Four Days Up North (East)

NOTE: In my infinite wisdom I deleted my whole blog today without having it backed up anywhere. Such a ‘mare. So if this sounds a little half-arsed…it’s because it is.

4 day weeks followed by 4 day weekends is what it’s all about!

I must admit I spent most of the week waiting for the weekend to arrive so I could enjoy 4 days up in Durham with Mama Bren...which I’ll tell you more about shortly. Being hugely busy at work meant the week did indeed fly by but I’ve managed to squeeze a few other things in too.

The most exciting thing to happen last Monday was the successful delivery of my online food shop. It felt like another key milestone on the road to becoming a proper grown-up adult person and another step away from my student life. But on that note…

The light at the end of
the tunnel

After work on Tuesday I attended an open evening in central London to find out more about part-time postgraduate study. I must be fucking mental… It would be a massive commitment over a two year period but definitely doable and there were a few suitable courses that sound very interesting. I’ve got plenty of time to think about it anyway. The application process sounds a bit scary, an interview and a test…somewhat different to the process I was used to advising potential applicants about with Course Enquiries. And 20,000 words for the dissertation?!...Anyone who knew me during the 6 days I did my undergraduate dissertation in may understand why this might be a problem... I’m labelling the idea of PG study a firm, ‘definitely maybe’.

The cathedral and Wear

Wednesday was spent studying for the fast approaching APM IC exam and Technical Fridays are always lovely. Real Friday soon arrived and I got up super early and made my way to Kings Cross. Long haul train journeys for me are usually on a Friday evening heading for Manchester where cracking a beer open is basically a requirement when occupying a Coach E seat, or on a Sunday evening back to London where the inhabitants of Coach E are drunk/hungover/too rough to function. However, I felt it was probably inappropriate to hit the beers on the 8am train to Durham… even if I was on my holidays. Luckily, the train pulled into the station at 11am, shortly before the arrival of mum from Manchester. After turning the wrong way out the station and getting caught in a sudden downpour we sought refuge in the nearest pub where to both of our delights a white wine and a pint of lager came to the marvelous price of just £4.12.

Safe to say we stayed in there for a few!

 

We eventually made it to the hotel, dropped our stuff and headed out to see what Durham had to offer. I was surprised at how small the place was considering it’s a university city… Mum and I didn’t want to cram everything into one afternoon so instead of rushing straight off to the cathedral or castle we decided a pub crawl would better acquaint us with the locals. We visited some interested places including ‘Big Jug’ and ‘Fighting Cocks’ – Good banter straight away from the North East.

Great building, shame about the
exhibition.

Saturday we walked by the River Wear, visited thecathedral (no photos allowed) where the new bishop was being sworn in (or whatever the technical term is), saw the castle (from afar) and wandered around the archaeology museum. On Sunday we decided to ditch Durham for the dizzy heights of Newcastle! We jumped on the train and arrived in a windy but sunshiny Newcastle 10 minutes later. We took silly photos at The Angel of The North and walked by the River Tyne, over Millennium Bridge towards the Baltic Mill to see theTurner Prize exhibition… Now, I’m quite a fan of an art gallery or two but these Turner nominees are definitely taking the piss… I mean, one of them has just thrown powder paint, plastic bags and paper all over a room. AND THAT’S IT… Easiest £40K they ever earned. Not for me at all…

The Angel...and the statue.

Mum ain't the best
photographer

After the gallery we walked down the River Tyne and headed back over the Tyne Bridge towards the train station and arrived back in Durham just in time for the Christmas light switch on and a drink in the champagne bar! Monday saw me and mum part ways, until Friday at least when I’ll be making my way up to Westhoughton for a(nother) long weekend and some Sarah Millican related funnies.

Champagne!

All in all a fabulous weekend full of sunshine, pubs, giggles++, boxes of wine, almost-cathedrals, millions of steps (Durham is hilly ain't it?!), and the story about the 3D glasses (i'll save that one for another time...).

Until next time…

Bren x

PS, The most ridiculous thing I learnt this week?... An IT/IM acronym that is actually used:

RAID = Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks.

NOT.EVEN.KIDDING………

PPS, *(minor) Celebrity Spot*…Paddy (off of Emmerdale) turned the Christmas lights on!

PPPS, More photos from the weekend:

 

Winter Sun and Sunday Markets

Been a bit cold ain’t it?!...

But, in London at least, it’s been super sunny – how very lovely.

I’ve been doing quite a lot this week; some fun, some not so much. And on that note, Tuesday I was at a training day at one of our offices over in West Kensington. It ran from 9am until about 4.15pm but it felt a lot, lot longer… The rest of the week was much better though! On Tuesday and Wednesday evenings I met up with friends for dinner which involved a couple of beers, lots of laughing, and learning of an amazing recipe ‘cake in a mug’! As we wandered down Oxford Street (‘oooh’ing and ‘aaah’ing at all the Christmas lights), Gemma introduced me for the first time to the Selfridges Food Hall and Christmas window displays – pretty impressive!

I’ve also been making progress with planning my trip to NZ/Oz in April next year (ages away, I know but I’m excited!) and have found flights and options for getting around bits of NZ – I really should learn to drive at some point…but not right now. Already wishing I had more than 4 weeks but I’ll definitely be making the most of it!

Where the author met the
inspiration for the story

Friday was Children in Need and I was fully prepared for staying awake until the VERY END for the first time ever… I failed. And if I’m honest, and possibly controversial, I thought it was all a bit… ‘meh’ this year. From the awful CiN2011 song by The Collective (entered the charts at #24…) and the cringey EastEnders Queen medley to the awkward and unfunny Dragons Densketch it was all somewhat disappointing. I donated so I feel OK slagging it off a bit and I know they do great work with all the money raised. And if you want to check out another organisation doing something equally amazing please visit THIS FACBOOK GROUP.

Memorial in the
sunshine

This weekend was the last until late January that I didn’t have any plans so I probably should have spent it with my feet up watching films and doing nothing much else… instead, on Saturday morning I headed to Lancaster Gate to visit Hyde Park for the first time. I walked round the edge of the Serpentine and past the famous(?) Peter Pan statue, the more famous(!) Princess of Wales Memorial, and finally into the Winter Wonderland – a mix between German Christmas market and huge fun fair. I jumped back on the tube to Waterloo where I walked down to Royal Festival Hall – lots of people were wandering in…so I followed! There was a photography exhibition on so I had a look around and then had a brew and a seat facing the stage. All of a sudden the lights dimmed and a jazz band appeared on the stage and started playing! Turns out I’d wandered in on the BBC Radio 3 Jazz Festival!...which was nice. After listening for a while I made a move between bands (I'm still unsure whether I was supposed to have a ticket for it!!) and headed out towards the South Bank where I found yet another German Christmas market! All these markets and not a single Bratwurst for me – I’m saving that for Manchester in few weeks time.

The Serpentine and fun fair

Playing games on
Brick Lane

Today I headed to find out what all the Brick Lane hype is about… and I wasn’t disappointed! What an awesome area… Sunday is the big market day and I visited a fair few. Before I got to Brick Lane I walked around Spitalfields Market, Petticoat Lane Market, Up Market (love what they’ve done there..), Backyard Market and Boiler House Market!! All very different, but all great. Favorites were Spitalfields – where I saw several things I’d like to add to the Wish List and Up Market – where I saw more food from more different countries in one place than I ever have before. And this all happens EVERY Sunday! Before heading back I had to try one of the Brick Lane Beigal Bake’s beigals, open 24hrs a day and always busy apparently – smoked salmon and cream cheese for me – best £2 I spent all day.

Scran!

I’ve got three 4-day weeks coming up! That means I’ll more than likely not be able to post blogs until Tuesdays, maybe even Wednesdays… but I will get round to it at some point in the week. I’m always keen to make sure I have something write at the end of the week and keep these interested but as a wise man has just told me, ‘not every week can be exciting love’. No, they can’t, he’s right… but I think I’m doing OK for now. Next stop, Durham.

Got to dash, Rihanna is on X Factor........................

Until next time,

Bren x

PS, Been watching Grease whilst writing this - still fabulous. And yes, I do know all the words!

Some other pictures from the weekend:

Wheel

German Markets

Gherkin

Hyde Park - sunshine

111111

No, that’s not binary I’m writing in… I’ve been waiting for it to be 11.11.11 for years… and, well, it was all a bit disappointing. I spent most of it in the library at work studying for my Association for ProjectManagement Introductory Certificate (APM IC)…don’t think I’ve mentioned that yet, but yeah, I’m doing it through work and if I want to move towards project management next year I’ll be able to do APM Professional. The exam is in December and I have to work through 20+ modules before then. As well as all that we’ve had a busy week in the office pulling together a planning report for the whole of LU IM but got there in the end. I’ve also had my mid-placement review where my manager has said lots of nice things about me. Which is nice.

Les Mis

Tankard anyone?..

But enough of all that, onto the good stuff – the weekend! Kathy came to visit and Suzie and Amanda were down for the weekend too. On Friday evening we headed to Nandos at the O2 for dinner and a few pints then on into town to meet Suzie and Amanda who had been at the Queens Theatre to see Les Miserables. Kathy and I drank while Suzie and Amanda had a late night Chinese from a d-o-d-g-y China Town buffet that keeps it’s sticky chicken near the door and makes you drink from either a metal tankard or a plastic cup regardless of what you’re drinking – my type of place…

Candy

Suitably tipsy we headed across the road toward Soho and in search of the infamous Candy Bar. I’m not really sure how to describe the place. ‘Interesting’ is always a good word. Safe to say we were suddenly feeling quite sober and so spent a lot of time at the bar before we felt able to approach the dance floor – very unlike any of us. I’m not sure what happened to London this weekend but everywhere I went they were playing crap 90’s pop music – massively disappointing. However, as soon as the vodka shots, Apple Souz, Kalua and more vodka shots hit us we were away and just went with the somewhat bizarre flow. Weirdly we bumped into a few people we know from Uni/Manchester/being out and about - It was good to see EJ, Chloe and Gemma. One argument with a night bus driver (who very almost left Kathy stranded in Trafalgar Square) later, it was 5am-ish (I think) and most definitely time for bed.

HMS Belfast

Protest outside St. Pauls

Saturday (afternoon) arrived – massive lie in necessary to get rid of hangover – and we headed to Borough Market for some A-MAZING lunch then on to the Tate Modern for a bit of a wander around. There are some really cool exhibitions on there at the moment – highly recommended. We watched the fireworks at the end off the Lord Mayor’s Show at the Thames and then the England match in the Doggett Pub before shooting back to C-Town for a Strictly/XFactor megamix.  Sunday was a sunny and warm day and we headed up to Stratford to see some of the Olympic Park, then back into town to walk by HMS Belfast, over Tower Bridge and along the North Bank, stopping at The Tower of London, Monument and St. Paul’s (where we stopped by the protest town of tents to find out whats going on) along the way. We stopped at Covent Garden for a spot of lunch and a Ben’s Cookie (see my What Happens in Bath, Stays in Bath blog post) and finally onto Leicester Square for a well earned drink before heading back. All was going well until the Tube’s breaks slammed on, all the lights went out and Kathy screamed like a little girl… we were stuck in the tunnel for about 20 minutes before the  engineer appeared out off nowhere like magic and we started to reverse back to the station we’d come from to have to find an alternative route. All I wanted to do is get from A to B, how hard can it be?!...who runs these things?!...................

Turbine Hall - Tate Modern

Lunch at Covent Garden

A 40 minute journey turned into an hour and a half but we finally made it back where Kathy packed up her stuff and headed for Euston and I settled down for Sunday night TV and an early night. After 15-20 miles of walking I woke up this morning ACHING just a tad!

This week I will be mostly seeing friends in the evenings and eagerly anticipating the start of the German Markets on Friday!

Until next time,

Bren x

Ps, while I’ve been writing this I’ve just had the most fabulous Skype session. So, in honour of that… here is the all new ‘Skype Session Snap of The Week’:

Rosie, Jen, OB, Traum and me :)

‘You’re My Stick’…

…I’d like to dedicate this blog to Mr Julian Fellows and his team of Downton Abbey writers for the quote of the series. I do love the show but I was a bit disappointed with the series finalé last night… good job it was hilarious and I shared the giggles with Mama OB and Laura OB – thanks ladies :)

But back to the beginning of the week…well, the middle. I left my mum at Green Park station on Tuesday morning, safe in the knowledge she was only three stops from Euston and 10 minuets later I started my 4 day week at work and mum started her 4 hour (slight exaggeration) journey home.

On Thursday the other IM grads and apprentices came over to my building for some training which conveniently ended around lunch time. We headed to the canteen at 55 Broadway for an hour and catch up to find out what everyone has been up to on placement. That night I went for a pint with a few people from work then on to Stoke Newington to see Heather and Jimmy before they flew to India on the first leg of their extended honeymoon. Stoke Newington is lovely!...quirky shops, proper pubs with roaring log fires, greasy spoons and trendy cafes, a bit of everything. North London is definitely scoring all the points at the moment; I’ll have to try South London properly at some point. I only got in after midnight, got me some cornflakes, sent a few emails (incomprehensible nonsense) then suddenly realised I was heading to Manchester straight after work on Friday and hadn’t packed………..and promptly fell asleep.

Curry time

Cupcake time

DANGER PACKING on an early Friday morning wasn’t the best plan and resulted in me arriving in Manchester that evening with one outfit for the weekend!...luckily, I was so wise last time I visited that I left some clothes there (read: too hungover to pack up my stuff properly) so that was lucky. Friday, I left work early headed for Euston and eventually got to Manchester. Those last 10 little minutes between Stockport and Manchester Piccadilly are always the worst, childish excitement for the weekend ahead – JenLa’s Birthday Weekender to be more precise.

I won’t go into too much detail (because you can see the evidence for yourself all over Facebook) but I had a really good time. We went for a curry, then moved on to cupcakes and cocktails and ended the marathon in a (/several) club(s) until around 6am.

JUST LOOK HOW HAPPY WE ALL WERE:

Not for me...

Sleep by 7am, up by noon, phenomenal Brennan Breakfast (c) for 8 by 1pm – recover, recover, recover – Fireworks at Platt Fields Park at 7pm, pizza, X Factor, MOTD – Saturday, DONE.

I took Sunday slowly. Jen was off for a Spa day, everyone else in the house was asleep (except Cam who was exercising or eating salad or chickpeas or doing something equally healthy or… something). So I went to meet my sister for a coffee (how grown up am I?!) at Weatherspoons (how cheap is she?!) then to Rosie’s for a brew and finally back to Piccadilly after a whirlwind of a weekend.

 

Wow – I very nearly wrote something really quite ridiculously soppy about those girls being ‘my sticks’ (y’know, like the title of the blog an’ that), but I found the delete button just in time so we’re good. Pheuw!

This week I have no plans. Totally sod all until the weekend! Which is good, because I probably need to catch up on some sleep? Goodnight!

Until next time,

Bren x

Ps, Just watched Eat, Pray, Love whilst writing this – anyone else think it was just really quite disappointing?!...I mean, how, in 2 and a half hours does not much at all happen?!

Pps, I haven’t spotted any celebrities in a while – fair doos, they don’t so much hang around in Canning Town.

Ppps, I spent most of Wednesday trying to write lots of clever formulae and macros in Excel and found this website… it didn’t really help in the end but I just love the name of it so it’s my Website of the Week: http://www.excelbanter.com/

My absolute favorite from Friday night/Saturday morning...

Happy birthday love xxx

Family Fun Times

I still never know how to start these…

It’s Tuesday again – already! Although I’m getting very confused after taking yesterday off work – but let’s not skip ahead. Back to last Monday, after work I headed to The Miller, close to London Bridge station, for a comedy night. It was top notch, £5 in and a few quid for a couple of pints and a couple of hours of great comedians. The headliner was Henning Wehn – if you haven’t heard of him, he’s definitely worth a look on YouTube.

An early start on Tuesday saw me leaving Kings Cross at 8am and heading towards Loughborough for another careers fair. I like doing these fairs but they’re not just a jolly out of the office – I was completely knackered by the end of the day, so missing the train back to London wasn’t ideal! I haven’t been to Loughborough in nearly 5 years – it was weird to see that the places I went to then hadn't changed at all!

Wednesday and Thursday I was back in the office and catching up with things I’d missed on Tuesday. It was half term last week so the office was quieter which meant it was possible for me to take a longer lunch on Friday and head over to North Greenwich (where our Pier Walk office is) and have lunch at Wagamamas. The special occasion was one of the IM grads had their last day! After Wagamamas came drink at Jacks and a catch up with the others. The first Friday I didn’t have to shoot off too – it was good, had a few too many and fell asleep pissed and prepared for a hungover start to the weekend.

50 Walks

So as I woke up with a splitting headache and no food in the house I wanted to shrink back under the duvet and forget about Saturday altogether but that was not to be. And how glad I am! After tramping round to the corner shop for some bread, beans and 3 Lucozades I grabbed a route map from my ‘50 London Walks’ packs and set off for Hampstead. Well, Hampstead is a bit posh innit!!... Veeeeeery nice place is NW3. So I schlepped all the way around the Heath, past the lovely Kenwood House (where I think they filmed that bit from Notting Hill) and all the way to the top of Parliament Hill by which point the hang over was well on it’s way out of the system. Whilst I was on a roll and in the area I headed to Fenton House, a National Trust place that was showing a Stephen Walters exhibition…so that was cool.

Fenton House

Kenwood House

View from Parliament Hill

Later that evening I headed down to Orpington to be reunited with Jane, Becca and Tom who I haven’t seen in FAR TOO LONG, about 7 or 8 years. The plan was pizza, vodka and X Factor but that all swiftly changed once Becca decided she wanted to go out – so off we go, in to TP’s in Bromley. What a night, lots of dancing, lots of people in fancy dress. Brilliant.

Dinner in the O2

Sunday and Monday, me and mum headed back into London and dropped her HUGE suitcase at mine. We went to Stratford, Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square, Westminster, all along the South Bank, London Bridge and to the O2 arena… and all the rest. We walked miles and miles over the two days.

I had such a good weekend. I ache like a mo’fo but it was totes worth it. Roll on this next week!!

Until next time,

Bren x

PS, Here are some more photos from the weekend...

Kenwood House

Towards the House

The Lake

Stephen Walters' stuff

Around the Heath

Tower Bridge and the GLA building

The Heath

Mum at the Met building

Mum at countdown clock

Best pies in the world - FACT

Household Cavalry Tuesday morning drill