My First Year in London: March 2012

Tuesday, 27 March 2012

Confessions of a Transport Geek

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

Wednesday, 21 March 2012

Breaking the Rules

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?

Tuesday, 13 March 2012

Cookies and Ice Cream

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

Thursday, 8 March 2012

Good Things Come To Those Who Tweet.

…OMG It’s Thursday already!

Even beer sized Coke
didn't help me

I’ve had a busy week. I’m knackered. But I’ve lots to tell you…

First things first, I failed at Lent. My bad. A solid two weeks completed – I’m happy with that. There’s only so much bad red wine a girl can take and I reached my limit after the weekend in Bath. So tonight, I’m kicking back, watching the football (bollocks!), and enjoying a well deserved cold beer. I’ll tell you more about why I think it’s so deserved later…

I want to tell you a little about Twitter.

Love it or hate it, it’s here to stay…for now at least.

I for one love it. And so do many of the other however many million users. There are several ways you can use Twitter and I encourage you to sign up or at least find out more about it #GiveItATry. I’ll be honest; I mainly use it for following celebrities, finding out what people are saying about stuff going on in the world (and throwing my opinion into the mix) and for anything a bit too geeky for Facebook. You can see what I’m saying over in that clever little box on the right side of this page, or go to actual Twitter by clicking on my name below:

@ThatGirlBren

*I try not to, but every now and again I like to send

a ‘I’m eating toast’ kind of boring tweet. You’ve been warned.

I ‘follow’ the tweets of around 300 people. Some people I know, some of the aforementioned celeb types, some news/world stuff and some stuff to do with things I’m interested in like, sport, travel, Manchester stuff, London stuff etc etc... In the past I’ve got some great stuff from Twitter, including winning theatre tickets and getting guest list to events. And it was on Friday evening that, through the greatness of Twitter (I can’t actually remember which of the 300 accounts I follow it was that tweeted about it – possibly @TimeOutLondon), I found out about the TNT Travel Show 2012.

Simon Reeve:
'The Indian Ocean'
BBC2, 2012

'We came, we saw,
we never went home'

So instead of heading down to Clapham for football training on Saturday morning, I continued on westwards towards Earl’s Court. The travel show was excellent. It was full of stands from different companies all flogging discounted trips and tours for all over the world. I had a right good chat to a bloke about my trip through southern and eastern Africa for about half an hour, enjoyed a seminar by Simon Reeve, picked up a free guide book on Australia and New Zealand (FOUR WEEKS TO GO!) and a free Gold Card from @hostelworld, and found out more about the logistics of working abroad (did you know that the minimum wage in Australia is over £10 an hour?!). Once I made it back to the house I booked my hostel for the first night in Christchurch on 7^th April and Googled loads of other NZ/Oz stuff. Everything is getting rather exciting now! Next up, booking flights to Melbourne and back, and finding out the quickest route to Gatwick from my new office in West London.

That’s right, I’m moving office again. The era of the one stop, 16 minute commute is over for now. As of Monday my department will be based back over at St. James’ Park and my commute increases to around 45 minutes for then next four weeks. Tomorrow I will mainly be packing up my desk into a crate and being sent home at 3pm so the movers can come in and start loading the moving vans. Early Friday finish – Huzzah!

On Sunday the weather was like this:

Shit one...

…so I stayed in bed pretty much all day. I watched some DVDs with the housemates and generally chilled out. An all-round great day.

On Monday night I played netball, again. We lost, again. But after putting an advert on the TfL intranet and having a good amount of interest we had a player come to join us and has decided to play next season!

Tuesday will forever be known as the Night of the Nando’s. Michaela and I headed to the O2 to take advantage of my 20% discount – POW! However, it turns out I’m only supposed to get the discount until 5pm AND only on my meal AND not when there is an event on at the O2. After charming the guy who was serving us (and after his manager massively pissed him off) he let us break all three of these rules and we chowed down on a fair amount of chickeny goodness. And afterwards enjoyed a great digesting session…(don’t ask…).

BoJo, front and centre.

Yesterday I was out at West Kensington for day three of my ICSA training. The morning session taught me all I need to know about the types of tickets we sell and the pricing system – such a nightmare, soz about that! The afternoon session was all about the gate line and how the different types of gates work and how to fix them when they go wrong. As I was over in West London I headed to the Hammersmith & Fulham town hall for People’s Question Time – a chance to ask the @MayorOfLondon and his GLA assembly members about issues affecting Londoners. I found it really interesting. A lot of issues were very local to H&F but with a 1000+ strong crowd, quite a few Londonwide issues were raised too. I’ll admit it, I like BoJo. The media may have tagged him ‘Bumbling Boris’ but he’s clearly a very intelligent guy. He’s quick witted, personable and engaging. Still, I’ll never vote for him… Shame.

Silly cap

Bethnal Green

And finally, it’s Thursday and I’m drinking beer. This morning I left the house at 6am, headed to the middle of Hackney to stand in the cold for hours, wearing a silly cap and headache inducing hi-vis, teaching people how to use the @BarclaysCycle Hire bikes. Today was the East London extension launch of the bikes and they proved very popular. It was great to get the chance to talk to local people and hear their (positive!) feedback. And I got to cycle around for free too – bonus. After that I had to head back to the house to change then get into the office for a couple of meetings. All in all it’s felt like a right long day and this beer taste chuffin’ ace.

This weekend I’ve got Brennan visitors, a family engagement do, a date with Charles Dickens and only a 4-day working week.

Until next time (which will be along in no time at all!),

Bren x

PS, As it’s International Women’s Day, here are 10 of my favourite women I follow on Twitter (in no particular order):