am on Saturday to go and babysit my nephew for the weekend and I have 2 nights at home before I go to Liverpool for 3 days on a training course. Yeah....forget relaxing) I will give you a few comparisons I noted between the two airports I used to fly out and fly back.

Flying over France

Arriving into Rodez airport

- Come off plane (incidentally after one of the most mental landings I've ever experienced, we bounced twice.)

- Walk into terminal building

- Hand passport to one of 2 people stood immediately inside the door to have your identity checked

- Pick up bag off carousel immediately behind airport officials

- Walk through small turnstile to people waiting for you
- Get out of airport less than 10 minutes after landing

Arriving into Stansted airport

- Come off plane

- Walk for FIFTEEN-TWENTY minutes (and I walk fast) along corridors and up escalators and beside moving walkways

- Get to passport control which is total mayhem and is enormous. People are everywhere and the queues are crazy. Feel incredibly sorry for anyone not carrying a UK or EU passport because that queue doesn't move at all. Takes another 15 minutes to get through passport control.

- Try and fail to figure out which carousel bag is on. Realise this is because they haven't bothered putting it up on the screen. Take 10 minutes to figure it out.

- Walk all the way through the airport to get to where the train leaves to get back to Liverpool Street station

- Get out of the airport approximately one hour after landing.

Departing Rodez airport

- Walk into terminal building.

- Walk up to one of three check-in desks and check in

- Turn around and walk through security, set off alarm, take off bracelet and go back through. All ok.

- Sit in very large waiting room with a vending machine with drinks in it.

- Go through the one and only gate on to the plane.

Departing Stanstead airport

- Walk into terminal building

- Get caught up in what appears to be filming for Little Britain, I might appear on TV in the future looking incredibly flustered while David Walliams tries to get me to stick money in a bucket for a fake charity.

- Walk round in circles trying to go through security but getting distracted by shops like Accesorize and Monsoon and WH Smith books.

- Get through security, don't set off any alarms, happy days.
- Choose out of one of the many possible cafes and sit down in Starbucks to read magazine
- Walk for about 20 minutes to Gate 50 and on to the plane.

If you don't hear from me again for another week don't panic. Like I said, I'm off to Liverpool on Tuesday and won't hit the ground until Friday. I'm going to take my laptop away with me and try and get some blogging done but, to be honest with you, I'm not holding my breath. Which is also why you might not get any comments from me either. I logged into Google Reader and the number scared the crap out of me and I logged back out again, how dare you all keep posting while I was away?! I will do my best to catch up with you all, I promise.