New Recipe #19, New Food #23 and New Phrase #9: Classy Cricket

As I ‘ve said before my dad Bobby and I like cricket and he’d been camping with my sister for a week while The Ashes was on. So this afternoon he came round to watch some of the test highlights.

I’m in full challenge mode so I also took the opportunity to cook a new recipe as well. I cooked Crème Brûlée, which is something I hadn't tried before either. I planned to cook it this weekend for a while, but as luck would have it they were cooking it on Bake Off this week, so I got some tips from there.

It was pretty straight forward to make, however I was worried it would turn watery or like scrambled eggs. Timing wise I had to leave it in the oven for 10 minutes more than the recipe said and they came out well. They tasted great, and I’m surprised at how filling they are.

What would have been better was if I used a blowtorch to caramelise the top. I do have one, but I didn’t realise that you need fuel in it, and I didn’t have any. So I did the Mary Berry way and grilled the top, which worked just as well.

While Bobby was here he also told me a phrase in a different language. He’s always been into history and we watched Time Team every Sunday growing up. So he taught me the Latin for ‘The Senate and People of Rome’ which is Senatus Populus Que Romanus!

So a fun afternoon and the cricket weren’t bad either.

New Recipe #18: Clean Living

I feed my friend Jen’s pets when she’s away and I looked at one of her cookbooks when I was at her house the other day. It was Deliciously Ella and I heard a lot about Ella Woodward as she writes articles for the Telegraph. I saw the recipe book at my cousins the other week as well and had a look through it then and I wanted to try a recipe from it.

So I made some granola bars and after buying enough seeds to feed a whole army of birds the baking began. I left Jen and Mark a few while I was feeding their pets and my family got a few as well. It was an easy recipe and it made 20 bars, so if I have them as snacks at work, it’ll stop me eating shortbread one of the guys brought in!

New Recipe #17: Masterchef Nemesis

Aussie Masterchef is my favourite show and one of the main food challenges for the contestants is chocolate fondant. So I thought I’d give it a go.

I got a great recipe from the Guardian site and read it through several times to make sure I didn't go wrong at any stage.

Going into the oven it all looked right, and even looked fine when it came out. However when tipping it out was more troublesome as it started to trickle out and I realised it hadn't set properly. I was gutted, even though my friend Alice said they were still good. Mine turned out a little better as the shape was nearly there, and it had the melted chocolate centre which was the most important factor.

I think if they were in the oven for a couple minutes more they would've set. They tasted great, not too rich and you wouldn't need ice cream as a side as it’s quite filling.

I will attempt them again as the recipe is very straight forward, and the next time, they’ll set!

New Book #22: Another Classic

My good friend Rachel loves reading and has all the classics. She leant me Animal Farm and The Great Gatsby and now it was time for another classic: Catcher in the Rye.

The book took me a couple of attempts to read as I’m afraid I lost interest. The main character Holden didn’t keep me entertained. Catcher in the Rye reminded me a lot of The Great Gatsby because it took a long time for me to get into it. With Gatsby it only got good in the last 2 chapters and for Catcher in the Rye it was in the last 3. Actually it was from when Rachel said the chapter when he talks to his old is good, did it start to get better. The teacher actually said a lot of thought provoking things which lingered after reading.

I’m glad I read it to see what all the fuss was about. Rachel made the good point that if I read it when I was a teenager I would’ve enjoyed it better and possibly changed my outlook on life. So maybe I was just the wrong age. 

New Places and experiences #27-28: Wet Witney

At the weekend for my friend Dan’s birthday we went camping in Witney, Oxfordshire. There were 7 of us and we stayed on a campsite for the bargain price of £12 each. We arrived on Friday evening and on Saturday we did had a look round Witney. Actually the main purpose was to stock up on camping equipment and get a fry up, both were accomplished. The fry up was a bargain price of £5 from a very nice pub and we ate while watching The Ashes. Well I watched The Ashes; a fry up and cricket, I was living the dream and could’ve quite happily stayed there all day.

Witney was very pretty and it would’ve been great to look around a bit longer, as we spent most of the time at the campsite.

On Saturday it was great weather but on Sunday it rained quite a bit, and that’s when we booked ourselves to go on Ringos. The campsite had a lake where you could do water sports and even though it was 29 degrees on Saturday, we thought there might be some availability to do some activities then, but it was all booked up. So on Sunday 4 of us went on Ringos which was inflatable rings that are attached to rope which are pulled around by a speed boat. We got 2 laps of the lake for £8.50 each which I thought was money well spent. Ringos were great fun, I didn’t fall off but I was a bit achy the following day. 

New Book #21: From one challenge to another

A couple of months ago it was Hitchin Festival and there was a variety of events happening throughout. One of them was a talk about cycling round the coast of Britain by a local woman called Anna Hughes. I like hearing about motivating and inspiring things as you know, and as it was only a fiver I thought why not.

So off I went to hear about how she made it round the UK by bicycle, not only that but on her own. It was a great talk and I asked a few questions at the end; how many miles she cycled everyday? 60-70 was her answer. And what made her carry on when times got tough? The answer was every time she hit a tough spot, she said to herself she would never to do it again.

She wrote a book about her challenge and it was a great read. Anna had a great way of writing that made you feel that you were cycling along with her. She also inspired me to keep going with the 29 challenge. I've still got an awful lot to do, and times I feel I'm not going to complete it, but then reading inspiring books makes me realise that I can (even if my challenge is small and trivial in comparison.)

So I highly recommend Eat, Sleep, Cycle, it’s very inspiring and who knows you may want to cycle the same route afterwards! 

Reconnecting #27: Journo Rock

Last week I caught up with my friend Hayley who I know from uni. I mentioned her right at the start of this blog as she gave me a phrase for the new phrase part of the challenge.

Hayley and I call each other Journo Rock as during uni we’d always turn to each other when we needed our articles to be checked, and today we still do the same when we each have ideas we want to check aren’t crazy.

We keep in frequent contact, but we haven’t actually seen each other face to face in two years as she lives in Crewe and I’m in Hitchin. Last week was her birthday and she went to the Harry Potter studios which isn’t too far away from me. Hayley didn’t realise this as in her words she has no concept of this country in terms of geography which is very funny. She did think that Hertfordshire sounded familiar.

So we met up in Nandos and along with her fiancé Jonathan had a great evening catching up. Luckily she’s coming to my birthday party in October, so it won’t be another two years before I see Rock again.

New Comedians #14-15: Familiar Faces

Just after Christmas I discovered a shop called Cex; it’s a second hand DVD shop and one I shouldn't visit very often as I could spend a lot of money as there are bargains everywhere.

With just under 2 months to go to finish the challenge and limited funds I thought I’d be economical and creative with how I saw some comedians. So I took a visit to Cex and discovered they have a lot of stand-up comedy DVD’s with prices starting at 20p! I picked out 7 comedians that I hadn’t seen do stand-up comedy before and spent the grand total of £5.55. And to make things even better a colleague of mine loves comedy and is going on maternity leave in the next few weeks, so I’m going to give them to her to laugh the countdown to her due date.

The first comedian I watched was Omid Djalili. I was aware of him and randomly saw him in the Prince of Persia film but hadn’t seen his stand up. I watched it in two parts and surprisingly the second half was better. The first half was mainly about terrorists and religion and the second half he would every so often he would say; everything up until now is shit, the show starts now.’ Then it would get better!

The second comedian I watched over the weekend was Dara O Briain’s, again I’d seen clips of him in Mock of the Week but hadn’t really seen anything with him in. I don’t know whether the challenge has made me harder to laugh as I’ve been watching a lot of comedians, but I didn’t laugh much. The ending was funny and I was impressed with how he remembered people he spoke to in the audience in the first few minutes, at the end of the show.

I’ll be watching the other DVD’s throughout the rest of August, so will be interesting to see which ones tickle my funny bone.

New Album: #28-29: Random till the end

Just like the large majority of the albums I've listened to for the challenge, the last 2 were recommendations. The first came from my friend Jen who recommended me the Incubus album Morning View, as it was the one that got her into rock music (I think, sorry if I got that wrong Jen!) 

The album wasn't as rocky as I thought it would be and usually with albums the first few songs are the stand out tracks, however I felt the last three; Are you In?, Under My Umbrella and Aqueous Transmission were the best for me.

The last album I listened to was recommended to me by my friend Tom and it was an artist called Parov Stelar who is Austrian. His music style is electro swing, a genre of music I hadn't heard before but absolutely loved after hearing the album. The album was a mega mix and it had 20 of his songs in full, so a great introduction! The whole album gave you that summertime feeling as if you were on a long weekend in a European city, so considering the bad weather we've been having it transported me to a warmer place, well in my mind anyway.

So that’s the end of the music part of my challenge. I’ll be doing a blog post in the next few days to look back at what a listened, it was a quite a variety!

New Album #24-27: Random Mix for a Road Trip

A trip to Wales is a just over 3 hours there and 3 hours back; so I thought when I went to Abergavenny this would be the perfect time to listen to a few albums and podcasts. I put about my trip on Facebook asking if anybody had albums to listen to and my friend Penny from drumming said I was more than welcome to look through her CD collection. So the night before the trip I went round hers and picked a few CD’s for the road.

And of course I went to my resident music advisor's Jen and Mark for their album picks as well. I picked quite a few albums from Penny and got 4 from the Walkers, so to make things even I listened to 3 albums each.

                My resident music advisor Jen and I

I started off with Jools Holland; More Friends: Small World Big Band Volume 2, which I think was perfect road trip music. The album had lots of variety and different artists collaborating. You could tell that they all wanted to make great music with each track. My favourite song was Together We Are Strong by Jools Holland, Sam Moore and Sam Brown.

The second album I listened to was Happy People by Peace and this was a nice summertime feeling album, it sounded like a cross between the Beach Boys and Bombay Bicycle Club. Django Django’s self titled album followed and the album sounded like it should be the soundtrack to a Quentin Tarantino film. Like so many albums though with the songs all sounding similar, it’s hard to pick out a favourite song from each.

The last album I listened to in the journey was one of the most random ones for the album. When I saw it in Penny’s collection, I just had to pick it up. Penny’s husband had got it as a joke from one of his customers as apparently one of the group visits his restaurant but they don’t know which one. The 27^th album I listened to for the challenge was the best of Chas and Dave! And not just any album, a 2 disc set. So while stuck on the M25 on a hot Sunday afternoon with the windows open, other drivers were given the delights of Chas and Dave. Penny hadn’t listened to it herself and it was still sealed. The first disc wasn’t as bad as I thought. It was light hearted and the whole album had a feel of a night at the pub with your friends. I’d only heard of two of their songs before listening to the album; Rabbit and Snooker Loopy.

                           My other music advisor Penny and I

The second disc I listened to when I got back and it was full of medleys which to be honest they could’ve done without. A medley or a megamix should be 10 minutes max and on the first album they had a few that were longer and felt like a lifetime. It was too much of a good thing guys! 

New Album #22-23: Striking a Chord

At school I loved Five, but after they split up it was all about Busted and McFly. In one of my yearbook’s my friend Jenny signed it with; ‘Can I be invited to yours and Charlie’s wedding?’ And by Charlie I mean Charlie from Busted.

Fast forward to last year and McFly and Busted joined forces and made an album which I listened to over the weekend. It was a good album and some songs struck a chord with me, in particular Gone.

Another album I listened to recently was Lionel Richie & The Commodores Definitive Collection. 

This was lent to me by my friend Penny (she’ll feature more in my next post) and I listened to part of it on the way to Abergavenny and the rest on my journeys to work. You can’t go wrong with a bit of Lionel and listening to all his hits you forget how much music he’s made. The first disc was mostly the upbeat classics and the second disc was the older, more meaningful songs. Like the McBusted album there was one song that struck a chord with me and that was a Commodores song called Still. I guess it’s always nice in a way when a song strikes a chord with you, it sort of makes you realise that whatever you’re going through, you’re a) not going through it alone and b) someone else has been through what you’re going through before and came out the other end.

Learn a phrase in a different language #5-8: Travelling Friends

As I said in my previous post my old housemates Emma and Lizi went travelling together. Since then Lizi has gone on to live and teach in Hong Kong and will be doing the same in Spain in a few weeks. And Emma has taught in Kenya. They are well travelled talented teachers!

Emma taught me Oi-Choi-Oi (spellings are phonetic) and that is Vietnamese for oh my goodness. Lizi taught me 2 phrases in Chinese; Ligo-Sam-Sau which means roll your sleeves up and moham which is don’t cry.

Also during the weekend I got a random text from my friend Tom and he taught me Korb Koon Kaab which is Thai for thank you very much.

Kind of ironic that I spent the weekend in Wales and learnt no welsh, but did learn some Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai! 

Reconnecting #26 and New Places #26: Celebrating 10 years of Friendship

This weekend I went away with 2 of my old house mates from uni; Emma and Lizi. We all went to Staffordshire Uni and were in halls together back in 2005 and then lived together in a student house for 2 years after that.

We thought it would be nice to catch up and stay somewhere, so we went to Abergavenny in a nice little barn conversion at the back of a lady’s farm. It was lovely and we picked great weather. So great I got sunburnt! Yes sunburnt in Wales!

I’d seen Emma about a month or so ago in Birmingham, but it had been 18 months since I last saw Lizi. She’s got the travelling and teaching bug and has taught in Hong Kong and will be heading off to Spain in September to teach as well.

                                   One of the first pictures of me and Lizi back in 2005!

It was great to catch up and we spent the whole time reminiscing, walking, talking, eating and drinking and laughing lots. Lizi brought a game called Dobble which was a great game but gets you very competitive.

Abergavenny was very nice. Going to see my Uncle in Wales my family may have driven through it when I was younger or stopped for a toilet break there, but I’d never stayed there. We walked up Skirrid Fawr which gave great views of the area and had a nice wonder in the area.

Mine, Lizi, Emma and Ro's (our other house mate who couldn't make it) friendship is one that no matter how much time has passed you can just pick up right where you left off. Towards the end Lizi reflected on all our lives in the years that have passed since graduation and sort of gave us all a little pick me up as she focused on all that we had achieved. Emma still lives at home, but her and Lizi have been travelling in Australia, New Zealand and Asia, as well as complete a teaching course and she’s secured her first teaching job starting in September. Lizi focused on the fact that I had been living independently since leaving uni and she finds that I worked in London for a couple of years was a great thing. Sometimes it takes a different perspective to help you remember what you've achieved even if you think you haven’t achieved much. And as for Lizi she’s been dancing to the beat of her own drum, travelling, teaching and exploring the world. Love you Liza-beth as I call her, please never change.

New Experience #25 and Reconnecting #24 and #25: A good old girlie night out

Last night my friend Laura (the one who I did a Neighbours day for) had a local hen do/birthday celebration which was a lot of fun.

When I arrived at Pitcher and Piano where the night first started, she wasn't there and was running late. I did vaguely recognise someone at the bar and it was her friend Helen who I had met years ago when working as a Wedding and Events Coordinator. So straight away I had someone to chat to, and it was great to catch up after all these years.

One of Laura’s friends bought some fake tattoos for everyone and not being a rebellious kid, I never had one growing up. So last night I had my first fake tattoo, a very mature Moomins one!

We then went to a local club called The Ivory, which I hadn't been to in years. The last time I was there, they started playing Justin Bieber and left straight away. When we arrived yesterday we were the only ones there for a good couple of hours, but as the main aim was to get cocktails it meant the group got served quicker than usual.

It’s also where my second bit of reconnecting took place, as the DJ there was a guy called Luc who was the DJ at the venue I was the Wedding and Events Coordinator at. We worked together for 8 months and I’d only seen him once since leaving the job. It was great to catch up and find out all that was happening in the wedding world. Although I was chatting for so long, the girls thought I was chatting up the DJ, but then had to explain that I used to work with him. Knowing him also proved usual later in the night as when the girls wanted a request for Laura I went straight to Luc and within a couple of songs her request was on. It’s not what you know but who you know!

Writing 29 pages of a screenplay per month #4: What happens after life?

It’s been a while since I did some screen writing. I wanted to restart one of my old screenplays but upon reading the plot which I developed 4 years ago, I realised it was a bit too close for comfort in terms of what was happening to me personally.  So I decided to develop a 6 part TV series instead based on something light hearted.

Thanks to 5 years working in an old people’s home I've often wondered what happens after you die and in my mind I developed a place called platinum heaven. My Grandma lived to 101 and thought she would be up in platinum heaven which is for people who live to a grand age. She would spend her days in a casino beating celebrities such as Paul Newman and Spencer Tracey at cards.

I've developed the idea bit more and created a new world I guess, and the first episode I wrote is about how you enter and what’s available in platinum heaven. Its great fun to do as it really uses my imagination.

I'm halfway through the second episode, which is exploring one of the advantages of being in this exclusive place.

The only problem I have is I do have a few celebrities in the show who have passed away. I've got a character based on my Grandma and she’s ruffling the feathers as she’s winning too much in the casino. Richard Burton isn’t happy, but Katherine Hepburn loves it. And in episode 2 the first half includes four celebrities who are no longer with us. I wonder how this show could be made?