Get Sporty.

Here I am again – only sportier.

Saturday Morning Football Snow

Over the past week I’ve played three, yes THREE netball matches. I’ve also joined a football team and been to my first training session in sub-zero temperatures!

Last Monday I headed to the Globe Academy (school’s are pretty swanky these days eh?!) at Elephant & Castle where our netball league, Go Mammoth, plays on a Monday evening. Our game started at 7.40pm but we got there pretty earlier to sign a waiver (if we die, it’s not their fault blah blah blah…), get out league t-shirt freebies, and warm-up – which was no easy task at -4°c.

We lost 22-2.

But, bearing in mind that some of the girls had never played a netball match before I didn’t think that score was too bad. I stayed for an extra game because the teams on next were missing a couple of players.. knackered.com!
This week we improved loads. Well, we still lost… but we managed to score 6! 13-6, not bad at all. And, as a rather cringey side-note and in an ‘Ode to Chippy’ [I tried to link to the page, alas they've made their group 'private']:

Match 1 – Player of the Match: me.

Match 2 – Player of the Match: me.

[For  anyone who doesn't know Chippy/didn't see her CRINGE post that won't mean much..] So that’s nice.

Back to last week... I have been getting stuck into work and was busy catching up with my project managers to make sure there was nothing I was supposed to be doing that I wasn’t and everything was progressing smoothly with their projects. I was also preparing for my 6 month probation meeting with the Grad Scheme sponsor. It was my chance to discuss my progress so far and my plans for the next 18 months. The good news is my sponsor wants to keep me on the scheme, pheuw! And that’s usually followed by bad news but…I have none! How can there be with only FIFTY, 5-0 days until New Zealand!

I’ve been in touch with Connie and Jenny and an itinerary is in the process of being arranged – hopefully we’ll also be able to meet up with Heather and Jimmy while I’m there before hopping over to Sydney to see OB and Joe. Incredible. I absolutely can’t wait.

On Friday, I had a pretty early night knowing I’d be up early to get to football and preparing myself for a big night out on Saturday when Cam and Gemma came to stay for the night. I woke up early doors and headed out in the fresh snow(!) and still sub-zero temperatures(!!) and headed for Clapham Common. Yes, I know I was taking the piss out of all the keen beans running around the Common on a Saturday morning last week – I have become one. Football was great! A good group of girls and a great coach – we did some fitness (which nearly killed me), skills and drills (where I made a tit of myself by into a mound of snow and face-planting the ground) and finally a good long game (where I scored a cracker!). All in all pretty great.

Candy

Guard blates
fancied Cam

I quickly made my way back to the house to spring clean, scrub off the mud, and put the wine in the fridge and headed back out to Euston to meet Cam. We headed to Borough Market and Straford where we met Gemma and came back to the house and prepared for the night out with crap TV, some TOP DRAWER gossip and lots of booze. Lots of giggles later we got to the (still horrific) Candy Bar after a brief stop by G-A-Y Bar to collect our wristbands for Heaven. After a cheeky Jagerbomb and a rather long wait in the queue we finally made it inside and what are we rewarded by?...Emeli Sandé on stage! Her voice is a-mazing and it set us up for a good ol’ boogie for the rest of the night on the stage. At 4.30ish (and near closing time) we called it a night and headed for the night bus (via McDonalds and an early morning wake up call to JenLa obvs..). I may or may not have fallen off my seat as the bus took a corner rather sharply – but I kept hold of my BBQ sauce so all was well with the world. We strolled home in blissful unawareness until, during the tea and toast come-down, we saw on the news that Whitney had died. And I thought it totally appropriate to call mum to tell her – sorry mum! Really, really sad news.

Sandé

After a few hours sleep (for me, on a rather uncomfortable couch) we thought the best thing for he hangover was a walk around London in the fresh air. We visited Buckingham Palace, strolled up the Mall, around Trafalgar Square, down Whitehall and past Downing Street, Westminster, Big Ben until we decided on a late lunch at Wagamamas on the South Bank. Lovely.

Cam and Gem

We said our goodbyes as we went our separate ways at Euston. We’ll definitely be doing all of that again sometime soon – a brilliant 24hrs.

This week I’m out of the office on a course Monday – Wednesday doing my ITIL Foundation and on Thursday I’m helping with the Q&A session for the next Grad intake’s assessment centre – I can’t believe it’s come around so soon!! I’m also meeting up with Traum and Calla after my exam tomorrow who’re in London to see Lion King. I’m 100% sure I’m playing my classic role of third wheel in what is probably their Valentines date…sorry girls – Can’t wait to see you though!! And the Brennan sisters arrive on Friday.... messy times.

Until next week,

Bren x

PS, **Depressing Moment of the Week (and my life to date)**: EBay sending me an email advising I buy myself a Valentines gift. Fuck you, EBay.

PPS, If you’re sat at home alone this evening whilst housemates/siblings/parents/EVERYONE ELSE is out doing something romantic…… go ahead, treat yourself…

PPPS, More pictures from the the weekend:

Sandé

Heaven

DJ LOVE

From the stage

No idea who he is

LOVING LIFE

Martha...

Downing Street

Buck House

Frozen fountain

The White Stuff.

No, not milk. SNOW!

SNOW in London!

A Sunday morning post, check me out. There are a couple of reasons I’m posting so early – 1) I’m not hung over (no, really…well ok, maybe a bit) and 2) I won’t be writing this tonight because I’ll be preparing (having a nap) to watch Super Bowl XLVI.

Yesterday, I was starting to think London would be the only part of the country without snow. Which made me sad. I bloody love snow. I even got a picture message sent from Westhoughton showing a mighty covering of it – I won’t lie, I was jealous. But fear not, it started snowing at about 8pm and by about midnight it was deep enough to have an almighty snowball fight! Who with I hear you ask? Well we’ll come onto that in just a moment...

On Wednesday I got in from work to discover our new housemate has moved in! She’s called Michaela and has moved down to London for a job starting on Monday. She likes TV and beer – Winner.

After work on Thursday I headed to Waterloo with the team for my manager’s leaving do. I was fairly sensible and was home by 10 ready to get Friday out of the way. Friday afternoon I headed over to Faith Lawson House (the office I was based Sept '11 - Dec '11) to speak to some of the heads of different teams over there. I wanted to understand how all the different teams within Service Management worked together but while we’re still in the process of merging TfL IM and LUIM through Project Horizon, it’s all a bit vague how it’s going to work into the future. I stopped in briefly to see my old team and see how they were getting on so that was nice.

APM Certificate!

On Friday, I got back from work to discover a letter and exam results from the APM – I PASSED!! And have a lovely certificate to prove it.

Michaela had some friends round, we got the TV in the front room working (only Channel 4) and had a few beers. Dave got in from work and joined us and it was all a good laugh.

NEWSFLASH: After living here for exactly 5 months I had a good night with housemates!

Raphael's Cartoons

V&A

I got up early on Saturday; I had decided to head back to Clapham to see it by day, so that I could piece together where my night out last weekend actually took me! I walked up and down the high street and around a few roads as I got a bit lost… eventually I found a coffee shop and a bench on the Common. It turns out that a Saturday morning on Clapham Common means you have to jog everywhere. There were at least 4 different groups of military fitness/boot-camp style sessions going on. It was all a bit mental. It was -4°C and after 15 minutes on the bench I could barely walk, let alone run. I headed back to the tube basically just so I could warm up (yes, that does make me sound like a hobo). As I sat on the tube, slowly thawing out, I decided instead of going home to hibernate, I’d visit one of the museums I hadn’t gotten around to yet, The Victoria and Albert in South Kensington. I had a wander and looked around some of the galleries – The museum is currently between exhibitions so I’m going to go back in a couple of months. On the way home I got caught up in the New Zealand Day Circle Line Pub Crawl – I was handed booze and joined in songs and games for the nine stops I was on there for. Brilliant, and if truth be told…way better than the museum.

Clapham
Common

I got back to the house in time for the dullest Calcutta Cup EVER (after some further TV aerial adjustments). A friend of Michaela’s came round and there were beers, Take Me Out, The Full Monty (the film) and then, a snowball fight! Three 20-somethings running around, screaming, laughing, having a bloody good time – until we realised it was midnight and that the neighbours were probably getting pretty pissed off.

And now it’s today – my plans for this afternoon have fallen through (bloody snow – I’m so fickle) so I’m going to do nothing all day except stay in bed and watch crap TV. That’s right. ALL DAY.

Enjoy the snow while it lasts!

Until next time,

Bren x

PS, ‘Severe weather’?.... It's a bit of snow?! I swear they run the SAME story every single year – Lazy journalism.

PPS, After re-reading this post it may sound as though I didn’t enjoy the V&A. I did! And here are some more pictures:

Highlight of the
Raphael Gallery

LIONS!

Small section of the
stained glass collection

Persian (?) rug from 1500s

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 (5^th out of 10) beat the old-school grad team (9^th 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

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