My First Year in London: 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):