My First Year in London

This Is It

2012-09-26T18:17:00.001+01:00

Here I am. Here it is. My 52^nd and final post. We’ll not dwell on that sad fact for now – I have my week to tell you about!

Last week I decided to book Friday off work and head home for a three day weekend. And it wasn’t any old weekend – well, it was old... Dad, to be more specific, turned the grand age of 70!! But, to be honest, he still acts 13 so we’ll split the difference and call him middle aged. Mum had arranged for lots of dad’s friends to come by the house on Saturday lunchtime for some food and drinks and a slice of the best cake EVER. The cake was by Lindsay at Totally Baked Cakes. She’s brill and you should all visit them on Facebook or Twitter and send your orders in via the website immediately.

That evening, once everyone had gone and the crumbs had been swept away, just the 5 of us headed up to a restaurant called The Retreat. Everything was lovely. The whole weekend – just great.

Back in London and this week has mostly been about preparing to move to the new flat on Monday morning. Suitcases have been packed and moved downstairs and the 8^th move in the past 6 years is about to begin.

I’ve been trying to decide for a while how I’d end this whole thing. So I’ve decided to end by not ending at all. Before you (mum and dad mainly) get too excited, this blog will end today, right now. But, if you’re keen to read more nonsensical ramblings and see more poorly captured phone-photos you can join me over on my Tumblr page. This page will be updated as and when I have something to share. No deadlines and certainly none of this one-a-week malarkey!

I have really enjoyed writing these posts over the past year and hope you’ve enjoyed reading them. Oh, that’s another thing.. THANK YOU for reading them! If you didn’t keep coming back week on week then I’d have been sat here writing to myself – somewhat lonely. It’s been a bit strange bumping into people and hearing, ‘oh I saw that on your blog’, but really nice at the same time. So I'm going to carry on writing, but maybe a bit less publicly!

And that’s it, that’s all I’ve got for you.

What I suggest you do now is click on that there Blogger logo in the top left corner, set up an account and tell me all about your next year in weekly bite sized chunks. Yes, I’d enjoy that very much.

Until… the next project,

Bren x

Southampton

2012-09-23T13:17:00.001+01:00

Where was I?... oh that’s right, just running out the door on the way to catch the train from Waterloo. I managed to do that (after a bit of a kerfuffle with my train tickets) and Kate, Binks and I bagged a few seats on a very busy Friday evening train to Southampton.

Once we arrived and met James at Southampton Airport Parkway we discovered Becky really wasn’t joking when she messaged us all earlier in the day and it turns out she really did have to work late into the night and so wouldn’t be able to join us. Super sad times. It’s been ages since we all got together but plans are already afoot for the next meet up..

Nat eventually turned up after driving all the way down from Newcastle, looking a little worse for wear and after having to stop for a little service station nap time. What a total trooper.

It’s been just over 3 years since we all met in Cape Town, South Africa and 2 years since we had our first Southampton based reunion. And even though it’s been some months since we were all together it only feels like 5 minutes. Once we'd all eaten and talked and talked and talked and (obviously) Ring of Fire’d we headed out to Southampton town to the Orange Rooms where we drank cocktails from pineapples and huge shells before deciding it was time to dance and heading over to Revs where the music was perfect for a boogie. For old time’s sake, we wandered through Chicken Land and an hour or so later I was passed out on the bedroom floor, half under the bed and half wrapped in a sleeping bag. Perfect.

The next day we only woke up around midday and realised James had already been in work for 3 hours! We made our way into town and met him for lunch. We decided that the best option was to stay in the sunshine and play mini golf! I was crap for the most part – but it was bloody great!! We popped into STA to see James at work and talk about what everyone’s next travel plans are. Back at James' we visited the allotment and fed the chickens!

That evening, instead of getting annihilated on pre-lash games and stumbling into a bar for more, we went for a LOVELY meal at Turtle Bay. I can’t recommend it highly enough; I had curry goat with rice and peas….. SO GOOD.

..and then came the cocktails. They were all rum-based. One of them had absinthe in. Surprisingly delicious.

Another great weekend and it was super to see the gang.

Back at work this week I’ve been doing lots of learning. There is more learning to come. I’m hoping at some point in the near(ish) future I will stop having to use the phrase, “I have no idea” in response to EVERYTHING.

In other news, quite a few people have been to the house to view my room, none have taken it yet...I can't really blame them. During the week ahead I will mostly be packing up the entire contents of the room in to bags and boxes ready for the move on October 1st.

I've had a crackin’ weekend at home, it’s been dad’s 70^th birthday. But I’ll tell you all about that in my next post. My final post.

Until then…

Bren x

More pictures from the weekend:

Starting to Wrap Things Up

2012-09-14T00:49:00.000+01:00

London is back to normal then. The mass exodus began as soon as the victory parade ended on Monday afternoon. Suitcases everywhere! Heading for airports, train stations and the dreaded M25. Not that I saw much of it – Tuesday was my rest day after working the weekend and I did very little. Well, I watched Parade’s End but we’ll not be talking about that – it’s awful!..A poor man's Downton.

This post isn’t going to be very long whatsoever and that’s for a few reasons:

Firstly, I worked all weekend on the stations at the Excel and although it was sunny and lovely and full of ice-cream and a guy called Damien (not important, we’ll leave that there) it wasn’t much to write home about or anything that I haven’t mentioned before. Secondly, as I mentioned, my day off this week was on Tuesday and was my chance to do something interesting to tell you all about. I didn't, I spent it in bed. Yes, that’s right, I did absolutely nothing and it was excellent. And thirdly, I really need to start weaning you off these – only two more to go!

A couple of semi-interesting things I’ve done this week…
It’s back to normal in the office. All the people who’ve been on the Games time 24/7 shift rota have returned to our main office so all of a sudden it’s busy and noisy again. Which is good! I’ve also got my first ‘proper’ mid-year review.. Now I’ve left the grad scheme I’ve had to agree proper grown up work objectives and all that (I can’t claim I’m fully aware of what they all are…) and this mid-year review assesses how well I’m doing towards meeting them by the end of year review in March/April. So, I’m sure that’ll be loads of fun…………………………………………

I’ve also been talking to one of the senior engineers in the team and have had an introductory session about SQL Servers and what DBAs do. I’ll be doing some shadowing over the next few weeks and will begin some formal training towards becoming a SQL DBA over the next few months. So that’s good too.

I’ve continued with the Life clear-out and have heard from my current land lady that someone is coming to view the room this evening. I won’t be here to show anyone around though (probably best, as I don’t really like the idea of having to lie to them) because I’m heading to Southampton for the latest instalment of Africa Gang Goes Wild.

Next week I’ve got flying mid-week visit from a few of the girls and the next group of grad schemers start. Yeah, the 2012 intake of graduate trainees start their induction week on Monday. Crazy, RIGHT?!

In other news…

Everyone who was allocated an iPhone or iPad for the summer has to give it back by 28^th September so if anyone has or knows of any iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S going at a reasonable price PLEASE let me know. I hate myself for it…but my HTC Desire just won’t cut it now I’ve been exposed to this Apple loveliness.

Must dash, I need to find my shoes for the weekend and finish sweeping. Just call me Cinderella!

Until next time,

Bren x

House Hunting

2012-09-06T19:31:00.000+01:00

And so it begins. The Great House Hunt 2012.

What?.. Oh, yeah, I think I forgot to mention that I’m moving house. I told my landlady that I’d be out by the 30^th September so the pressure is on. And why? Well, as much as everyone who has been to visit over the past year has been lovely about it… this house is grim. It’s a grubby little student house, minus the students.

Moving house is such a pain in the arse. This will be my 8^th time in the past 6 years. I have now been in this house for exactly 1 year and 2 days (don’t panic, I’m carrying this on until I’ve done 52 posts) making it the place I’ve lived for the longest time since moving out of the family home. Mental. And even though I’ve been here longest it certainly doesn’t feel like home. Time to move on.

DEVELOPMENT: So I wrote the beginning of this blog a couple of days ago and since then I’ve been BUSY. I have now found somewhere new to live (pictures above and left)! It may be cavalier and a reflection on how much I don’t like the whole moving house process but I only went to one viewing. A lovely 2 bed flat just on the edge of Lewisham. I’ll be sharing with a girl called Dolly; she’s 24 too and works 9-5 Mon-Fri in central London. So, that’s that sorted.

Now I just need to actually sort out a way of physically moving my stuff – somewhat trickier. I have come up with one excellent solution though... So far I’ve got rid of 5 bin bags of belongings. Some to the charity shop down on the high street but most, unfortunately, has gone straight into the bin. I have three weeks to sort something out until I resort to Man with a Van.

In other news this week:

I’ve been on volunteer shifts at the Excel centre, Canning Town and West Ham. I now only have two shifts remaining until it all comes to a close. The whole experience of front line duties during the Games has been fantastic. I’ve done my bit and smiled and cheered and laughed and I’ve misdirected customers and I’ve lost team members and I’ve even surprised myself when attempting to recall my high-school French. I’ve met celebrities* (list below)! And best of all I’ve been fortunate enough to actually experience the whole thing as a paying visitor too.

My latest spectator experience came yesterday morning as I left the house at 8am on my first day off in 10 days. I was excited. After seeing Olympic football, handball and hockey and getting to visit the excellent Olympic Park I was finally on my way IN TO THE STADIUM. Once again, thanks to Twitter (I can sense some of you rolling your eyes!) I managed to secure a ticket to the morning session of the Paralympic Athletics. Now, I’m no expert on disability sports but I do enjoy athletics and had done a lot of swotting up of the classifications and variances in the rules compared to the Olympic events. A lot of people had not. But not to worry, rather than sit there listening to them guess what each classification meant or why each sitting discus thrower takes all three attempts in one go I got chatting and soon had a collection of people at either side and in front of me cheering at all the right times and able to identify the difference between a T38 and a F33. My work there was done.

I left the stadium and the park for the last time. It's likely to be 2014 before I visit again, once it has been transformed into a huge public park for the people of east London. But the sun was still shining and I had the whole afternoon soak it up. I decided that I would do something I’ve been meaning to get around to for a year now. About 8 years ago (maybe even more..) my nan and granddad finally moved up to Bolton in order to be closer to us and my aunt and uncle. Before that though, we would visit every year in the summer holidays (and Easter some years too – bonus!) their flat in Forest Hill. Yesterday afternoon, I journyed south of the river, to my soon-to-be home borough of Lewisham. I was excited to find out what I still remembered and to see if I could find the place without the help of Google Maps.

As I left the train station I had a huge sinking feeling. I didn’t recognise a thing.

Turns out I’d left by the wrong exit!

As I came around the corner I saw the WH Smith we used to drag mum to at the end of the holidays in order to get our new pencil cases and the pub granddad used to frequent where he was affectionately known as Dusty. I carried on up the road and was pleased to see the local swimming pool has had a revamp and that the small public library was still going strong. I turned left and had expected to see a mountain-like road that Me, Naomi and Jess used to tackle as youngsters...turns out the road has a bit of an incline but is barely even a hill. I finally made it to Shackleton Close and my nan’s unforgettable fire engine red front door. Sadly, it looked a little run down but maybe I was just seeing things through more mature eyes. The estate still buzzed with life and I had a quick nosey around all of our favourite old hiding places. After a while I began to feel a bid weird snooping around taking sly photos so moved on but it was really nice to go back and feel like I knew somewhere I hadn’t visited in almost a decade, so well.

Still in Forest Hill and on this journey through my past, I decided to revisit a place we visited at least once a summer, the Horniman Museum. It’s still fantastic. I visited my favourite gallery, the Music Hall and visited the photography exhibition too. I ended the day in the gardens of the museum where I phoned mum to have a little reminisce.

This weekend I have my final two station shifts and will hopefully find time to visit the Thames Festival – a real sign that I have definitely been here over a year now as I’ve already written about that fesitval 12 months ago!

I’ll have to dash, there’s a lady at the door asking to look at my loft space. Ooow er!

Until next time,

Bren x

Ps, Lists of celebs I've spotted/spoke to/had a photo with during the Olympics and Paralympics:

Jamie Murray
Kelly Smith
Alex Scott

Huw Edwards
Matt Baker
Peter Hendy
Boris Johnson
and I even got a Tweet off Rick Edwards after bumping into him at the Excel...

Pps, This amused/depressed/didn’t surprise me this week:

More pictures from the week (all of the best Paralympic Athletics pictures will be on Facebook shortly):

Feeling Proud (kind of..)

2012-08-30T21:47:00.000+01:00

I’m writing to you from bed. I’ve been here since 3pm.

As I got in from Paralympic shift 2 of 9 it dawned on me that a bank holiday boozy bender in Manchester was perhaps not the best mental or physical preparation for this madness. But no matter, it will all be over soon and I’ll be stuck back behind a desk so I’m going to enjoy as much as possible while it lasts!

I had decided to venture up to Manchester after cancelling a couple of weekend shifts. I thought I’d take some peppermint tea and we’d watch X-Factor and Total Wipeout and an array of appalling DVDs (has anyone seen August Rush??) and generally chill out and reminisce away not just a duvet-day but a whole duvet-weekend.

But no. Ooooohh no. Silly, silly me.

Before I’d even arrived at Euston for the train to Manchester I’d been told I was buying a weekend wristband for the whole of the Pride weekend. Good job I’d had that haircut I had needed, and had packed a few suitable clothes!

I can’t imagine I’ll tell you all about the weekend. Probably because a lot of it is blurry…

Friday looked promising… We were staying in! Alas, off we trotted to the local Sainsburys to stock up on the ingredients to make a huge vat of mojito! And you can see the result here… rum, ice, soda, sugar, mint and lime. In a Union Jack bin. Classy bitches.

On Saturday morning we left Withington and headed in totown to watch the Pride parade. SO MANY PEOPLE. So many in fact I felt quite overwhelmed but Jenla was on hand to thrust a Strongbow in my direction and so, it began. I was supposed to go back to Withington at some point to change and see X-Factor(!) and pre-drink, but that didn’t happen. In fact, I didn’t make it back until after 5am on Sunday. Instead, I flitted from group to group and bar to bar meeting up with lots of people I’d not seen in months. Which was totally excellent, of course! But, when you have a drink at every stop it becomes easy to understand why the rest of the night was a blur.

Sunday required a serious Nando’s.

After we’d smashed that chicken’s back doors in we headed into town to an apartment-hotel where some friends were staying. Beer and brandy came next. Then there was dancing – oh how I love to dance – and singing and that was still at the apartment!

Sunday night I ended my Pride celebrations in the only way I know how – in Coyotes dancing next to the speakers so I can feel closer to Lady Gaga – idiot.

But a happy idiot.

On Monday I woke up and couldn’t find anyone at the house. Well, Rose was there but definitely several bodies missing! At 11 I got a phone call – they were alive, phew! – and all at the apartment. So I gathered my belongings, unable to believe that it was time to head back south already. We rendezvoused on the Canal, said some friendly goodbyes, headed for some much needed food (how good is Barburrito?!) then for the train.

Crackin’ time. Good one girls!

Wouldn't say I was particularly proud. Definitely pissed.

So here I am, back in full swing of ‘lympic-mania.

Unfortunately for you, since I missed a week's post I didn’t get to tell you all about my fun weekend at Primrose Hill and at a seminar about algorithms and metadata…………. We'll skip that I think.

Until next time,

Bren x

Ps, THIS MADE ME LOL

More pic from this weekend and last:

Jen

2012-08-28T18:50:00.000+01:00

So, it appears I’ve missed a week. Or two even, I don’t know..
August has been mental. I’ve been so busy, and when I haven’t been busy I’ve been totally knackered.

No. No, sorry, that’s a shit excuse.

Ok, I admit it, I’ve been avoiding this blog, putting off, thinking I’ll do it tomorrow or tomorrow or tomorrow... The best thing about tomorrow is that it never actually arrives.

I’ve done quite well over the past year in telling you all about what I’ve been up to but the moment has arrived where I’ve suddenly realised I’ve been keeping a very public diary and am aware how many people read it. I’m sure that sounds stupid, I mean how have I only just realised?.. But it was like a thunderbolt - I’M KEEPING A DIARY THAT DOESN’T EVER LOCK. There really hasn’t been anything (much) that I’ve not included in these posts, but it has been a properly shit two weeks and writing about it has not been top of the list of things to do. But I’m committed now, so deep breath and here goes...

I found out two weeks ago that a beautiful, intelligent, ~~funny~~ hilarious, caring, smiley, wonderful friend had passed away. Jen was 26 years old. She spent her all-too-short life caring for others. She was a mummy to baby Ava, a nurse to hundreds of NHS patients, a rock to her BFF Jenla and a bloody lovely person for the rest of us to have spent time with.

One of my favourite times was, as per, on a night out in Manchester. Jen was staying at ours and we were all Canal-bound. Jen in her mile-high stilettos and the rest of us in our Primarni pumps dancing through the night until we all rolled out of Cruz at 6 or 7am. And the next morning, eyelashes half way down her face, ‘good morning, where the fuck am I?’

If I’m honest, I’m not really sure what I believe about the afterlife. But I’d like to think she’s out there somewhere getting up to all sorts of shenanigans, and if not then I hope she’s resting in peace now.

Jennifer Murphy
02/10/1985 - 12/08/2012

Normal service resumes later this week.

Until then,

Bren x

London 2012 - 'We did it right'

2012-08-13T21:45:00.001+01:00

The London 2012 Olympic Games are over.
7 years of preparation and anticipation, 18 months of scrabbling to secure tickets, 8 weeks ‘negotiating’ a few days annual leave, 5 days training to be a volunteer and now it’s all done. Well, not all... We’ve got the Paralympics in two weeks time but please let’s have a breather and reflect on what a BANG TIDY job we all did. Right from the spectacular opening ceremony to the madness of the closing ceremony, everything was fantastic. Even the Aussies think so!

There have been so many highlights I could go on and on and on... Mo Farah, Jess Ennis, Katherine Grainger and Gemma Gibbons just some of my favourites. I also surprised myself by really getting into the boxing competitions and we did fantastically well in both the men’s and the inaugural women’s contests with 5 medals, including three golds. And the coverage, OH THE COVERAGE! Didn’t the Beeb do well! TV, radio, web, etc... all marvellously delivered by outstanding and knowledgeable presenters and commentators (I’m starting a petition to see DAME Clare Balding, she is fantastic!)... And all we paid for it was about £5.50 from our license fee – super!

I saw Giggsy and the rest of Team GB play football at Old Trafford, and handball and hockey inside the Olympic Park. Mum and Naomi also got to the ExCeL to see the Women’s Freestyle Wrestling event too. As well as all that I sat with thousands of other at the big screens outside the Velodrome whilst The Real McHoy won yet another gold medal and cheered on the Brownlee Brothers as they swam, cycled and ran for glory. I’ve smiled at people, said hello as I passed, taken photos for them, even hugged one guy (I got carried away watching Sir Chris) and enjoyed every minute of it.

Amid all of the Olympic business, Jenny and Jenny’s sister Robyn have been staying with me for a week or so too. Robyn started the baby fancy dress company Little Babas and won the opportunity to sell her products in a pop-up-shop in Richmond. Its part of the Mary Portas backed Pop-Up Britain scheme, involving new entrepreneurs and giving them a platform to show people what they can offer. Staying with me and going to the shop every day over in Richmond has meant a long commute across London every day but hopefully it will all prove worthwhile!

I met up with Amy who was down in London with some Merseyside Constabulary colleagues on a 2 week attachment with the Met and had a day off – we went to Hyde Park to visit the Live Site and had a great time! 4 huge screen showing different sports, a stage where we saw Nicola Adams and her gold medal, ice cream, beer and music from Temper Trap, Ocean Colour Scene and Feeder.

I’ve also found time to visit some of the Olympic National Houses – Casa Brasil put on a show every night with samba beats, more beers, and even the sunshine came out to say hello and I got chance to catch up with Heather and Jimmy.
In between all of that, mum, Naomi and I climbed to the top of the O2 arena too!

So yeah, it's been a fairly busy ol' week...

I’m now back in the office for a couple of weeks during the ‘Transition Period’ between Olympics and Paralympics. But there is no time to rest! We’ve got the start of the Premier League season which this season includes no fewer than SIX London based teams, and the annual Notting Hill Carnival over the bank holiday weekend. I’ll be doing a few Travel Ambassador shifts here and there but it’s mostly back to the desk job for me until the Paras start on Wednesday 29^th August.

So during the ‘break’ I’m making sure I get all the important stuff done... I’ve sorted out my Fantasy Premier League team for starters! And Lord knows I need a haircut, I currently look like a shaggy dog but what with my hairdresser being in Stratford town centre I just haven’t been able to face it.

The tag-line for the Games has been #InspireAGeneration. And I think it has worked, for me at least. I’m now looking into, statistically, which Olympic sport is the ‘easiest’. I mean, who doesn’t want a free jolly to Rio in 2016?! I think I might have go at wrestling and see how I get on...

London 2012 and the Games of the 30^th Olympiad, you have been proper crackin’!

Until next time,

Bren x

More pics:

The Olympic Games

2012-08-04T21:41:00.000+01:00

Hello from Olympic London.

I write to you an exhausted, broken woman. I’ve just got home after completing the eighth eight hour shift in eight days, I have one more to go then I have two days off. They will be the hardest earned days off I’ve ever had.

But back to last week for a moment…

After Amsterdam, I spent a few days at home which allowed me to visit Old Trafford for the first game of the Olympic football tournament for the Team GB Men’s football team. Dad and I had a great time sat in the lower tier just 5 rows from the front. We saw the ‘warm up’ game between Uruguay and the UAE which was fantastic. The UAE bossed the first halft going ahead after 20 minutes. Unfortunately Uruguay pulled it back and went on to win. Then, out came the GB boys to warm up. The crowd went mental at the sight of Giggsy and co and the atmosphere continued to build right up to kick off. It was an entertaining game and a 1-1 draw was a good starting point. A week on and GB have now qualified top of the group and continue to the quarter final played tonight!..

The next day I caught the train back to London where I managed to avoid the majority of the crowds even as I neared east London. I grabbed a few beers from the fridge and put my feet up to watch the entire opening ceremony. Thee firework from the stadium just up the road made the house shake and they were just visible from the back garden. An incredible effort by Danny Boyle and everyone involved and it really got everyone in the mood for the excitement of the two weeks following.

A 1am bedtime was not the best preparation for my first station shift but up I leapt at 6am, excited and enthusiastic. I arrived at West Ham just before 7am and worked until 3pm. It was fairly busy, but not horrendous. I actually quite enjoyed it. I was helping people get to wherever they needed to be and everyone was in a great mood. Saturday evening I had lots of guests! Traum and Calla were here to see an event at Earls Court so stayed here for the night. Connie and Jenny, recently back from New Zealand were here with family and stayed over and Rosie came to London for a day in the sunshine and a night here where all 6 of us got to catch up over a few drinks and a take away. More of the same on Sunday (minus the take away)! Then there was Monday…

On Monday I was at Canning Town where they’d put a one way system in action just in time to confuse and frustrate commuters on their way to work. I got through it but the crowds came thick and fast and with the Excel centre just down the road we had thousands of people interchanging. I’ve also done a shift at the London Media Centre – this is an overspill building for 13000 journalists that couldn’t get accreditation for the Olympic park. It hosts press conferences and photo ops for the sponsors and invited athletes. It sounds very exciting, and I'm sure it was, except on the day I was there not a single press conference was scheduled! Gutted. Day 4, 5 and 6 I was really feeling it back on the stations – partly due to the hangover thanks to an impromptu Africa reunion… But then, on the morning of day 7 something spectacular happened. I got a phone call. A phone call asking me if I was available to work inside the Olympic Park.

I leapt out of bed!

I had an incredible day. It was long and so so busy but I just didn’t care. We went behind the scenes for lunch and I saw the BBC and Sky Sports broadcasting balconies. And as it hit 7pm I whipped of the TfL branding and launched myself towards the nearest cold beer faster than Usain Bolt! That treat of a day spurred me on through today and I cannot wait for tomorrow’s final shift to be over because then I can look forward to two days off and two days spent in the Olympic park as a punter rather than working. I’m off to see handball on Monday and hockey on Tuesday. All that stands between me and more Olympic Park funtimes is a tiny little 8 hour shift at Canning Town. I will grit my teeth, grin and bear it. It’s safe to say that this is the busiest I’ve ever seen the stations and apparently we broke the record for daily passengers on our network last week and that was before the Athletics even started, with an additional 80,000 people in the Park per session I’m sure we’ll break it again.

It will be a bit of the shock to the system returning to the office on Wednesday. I’m glad I’ve done a bit of front line work but not sure I’ll be volunteering to do 9 shifts in a row again. Ever. But then, we’ll never have the Olympics in London again. It’s only here this one time* so enjoy it everyone!!

Until next time,

Bren x

*I realise it’s been here twice before and it may very well be here again, but probably not in our lifetime.

More pictures from the Olympic Park:

Birthday in Amsterdam

2012-07-30T12:49:00.000+01:00

I’m alive!

I made it to Amsterdam, I had a bloody good time, and I made it back home to Westhoughton in one piece. There was definitely one point during the trip I thought that might not happen – on a little boat, in the middle of a canal, with Traum steering and two huge tour boats coming from both directions…. But we’ll get to all that.

I left work on Friday at about 3.30pm and made my way to Gatwick. I got my EasyJet flight (30 minutes late) over to Amsterdam and the train to Centraal station. I found my hostel and dumped my stuff in my room, a cosy 18 bed dorm, then headed up to the bar where I made some friends around the pool table. Playing pool with people who’ve been in Amsterdam for a couple of days takes a while…..

The next morning, MY BIRTHDAY, I got up fairly early put my stuff in a locker and left the hostel to explore Amsterdam, first stop I went for breakfast with a couple of people I’d met the night before. I had the traditional Dutch dish uitsmijters at a place I’d read about, Letting – turns out its thick cut ham, three fried eggs with melted cheese all on top of toast. Ace! I left there and my new American friends and wandered around the city for the rest of the day. I found the hostel we’d be staying in once the girls arrived and spent a lot of time in Dam square watching the street performers (some better than others). I also stumbled upon a huge crowd of Celtic fans who were in town to see their team play Ajax in a pre-season ‘friendly’ (they suffered a crushing 4-0 defeat).

I eventually strolled up to the train station, via my hostel to collect my bag, and met Cam, Traum, Calla and Summerleigh who had arrived right on time. We jumped on the tram and set off towards our hostel where we’d stay for the next three nights. The hostel was set right on the edge of the 120 acre Vondelpark. We freshened up and wasted no time getting the beers in and cards out. We enjoyed happy hour down at the hostel bar then headed out to The Bulldog and on to a bar just off Rembrantplein. A lot of dancing and drinking later, we returned to our beds, stumbled up to the top bunks and realised it was almost 5am!

A few sore heads the next day was the least we could have expected. Luckily, the amount of bread, ham, cheese and eggs served at breakfast managed to soak a good deal of the alcohol up and meant we could go and explore the city. It was a great way to spend my birthday and Amsterdam is such a cool city. I’ll definitely be back because even after my second trip there are still things I didn’t manage to get to.

Between Sunday and Tuesday we took in a lot of the Amsterdam sites and sounds including hiring a boat (and causing chaos by crashing into a houseboat), visiting Anne Frank’s house and the Heineken Experience which was fantastic!

We landed at Manchester airport and went our separate ways safe in the knowledge that the picture would surface on Facebook very shortly allowing us to relive the entire trip.

And that's it. That's all you're getting. Because, what happens in Amsterdam must definitely stay in Amsterdam. Forever.

Dad and I headed back to Westhoughton so I could continue my week of annual leave and prepare for the start of the Games… which I will tell you all about in the next post to following in the not too distant future. I’m currently 2 West Ham station shifts into my volunteering and already pretty knackered but I’ll power through these 9 DAYS STRAIGHT and find time to blog about it too!

Until next time,

Bren x

More photos from the trip:

One Extraordinary Weekend

2012-07-17T20:38:00.000+01:00

Friday began with an early morning birthday phone call to Australia! The BFF checked off another year and took another step towards the big 3-0 – not long now.. (Lol, I joke, I joke..)

After a busy day in work and ahead of the packed weekend I had planned I arrived home to Michaela and friends who were preparing for a night at CatFace. I said no, said I didn’t fancy it, said I couldn’t, wouldn’t, shouldn’t… then… MEOW.

And I’m so glad I did go! I had such a good night. The Star of Bethnal Green hosted CatFace for the first time. It was a perfect venue. Just the right size, reasonable drinks prices and excellent music. After several hours dancing, a slurred call from Australia (to let me know how I would feel in a few hours), chicken, chips, a drunk American who didn’t realise our lager is NOT Bud Light, and an argument with a cab driver… I was home, in bed, drunk but happy, after a crackin' and unexpected start to the weekend.

On Saturday I had to work. Which I did through a slight haze and whilst consuming as much water as possible. Once rehydrated, I got myself together and cracked on with the fun stuff. That’s right; I made my way to the London Transport Museum at Convent Garden. The only other time I’ve been to the museum was during induction in September but the main reason for visiting on Saturday was to see the Mind the Map exhibition. What?!

IT WAS ACE!

The museum was really busy but it’s so big that you couldn’t really tell. I’d definitely recommend it as something to do for anyone visiting London. Or for anyone who wants to find out more about the history of the Tube and Transport system here. And the shop!.. Ohhh the shop – fantastic! Ok, enough, now let’s move on…

I returned to Canning Town to find a full house! A group of 6 were setting off on a 2 week road-trip through 8 countries towards a music festival in Croatia. So we had a farewell dinner courtesy of Papa John’s and off they went, hoping to make it in time for the ferry over to the Netherlands – first stop, Amsterdam!

And speaking of Amsterdam...

On Friday this week I’m flying out to Amsterdam for a few days of shenanigans with some of the Manchester gang. Cam decided that she deserved to treat herself as she graduated (today, in fact!) and when I heard the dates of the trip I just could say no – Oh hai BIRTHDAY IN AMSTERDAM!! I’ll be telling you more about that in the next post. Or maybe what happens in ‘Dam, stays in ‘Dam...we'll see.

Anyway, back to Sunday. I’d seen via Twitter/the news that HMS Ocean was arriving in London on Friday evening and would be moored at Greenwich. The Royal Navy were holding a public viewing of the ship between 10am-3pm and I thought I’d go and have a nosey around a bit. I was just going to see what was happening and head home. I didn’t. After being ferried to the ship from Greenwich Pier I was on the ship, talking to sailors and looking at all the cool stuff for well over an hour. It is MASSIVE. The biggest ship in the Naval fleet in fact. I couldn’t count them all but I’d guess there were at least 8 helicopters, 4 JCBs and a tractor on board. I did everything – although I did draw the line at getting my face painted this time, because I thought I might stay out in London in the afternoon to take advantage of the LOVELY weather (don’t be jel, it’s turned crap again now).

Once I got the little boat back from the ship to the pier I had decided I was going to head into town to catch up with Surprises: STREB and their One Extraordinary Day. A gymnastic/dance group of 32 were running around London appearing at secret locations every couple of hours and the locations could be found first on Twitter (of course). I made it in to town in time to see surprise 3, 4 and the warm up of 5 but the day began at 7.30am at Millennium Bridge where 16 of the gymnasts threw themselves off in the ‘Waterfall’. Then at 10am they walked down the outside of City Hall in ‘Sky Walk’ - pretty spectacular too. But realistically, it was all about the grand finalé at the London Eye. There were a lot of brilliant photographs taken and you can read more about what other event London has planned for this summer at the MOL Presents website.

And then it was Monday again. But not just any Monday, oh no. This Monday was the first Monday of the 9-week Olympic Shift Rota period, during which time TfL's IT department is going 24/7 to support the increased demands during the Games. Luckily for me, my volunteering and annual leave was agreed before I took this position permanently and so I won't have to do any of the 12hr night shifts(!) and only have another few days in the office then I’ll be out for over two weeks! Friday to Tuesday in Amsterdam then on to Manchester and back here just in time for the Opening Ceremony…which I’m still deciding whether to head to Hyde Park or Victoria Park to watch on a big screen to avoid returning housemates. I like ‘em and that and I really do want to hear about their trip but, COME ON, I’ve been waiting for this for SEVEN YEARS. And now there is only 10 days to go…

Until next time,

Bren x

Ps, (Highly) Recommended Reading:

1) 35Reasons Rain is Better Than Sunshine

2) London2012: An Etiquette Guide for Olympic Visitors

Enjoy a few more pictures from the weekend:

A Wonderful Wedding

2012-07-12T23:26:00.000+01:00

I can’t imagine this’ll be the longest of rambles. I’m exhausted. But I had such a good weekend that I don’t really mind.

On Friday night some of Michaela’s friends came over and we all headed out to Soho for a few drinks and a bit of a dance – a warm up for ‘World Pride’ that was held in Trafalgar Square the next day. I’m told it was a good do, but not for me. No, I was uncharacteristically restrained and caught the last tube home on Friday so I could be up, packed and on the way to Euston to catch the 9.20am train(s) to Hale.

I was on the way to a wedding! Nat, a friend from Uni, was getting married. I met up with the group of guest I knew at the church – we were all surprisingly well behaved (in the church at least). It was a lovely big church, in Bowden, Cheshire and the sunshine even came out so that the confetti pictures looked pretty. The reception was held in the Mere Golf Resort & Spa, preeeety nice! As we arrived from the church we were greeted with a Pimm’s and asked to head outside for some group photos. We returned inside to the beautifully decorated room to enjoy the meal, speeches, cake cutting, and finally the dancing. Ooooh the dancing! There was so much of it – and I bloody loved it. In fact I loved the whole day. We all scrubbed up real nice and the happy couple looked wonderful.

The next morning I felt a little – delicate. And a four hour journey back to London was the last thing I needed, but on I soldiered listening to the Wimbledon final on BBC 5 Live – tennis commentary is incredibly fast and really quite funny but I managed to get home in time to see the final three (disappointing) sets. Better luck next year Murray.

Some good news on Wednesday – I collected the last set of my Olympic tickets! With all the tickets in hand, the free travel cards and the spectator guides, I have started putting together a plan of what Naomi, mum and I will be getting up to while they’re down for a visit in August.

I’ve also found out I’ll being doing even more shifts than I expected – some of them at the London Media Centre. I’ll be advising journos about the quickest way to get to certain venues and events – looking forward to fucking over a few Daily Mailers…

In other news, I’ve started looking into how I can turn these posts into a book. And I guess this sentence will be very weird to read once printed in said book… I’ve downloaded the software and started the editing – If I’m honest, some of these posts are awful! So it’s a pretty big job and I’m getting a head start.

That’s it for now. I told you it was a short one!

Over the next week I’ll be working. And working. And probably a bit more working. Good job I enjoy it!!

Until next time,

Bren x

Ps, If you’re struggling for any decent TV program at the moment I can’t recommend Line of Duty highly enough – BBC 1 iPlayer. Treat yourself.

Track Walk and Toulouse

2012-07-06T01:12:00.000+01:00

Piccadilly Line

Summertime fun things happening all over London at the moment means I’m finding it tricky to get these posts written and published at reasonable intervals, but I’m just about keeping it weekly at the moment – and this is week 41. FORTY ONE WEEKS?!... In fact it was exactly 10 months yesterday that I arrived in Canning Town, unpacked the car, wiped away the UmmBop-tears and started my London-Life. And actually, it’s going pretty damn well so far. This paragraph would have been ideal as a conclusion for week 52 but it’s written now and I’m really trying to let you (mainly Dad) down easy…. There really won’t be any great cliff hanger or climax I’m afraid. I may continue to write but I won’t be publishing after the year is done. Thought I’d get that out the way now…

But anyway, where were we?

When I posted last week I was just off out to do a track-walk down the tube tunnels of the Piccadilly Line to the disused station, Brompton Road. Brompton Road station sits between South Kensington and Knightsbridge, and closed in 1934 when a new entrance and the Harrods end of Knightsbridge station opened rendering this smaller station just 400m away, redundant. I got to the LU Track Access Control Centre offices at around 10.30pm. The small group of us had a safety briefing from the Protection Master and heard about how the crews of engineers and other workers sign on every night and how we keep track (pun not intended) of the people on our network – primarily so we don’t switch on the electricity whilst they’re still working! It’s all very interesting and is a system that has been evolving and improving over recent(ish) years and continues to do so.

Engineering train rolls through

At just after midnight we donned out hard hats and (orange) hi-vis jackets and headed down to the platform to see the last passengers train depart. After that we had to wait for several engineering train pass through heading off to various areas of the network and at just after 1am we got the signal that the power had been turned off and we were able to get onto the track. I obviously wasn’t about to offer myself to head onto the track first (just in case) but I didn’t want to be stuck in the eerie tunnel at the back either!... I positioned myself nicely in the middle of the group and we set off in single file, carefully avoiding various cables, big steel girders and surprisingly few mice. In short, it was great! We got back to the offices at about 2.30am and started the long and somewhat horrendous nightbus journey back to east London. By 5am (after some ridiculous roadworks at Trafalgar Square and a detour around the Isle of Dogs) I was in bed trying to get a few hours of sleep before…

The Pool

…dashing to Gatwick!

REALLY French

The View

I booked flights out to Toulouse a few weeks ago. Mum and Dad were off to my uncle’s place in Saint- Clar for a week so I thought I’d tag along for the first weekend. The great twist in the tale being, mum didn’t have a clue I was going and as she turned to face me at the baggage carousel I thought she might pass out and she told me later, she thought she already had! So that was funny. France is brilliant. Really…French. All of the boulangeries, pâtisseries, boucheries, charcuteries, crémeries, poissonneries, and épiceries – wonderful! And the countryside and the wine and beer and the swimming pool – all ACE! We explored Moissac (one of the towns on the many routes of The Way of Saint James) and a couple of other areas, although we didn’t manage to get over to THIS PLACE – randy old bastards! Only 80 minutes from Gatwick – I’ll be back!

TA Uniform

After a delayed EasyJet flight and a missed last tube home I only got in after 1am so first day in work was pretty tough going. I did finally receive my new contract and my official starting date was Monday 2nd July - hurrah. On Tuesday I was over at West Kensington all day for Travel Ambassador training. I learnt a lot about all our different ‘business areas’ (modes of transport) and about the iPhones/iPads everyone will be using. That evening I met up with Jane and Matt for a few drinks, a catch up about our current placements and another chance to ride the Cable Car. On Wednesday evening there was more socialising with the Manchester crowd. I went to a very busy Covent Garden to meet up with James, Devy, Rich and Amy. We spent a few hours reminiscing about the good ol’ days of MMU Course Enquiries and having a laugh. We saw Murray win his quarter-final game and agreed to do it all again in a few weeks.

And here we are at Thursday. Today, I’ve been getting used to my TfL issued iPhone and coming to terms with the striking pink hi-vis I have to wear during my Travel Ambassador shifts. I also visited West Ham for my familiarisation of the station and met some of the people I’ll be working with during my ICSA shifts.

The Shard:
shot from Tower Bridge
(NOT my image)

(via TimeOut London)

I was going to go into town this evening to see the opening of The Shard. We were promised a spectacular laser show… we got a few twinkly lights. I streamed it from their website and I’m so glad I didn’t make the journey up to Parliament Hill!!

One day left in the office then I’m off to Cheshire for a wedding on Saturday – but I’ll tell you more about that soon.

Until next time,

Bren x

Ps, I'll be putting more of the Toulouse photos on Facebook fairly soon (once I've weeded out any taken from below the chin!)

More photos from the week:

Checking the current
is off...

Love a plane window photo!

Pool pavillion

Vineyard

Driveway up to
the house

Euro 2012 cup final.
Huddled around the terminal's only TV like damp refugees!

Radio 1’s Hackney Weekend

2012-06-28T19:13:00.001+01:00

YES!

Calvin Harris

And what a weekend it was!

On Friday evening Naomi and Jess showed up at about 11.30pm after catching the late train from Manchester. We had a couple of drinks and caught up a bit and we decided on a few of the acts we definitely wanted to see the next day.

We had been looking forward to this day for a couple of months and finally it was here. We woke up on Saturday at just after 7am. Which, considering I only live a 30 minute bus ride away from Hackney Marshes may seem quite early but we didn’t want to miss anything. We got to the site just after 9am and waited in the early morning sunshine until 10am when the fist set of gates opened. We had all been given airport style plastic bags to put our metals in as we all had to go through scanners. After another few check points we eventually got into the site at around 11am where we set off for our first stop – the bar! We explored the site which included the enormous main stage, three tents, two outdoor stages and pop-up DJ sites. We got some lunch and more beers and saw the first DJ set at 12noon – Tim Westwood. This bloke makes me cringe. I like the music he plays but he doesn’t half talk a load of old shite… Turns out the BBC has just announced that his contract will not be renewed – not surprising.

deadmau5

EastEnders!

During the early part of the day we got to see Leona Lewis (not my choice), Emeli Sandé, deadmau5, Annie Mac, Example, Rudimental, Ed Sheeran and Nicki Minaj (again, not my choice). The atmosphere was excellent and only got better when Calvin Harris absolutely smashed his set in the Dance Tent and took a rather surprising turn when I found myself actually really enjoying Flo Rida’s set – he’s got a lot of bloody good songs to have a dance to and threw 90% of his clothes into the crowd – strange but great. And of course we then came to the head liner, one Mr Jay Z. But we weren’t only treated to Jay Z, oh no.. On came Rihanna, MIA and Kanye in a spectacular end to a fantastic day.

West End Live

Totally knackered, totally soaked from the evening rain, but totally worth the wait – all in all, a great day. If only all festivals could be £2.50! The journey back to the house was smoothly done where I found Traum and Calla who had arrived earlier in the day. As they left on Sunday morning for day 2 of the Hackney Weekend I couldn’t help feel pangs of jealousy!...although I ached all over and think I quite possibly would have broken myself if I’d gone for a second day.

Photography Exhibition

I was feeling rough from Saturday but powered though on Sunday to see the West End Live event at Trafalgar Square, the National History Museum, a photography exhibition and the England match in a little-known Bier Keller just off The Strand where they are showing all the games on several big screens and you can buy drinks by the litre – ACE. Good times had with the Brennan’s and Rosie who had popped into London for a few days whilst on the way home to Norfolk.

Track Walk

By Monday, the cold and wet weather on Saturday had caught up with me and I was feeling awful. I’ve spent two days shaking it off and recovering and returned to work on Wednesday to some excellent news. About a month ago I interviewed for a position with the team I’m currently with on placement. I originally thought it would be good interview practice and would allow me to find out what a technical interview would be like… turns out they’ve decided to offer me a position and today, I accepted. This all means I’ll roll off the scheme much earlier than expected but will be able to focus on the area of IT I’m interested in. Hurrah.

While I’m still on the scheme for a few more days I’m going to take advantage of the random things I get to do… Tonight, I’m heading over to one of our west London offices to see the Central Track Access Control, watch the last train leave the station and power be turned off the track and – once someone has checked the current is actually off – walk down the track through some of the tunnels. Why, you may ask... Well, why not? This should all finish around 3am and then I’ll need to get two night buses (/a taxi) all the way home so I’ve decided to treat myself to Friday off!

Finally at the front!

Emirates Airline

Another rather cool thing I did today was ride the new Emirates Airline. Now I'm not one for heights - AT ALL - but after seeing it built over the last 6 months I thought I'd better bite the bullet and give it a go. Terminals are at North Greenwich and across the river at the Royal Victoria DLR station. It was really good!...and a bargain for just £3.20 or £6ish for a return 'Boarding Pass'. I bought some lunch, queued up, boarded one of the cabs and took off very quickly. It rises rapidly to 295ft at it's highest point (I was gripping on rather tightly at that point). I hopped off at the other end and wandered in the sunshine to Canning Town to get the Tube back to the office.

Ticket to Ride

I’ve got a very exciting weekend planned – but I can’t tell you anything about it just yet… sorry about that.

Until next time,

Bren x

Ps, This - http://careers.guardian.co.uk/careers-blog/women-information-technology-dispelling-myths

Pps, More pictures from the weekend:

Meeting Gold Medal Winners

2012-06-21T22:25:00.001+01:00

Busy one this week! A few things to tell you about, so I’ll get a move on…

Overtime

It appears I’ll never learn… It goes on.

Instagram

I joined Instagram just 4 short days ago and I already love it. You can get Instagram on both iOS and Android and I urge you to download it immediately if you haven’t already (I’m pretty late to this particular party). Phoneography is massive; there are so many blogs out there all vying to give you the best tips on how to make your phone snaps the most edgy/arty/hip/loved. I’ve started uploading but you can only see my portfolio (too far?) by getting the app yourself...

GoalBall

Medal winners...and Howard

Ever heard of GoalBall?... No, neither had I. On Tuesday evening I left work and headed for Queen Mary’s University SU to meet an Olympian and Paralympian…as you do. We saw Amy Williams’ gold medal (it was HUGE) that she won for GB in the Skeleton at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games. We also saw one of ex-GB swimmer Giles Long’s Paralympic gold medals (he has three in total, as well as two silver and two bronze) that he won at the 1996 Atlanta Summer Games. The event was for TfL and LU employees and was one of several engagement sessions that have been running over the past months to get employees excited about the Games. I was actually only there to make up the numbers… On Monday afternoon I had received an email asking for people to register for the event as they hadn’t had enough sign up – the day sessions were full but the post-5pm event still had space…funny that. Anyway, I was happy to go, it sounded interesting…and we got food and drinks. Bonus.

GoalBall!

When we arrived we signed in, got a coffee and did a bit of networking (how wanky does that sound?!) until we were called to take our seats. Giles, Amy, and the Chief Operating Officer of LU and lead director in charge of TfL/LU’s Games delivery Howard Collins took to the stage and spoke for about an hour. Afterwards, half the group got taken to the sports hall and half of us had dinner! Another half an hour or so later the second group, me included, were lead to the sports hall and given blindfolds! Once in the gym, we were told we’d all be playing GoalBall. Rules of the game can be found HERE but in brief – two teams of 3 players defend their respective goals as they roll a large, heavy ball extremely quickly at each other attempting to score. All players are partially sighted or blind but all wear eye masks in order to level the playing field. Playing it was…eye opening (sorry). It was an incredibly strange sensations, being totally reliant on hearing and touch to figure out where you were and where the ball was! The ball has lots of small bells in it and the spectators watch in silence. Definitely worth a YouTube and I’ll be looking out for it on TV during the Paras.

Euros

I won’t say too much...just in case. But we’re doing alright, eh?

And what do Italians know about tournament football anyway………………………………….

Delish!

Sunshine boozing

Manchester get-together

Lovely weather on Wednesday meant the Manchester Meet-Up could, once again, be an outdoors affair. We bagged seats and a table on the South Bank Centre balcony terrace and chatted away for a long time. We headed to a lovely French restaurant where I immediately opted for the Italian Platter. All in all a lovely evening and one we’ve agreed must happen more often!!

Creative Problem Solving

Today, I’ve been on a Creative Problem Solving course over in West London. I sometimes find these ‘soft skills’ courses a bit of a doss day but this one was pretty good! Got a problem, come see me… (don’t actually do that.)

TED

I tend to plan what I’m going to write in each blog as the week progresses and I was genuinely going to write about TED this week. It appears the BBC beat me to it – bastards. So now you all know about TED let me make a recommendation or two:

In my opinion, the best of the lot comes from Ken Robinson. It is brilliant, funny and totally worth 20 minutes of anyone’s time. Another was a recording of a TEDx event all about ‘Hedonistic Sustainability’… please do give them a whirl!

Hackney Weekend

IS SO SOON. And I’M SO EXCITED. More on this next week.

And I think you’re bang up to date.

Until next time,

Bren x

Ps, Don’t really get what all the Jimmy Carr fuss was about. If I had his money, I’d put it in a LEGAL tax efficiency scheme too. Surely Cameron realises hundreds of people in the UK are doing this?... including some Tory donors *ahem*GaryBarlowOBE*ahem*

Morals Schmorals.

More pics from this week:

Euro 2012...and not a lot else.

2012-06-14T21:35:00.002+01:00

Lescott's headed opener (not my pic)

What uuuppppp!

I'm currently watching the <insert any Euro 2012 match> game. It's a cracker.

And that could be my entire blog post this week, because as of Friday last week I’ve done little else. Planning my Fantasy Euro 2012 team, entering sweepstakes, putting a few bets on and watching the games. It’s taken a lot of time and commitment, not to mention the effort involved with having to put up with ITV’s crappy coverage and commentary!
I’m glad there was no expectation of greatness from the England team this time – it has meant I could get excited by a not-bad-ish performance against the French whilst still not expecting to see England in the quarters (well, ok, maybe I secretly think they’ll get there but I’m not about to jinx it..). Other than football I’ve been, erm.., well I’ve..., oh ok, it’s really been quite a quiet week.

On Friday afternoon, after a 3 day week and excited for the Euros to begin, I was in such a good mood I found myself offering to do some overtime. I realised as my alarm went off at 7am the next day, just how silly this offer was. As I live about 10 minutes from the office I went in rather than doing it from home – It’s probably quicker for me to get to the office than it is to wait for my laptop to boot up!...and realistically trying to do my job on my laptop when I've become accustomed to dual screens...tricky. One of the downsides to being in a huge office all alone on a Saturday morning was that I had to periodically wave my arms around like a mad woman in order to keep the lights on. Oh, and I got caught singing along to the radio (rather loudly) by the security guard doing his rounds... embarrassing.

The
Rebel Bingo
Show

I called it a day after about 6 hours and headed home for a nap and to prepare myself for an outing to Rebel Bingo to celebrate Michaela’s birthday! Last time I went to Rebel Bingo I woke up in a right state... and there was no change this time. A group of about 15 of us (lots of Michaela’s friends came down from Hull) headed into Shoreditch to dance the night away. We all arrived back at the house hours later in dribs and drabs after getting separated in the crowds – we shared tales of dodgy cab drivers, disgusting night-buses and (personally) the best chicken kebab I’ve ever had...EVER.

I was grateful I had zero plans for Sunday – I couldn’t even make myself go for a walk to get a bit of fresh air; I did make it to the deck chair in the garden though where I fell asleep for about an hour. I was longing for greasy food and fresh orange juice – and the next thing I know, there it is! That’s right, a friend arrived at the house with two big carrier bags of breakfast making material, including three type of fruit juice, toastie size bread and a brand new bottle of Tommy K.

At first I wasn’t sure how I felt about someone else making my hangover eggs (that will only mean something to some of you) but I was in no position to argue. After breakfast was devoured I retreated to the comfort and quietness of my room where I wasted the rest of the day napping, watching crap movies and drinking a variety of sugary liquids.

I was still rather knackered but had to be bright eyed and bushy tailed for a morning meeting with the Director of IT at Crossrail over at their Canary Wharf offices. Crossrail seems keen to bring in Grads on a regular basis (they haven’t had any in the IT department so far). We had a talk about the placement opportunities they could offer and what we’d be looking for from them. There wasn’t really anything suitable for me personally – they outsource all of their technical functions, mainly Fujitsu – but they did have plenty of options for future Grads so it’s looking likely that there’ll be an on-going relationship set up between the two departments soon. And as I mention future Grads, I can let you know that tomorrow (Friday) will be the next intake’s insight day where they get to meet our managers and us current grads. For the second year in a row TfL have taken on two girls and one guy even after the male-to-female application ratio was about 3:1. From my experience this only shows that women come to interviews better prepared… JUST SAYIN!

In other news this week…
After two fantastic netball wins for Team TfL, our progress towards league glory stuttered with a narrow 11-9 defeat.

This weekend sees a Friday night England game (meh..), the possibility of more overtime (its Thursday so I’m still under the impression that it’s a good idea) and most likely a chinese and a few beers. Sound.

Hoping to have some exciting news for you next week…

Until then,

Bren x

Office desk with
a view!

Zoom in to see
people mid-climb

Ps, If you’re a London 2012 tickeet hunter you NEED to follow THIS MAN on Twitter and search the #2012tweeps hashtag – turns out there are LOADS of tickets still available (even in the cheaper categories) – you just have to be clever about it! READ THIS

Pps, I’ve been watching the construction workers erecting the O2 SkyWalk over the top of the Dome over the past few months and today I saw the first test group head to the top. Think Sydney Harbour Bridge climb but without the sunshine.

Lovelee Jubblee Jubilee

2012-06-07T00:09:00.002+01:00

Ay up cockers, how you going?...

Jubilee warm-up

Saturday bevvy

So, the Jubilee was a bit good wasn’t it?! Jen came down to London (after a last minute ‘mare with train tickets) and we fully embraced all things Queeny.

After my quick stop at the hairdressers to get my summer ‘do’ sorted, I met Jen in Stratford where we enjoyed a Corona (and quite a range of other beers) in sun-drenched(ish) deck chairs during the busy Saturday afternoon shopping rush. We spent the evening looking totally awesome in matching vest-tops, watching crap TV and planning the rest of the weekend.

Gloriana

Sunday was flotilla day. And what a flotilla day it was. Jen and I met Jen’s mum and friends at Embankment and wandered along the North Bank until we found a decent spot at Temple Pier. We saw the royal rowbarge Gloriana which was crewed by 18 oarsmen including Sir Steve Redgrave. We also saw hundreds of other rowboats with all the flags of the Commonwealth. And finally we saw Queeny and the whole royal family just as it began to drizzle a bit. The rain really came down on the way home but that was fine, because we were in the house for a few hours then heading back into town for a night out in Soho.

Greenwich
wandering

Or at least that was the plan...

Turns out we had ‘toasted the Queen’ a few too many times during the day and our 6.30pm pre-night out power-nap turned into a 5 hour sleep! I still don’t fully understand how neither of us was woken by our (several) alarms. Oh well, it was probably for the best, 100% Babe definitely wouldn’t have been able to cope with the shapes we were going to throw down. So we ordered pizza and watched Bridesmaids instead – so very Rock and Roll of us.

On Monday we woke up hangover-less… how novel! We journeyed down to Greenwich to have a gander at yet another boat – this time, the rather spectacularly renovated Cutty Sark. We also walked up through the park to the Royal Observatory where we got a stunning view over the equestrian stadium currently under construction in preparation for the Olympic Games. In the afternoon we dashed back to the house to collect Jen’s rather sizeable suitcase and made our way to our final destination – St. James’ Park. We rendezvoused with Jen’s mum again who was due to drive Jen home after the concert. But that didn’t happen. Nowhere near that.

The Mall - Casual

No, instead, during Paul-MASSIVELY-OVERRATED-McCartney’s closing set I dashed home, collected a tent and sleeping bag and got back to St. James’ Park just as the last of the spectators were leaving. We crossed the Mall, set up the tent outside Clarence House and got a few hours kip. Beer Jackets played a huge part in our survival – it was bloody freezing on Tuesday morning and with no phones (dead batteries) and no watches we had very little idea that we had got up before 5am – it was so light! Once a few people arrived on the first tubes of the day and we established our position right at the front and against the barrier Jen headed off in search of supplies. And didn’t she do well! A hot breakfast roll, a sandwich for lunch and snacks and chocolate to keep us going through the day. We saw all of the royal family leave for St. Pauls in the morning then LOADS of soldiers and military bands entertaining us until the royal procession back down the Mall in the afternoon. As the crowds flooded down the Mall ready for the balcony wave, we made our escape and walked up the Mall and through Trafalgar Square to Leicester Square tube station to make the short journey to Euston. That was when we really saw how lucky(?) we’d been to get the spot we did!! Thousands and thousands of people had spent the day in Traf Square watching everything on a big screen!

HazzerLAD
My fave!

All in all an outstanding weekend. It felt like people were more excited about the Jubilee than they are about the Games – but I think part of that was due to the Queeny giving us all a 4-day weekend.

Cheers love.

Now, bring on the Euros!

Until next time,

Bren.

Ps, Like fantasy football? Try this Euros fantasy game. Entered a sweepstake?...I’ve paid £10 and had balls all luck – Sweden and Ukraine.

Pps, Rebel Bingo returns to London on Saturday. Bingo pens at the ready people!!

Ppps, More photos from the weekend:

Lazing in the Sunshine

2012-05-31T23:46:00.001+01:00

Last of the evening
sunshine.

Oh hi, THURSDAY ALREADY?... I’m sure I’ve opened with something like this before.

I’d love to tell you this week’s post is later than usual because I’ve been super busy doing fun and exciting things. I haven’t. I’ve been a lazy git, or should that be ‘lazing’ git? Yes, I’ve been a lazing git; lazing in lots of SUNSHINE!

Tickets

But that’s all gone now, we’ve had our summer. It was lovely, if a little brief. Seriously though, I hope we do get a bit more of the lovely weather. Hosting the Olympics will be a bit shit if it pisses it down the entire time! And whilst we’re on the Olympics, my first set of tickets arrived yesterday. Well, I say arrived, I actually had to walk about 2 miles to the sorting office in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE to find them but shouldn’t grumble – I’M GOING! These tickets are actually for the GB football match at Old Trafford but I’m expecting some Handball tickets any day now. They come with a really personal letter from Seb Coe (‘Dear Ticket Holder’), and a Team GB sticker. Lovely. London (specifically the Star Lane stop, 60 seconds from my house) is getting steadily busier as Games Makers descend on the East End for their training sessions and to be issued their uniforms and credentials.

Hi-Vi

I’ve been issued with my orange Hi-Vi jacket for my shifts at West Ham and Canning Town and will be going for a ‘familiarisation’ session at both during the next month or so. I’m also booked on to do a night-time track walk! I’ll turn up at 10.30pm one night at the end of June and after the last train has left the station and the power is switched off a group of about 6 of us will head down the tunnel learning about…engineering stuff. I can’t wait – the IT crowd don’t get out from behind the desk very often so it’s good to get the chance to do it while I can.

From the boat

On Friday night I went on a stag do! One of the guys in the office is getting married and a big group of us went for drinks. And more drinks. Then a boat ride down the Thames. Then dancing. Lots of dancing. It was great, but good Lord did I have a hangover the next day! And worse was to come as I arrived at the office on Monday morning to discover the photos from the night had been emailed around to everyone… LUCKILY I only had one awful photo so escaped the embarrassment that some of the others faced. Pheuw! It was good to get a chance to get to know some of the rest of the (huge) team in a more relaxed environment.

Liverpool

Had a bit of a sore head on Saturday. I lay in the back garden and wondered how I could better the situation. Ice lollies – lots of them. That evening, armed with a big bottle of water and several Red Bulls I headed to Euston and jumped on a train to Liverpool. And what a night I had! The Lisbon, Bar Baa, somewhere else, somewhere else and Pink! I woke up in Formby with a totally unappealing 4 hour journey home ahead of me. It was tough. But very worth it. And this weekend will be just as busy!!

The Jubilee events look set to be FANTASTIC.

I have invested in LOADS of Union Jack

Jubilee prep.

(I refuse to say “Union Flag”…where the hell has that come from any way?!) stuff and am fully ready for the arrival of Jenla and spending the weekend wandering around London looking like a complete idiot. I do hope you will join me, wherever you are in the country.

Until next time,

Bren x

Ps, You seen this? (via @berryfruitful)

Get it?!

Pps, Seen Silk Season 2?... You should. It’s great. Catch-up HERE.

A few other random pics from the week:

From the boat

Buckets of vodka

Trip on the Mersey?

Thames Path Appreciation Society

2012-05-22T21:22:00.001+01:00

Twickenham Amateur Regatta

I’ve been back for two weeks now. I’ve shaken off the holiday blues, started a new placement, and am back in full London-swing. Although I’m back, I haven’t totally pushed NZ/Oz out my mind. I have plans to return, for a longer time, in the future. But there are a few things I want to tick off the list before then.

The past two weeks have flown by, partly due to the fact that I’m really enjoying the new placement at work. I’ve moved into IT Infrastructure and it’s likely to be an area that I’m in for some time. Placements are usually about 4 months long but what with the Games and me out volunteering a chunk of that time, we haven’t actually set any end date yet. I’ve started in the End User Computing team – involving everything to do with the user from investigating computing faults to creating new user accounts and granting users access to share drives and various softwares and applications – which, I KNOW, sounds fairly boring, but I actually find quite interesting getting to see how the back end system is all linked together. I like the customer contact and getting to talk to, and help people. Anyway, enough of that for now – more news soon…

The La's

Last week was pretty relaxed; the jetlag definitely affected me more on the return leg – AKA I did nothing of interest to tell you about. That’s not totally true, I did spend the evenings researching the IT job market in Sydney and the visa application process...
On Friday I jumped on a train and headed to Manchester Piccadilly to catch a ride with Naomi and Dad back home – via a lovely dinner at the Brinsop Arms where I talked basically uninterrupted for two hours! - sorry Fam!

On Sunday I went to Manchester. I went for a sensible, sophisticated lunch with a select group of close lady friends. What I got was a beer and a burger, inappropriate hilarity, penny poker, Jӓgerbombs, tequila shots and shisha pipes with a group of peer-pressuring barely-women. Such a good day (minus the footballing saga which we’re definitely not mentioning here). In fact I had such a good day that I decided it would be best if I just stayed in Manchester all night and got the 5.05am train back to London on Monday… Seemed wise at the time. I survived Monday – but it was definitely touch-and-go more than once during the day.

During the past week I went to another BCS lecture about something probably fairly uninteresting for most, I also went to my first netball practice session in a while and caught up with how the second season has gone so far – pretty much the same as last season. On Friday I finally got around to doing my practical assessment for my ICSA license. During the busy morning period I pulled on my hi-vis jacket, picked up my baton and PA walky-talky thingymajiggy and off I went announcing destinations, warning people to ‘please stand well behind the yellow line for your own safety’ and asking everyone to ‘please mind the doors, mind the closing doors please!’ - I passed! And then, it was the weekend again. I bumped into one Mr James Brook for a cheeky pint in a great place after work on Friday and then went home for a Skype session with Sydney, Australia.

Ham House

Ice Cream

And now we get to the good stuff – Saturday. I’d seen a free give away in the paper last weekend 'Great British Walks' – so I went for a walk. I got the tube all the way to the end of the District Line to Richmond and according to the route map I was supposed to head in a south easterly direction. I didn't. I soon realised it was Heineken Cup Final day! So I decided to walk to Twickenham Stadium. There was a lot going on and a lot of excited Leinster and Ulster fans! After spending a bit of time there I jumped on a bus to Kingston and joined the Thames Path at Canbury Gardens. I walked for miles, stopping along the way to enjoy the Twickenham Amateur Regatta (all VERY la-di-daa!) and the gardens of Ham House. I didn’t venture inside on this occasion but I’ll be back because it’s a bloody lovely place. I highly recommend that everyone walk some of the Thames path - it's 285km in total, starting in The Cotswolds and ending at the Thames Barrier in Greenwich. By the time I arrived back at Richmond station I was exhausted and had walked over 8 miles meaning I slept the entire way back to West Ham only just waking up and realising where I was in time.

Random Shoes

Twickenham

I’m on the early shifts this week and next, meaning I get to finish at 4pm and enjoy the last the days good weather! Which I’m hoping lasts through the weekend because on Saturday I’m heading up to Liverpool for the night. But I’ll tell you more about that next time.

Until then,

Bren x

STOP PRESS

WE WON OUR FIST NETBALL MATCH!

FINAL SCORE: 13-8

Ps, I've signed up to do shifts at a couple of stations during the first week of the Games - If you’re coming down to see any of the events and heading to the Olympic Park you might even see me at Canning Town or West Ham.

MORE PHOTOS FROM THE WEEK:

Two Weeks in Oz

2012-05-16T00:15:00.000+01:00

Opera House

The aim is to get a summary of both weeks into this one post – a whistle-stop tour of my two week in Australia.

Here we go…

We got to Christchurch Airport at 3am and once I was checked in I headed for a big area full of comfy couches and snoozing backpackers and slept for over an hour. A noisy cleaner came round at just before 5am to let us all know that security was opening so we could move off her patch and head for our departure gates – most of us did. I fear that the couple of guys who didn’t even stir either missed their flights or got forcibly removed by the woman!

By 8am I was coming in to land at Kingston Smith Airport. I had arranged to meet OB at Circular Quay at about 9.30 but as we taxied towards the gate the captain made an announcement over the PA system that 25 bags had been left behind in Christchurch and soon after that I found out my bag was one of them! No matter!...I had no connecting flight or plans other that a day of gossip, beers and sitting in the Sydney sunshine. I found my way to the train station and was waiting for the train to the Quay when I was accosted by none other than one Miss O’Byrne!! Safe to say ther were hugs and LOTS of excitement but, after about 2 minutes of chat it was like we saw each other yesterday. This also happened with Connie and Jenny and Heather and Jimmy – somewhat of an anti-climax (but not really!). We had no choice but to hang around in town until the evening when I could go back to the airport to collect my bag so we strolled around to the Opera House and (as it was still before 10am) we had coffee and croissant rather than getting straight on the beers. We talked for hours and before we knew it we were in seriously in need of ~~some lunch~~ a beer! We headed towards an area called The Rocks to a restaurant/fancy bar called The Argyle where Joe joined us for a beverage. Eventually it was time for me to collect my bag which had finally arrived in Sydney (via Auckland!) safely.

Excitement!

Sunday was Joe’s birthday! I’d found a particularly awful birthday card with a teddy bear and pink balloons on it – lovely. We had a leisurely morning before going around the corner to The Stein pub to meeting up with a mate of Joe’s from back home who moved to Sydney a while ago. We had a couple of bevs but had to move on fairly sharpish as we were heading to Paddington to see the Aussie Rules match between the Sydney Swans and North Melbourne. The Swans triumphed by quite a margin. Aussie Rules is a great game – the one game I’ve seen where players can really get away with giving someone a sly thump and getting away with it quite easily – the pitch is massive, 8 refs, 34 players, runners, water boys.. I think there was around 50 people on the pitch at one point!!

Spit to Manly

On Monday I went all Dora the Explorer and headed over to Circular Quay solo, and made my way to the Australian Museum. I saw some amazing Aboriginal painting and learnt about the Canning Stock Route. They also had a large exhibition hall filled with skeletons in rather strange posses. From there, I headed to The Domain and the Art Gallery of New South Wales where I saw a painting of Milford Sound from 1879! I explored the enormous China Town and Darling Harbour areas – stopping for a couple of pints and a read of the Sydney Morning Herald – before catching the ferry back to Manly.

With sandwiches and sun-cream packed, OB and I caught the bus out to Spit Bridge on Tuesday morning ready for a few hours and a 10km trek back to Manly. We strolled through forests, along beaches and across parks and hurried the in between bits to stay ahead of the weather that was quickly closing in. We passed some spectacular scenery and gigantic creepy crawlies before joining up with Joe for the rest of the day.

Anzac

Wednesday was a public holiday. Anzac Day is the Aussie and Kiwi Remembrance Day, with dawn and sunset services and a lot of boozing and gambling between the two. All three of us went to Kings Cross to play Two-Up and win lots of dollar –although not as much as the 85 year old veteran throwing down the $100 notes! A funtime Wednesday meant a hangover Thursday. In our infinite wisdom, we thought a trip to Bondi Beach would clear our heads – we were wrong. A bus journey that seemed to last a life time and a while on the beach watching the surfers and we felt grimmer than ever. We went for a coffee and treated ourselves to the train back into town. I was glad I got to see Bondi but the highlight of the day was the spectacular sunset we were gifted as we sailed across to Manly – Superb.

Walking the Bridge

Friday was another Dora day. I decided to venture north of the Harbour Bridge on the train and walk back. Little did I know, THE BRIDGE WOBBLES, which was quite unexpected for such a huge structure and made it tricky to go to the edge to get any decent photos. I did however get to see the nutters who decide to CLIMB the Bridge up close. Once I was safely across, I explored The Rocks and the Botanic Gardens and saw more lunchtime joggers than I’ve ever seen in one lunchtime my life. Back in Manly that evening the three of us went across to Shelley Beach to play a bit of Aussie Rules, watch the sun set and get an early night in preparation for the excitement of Saturday’s trip to Featherdale Wildlife Park.

KOALA

What can I say – It. Was. Awesome!! I had said if I didn’t do anything else the whole time I was in Australia, I wanted to see the Bridge, the Opera House, a kangaroo and a koala. Job done. As well as kangas and koalas, we saw a Tasmanian Devil and wombats which I’d never seen before. All in all a super day, followed by hours and hours of poker playing and rum/vodka drinking… 3am came around all too quickly and ensured that Sunday was a complete write off consisting of hours monging in the internet café and rehydrating.

Now this most is getting lengthy again and I’m only just getting to week 2 of my Australian adventure. But it’s OK, because I can’t really tell you much about week 2 – ‘what happens on Tartar Tour, stays on Tartar Tour’. On Monday we said our goodbyes to Joe and headed to the airport to catch a flight down to Melbourne. We spent the night at a family friends’ of the O’Byrne’s and set off the next morning for a tour of the Great Ocean Road, starting at the Twelve Apostles an taking in several lookout points and beach stops. We spent Tuesday night in a small town called Lorne, had fish and chips (and tartar sauce) for dinner, bought a crate and pack of cards from the British girl in the local supermarket and sat in the kitchen of the hostel entertaining the French group of backpackers with Jimmy Carr-esque laughter and inappropriate ‘Would You Rather’s /‘Criuse, Marry, Shag’s. We continued our road trip on Wednesday, all the way back to Melbourne. On the way back we made a pit-stop at the lighthouse from Round the Twist and the street that doubles at Ramsey Street in Neighbours!

Great Ocean Road

Back in Melbourne we thought it’d be rude not to sample a little of the nightlife on offer so we ventured into St Kilda and Fitzroy Street to a bar with a bathtub in and cheap booze. Oh but did we pay for it the next day… Well, actually, I didn’t… Just OB. My bad. All we were fit for on Thursday was an overly warm bus ride to the airport and getting back to Manly as quickly as possible.

And next thing I know, it’s Friday and it’s time for me to go home. And I’ll leave that there otherwise I’ll get totes emosh again about the fact I may not see the BFF for a year…or more.

And that’s it, I promise. I’ll not be banging on about the trip any more, although I can’t promise won’t mention it from time to time… Plans a afoot for the future and being out there on a more (semi) permanent basis within a couple of years.

OK – normal service will resume with the next post – I have lots, as always, to fill you in with!

Until next time,

Bren x

Ps, Not sure if non-London based folk have heard about the Cable Car, but its right outside my office and I'm going on a tour of it next week!

Dunedin

2012-05-09T22:58:00.003+01:00

Tomahawk Beach

WARNING: I hope you’re sitting comfortably, this gets lengthy.

I really have no idea where to begin. There are only so many ways you can say how excellent a holiday was, and I realise that people will very quickly become bored of hearing about what a great time I had, but bear with me… I’ll get it out this one time and just refer people back to this post and that post and the next one all about Oz.

So, where did I leave off?.. I had just reached Dunedin and was settling into Connie and Jenny’s flat. Another excellent week was had and you can see all of the photos I posted from that week in the Facebook album New Zealand 2012 – Dunedin (I would imagine you'll need to be my Facebook friend to see them). Over the weekend I explored Dunedin a bit including the whiskey store Connie works at in the train station and I tried a dram of the ’87 – top stuff! That Saturday evening we had all decided to head into town and to one of the busy clubs on the Octagon. Jenny, Holly and I met Connie in Scotia after her shift and moved onto a couple of bars and ended up in a place that is all a bit blurry but that I know was called Carousel. I’m not sure about anyone else, but I had a wonderful time.

Paddling!

Of course, we all woke up with hangovers. And what better way to cure a hangover than a McDonalds and a football match in glorious sunshine?...None that I can think of. I went along as spectator to see Connie and her team in action where they beat a team of sprightly 13 year olds 2-1 and I lay quietly with dark glasses to cover the bloodshot eyes. After the game we visited Tomahawk Beach, had a paddle and made friends with a very excitable dog. We were due to go camping that night – we didn’t. Instead, we watched a crap film and had an early night. Good decision making.

Mmmm...

Monday was huge. Massive. Packed full of lots of Dunedin highlights – mainly booze. Jenny and Holly both had class, so it was just me and Con, let loose. We started slow with a slap up breakfast and a stroll to the Otago Museum. We spent a while wandering around some of the galleries including a section all about Sir Edmund Hillary and a bigger photo exhibition all about the history of the Otago Daily Times newspaper and stories they’ve run over the last 150 years. Suddenly we realised we’d been there for nearly 2 hours and had to jog to the other side of town to get to the Speight Brewery Tour on time. It was totally worth it! Speights is GREAT and after a tour of all the brewing floors we ended in the free bar where we were left to ‘sample’ the 6 different types of Speights. After 45 minutes, they were all equally delicious. After the tour we had about an hour before Jenny finished at Uni for the day and our table at Scotia was booked so, of course, we went for a drink and to sit in the last of the days sunshine in the Octagon and wait for Jenny. Soon enough we were in Scotia with decisions to make – what a menu!! We all got something different so we could try a bit of everything – Connie has been working here since August 2011 so I’m sure she’s making her way steadily through the menu.

As well as excellent food, Scotia has an enormous range of whiskeys, which I enjoyed quite a lot. Next stop on this ram-jam full Monday was the Dunedin Ghost Tour… Now, you might not know this about me but I’m pretty scared of a lot of things – you might describe me as a dodgem rather than a bumper car (thanks to Sarah Millican for that one). And I particularly don’t enjoy pitch black cemeteries with screeching possums whilst being told horrific ghost stories about dead Maori folk by a creepy pale dude with a handlebar moustache, top hat and long black coat – unfortunately for me, that’s exactly what happened. I clung on to Connie and Jenny the entire time and can’t really claim to have enjoyed it – all really rather scary!... But, I did learn a lot about lots of culturally relevant people who are all (quite weirdly) buried in Dunedin’s North Cemetery. Clearly the place to be!

Steep

Really steep!

Tuesday was a much more relaxed affair. Connie and I went to Baldwin Street – The Steepest Street in the World. We strolled up it, unlike two energetic girls who jogged up and down in the time it took us to get out the car! In the afternoon we visited Cadbury’s World which is in the middle of town – a bit smaller than the Cadbury’s World in Bournville but we were all busy dealing with our hypoglycaemic naps to grumble. We went for a bit of a drive, got ‘$5 chips’ from the chippy and had an early night.

Jen is off Uni on Wednesdays so we drove the entire length of the Peninsula to the Royal Albatross Centre, had coffee overlooking the sea in the lovely warm sunshine. We drove back via Allen’s Beach and the coastal high road – epic. Both Con and Jen had to go to work in the evening so I headed back to the house to watch Kiwi movie, ‘Boy’. Holly and I wandered into the Uni and around the library (YAY) until we found some of Holly’s mates, we went for a Rob Roy’s (MASSIVE ice cream) and eventually made it to OUSA where Jenny works and where we decided that we would go out for a few bevs once she finished. So at about 11pm we headed to Pint Night – a screechy metally/rock band later, Connie had finished work and joined us for a few.

On Thursday Connie made me sleep in a cave. I’m not joking. Luckily, it was a pretty cool cave at the end of a pretty cool beach under a sky FULL of lots of pretty cool stars. We chatted for hours, used up all of the wood, got steadily merry and slept like babies. But before I got to enjoy all of that, Connie made me collect all sorts of wood and kindling and lug it from the car all the way down the entire length off the beach – a beach call LONG Beach – and all she carried was a few beers…

Oh, and I got a tattoo, but we’ll quickly skim over that fact because I haven’t actually told the parents…SURPRISEEEEE!!!

Before.

After.

And all too soon week two was over.

We woke up to an old fella walking his dog around the cave, said a friendly good morning, packed up all the stuff and headed back into Dunedin. Connie had to head off to work so I said my goodbyes and set to packing up my rucksack. I tagged along with Jenny and Holly as they shopped for new outfits for the big Friday night out. We went for some dinner and back to the house and as people began to arrive for pre-drinks I had to leave for the night bus to Christchurch.

All in all, an absolutely fantastic week 2. It was great to get to see where Con and Jen have made home for almost a year now and it was easy to see how it’ll be hard to leave back to Manchester in July. I arrived at Christchurch Airport sad to leave such a beautiful country after meeting some great people but VERY excited to get to Sydney and see the BFF for the first time in over 6 months.

And I think for now I’ll have to leave it there because this is already twice as long as it should be and I’ve still two weeks to tell you about!

Safe to say I’m taking my time readjusting to 9-5 life so writing a couple of catch-up blogs is my chance to go back there…as is this: Escape Plan is a GO!

But I’ll be talking to the parents about that this weekend................

Lot’s going on this week including the beginning of placement 3 – But I’ll tell you more about that next week.

Until then,

Bren x

Ps, So many highlights but here are my top 3 from New Zealand:

1 - Milford Sound on a sunny day.

2 - A boozy couple of nights in Queenstown.

3 - Camping, anywhere. But specifically on beaches or in caves.

Sweet As, Bro!

2012-04-15T10:59:00.000+01:00

Mitre Peak, Milford Sound

Hello from Dunedin, New Zealand!

This is weird; I’ve never written the blog from anywhere else before, let alone the other side of the world. It’s Sunday evening here and I’m just about recovered from the first week’s adventures. It’s been none stop and if I’m not careful you’ll be here all day so for now I’ll tell you about a few of the highlights* (doesn’t really narrow it down at all) and fill you with the details (and loads more photos) when I get back.

So I eventually arrived at Christchurch airport on Saturday 7^th April and jumped on the Red Bus to town. I chatted with a Canadian girl who kindly let me use her map to figure out where I was going once we arrived at the bus station – it turned out she was doing pretty much exactly the same thing as me and meeting two friends to drive around south island for a couple of weeks. We both walked towards the centre of town until it became clear we weren’t going to be able to reach our hostels. The centre of Christchurch is completely closed to traffic and pedestrians as they pull down and rebuild buildings damaged in the recent earthquakes. I hadn’t realised the extent of the damage but it really has destroyed the city and there really isn’t a lot going on there at the moment. I ended up meeting Heather and Jimmy at the local supermarket where I spotted their campervan from a mile off. It was so good to see them after their trip through India and South East Asia – back at the hostel we chatted for ages and played a bit of Scrabble and the Dice Game...and OK I’ll admit it, I was glad we weren’t part of the group in the living room playing Ring of Fire. I was totally knackered so hit the sack around 11pm and only woke briefly at about 1am when Connie and Jenny arrived!

Traveling in style!

The next morning the 3 of us packed up the car, said our goodbyes to Heather and Jimmy who we planned to see again later in the week in Queenstown and set off for our first destination, Kaikoura. We arrived at the whale watching station and found that there was a severe sea sickness warning. Anyone who has heard about my first day in South Africa in August 2009 will know this meant a high probability of me vomiting on Japanese tourists all over again – nightmare. I was advised to take a little white tablet and wear gray bracelets which I did and amazingly they worked – I felt GRIM but managed to keep my lunch down while we watched a pod of dusky dolphins and two enormous sperm whales playing in the ocean.

Back on the road we set off for the mammoth evening drive all the way to the west coast and the small town of Hokitika...we didn’t make it. After a bit of a calamitous drive which included finding Connie’s camera trailing on the ground outside the car and then killing our very own bunny rabbit (the crunching noise was horrific) we decided to call it a day when we reached Greymouth. We pitched our tents and headed the 15 feet to the beach for a few late night beers and to listen to the roar of the rather fierce Pacific Ocean waves.

Franz Josef

We all slept like babies and in the morning packed up our tents and set off for the relatively short drive to Franz Josef. We checked into the hostel and headed straight out in the beautiful sunshine towards the glacier. We spent a good few hours walking up to, on and back from the spectacular glacier. We spotted a group of ice climbers in the distance and I’m so pleased I had chosen not to do it – scary ++. We walked way past the ‘DANGER – DO NOT PASS’ sign until we reached the highest and furthest peak we could and stopped once we started to hear the sounds of rocks shifting and slipping ahead of us. We were rewarded with stunning views of the valley created over millions of years by the receding ice mountain. The weather started to close in and we returned to the hostel. We treated ourselves to a slap up meal and a trip to the hot pools where I, rather embarrassingly, slept for the whole time we were there.

Just south of Wanaka with
Queenstown in the distance

From glorious sunshine to pissing down rain and gale force winds overnight – but ‘that’s what you get in the rain forest’ said the cheerful hostel owner the next morning. We set of for Fox glacier and spent a considerably shorter amount of time there due to the fact that my ‘rain coat’ wasn’t so much rain coat as tissue paper...cheers Primark! We drove on through Wanaka where we stopped for a curry lunch and to pick up some milk for the two tea-fiends I’ve been travelling with... From Wanaka we continued south, past Queenstown and more and more awesome scenery stopping at a few crackin’ look out points. When we arrived at Te Anau I pretty much passed out while Con and Jen headed out for a wander.

Milford views from The Mariner

A solid 12 hours later I was up as the sun rose over the lake and went for my own explore of the tiny town. I walked along the lakeside and past the Real Journeys HQ – the company we were going to Milford Sound with. I got a coffee and bought the first of the postcards that are currently winging their way back to the UK and headed back to the hostel to find those two still asleep!! We again packed up the car ready for our speedy get away that evening and walked down the road to the Real Journeys coach. Our coach driver, Brownie, was...unique. He talked throughout the three hour drive and told us about the areas and bits about Milford and how/why it’s named after the Welsh Milford Haven! He threw in a few (rather lengthy) tales from his childhood and random Maori folk law stories. Basically, he was a lovely old fella who loved a good chat. We stopped at a few place on the way including The Chasm – an epic waterfall/cave thingymajig. We arrived in Milford and boarded The Mariner. We sailed out into the Sound and all the way out to the ocean. We were treated once again to beautiful weather and a lovely picnic lunch.

FERG!

Back in Te Anau, we jumped in the car, filled up at the petrol station and set off, pedal to the floor to make it back to Queenstown where Heather and Jimmy and Connie and Jenny’s flatmate Holly were waiting to chow down on the world famous Fergburger. And Ferg didn’t disappoint – wow. The 6 of us saw off our food and headed to World Bar and Winnie’s to enjoy a beverage or two...or more. Heather and Jimmy were ‘glamping’ just on the edge of town and had a long ol’ drive the next day so we again said our goodbyes and waved them off. We went for a look in a few other bars and were headed back to the hostel when I stopped suddenly in search of the source of the thumping beats of a Rihanna remix – so we just went for ‘one more’ and ‘a bit of a dance’.

Which resulted in:

Table dance standard

Shotover River.
We're on the back row!

With only semi-sore heads we were up early and in search of food – Fergbaker to the rescue! We wandered around a few shops in search of crap souvenirs and tacky kiwi goodies. We went to one of the activity centres to book our Shotover Jet boat ride for that afternoon after I made it perfectly clear that I would NOT be doing anything ridiculous like a bungy or a skydive. We played several games of pool and got a bit tipsy before boarding the bus which took us down to the Shotover River. I loved it and when I become a millionaire I will be buying a canyon (maybe the Grand one) and a jet boat. That evening we used the hot pool at the hostel where we met two guys from the USA over here on an exchange year – once suitably prune like (and all out of beers) we got changed and headed out for the night. And that’s where that story ends because it’s all about fuzzy after that. I know it involved a couple from Melbourne practising their pommy accents, and a weird 4’9” woman who was trying to palm her son off on us (wrong tree love...), a pool table, a bar with the roof off and a 3am Fergburger. Queenstown, DONE.

Clyde dam rest break.

9.40am and we woke up to the realisation that 1) we all had raging hangovers and 2) we had to be out of the room in less than 20 mins... the two combined made it the worst wake up ever. We spent a couple of hours sobering Connie up enough to drive us back to Dunedin. Several hours, a couple of pit stops and an Adele album screech-a-long later we arrived at Leith Street Central, Dunedin. A bloody brilliant first week jam packed with New Zealand good stuff. I knew it was going to happen way before I left the UK but I really do wish I had a bit longer here to explore a few more places but I’m really looking forward to seeing more of Dunedin this week and will be telling you all about it soon.

Love to everyone back home.

Until next time,

Bren x

*Well that didn’t really work out now did it...

Ps) Sheep really are everywhere here. Like, EVERYWHERE.

Pps) New Zealand does good pies. Great pies.

Ppps) Treat yourself to a look through a few more pictures here (just some of the 700+!):

Screw it, keep walking...

Not loving the boat - sick bag in hand.

Dusky Dolphin

Navigator extrodinaire

The blackness in the
background is the sea

Walk towards Franz Josef glacier

Immense

Cool cave wall things

Ice Climbers

Con and Jen - Franz Josef

Early morning - Te Anau


Fox glacier

Milford reflection

A tad windy

Milford Sound

Skimming stones - Queenstown

Winnie's - Queenstown

The Final 24hrs - AAAARRRRRGH!!

2012-04-04T20:54:00.000+01:00

Extent of packing
so far.

Note: This will be the shortest blog of all of the 31 post so far due to the fact that I have been a bit of a fucktard and left packing my rucksack until, well, right now.

I can’t remember the last time I was this excited!

Possibly the time we found out that Father Christmas had brought us a blue and red bike, trike and scooter set, but that was a long time ago. It’s now just about 24hrs until my flight leaves Gatwick (assuming we leave on time – something I have not had much luck with in the past) heading for Christchurch. Ahead of my trip to Africa in 2009 I was probably a bit nervous rather than excited but not this time. Oh no, this time its pure excitement – which is rather difficult to cope with when you have to be professional and sensible in the office. All I want to do is talk about the trip and tick things off any of the several lists I have made. One, quite menacingly titled: ‘RACHEL – Things you MUST DO before you leave. DO THEM.’

I’ve spent most of this week watching very cool travel videos and reading travel blogs. One of my favourites has been about the Shotover Jet in Queenstown. I’m not one for heights (AT ALL – I don’t overly enjoy flying actually but worth it for the plane food, right?! Everyone loves plane food) so while Jenny and Connie go off to do bungy (sp, bungie/bungey?) jumps or gorge swings my mum and dad will be pleased to hear I’ll be safely strapped into this beast:

Anyway, enough chat. I really must dash. Packing is not my forte, by a long long way and I literally have nothing packed. What else did I want to tell you about??...........

So this snow business? Crazy. No sign of it down here. In fact, it was really rather sunny today and all of this past week. Unless I’m living in a holiday-mode bubble?!

Southbank Centre
balcony

It was so sunny last week that after work I headed to the Southbank Centre’s balcony area for drinks with Devy, Amy, Frank and Michaela. I woke up the next morning inexplicable hungover!! Does sunshine effect the alcohol content in beverages because I could have sworn I only had a couple…

I saw Devy and Amy again on Sunday as we agreed to visit Devy and Nav’s new Greenwich apartment for lunch and park picnicking – what a lovely area.

Greenwich Park

I’m writing this post in front of our NEW TV (Champions League game not helping the packing-avoidance situation). We had to get a new one because of the digital switch-over which happen here last night. Gumtree, £10, super bargain!

Right, enough is enough, this is getting ridiculous (this takes much longer for me to write than it does to read – I've been at it for a while) I really must crack on. I’m not sure when I’ll be blogging next – it may have to be a couple of extra-long blogs on my return but I won’t make promises.

Until next time, whenever that might be…

Bren x

PS, Jenny, a friend at work, has let me borrow her NZ Lonely Plant guide (THANKS JEN!) which will fill a couple hours during the 28 hours between leaving London and arriving in New Zealand but if you know of any good films I should watch do let me know!

PPS, Tomorrow in the office is sure to be one of the longest in the history of work days…

NEW ZEALAND & AUSTRALIA 2012

FUCK YEAH!

(potential new bum tattoo if things get crazy with the BFF in Melbourne)

Confessions of a Transport Geek

2012-03-27T23:02:00.004+01:00

Evening all. Hope you’re well.

I don't usually jump straight to today but I had a really cool day (IMHO) and must tell you about it immediately...

ULTra PTR

A few weeks ago I asked why you were intimidating my wife and one of the PS’s showed a video about ULTra PRT and their pod system at Heathrow Terminal 5 - future transport technology and clever IT systems rolled into one. Well today, four of us headed across London all the way to Heathrow for a tour of ULTra’s offices, workshops and control centre as well as TWO rides in the pods. At the moment the pods are only available from T5 to the Business Class car park but over the next 5+ years will expand to incorporate the other terminals, car parks and possibly even airport hotels. I never thought I was a transport geek (no really, I didn’t!) but after riding in the pods on the elevated guideway over the dual carriageway and over a little lake in the baking sunshine with a Boeing 747 very close overhead…well, it was all pretty incredible. I’m a massive fan of the system; it’s the only one of its kind in the world at the moment but the build of the second system in Amritsar, India is due to begin in the near future and be complete in 2014 - I'll be the first from TfL to volunteer my time for a business trip to see it in action! The system in Amritsar will mostly be used by tourists and some locals heading towards the Golden Temple. The temple is made from real gold which is the reason it is surrounded by an exclusion zone for motorised vehicles to prevent damage from emissions…which makes these battery powered pods perfect! And the IT system that runs the whole thing is really very clever and stuff too.

So, today was pretty ace. But that's enough about that...

We’re getting ahead of ourselves! Let’s go back to last week and Thursday. I had my final day of ICSA training. I have now completed all of the modules and just need to do the practical test on Victoria station, making anouncements on the platform and helping customers at the gateline and ticket machines. Unfortunately it looks like I’ll have to do this once I’m back from down under (NINE DAYS TO GO PEOPLE!) so may have to refresh my knowledge by doing a few online-learning courses on my return.

Other things that happened on Thursday include this:

Before

Which, some hours later, turned into this:

After

Both images are the result of a night out at the bingo. But not just any kind of bingo, oh no, this was Underground Rebel Bingo. And it was chuffing fantastic. Michaela and I headed into Shoreditch for a night of royal proportions – we "lived like queens". It next comes to London in June – which is probably best because almost a week on and I think I’m still recovering.

I’m sure you’re thinking I must have been off work on the Friday then – you’d be wrong. After scrubbing my face for a long time I headed in to sit, quietly, at my desk with a blotchy green and red complexion. Not my finest look, but totally worth it. Safe to say I had a quiet one on Friday evening.

Regent's

On Saturday we had the first great weather of this mini-heatwave/early summer we’re having at the moment so I headed into London and to Regent’s Park to doze in the sunshine with the newspaper and some cold cider whilst I topped up on my Vitamin D. I visited Stratford to do a bit of a shop and was back just in time for the start of the reality TV season – The Voice vs BGT. I liked The Voice but with David Walliams on board and Simon Cowell back, BGT won hands down.

On Sunday I was up early, primarily for the rain-delayed Malaysian F1 race, which I ended up missing because at 11am I spent 2 hours frantically clicking the refresh button on the tickets page for Hackney Weekend. At one point I got lucky and paid for my ticket…or so I thought. After reading the confirmation page more closely, I realised the confirmation was not for my ticket, but for two tickets in the names of Naomi Brennan and Jessica Brennan!! Shocker. I had to leave to get up to Hertfordshire and the Womens FA Cup quarter final tie between Arsenal and Everton so I left my computer (and my hope) with housemate Dave who got in touch shortly after I got to Elstree & Borehamwood to say he’d managed to get me one just before the tickets sold out. GREAT NEWS. So on Saturday 23rd June I’ll be heading to Hackney Marshes with the little Brennans in tow to see Jay Z and co. WIN.

I got to the ground at Boreham Wood FC (no idea why they spell it differently to the place name) just after KO and found my friend Sinead in the stands. The sun was shining again and it was a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Arsenal won 2-1 in the end but with 5 England internationals on the pitch it was a lively game with even livelier Arsenal fans who all seemed to be very…’local’. It took a fair amount of time to get all the way out there but with the Women's Super League 2012 season about to start I’ll probably head up there again at some point this summer.

Arsenal vs Everton

Monday morning came around quickly (about an hour quicker than usual). I was really looking forward to netball; after taking a couple of weeks off everything, giving my knee a chance to recover, I was ready for the last game of the season. And what a game it was! After the 3^rd quarter WE WERE WINNING 6-5!!!!!! Then we lost 7-11. But y’know, an improvement, right?! You can see our dismal (but great fun!) season record here.

And here we are, we’ve come full circle and it’s Tuesday (henceforth known as Transport Tuesday?...no??).

On the cards over the next week: after-work drinks in the sunshine, a pre-holiday haircut and a 3-day weekend. Great stuff.

Until next time,

Bren x

Ps, Connie and Jenny have been totally amazing and sorted out my entire first week in New Zealand. Check it out!

Pps, Here is a (blurry) video of the ULTra PRT pods system at Heathrow. No sound due to the fact that I got totally over excited and sounded ridiculous…

Ppps, Other pics from this week (mainly pod-based):

BINGO

Pulling into T5

Pod

Boating Lake
Regent's

At station A

Elevated guideway

De-Icer Pod

Engineers working on charging
mechanism

Company ethos.
Only 35 employees

Passing Pods

Above the cars, below the planes

Just exited the terminal

Docked pods

Breaking the Rules

2012-03-21T22:51:00.003+00:00

Evening, hope you’re well.

I’m not. I feel grim and quite a few people in the office have been a bit off this week…something going around.

Anyway…

£6 bargain

Where did I get up to last?... Oh aye, I was going to see the BBC Radio 4 recording of The Unbelievable Truth. I did go, and it was ace! I was over at the east London office on Thursday afternoon so I was able to nip home, change and head out to Euston and the Shaw Theatre where the show was being recorded. I got there and the queue was MASSIVE. The tickets were all free, you just apply online and cross your fingers. Even if you're sent tickets, they don’t guarantee entry – its first come, first served and I got very lucky as they stopped validating tickets about 7 people behind me! Once I had my ticket stamped we could leave the queue and return to the theatre for when the doors open so I headed across the Euston Road to Pret (that’s totes how I roll these days) to get something to eat. I still had half an hour before I needed to be back so I wandered down the road a bit more and found an AWESOME little book shop. Every book £2 or less. I browsed for way too long, bought three books and had to jog back to the theatre to get in on time.

Fave shop!

I’m not sure how I managed it (possibly my first lot of rule-breaking this week), but I ended up front and centre – a superb seat. I got myself comfy and was chatting to a girl sat next to me – she’s a regular at these recordings and loves them. I soon realised why... she is perfect for radio recordings as she had the most audible and recognisable laugh I’ve ever heard. Eventually, the producer came onto the stage and explained that we were recording not one, but two episodes and introduced the guests. Onto the stage walked Marcus Brigstocke, Susan Calman, Miles Jupp, Alan Davies and the host, and one of my most favouritest comedians, David Mitchell! All in all, a hilarious evening – definitely worth catching on BBC Radio 4 some time in the near future (although I’m sure all the best bits will be edited out – oh boo)!

FUNNY PEOPLE!

From hilarious highs to crashing lows (EEEK inappropriate pun alert!) – After a late night and a very early morning (thought I’d get to the office early so I could slope off early) I headed to Euston with my tickets to Manchester in hand…

“Ladies and gentlemen, all Virgin Trains to Manchester are cancelled this evening due to and incident on the tracks earlier today”

Nightmare. I had to go to Kings Cross, get a (slow) train to Leeds then another train across to Manchester. After a few drinks and a bit of a Twitter rant I chilled out and looked forward to seeing the girls. Nik and Jen came to meet me at Manchester Piccadilly and whisked me down to Fallowfield for a few (more) pre-drinks then we headed out for a bloody good night on the town, definitely without breaking any rules… And that is all the detail you’re getting.

The hangover
standard

Mother's Day

Saturday was St. Paddy’s Day - I celebrated by staying on the couch ALL day watching the first F1 qualifying of the season (without Jen wanting to whack me with the zapper) and England CRUSH Ireland in the 6 Nations. Soz about that. On Sunday I made my way back to Westhoughton for a lovely Mothers Day with the Fam, including Nan and Pops. Jess made some lovely soup, Naomi had to buy all Mother’s Day gifts twice after leaving everything in Manchester, Dad had the bathroom scales explained (and dessert well and truly ruined) and I trekked back to London with several more bags than I meant to!

Fast forward to Tuesday evening and Michaela, Sinead (Michaela’s mate) and I headed to Ilford in search of the AMC cinema that does cheap tickets on a Tuesday (who knew?!). Unfortunately, the film of choice was The Devil Inside. I watched most of the film with both hands over my face, but survived! No surprises, it delivers exactly what you’d expect from a film with ‘devil’ in the title and the tagline, "No soul is safe". Something that was WAY more surprising was what happened next…

Finished at 9pm, perfect!

Many of my friends know this about me – I hate breaking the rules. Any rules. Anything from queue-jumping to fare dodging to saying you’re a student and hoping they don’t check the expiry date on your student card too closely… I hate it. But on Tuesday 20^th March 2012, Rachel M Brennan (admittedly, encouraged my two life-long (I suspect) trouble makers) watched TWO FILMS FOR THE (already discounted) PRICE OF ONE! The Devil Inside finished at 9pm and This Means War started at 9.15pm. TOTAL WIN.

Today I’ve been on a ‘Facilitation Skills’ training course which was quite useful and meant I got to see some of the grad group for the first time in a while.

This week I’ve got my last bit of ICSA training, I’m playing Rebel Bingo (it's like fight club...I can't really say much) and hopefully make my footballing/netballing return.

Until next time,

Bren

PS, OMG IT’S ONLY TWO WEEKS UNTIL NEW ZEALAND (I’m so under-prepared!)

PPS, The Apprentice has started again. My rage at the TV on a Wednesday evening has started again. Coincidence?

Cookies and Ice Cream

2012-03-13T22:44:00.000+00:00

Friday last week was strange.

I’d worked a long day on Thursday (because of the Cycle Hire shift) so decided I wasn’t going to get in until 9.30am. I did a few things and spoke to a few people and suddenly it was lunch time. I headed to Borough Market to pick up treats for mum, Naomi and Jess who were visiting at the weekend. I got back to the office for 1.30pm and by 2.30pm I was out the office, back at London Bridge and in the pub! We had to pack up all of our stuff and be out of the Pier Walk office by 3pm on Friday but the movers arrived early and we thought it best to get out of their way... A couple of pints of London Pride later, I headed back to the house for a chilled out Friday evening watching the Graham Norton show, trying to spot Michaela and her friend in the audience...and we did!

Brennans

I couldn’t go to football again on Saturday; I’ve injured my knee and wanted to play netball on Monday evening so instead I rested and kept my weight off it (ie, stayed in bed all morning watching Ally McBeal). I had a quick spring clean around the house and set off to meet the Brennan ladies in Bexley. I beat them there, but I’ll let them off since they came 200+ miles further than I did. Once they arrived, we found the hotel (apparently mum is a ‘premium member’ so we got free drinks from the bar!) and cracked open a few beers whilst we chatted and got ready for the night.

We were in Bexley for an engagement party. Whose engagement party?! Becca and Liam’s engagement party!

Short explanation: Becca is my cousin
Long winded explanation: Becca is my mum’s best mate Jane’s daughter

So Becca is my cousin and Liam is her lovely fella, and the night was ACE.

CAKE!

What a great night!! We got to see people we haven’t seen in years, have a great dance and quite a lot to drink. And I’ve just realised I can’t actually remember getting back to the hotel – RESULT!

I had the horrible job of waking Jess on Saturday morning; I won’t repeat the answer I got as she picked up the phone… safe to say it wasn’t, ‘good morning’! Our planned quick get away so that we could spend more time in London before Naomi and Jess had to catch the train home was thwarted by Southeastern trains engineering schedule. Everything worked out fine though – we caught the bus into North Greenwich, dropped bags at my house a couple of stops on, then headed into town.

Ben's

The weather was lovely as we made our way around Chinatown, Leicester Square and Covent Garden where we watched the violinists, the Chinese guy playing a strange looking (but weirdly hypnotic) instrument and feasted on the best cookies and ice-cream (so good, it was blog-title worthy). During our stroll around town we searched for eggs. Not any old eggs, The Big Egg Hunt eggs. I think we found about 6 or 7 but there are about 210 hidden around London at the moment and it’s great fun trying to find them (and something easy to do with a hangover). Before long though it was time to get the bags and head to Euston to wave the girls off.

But not mum.
No, mum was staying another day and I had the day off! And what a day it was. We got up early (not exactly through choice, but through mum’s terrible sleep pattern…or lack thereof) and headed into London, to the Charles Dickens museum near Russell Square. It’s not huge and they’re currently refurbishing some of it to build an extension but what we did see was great. The museum is on Doughty Street where he lived with his wife and where he wrote Oliver Twist. It’s a WC1 postcode and he paid £80 rent per YEAR… 150 years on and I reckon rental price on a property like that there would be around £800 per WEEK!

Prince Alfred

And speaking of scandalously low rent back in the day, our next stop was Maida Vale to see the house mum and Jane lived in 30 years ago. After a nice trip down memory lane we carried on our West London jaunt in the sunshine and set off past the BBC Maida Vale studios towards Warwick Avenue and the Prince Alfred pub – a very quirky, cool little pub me and OB went to on the evening of my 20^th birthday whilst singing Duffy’s Warwick Avenue at the top of our voices...Ahhh memories! After a swift couple there we carried on down by the canal until we reached the Grand Union at Westbourne Park and had a late lunch (spicy whitebait highly recommended) and more booze.

Ouch

Quick trip back to the house for a cheeky nap (sleep off the booze) then we headed out to netball. Mum used to play a lot and so was keen to see me play. We lost, of course – I’ve decided it’s just our thing, if we won now it’d kind of ruin our vibe… It was a tough game and my knee just about held out but I doubt I’ll be doing very much on it for the next week. As the best physio I know is about 12000 miles away and the others are in Manchester I’ve been making it up as I go but I reckon heat packs, elevation and ibuprofen should do the trick, eventually. But please let me know if it’s not!

Mum left for home this morning and I headed to my new/old office at St James’s Park, unpacked my stuff and caught up on yesterday’s emails. Only 18 office days left before NZ/Oz!! This week I’ve booked flights to Melbourne for a 4 day trip for me and OB, I’ve sorted out my bus from Dunedin to Christchurch and checked that this is allowed at Christchurch International. ‘Things still to do’ is a very long list but this week I’ll sort out insurance and send all the important info to the parents.

The rest of this week I’ll be feeling sorry for myself and my knee, going to the recording of David Mitchell’s BBC Radio 4 show and heading up north on Friday to see the girls and pop home for Sunday lunch on Mother’s Day (note to self: DO NOT FORGET THE CARD!).

Until next time,

Bren x

Ps, This evening, as well as keeping up with the football scores, I’ve been watching Leanne La Havas’s Scala gig. She has a bloomin’ lovely voice – go forth and buy her stuff.

Pps, Anyone been watching The Tube?..No?..Just me then?... Well anyway, I spotted one of the guys, David Waboso on the tube yesterday... AND...

**CELEBRITY SPOT**: Eddy Izzard - I was chillin on the park bench eatinf lunch today and who strolls by headed towards the Met Police HQ?... Eddy frickin Izzard! Fave spot so far.

Ppps, more pics from this weekend:

Bexley sunset

All dressed up with
somewhere to go.

Silly

Payback

Silly again

Sunshine singing

Covent Garden

Mum and Charles

David Waboso!

Mum's gaff