Tuesday, 31 January 2012

Thank You.


A nice end to the day
Amazing how those two simple little words can change your mood instantly. Had a bit of a hectic day; I've been out of the office since Thursday and had a lot to catch up with, including a tricky dispute to work through between two groups... Just as I was about to tear my hair out, a ‘thank you’ message popped up on instant messenger and all was right with the world (that, and the fact that it was basically home time).

Anyway, lots to catch you up with!..and you’ll have to forgive me if this is a bit rambly and disjointed – it’s Transfer Deadline Day and we’ve got 5 Premiership games to get through tonight; a totally excellent Tuesday.

So last week, I skimmed over the fact that I started playing netball for the first time in 6 years – partly because I didn’t really want to dwell on it too long because of the ‘banter’ I knew I’d get from the ol’ football girls back home (love you too, girls…). But, I’m coming out (again)…I am a netball girl! There, I said it. And you know what?... It all came flooding back – I used to be pretty damn good you know. And I’m really enjoying it so that’s the main thing. Team TfL had our second session yesterday and we’ve progressed onto backline passes and set plays! Our first match is on Monday with a full match report to follow shortly after that. Fingers crossed everyone.

I also mentioned a charity pub quiz… A colleague is doing the Marathon des Sables, 156 miles in 6 days – totally hardcore. So the absolute least I could do was go to the pub and take part in the quiz to help him raise money towards his charity, Mencap. Oh, and I won a prize in the raffle, free day passes for the gym near work – I’ll take that! But the main thing to take away from that night was the new-school grad quiz team (5th out of 10) beat the old-school grad team (9th out of 10) by a long way.

This doesn't really show the sheer size of the room
On Friday I met Helen at a pub for a swift one before she headed back up north and I headed to one of the most bizarre experience of my life: Pro-Bingo. I joined up with a few friends and headed to The Palace* in Elephant & Castle. We had no idea what we were doing. We bought bingo books and soon realised we’d come in after the game had started… we quickly caught up and got into the swing of things. But this was not easy-going bingo. No, no.. this was the type of bingo where people got fined £2 if their mobile phones rang during a game!! The room fell silent and everyone hung on the caller’s every number. Incredible. I’ve never seen anything like it but, perhaps weirdly, I’d definitely go back! For two crucial reasons – 1) minimum prizes were about £100 for a line (JUST 5 NUMBERS!) all the way through to £3000 for the last Full House of the night. And 2) easily the cheapest bar I’ve found since moving to London, £2.70 a pint – I’ll be seeing you again!

Clapham
Common
On to the weekend and on Saturday morning I headed to Canary Wharf for an excellent breakfast and to watch the Utd match (let’s not talk about it). I also had some reading to do to prepare for Monday’s day of training which I’ll tell you about shortly. Later Saturday evening I headed down to Earlsfield and Clapham for the first time since moving here to meet up with the Africa Gang. What can I say… Another awesome evening and just really great to see everyone. Binks even managed to put the dissertation on the back burner for 12 hours and surprise us all by coming down from Bath for the night – although upon Binks’ disclosure that of the 10,000 words she had written, approximately zero were her discussion or literature review, I did feel perhaps our peer pressure had gone a little far! However, as someone who did their entire dissertation (research to write-up) in 6 days I was in no position to comment. And yes, I am a little proud that I did that.

The good news is, we all had an awesome night in The Loft and Infernos and Binks managed to get her dissertation in by the deadline yesterday**. Legendary.

Hangover walk over Tower Bridge
Sunday passed me by in a bit of a haze. I do know it took me about 3 hours to get from Clapham back to the house (usually takes about 30/40 minutes) because I needed to get off the Tube at London Bridge for some fresh air and the biggest bottle of water I could find. Once off, I decided I might as well have a bit of a walk and ended up walking all the way to Tower Hill (with several rest breaks!). I spent the afternoon napping, watching All McBeal and generally feeling a bit sorry for myself. And then the photos appeared on Facebook…..

Monday morning arrived and I headed not to the office, but to West Kensington and Ashfield House to begin my ICSA (customer support agent) training. Once I’ve got my license I’ll be able to work on the stations doing various duties such as dispatching trains, operating the gate line and generally being helpful and smiley and informative to passengers. LU have had a huge drive to train up as many people as possible ahead of the Olympics. We’ve also had to state which is our ‘home’ station – I’ve nominated West Ham (I live equidistance from Canning Town and West Ham) which will be massively busy all summer!

And that rather lengthy ramble, brings us right up to today. As the half time whistles blow and absolutely nothing exciting is happening transfer-wise I’ll be off.. Roll-on MOTD!


Until next time,


Bren x

* Obviously not The Palace
** Unconfirmed but fingers massively crossed!


PS, With my ICSA training underway I’ve gone all Olympic transport geek… Not quite a Website of The Week, but a must-see if you’re coming to London during Summer 2012: PLEASE VISIT THIS WEBSITE!

PPS, Some more pictures from this week:


Bold Shout

LOL


One of my fave
walkways in London


So keen to run into this

Tower Bridge

Tower Hill sundial

Wednesday, 25 January 2012

Brixton Academy and a Trip Up North

It’s Wednesday already! Apologies to my most dedicated readers (Dad) but after a last minute decision to head north for 24hrs my usual Sunday evening writing session was instead replaced by a roast dinner, BBC1 period dramas and gallons of tea.

After a busy weekend at the Boat Show and exploring Greenwich, the beginning of last week was really rather quiet. My main task was to catch up with various friends’ travel photos and blogs and remind myself where in the world they all are now! Brazil, Vietnam and New Zealand... time differences alone make it fairly difficult to coordinate appropriate Skype time but they all seem to be having a brilliant time and now it's only 70ish days until New Zealand!! I've added a countdown timer in the top-right of the page. The end of the week was taken up with the excitement of Jen and Nik coming to London to see Ed Sheeran and do lots of touristy stuff.

The only half decent photo I took.
After the only minor setback of getting the wrong train from Piccadilly, they eventually arrived at Canning Town where we just about had time to do the grand tour of the Hovel, drink a box of wine, and get ready to go. We headed to Brixton Academy where we met up with Jen’s friend Chloe and made our way to ...the bar. Ed was brilliant and the support act, Abandoman (an Irish comedy rap duo (or was I just seeing double by that point?)) was equally as good. After the gig we headed to a local bar (primarily because we all needed the loo) and on into town. Because of Nik’s Manchester door-staff connections we skipped to the front of the fairly large queue and got in for free – Bonus! After several hours of dancing (swaying) and when the lights came on, we figured it was time to leave for Chinese street food (obviously) before jumping on the night bus and Jen insisting we sat at the top, right at the back. As much as I try to fight it, there is something about a night bus that compels me to sleeeeeeep!...and I knew we weren’t on the bus that terminated at Canning Town. Dangerous. All was well though, and I woke up just in time!

Happy Weekend!
Nightbus WIN!
They were supposed to stay all weekend but Jen being dead grown up and sensible (ROFL......) decided that it was best if they headed back up to Manchester on the Saturday evening in order for her to plan and prepare for her 8 week primary school placement starting that Monday. With that in mind and coupled with the fact that I missed mum’s big 5-0 birthday during the week, I decided to do a 24hr dash up north. So on Saturday, after finally managing to rouse Nik out of her hangover-coma by wafting bacon butty smells towards her, we set off on a London adventure. We started at Stratford where downing a shandy each was the key to getting rid of the hangover and gave us the opportunity to visit alovely little bar called Cow – highly recommended. We then headed to Borough Market where we wandered around sampling different breads and chilli oils and cheeses and nuts (not me) and lots of other things and of course bought some a-mazing Pieminister pies (which went down a treat with dad later that night). After quick pit-stops at The Tate, St. Pauls and Big Ben we made our way to Euston to soak up the very tail ends of the hangover with a somewhat disappointing (but eventually free) jacket potato. A two hour snooze later I said my goodbyes to Jen and Nik, jumped in the awaiting car and dad and I headed to surprise mum! She had no idea I was coming up and thought she wouldn’t see me until March – so her shocked face was brilliant!

Thanks mum!
On Sunday, I didn’t really do much other than sit nervously through the Arsenal vs Utd match and look forward to the Sunday roast. Brilliant. This new placement is pretty pro-flexi-time and on Monday I took full advantage of it... I thought I might get the train back to London on Sunday evening but that idea was swiftly scrapped when I realised I was too chilled out and had a glass of red wine in hand that I wasn’t about to rush. Monday morning as the alarm buzzed at 5.45am I only regretted it a tiny bit. I was in Manchester and on the 6.35am train south bound in no time and awoke a couple of hours later with ‘train hair’ which I could no nothing about all day, and a fellow morning train snoozer next to me.

And now it’s Wednesday! This week I’ve been to the first session of the new TfL (Totally Fabulous Ladies) Netball Team. Matches start in a couple of weeks time so hopefully we’ll be good to go by then… I’ve also been to a charity pub quiz which managed to raise £650 for Mencap and I won a prize in the raffle!

This weekend I’ll be meeting up with some friends in Clapham – last time we got together everything got a bit rowwwdy, so hopefully more of the same!


OH! As if I almost forgot to mention........... The land lady has found someone to move in!!..and she seems nice and normal and one of the first things she asked was whether anyone was up for going out - I think we're going to get on very well.

Until next time,


Bren x


PS, I haven’t really talked much about work because, well, it’s work… But if you want to hear from the CIO of TfL you can do so by clicking on this link. I haven't read the full thing but apparently it's alright... but whatever he/the article claims, London will be horrifically busy during the Olympics and nothing will change that.

PPS, I'll update with more photos once Jen uploads pic and I can steal them taaaa...


UPDATE: here we go...


Bromance


Rough (in) Cow
Ed











Borough
Shock at seeing our ROUGH
reflections









Put Ya Lighters Up

LOVING IT















Monday, 16 January 2012

All Things Maritime


Parts of this week have been lots of fun. Others, not so much… So let’s get those bits out the way up front.

The boiler breaking on the day the weather decides it’s had enough of the unusually mild January temperatures was not ideal. The mercury has plummeted and so has my desire to get out of my warm bed in a morning and into an ice cold shower. I’m bored of winter already and I fear it’s only just starting… Mr Boiler Fitter has been here all day Sunday and now all day Monday and still says he needs another day to get it finished – after Googling ‘time it takes to fit a new boiler’, I think he might be taking the piss a bit.

The Boat Show 2012
Anyway, enough of moaning about the weather and it being cold in winter…

I’ve now finished my second full week in the new placement and it’s still going well and I’m getting a better idea of what this team and area of IM is all about. I’m going to be taking over some responsibilities from a couple of people who are moving on to different departments so next week will be about making sure I know what I’m doing so I can take over seamlessly. I also found out today that one of the guys I'm working with has written a book! And I have downloaded it to my Kindle. And I will plug it for a second time in the PSs below. I think it's brilliant that anyone can now release a song or write a book!!

I also had my end of placement review with my manager from the placement I’ve just finished and a 3-month review with the scheme sponsor (before he leaves and we get a new sponsor on January 20th) – both went very well.

All aboard!
This weekend has gone so quickly! I headed up to Stratford Westfield on Saturday morning to pick up a few things and meet Mr Brook. We picked up some breakfast-to-go and headed back to the house to drop off his enormous(!) bag. Once we’d breakfasted we set off for the Boat Show 2012, currently on at the ExCeL (just a sort DLR ride from the house). One of James’ Events Management MMU friends works at the ExCeL and said we should poop down. ExCeL is massive, it even has two DLR stops depending on which end of the building you’re looking for. There were loads of activities going on. You could have a go at wake boarding or kayaking or sailing but we gave that a swerve because we just knew we’d be the two plonkers to fall in! Instead, we headed over to the Big Boys (technical term) to have a look around a £1m, ‘sports family day boat’. It was incredible and most likely the only time I’ll be on one so we made the most of it and took lots of photos! It had two double bedrooms, a twin room, full kitchen, sitting area, sun deck, plasma screens...etc etc... amazing!

Old Royal Naval College.
I spent Saturday night hiding from the cold in the house and watching the NFL Playoff game between the New Orleans Saints and the 49ers. Every year, just after the Super Bowl I always think I’ll get into NFL a bit more (starting with the Draft), but this year I’ve finally done it – since September I’ve been checking in with scores and streaming games when I can. I haven’t got a team yet but I inexplicably root for Baltimore (probably because of Michael Oher and The Blind Side), Seattle, New England and New Orleans. The Super Bowl is at the beginning of February so I’m sure I’ll waffle on a bit more about it then.

24hr Clock
I hadn't decided what I was doing on Sunday until the morning of.. and after watching NFL until 2am I would have been more than happy just to stay in bed all day but thought I should make the most of the weekend while it was bright and VERY sunny. I hadn't been back to Greenwich since that fateful house-hunting day back in August when I got completely lost up Maze Hill on the way to a viewing and a man came to pick me up in his van and small children in the back… I’d rather not relive that here… (oh dear, that sounds way worse than it was supposed to!).
Anyway, I jumped on the DLR and headed down the stop at the Cutty Sark (not Greenwich proper) and wandered around a bit until I found the Greenwich Market where I bought some lunch (spicy lamb and chorizo wrap - proper lush) and found a bench in the grounds of Greenwich University to chow down. I walked along the Thames Path for a while, for longer than I meant to, until I realised I didn’t know where I was going anymore but thankfully managed to find my way back through a maze of cobbled streets and cottages to the main road. I headed towards the grounds of the National Maritime Museum but carried on up the hill towards the Observatory.


View from the Observatory - Phone camera doesn't do it justice!


Nelson's Uniform -
Tiny!!
What a cool place! Amazing views across London and the chance to stand on the meridian (although I didn't actually do this - I'm saving it until both Brennan sisters come to visit in Feb) at the home of Greenwich Mean Time – needless to say it was full of excited tourists and I don’t mind admitting I was one of them. After a while I headed back down the hill and into the museum to learn all about Admiral Nelson, the East India Trading Company, the discovery of the Americas and how good the UK was at all things nautical. The museum is great and FREE - Bonus. I'd definitely recommend it.

Eventually I felt my late night catching up with me so headed back to the house in time to catch the 3rd of the four NFL games this weekend and the grand finalé of Sherlock Holmes – Brilliant! For anyone who follows Sherlock, I think I know how he's done 'it' (don't want to spoil it for anyone that hasn't cought up on iPlayer yet!)... Roll on series 3!! 

This week I’m meeting friends for dinner and drinks and seeing Ed Sheeran in Brixton on Friday with some Manchester friends who are here for a visit!


Until next time,

Bren x


PS, I got a Kindle for Christmas and I’ve never read so much so quickly! Currently reading Before You Go To Sleep – it’s excellent so far, I recommend. I also MASSIVELY recommend you download Mashed-Up Queen of Heaven, a dark comedy with the strap line, 'If you are looking for a happy ending - jog on!' by DJ Bidewell.

PPS, This was a long  and rambly blog and I’m sure I forgot a few things I wanted to mention – damn it.

PPPS, More pics from my weekend:















Monday, 9 January 2012

A New Year, A New Placement.


Christmas, New Years and all that relaxing business seems so long ago! This week I’ve mostly been getting my head around the TfL world of Service Transition. I’ve started my new placement. A new building, a new team, and lots of new things to learn.

I got back to London last Monday evening after recovering from the brilliant New Years Eve party at Colgate Crescent and pretty much went straight to bed. Alas, two weeks of late nights and long lay-ins meant my body clock was having none of it. My radio alarm went off at 7am on Tuesday and to my horror the nasty beats of Skrillex were blaring out – don’t you just love a Zane Lowe breakfast show…

After recovering from the Skrillex wake-up, I started out on my new commute – and all of a sudden I was at work. That’s right, my new commute means I can get door to door in just 20 minutes…pretty rare in London I’d say! After introductions to the team and sorting out my desk (filling the draw with stationary and proudly display my coffee mug) I started a week of listening!.. That’s pretty much all I’ve done since I started; talking/listening to all of the different teams within the Service Management department, finding out what they do, how they work with the different teams in the rest of IM and asking lots of questions! The team that I’ll be working in is Service Transition – making sure new systems are ready to be supported by us once they ‘go live’ on the network. It looks like I’ll be taking over a portfolio of Suface Transport/Small Works projects as well as taking on the project quotations procedure to ensure we (STrans and the wider Shared Services dept) charge each project an appropriate amount for the service and support we provide. After one week, and with the first impressions firmed up, I think I’m going to like it at the Pier Walk office. From where I sit I can see the Dome/O2 (we’re right next door), the Olympic Stadium and the beginnings of the newCable Car across the Thames. Lovely.

Saatchi Gallery
Gardens outside the Saatchi
After a long week (albeit only four days!) the weekend called for a more relaxing pace. I didn’t have any plans so decided it was the perfect opportunity to delve back into my box of 50 London Walks. Since I moved down here in September I hadn’t made the time to explore south-west London at all. And, partly due to hearing about the Northern Line extension to Battersea in work I decided to head to see the iconic Battersea Power Station. I know, it’s a ruin and it’s fenced off and, ultimately, there isn’t much to see but Iwanted to see it before the surrounding area is full of trendy wine bars andshiny apartments and looks nothing like the Pink Floyd album cover. I thought while I was down that way I’d have a nosey around the Saatchi Gallery just off the Kings Road – it was great! And I wandered around the more residential parts (where the London 1%ers live) before heading through Battersea Park (via the pretty impressive Albert Bridge) and along the Thames Path to Vauxhall. Exhausting!

Albert Bridge
Iconic
Sunday I slept until noon. Damn it! Just enough time to sort out breakfast and tune in for the Manchester derby. A nervy last 30 minutes but we dragged ourselves over the finish line and into the 4th round draw…only to draw bloody Liverpool at Anfield!! Other Sunday nothingness included watching two crap films, Adventureland and Broken Flowers, searching for decent books for my Kindle, reading Travel Blog articles about NZ and…ironing.

Unfortunately, plans of a trip to Bedford this weekend have fallen through (100+ end of year school reports to write…I don’t envy you Gemma!) but I’m sure I’ll sort something out what with Mr Brook being in town..
Random Peace Pagoda
in Battersea Park

Oh, I’ve also signed up to become an ICSA (Incident Customer Service Agent) so, during the Olympics, I could be working on a station near you! It takes about 4 and a half days training and a couple of practical test too… And speaking of tests, I hear we’ll be getting the results of the APM IC exam sometime next week – argh…

But, of course I’ll keep you updated with all that next week.

Until then,

Bren x


PS, Horrible Housemates Update: One of them is moving out!... Sadly, not the worst offender. I live in hope...