MAD COW MOMENTS

Easter Roses

2009-04-12T10:15:00.006+01:00

Believe it or not, you are looking at 120 roses, or so the labels say. I'm having Easter Sunday lunch with Fabienne, Claire, Chantelle and Martin at Fab and Claire's house and so I went to my local supermarket (Sainsbury's) to get an Easter egg for each of them. I always have to at least look at the flowers on my way in... and these wonderful roses jumped out at me. 40 Fairtrade roses in each bunch reduced to half price (down from £10 to £5), I just had to have them. I ended up buying a bunch for myself as well. I still bought the eggs but in my opinion the flowers are the winners.

I'd love to be home with my family in Brisbane having Easter Sunday lunch with them and trying my hand at decorating eggs Croatian/Ukrainian style but I'm happy that I will be spending it with my replacement family at least. I'm also glad to be getting out of this unfriendly place for a while (my housemate is crazy and has not been speaking to me for over a month now because I dared to bring a friend into the kitchen when she was having dinner. I just wished her a happy Easter and she ignored me). Anyway, she's the only nasty person in my life at the moment so I guess that's something to remember and be thankful for.

On the Easter lunch menu - Fab's making Portuguese fish pie and as luck would have it, I had been thinking I would make Portuguese custard tarts so when i found out about the main course I decided my tarts were a must have. Chantelle and Martin are bringing the drinks.

Oh, I almost forgot, this lunch will also include a cat care training session for me... I'm housesitting for F & C next week and they have 3 cats. Wasn't until after I'd said yes to housesitting that I was told that two of the cats have developed some very annoying/messy habits of late... hence the training involved.

Ok, better go prepare these custard tarts. Here's some I prepared earlier :-)

They taste a lot better than they look. Oh and the other ones are raspberry and blackberry friands... delicious.

Happy Easter everyone!!!

Not so Softie

2009-04-05T22:54:00.007+01:00

If you don't know already, my sister Rosey makes lovely Softies and other crafty things. This is a relatively new thing for her, and a huge surprise to me. I'd never have believed that the same girl who got me to do her school and uni art projects for her is now more arty than I am. She puts me to shame.

I have one and only one softie to my credit and below is a picture of him. His creation is as random as he is. There is a night club in Nottinghill Gate called Nottinghill Arts Club http://www.nottinghillartsclub.com/ and every now and then they hold a craft night. Not exactly what you would expect from a night club but hey... I was invited to attend one night with some friends so there we were, all having a few cocktails and armed with needle, thread and a pile of crafty stuff all supplied by the club, we got stuck into making our softies. All those who wanted to enter the competition at the end of the night handed in their softies to be judges... there were two first prize winners that night, one was "the hand of God" someone had made a softie hand coming out of a pile of white pillow filler for clouds and the other was fittingly something to do with the devil. Anyway, my little guy didn't get a prize but he took pride of place on my wall at work until recently when i took him home to photography him.

So, without further ado, I give you..... STUART!!!

Stuart hales from a little pond downwind of Chernobyl. He enjoys swimming, blowing bubbles, chasing dragonflies and other insects and is great to have around, and he is quite adaptable to his surroundings (I've never even seen him in water). His favourite movies are "Splash" and "A Fish Called Wanda". He feels a little misunderstood and he misses his half-brother Nemo. He has a third eye but we try not to focus too much on that, and he's learnt to turn it into a positive... he is one rainbow fish that is a pleasure to have around. I for one love him.

HAPPY NEW YEAR - fulfilling a New Year's resolution

2009-01-01T22:15:00.014Z

I made a few New Year's resolutions to myself today, and starting this blog was one of them. So, by popular demand (of one - my little sister Rosie aka Goldsworthy), I give you my first ever blog posting. And what better day to start a new resolution than today, the first day of 2009.

My New Year's Eve 2008 was celebrated with friends Chantelle, Martin, Gaya and Ben, firstly sharing dinner together at Chez Gerard in Piccadilly Circus and then a mad dash down the London streets toward the riverbank where we hoped to see the fireworks.

As usual I was running late, but luckily I have friends who are as bad as me and Chantelle was running just as behind. Not too bad though and 15 mins behind schedule I met up with Chantelle and Martin on the train and we headed into Piccadilly Circus. It was a bitterly cold night and of course, Gaya was nowhere to be found. (it's so reassuring to know that there are people who are more unreliable than me at time keeping, and how fitting that they should be my friends - it's always good to share the burden of guilt).

After waiting at the station, scanning the constant stream of faces that walked by us on their way up to Piccadilly Circus above us, we soon decided it was much too cold to stand there waiting for Gaya and Ben to arrive so we headed off to get a drink and wait for them indoors. Martin asked a Police Officer if he could direct us to the street our restaurant was on, and as I've witnessed many times with London's "Bobbies", this lovely man, not content to just give directions, actually walked us to the street itself. There is something very empowering in being able to walk freely down one of London's most busy and well recognised streets (and I mean right on it - traffic was blocked off for the night and the whole city centre became a giant mall) and to be escorted by a friendly police officer was just plain cool.

Settled in at the bar of our restaurant, we enjoyed a pre-dinner drink while waiting for Gaya and Ben. When they arrived we moved to our table to start our evening.

(left to right) Chantelle, Me and Gaya

Dinner was lovely (I had a half dozen snails - a first for me, and for mains a seafood crepe) although not without its hiccups. Service was very very slow and 3 hours later and only 15 minutes left of the year, we decided to cancel the desserts we had ordered some minutes ago so that we could make it out of there in time to see the fireworks. This in itself caused problems and resulted in the manager giving us 15% off the bill and removal of the automatically added tip. (I guess complaining about poor service does get you somewhere sometimes - although I still feel uncomfortable in such situations).

Chantelle and Martin

Gaya and Ben

as it is now 5 mins to Friday and technically the 2nd day of the year I had better stop here and post it or my promise will have been broken. TBC...

Well, here I am finally, back to finish the story.

We headed off through Piccadilly Circus as fast as week could. He had a general idea of where to go, but even if we didn't all we had to do was follow the crowd of people who were starting to run in the same direction. We started running too... rounded a corner as we heard the first of the fireworks blast their way into the midnight sky over London's Eye, and there we were on the very edge of Trafalgar Square watching the light show peaking up above the city buildings. Wasn't the best view in the world but I can now say that I did see the New Years Eve fireworks in London, and we did it in style... with a bottle of Champagne (and plastic flutes) :-)

After the fireworks, it was a mad dash by nearly every Londoner to get to the closest open tube station and out of the freezing cold. We thought we might stop somewhere for a drink but all the places we tried to were closed to anyone new (they were refusing entry to anyone who was not already there before the fireworks started), so followed the crowd to Tottenham Court Road and headed home.

Along the way two very different but equally exciting things happened. Firstly, and most bizarrely, my handbag rang my father from my mobile phone, without my permission. I have no idea how, is the phone at the time was a slide up phone and it just couldn't do that in the little space it was in. Secondly, was this:

My Bobby didn't seem too pleased to hand his over, but I wasn't leaving until he did. I apologise for the quality of most of these photos, especially the one with we three girls, (we look hideous) but they are the best of a bad lot.

After the photo, I heard Chantelle's Champagne influenced discussion with her Bobby. He was denying all knowledge but she was adamant that he is require by law to offer her his hat to pee into if she finds herself in need of going without a toilet in sight. Sadly, this is just a myth, however I have it on good authority that in days gone by, those hats were required to be of sufficient size as to hold a woman's placenta. As an experienced birthing partner, this is a good thing to know, should I ever find myself in a position where I am helping someone give birth in the middle of a London street.

Was a lovely New Years Eve.