Manchester

This week has not been about blogging; in fact I very nearly didn’t have a single photo to upload for your visual delight... No, this week has been about one thing and one thing only – Manchester.

Essential onion chopping
eye protection

Blue sky and sunshine in
Manchester on Wednesday

I love the place. And have been missing it more than I thought I would. So when the chance arose late last week to attend a careers fair at the GMEX Centre on Wednesday, I jumped at the chance. I did quite a few recruitment events/Open Days at my last job and really enjoyed them so I packed my bag and on Tuesday evening headed to Euston for the train HOME. The others attending the event were put up in a lovely hotel at Salford Quays with dinner and breakfast all paid for – me?...I opted for a crate of beer a couple of pizzas (to share!) and my favourite couch in all of Manchester. Miss Jen Copestake (there you go, a personal mention...happy now?) didn’t know I was coming and was so surprised to see me – although quite annoyed that that meant she hadn’t ‘put her face on’. Catch up chat, crap TV and too much pizza later I was knackered and settled down for a night on my couch.

The event the next day was really busy. Lots of interest from undergraduates and a surprising amount of first years (who only started Uni 3 weeks ago!) interested and keen to find out about placement opportunities, years in industry, insight days etc etc... Also got the chance to go round and have a nosey at what the other companies (most of the Times Top 100 were there) were offering. After that I dashed home to Westhoughton to see the parents (and for a free meal) and caught the 8.15pm train back to Euston.

Homies 4 Life

Back in the office on Thursday I had a bit to catch up on and suddenly it was Friday again!..and clearly time for some post-work cocktails at Waterloo Bar and Grill with lots of the other TfL grads. Those catch ups are great although I really need to do it 'properly' next time when I don't have to rush off somewhere else. I had already planned to go to Manchester this weekend so the 24hr trip earlier in the week was a bonus. Heather and Jimmy leave for their extended honeymoon at the beginning on November so this was the leaving do (any excuse for a party, eh?!). The Gas Lamp was the starting point and then onto Mojo – not to be confused with Moho or Noho – both in the Northern Quarter, nowhere near Mojo. Some of us continued onto the Village and Coyotes then finally Cruz where we danced until the sun came up.

pasta in a cake tin and
a chair for a table.

Turns out I was far too hung-over to stand in the pub for more than 45 minutes on Sunday afternoon, and thank God I did leave - how totally embarrassing. Even more worrying than not being able to stand up for 90 minutes was that it became physically impossible to move from my couch all evening and ended up staying in Manchester for a third night!...I was well fed and slept on a belly full of pasta bake and garlic bread – standard Colgate Crescent communal Sunday evening dinner. All of the above factors resulted in me having to catch the 5.55am train from Manchester Piccadilly on this morning – painful, but so totally worth it for such a good weekend.

This week I’ll be heading to Loughborough for another careers fair, having my ‘development needs’ meeting (where they tell me how awful I was at interview) seeing some comedy and at the weekend, heading out to Orpington to see some family – lovely jubbly.

Until next time..

Bren x


PS, AS IF it's November next week........WHAAAAAAAT?!

What happens in Bath, stays in Bath...

I am aware that people should mind what they say in blogs. I think I’ve done that quite well so far. With that in mind, I was struggling to find something to write about and after reading several horror-blogs I changed my mind about the possible topic… and I also really want to avoid sounding too much like a grumpy bastard in these posts. In a successful attempt to cheer me up and demonstrate that other people clearly have it worse than me, the BFF gave me a gift before she left (which we’re not mentioning, here or in general)… a book by Oonagh O'Hagan, ‘I Lick My Cheese’. Worth a look, very amusing.

ANYWAY.

Simply lovely.

The Roman Baths

Then the weekend arrived to save me from my foul mood. I escaped London on Saturday morning and headed to the lovely Bath to see Binks, Nat, Becky, Kate and Mullins – aka The Africa Crew. I’ve known this lot for over two years now, we meet up every few months and get really, really... really pissed. Excellent. And it’s like we saw each other just last week. [Bit of background: I went to Africa for 7 weeks in 2009 – starting in Cape Town and ending in Nairobi – camping pretty much every night with this lot in the next door tents.]

The Girls

So Saturday morning I 'danger packed' (vodka, playing cards, ping pong balls and a clean tee shirt) and made my way to Paddington Station where I met Kate and we found our seats on the train. 90 minutes flew by and suddenly we were at the station. We arrived in Bath at 1pm and headed straight for Binks’ and Nat’s house right in the centre of town. Bath is lovely. Like, really lovely. I was only there for just over 24 hours and most of that time it was dark and/or I was really quite drunk but it made a great first impression! I’ll definitely be heading back at some point soon.

Mad pizza cutting skills

We lunched at Market, where I taught the girls a thing or two about flirting and the art of getting a free drink. Binks introduced me to the finest cookies on Earth, Millie’s cookies ain’t got shit on Ben’s Cookies!!...easily the best thing I’ve ever had in my mouth, well…top three.

Sparklers!

Mr Mullins didn’t disappoint (does he ever?!) and surprised us all by turning up hours before we expected him – cue girly screams and a stampede to the front door. After hours of F*** The Dealer, Ring of Fire, I Have Never, Spillage is Lickage, sparkler amazingness and lots and lots of Amarula we went to Fuzzy Duck at the Bath SU and treated ourselves to jagerbombs and Blue VKs...so, so classy. A short bus ride down the hill back to the house and chicken nuggets and curly fries at 4am - what more could a girl ask for?!

It was exactly the type of night I've been missing since term started again and all I can see on my Facebook news feed is...

'Oooow Monday hangover, brutal'

'Two for Tuesdays?...Two crates of beer maybe'

'Wednesday social - EPIC'

'Freshers got schooled last night...back on it today, yeaaaah'

'LECTURE CANCELLED, pub??'

'Heading to the pub for the game, see you there 12 noon'

'Heading to the pub for Super Sunday, see you there 12 noon'

The morning brought a big fry-up, a Rugby World Cup semi-final and then to the pub for the Arsenal game. It was so good to get away and see some familiar faces and have a proper catch up. I bloody love those guys. A special mention goes to one Becky Wild… there are simply no words…and even if there were, well, what happens in Bath will forever stay in Bath (expect those sneaky pictures that end up on Facebook and you're too slow to de-tag!).

Christmas, every day.

The trip also made me realise that it's so important to get out of London at the weekend - during the train journey I remembered this country has some crackin' countryside - and as a-mazin as London can be, well... Hampstead Heath is no Winter Hill or Rivington Pike. Walking back to the train station I stumbled upon a little shop, 'December 25th'... Imagine working there all year round; Christmas hits on repeat over and over and over again. Urgh.

I have a TOP week planned which I'm still finalising the details of so I'll include that in next week’s post but in short it ends in a Manchester gutter.

Girls, get the couch/bucket/funnel/shots/DMCs/beers/music/DVDs/duvets/gossip/banter ready...

I'm coming to get you!!

Until next time (as long as I make it back from Manchester),

Bren x

Ps, The information geek in me is excited to share my ‘Website of the Week’ (it’s new, I just made it up). One of my favourites is the Left/Right political comparison visualisation although I’m pretty sure it was created by a Lefty and so in parts sounds wildly one sided…but aren’t all graphics?!..

A Busy Week

I can’t believe it’s time to write another of these already - I’ve been pretty busy this week and it’s just flown!

Where to start… well, work has been steadily getting busier and busier to the point where on Friday I seemed to be running around seeing lots of people and at 2.30pm squeezing in a meeting over at the North Greenwich office – and all of a sudden it’s pub o’clock!

As I mentioned in the last post, my manager and I set a few things for me to work towards over this placement until I leave at the end of December / January. One of the targets is to keep the budget up to date and accurate which resulted in me staring at the same spread sheets ALL DAY on Thursday, not so much fun. Other things at work are all going well, still meeting lots of people and getting involved in lots of thing in the whole department, not just my team… so that’s really good.

After work Thursday I met up with a few of the graduates. It’s nice for us all to have the chance to meet up and hear what everyone is up to – everyone is doing such different things! Some grads had their first weeks in stations and on Monday morning as I walked into Canning Town station I saw one of the other grads making the announcements about the next trains arriving/leaving the station – weird!

Great seats.

After Pub O’clock on Friday a group of us headed to Leicester Square for dinner and on to The Leicester Square Theatre to see Tom Stade. A totally hilarious Canadian comedian and highly recommended! Definitely one to YouTube but be warned – he’s not PC, he’s unnecessarily sweary (my fave!) and tells the same ‘Meat Joke’ at the end of every show. Pizza, beer and comedy – a bloody good Friday evening only slightly tainted by a chance run-in with the Food-Thief Housemate on the DLR home.



The British Museum



This weekend I really didn’t have any plans – at all. Well, other than teary goodbyes with the BFF before she jets off around the world for 18months on Wednesday morning… but I can’t talk about that right now... I’m enjoying being in denial a while longer.

So after the two (massively disappointing) rugby matches on Saturday morning I decided to head to The British Museum – inspiration courtesy of the Time Out London app – to have a wander round and see some cool stuff. If I’m totally honest I expected more cool stuff than there was (The Natural History Museum is pretty hard to beat), but some of the highlights included the Ancient Egyptian section which included some mummies – and I know most of them were replicas/restorations but a few looked particularly real and VERY freaky:

Mummies

Mummies

120 black balloons for 120 months.

After the BM I headed towards Trafalgar Square with the intention of going to the National Portrait Gallery (another of my faves) – are you getting the theme?... I’m filling my weekend with anything that is FREE - and I can not wait to be paid properly for the first time!

Countdown!

But I never did get to the NPG…I got side tracked when I saw a rally at Nelson’s Column…and a big one at that. It was an anti-war rally and I listened to some interesting people and was passed a range of interesting flyers... an hour later (and once the excitement of spotting the Olympic countdown clock had passed) I was hungry and cold and decided it was wiser to jump on the tube and DLR home. I got side tracked (again) and ended up in Beckton (at the very end of one of the DLR lines) just ‘cos I wanted to see what was gwaanin that far out East. It’s very pretty down by the dock and it was cool to see all the BA planes at City airport right next to the water. The University of East London has an awesome campus out there too.

Finally made it home for Strictly and XFactor (don’t judge me). Current fave, Sophie Habibis who absolutely smashed Teenage Dream and that guy who they’ve put on a diet...can’t remember his name – probably not a good sign.

Sunday I did pretty much NOTHING all day. I watched the F1 and a few films (The Adjustment Bureau was really good!) all from the comfort of my bed. I headed up to the BFF’s for about 6pm to assist in list making/bag packing. We watched XFactor and Downton and finally said our teary goodbyes. I’m going to fugging miss her.

Worlds WORST packer. She'll kill me for this pic...

I leave you with two questions that I need answering: -

-          When did adverts get SO weird?... Sunday night ITV advert booker has gone mental.

-          Does the phrase, ‘harsh but fair’ actually make sense?... I mean, is something harsh, or is it fair?!

Until next time..

Bren :) x

***Celebrity Spot!*** Saturday 8^th Oct, The British Museum – Henry Holland


PS, some other pictures from the British Museum:

Ancient Egypt section

The Rosetta Stone

Greek and Roman decoration

A clock, no really!

Roman pavements

Shakespeare, Charles I and Cromwell

Let the Sun Shine

This week has been glorious.

Lunch in the park

Since Wednesday the mercury has been steadily rising, topping out at 29C on Sunday afternoon. Lunch times have been lovely, sitting in St. James’ Park. I even went an extra stop on the tube a couple of mornings just so I could walk through Green Park, past Buckingham Palace and through St. James’ Park on the way to the office. Very prettiful in the morning sunshine.



Buckingham Palace at 8am




London Eye in the distance 8am



Cyclops

Wednesday night I headed up Norf Landaan to the BFF’s gaff via a swift canal-side beer in the sun in Camden where we purchased new Fun Times/Wisdom Glasses...safe to say the Cyclops-style pink shades didn’t win but the eventual winners are sure to see her around the southern hemisphere in seeeeerious style. Thursday evening I met up with a few of the grads based in various offices across London for a few bevvies in a lovely bit of sunshine in Southwark and on Friday I did it all over again in sunny Angel (although I did have a bit of a ‘mare and go all the way to Archway by mistake).







Me and Jose loving life

Yes, Friday was the BBF’s last day in work – 25 and retired – hero. So of course there was one HUGE knees up with drinking and dancing and Jagerbombs, tequila, burgers from street vendors and 3am… 6am… and 8am rugby matches. Friday night rolled into Saturday which then turned into Sunday…you know, as it tends to do – but what a brilliant weekend. There is a lot to say for getting up at 7am after only a couple of hours sleep, at 23 I’m finally ready to accept that

getting up early (even though it is the weekend and this new bed is SO comfortable) makes it last SO much longer.

At one with the music



Beer, poker and sunshine





Personal Saturday highlights include, beer pong, crunchball (Manchester girls this is a game coming your way very soon), poker, nose-Jager, 20+1, Chinese take-away, MOTD excitement…oh and so much more. A brilliant day which basically involved sitting in the garden for 12+ hours – simple but fabulous. Sunday was more of the same until Pete hit the road back to Dorset, McGav and Dunc flew back to Edinburgh and Jose jumped on a train back to Preston. OB and I treated ourselves to a Solero Exotic Explosion (from the petrol station) and perched for a while and had a good ramble – it’s what we do best. Ed Sheeran and a debate (/explanation) about some of his more dubious lyrics got us all the way home. All there was left to do to round off the best London weekend so far was an hour of X-Factor and an hour of Downton and a smooth-ish journey back to Canning Town. Perfection.



Drawer under my bed - bad times.



And so getting home for around midnight is why I’ve ended up posting on Monday night again. I’ve been here 1 whole month already and am definitely loving it – the job is brilliant the weather is great, weekends are fun and my food is now safe…



My boss and I discussed my aims and objs for this placement yesterday (which the Schemes Team make us set for every placement) but I’ll talk more about that in my next post once they’re finalised. The week to come includes a couple of Skype dates, a night out in Leicester Square and depending on weekend weather potentially my first go on a Boris Bike!

I’ll let you know how I get on, of course.

Until then..

Bren :) x

PS, I’m going to start keeping you updated on celebrity spots!

- Monday 12^th Sept, Convent Garden Piazza – Gok Wan

- Thursday 29^th Sept, St. James’ Park – Jon Snow