She is my sunshine

London - Where the streets aren't paved with gold...

London has been bloody pissing me off recently.
Here are a few reasons why sometimes I just wish I didn't live in the city:

• Today on the tube I got elbowed in the head. Twice. Did they apologise? Did they hell.
• Whenever the wind blows you get so much grit in your eyes you stumble down the road beause you are trying so hard to get it out
• Passive Agressive thrusting of newspapers/magazines/leaflets. If I wanted a newspaper I wouldnt have my head down and both hands in my pockets
• If (because I’m a decent person) I rush told hold the doors open because you you decide at the last minute to get off the tube with your pram, and I dont want you to get crushed, please say thank you. I now have oil and dirt all over my hands. You’re welcome.
• Homeless people by cashpoints. Anyone who knows me will know that I am a huge advocate for getting people off the streets and I give freely to those who need it but I dont need you to make me feel bad for getting my hard earned money out of the cashpoint!
• The rudeness of people. Seriously, did you need to push in front of me to get on the tube that fraction of a second quicker?!
• People who shout ‘Can you move down please’ - No I boody cant I’m already squished between crotch man and the woman eating a (very smelly) tuna salad. If you have to ask us to move then there wasnt enough room for you in the first place. Get off the tube and wait - shock horror - 2 minutes for another one!
• Personal Space. Or lack of it. Stop brushing your crouch against my arse and pretending its the tube moving. Ergh.
• The windtunnels created by the buildings. My hair and dress do not thank you.
• The constant beeping of car horns. You are in a traffic jam. Beeping your horn is not going to get you anywhere any quicker!
• The inability to go anywhere without getting filthy hands and black soot up your nose
• The distinct lack of fresh air
• The large number of people that are cooler than me

xxx

4 down....2 to go.....

So it is with great joy that I say that I have passed my 4^th course towards my degree in English Literature.

After the amount that I worried about my exam it is such a relief to have passed and with the feedback given I now know what I need to change and improve on for my exam next year.

I found it harder to get grades above a C throughout the course, I have a lot of other things on with work and I think my essays suffered because of this, but I managed to pass the course with a C grade which is what I was expecting and it’s still ok although I will have to bring up my grades for the next couple of courses to get the best final degree mark.

I am really happy that I have passed and I also want to thank my best friend and my boyfriend for being my proof readers and support network through the whole thing and encouraging me to keep going! 

xxx

Recipe - Scotch Eggs

Ingredients

4 slices of bread to make breadcrumbs

5 eggs

8 of your favourite sausages (I just used standard sausages but next time I might be more adventurous)

Method to the madness

Put the 4 slices of bread in an oven at 150°C for 20 minutes until completely dried. When cool, place in a  bag and crush until you have breadcrumbs - I used a rolling pin to bash it up and make it easier.

Part boil 4 of the eggs by putting them in boiling water for 4 minutes (if the eggs are at room temperature), or 6 minutes (if they are from the fridge).

Place the boiled eggs in cold water for a few minutes, gently tapping them to crack the shell. The shell will now peel off easily.

Take the sausages and slice off the skins and then squish all the meat in to a ball. 

That sausage looks like my little finger!

Gently squeeze and shape the sausage meat evenly around the eggs.

Crack the remaining egg into a bowl and whisk with a fork. Put flour in a bowl and the breadcrumbs in another bowl.

Roll each of the scotch eggs in the flour, then the whisked egg, and then the breadcrumbs.

Place on a baking tray and cook in a preheated oven at 160°C for 30 minutes.

It's a simple as that!

xxx

Open University

So I have decided after much deliberation that I am going to do "Nineteenth Century Literature" as my penultimate course towards my Open University degree.

I was looking at 20th century but I decided in the end that although it means I will have to do another exam that I preferred the books that I will have to study:

• Germinal, 
• Northanger Abbey
• Jane Eyre
• Far from the Madding Crowd
• Madame Bovary
• The Portrait of a Lady, Oxford University Press
• Middlemarch
• Dombey and Son
• The Woman in White
• The Awakening

I can't believe that I am finally getting to see the light at the end of the tunnel with all of this and in 2 'short' years I will have a degree.

I start the new course in October and although it has been nice to have a break I am looking forward to reading all of the above, it should be interesting.

I really would recommend the OU to anyone!

xxx

Love is in the air

On the 22nd July (also known as Princey's Birthday from now on) it was my boyfriend and mine 3 year anniversary.

I just wanted to dedicate a blog post to how bloody fantastic he is because he makes me smile every day, we are on the same level, he puts up with my occasional strops, he buys me flowers when I am poorly, he has stick fights with me in the park, even after 3 years I still catch him looking at me like I’m the best thing in the world, he is clever and silly and so enthusiastic about everything, especially Lego games (which I love too). With him and my cat I have my own little family and all the moments we spend together will be ones I treasure when I am old and so is he  :)

When I first met him at Glastonbury 3 years ago I wasn’t sure I wanted to get into a relationship but I am so glad I gave it a go because my life just wouldn’t be the same without him and I love him very much indeed.

I'm not even going to apologise for the soppy-ness of this whole post.

xxx

What do you mean you didn't see the Rolling Stones?!

Where do you start with something SO epic as Glastonbury? After months of booking, debating whether to even go, planning, paying off it eventually came round after a 2 year wait.

For those of you that have been you will understand the unbelievable atmosphere that comes just with stepping through those gates. No matter how long it has taken you to get there, however long you have queued, even if you are buckling under the weight of the backpack with 4 litres of spirit and mixer, 8 cans and 3ltrs of wine, the second you step through the turnstiles and have your band attached to your wrist you have entered another world.

For those of you who haven’t been – why not?! I will list the common reasons people don’t want to go:

1. You can’t wash for 5 days – you can actually, you just have to queue for a shower which takes away vital exploring time and therefore it isn’t worth it, unless you want to get up at 6am when most people are going to bed. Baby wipes suffice!
2. Doesn’t it always rain? – I’m not really sure where Glastonbury has got this rep from. Yes it has rained heavily in years before but I’ve been going for the last 4 years and I always come back with a suntan 
3. I’m not really that fussed about the music – So don’t go for the music! Go for the atmosphere and the adventure of it all! 
4. The toilets must be disgusting – Admittedly the toilets aren’t the best, especially at 12am on a Saturday by the Pyramid Stage, but you get over it because there are better things to do then moan about the toilets! 
5. I don’t want to camp – I don’t like camping especially but for 5 days I live in a tent and I love it. Because it’s part of the experience...

Thinking about it though I’m not sure why I am trying to convince more people to go – with tickets selling out in 1hr and 40 minutes and 137,000 people there this year it might just be crowded enough.

But enough about all that – My Glasto 2013 experience:

Waking up, shouldering the load, squeezing on the tube, joining the pre booked seat queue (so much shorter than the none!) having leg room, queuing for an hour at Castle Cary, getting a shuttle bus, straight off and in through the gates, trudging 30 mins with our backpacks to find a camping spot, setting up the tent, turning round and boom:

Well that was all worth it then.

Wednesday

After our epic trip we chilled out at the tents drinking cider, admiring the view and getting to know our neighbours. We had a prime spot this year, the hill was a pain at night and in the heat but we were by FLUSHING toilets and we could hear all the acts on the Pyramid Stage. We went for a bit of a stroll once we had rested our blisters and sore shoulders. This year I went with my boyfriend and one of my best friends and we have all been before so we knew exactly where we were going for our first meal. A heart attack in a baguette and glorious after 4 months of dieting –

I’d say don’t judge me but I don’t care.

Afterwards we headed over to Stone Circle to watch the sunset and see the bonfire blaze, along with most of the festival. It is always my favourite time because everyone is starting to relax and we talked about who we wanted to see. Normally there are hundreds of lanterns in the sky but Glastonbury but a ban on them this year because of Health and Safety, which is a shame because they are so pretty but understandable. I also got to meet up with a very old friend who I haven’t seen in 8 years, and of course saw at Glastonbury after all that time! All the bars close early on Wednesday so we had a relatively early night and went back to the tents.

Thursday

We woke up at the perfectly acceptable time of 10am and rolled out of the tents before they got too hot. Still no music so we just had a walk around the festival finding all the hidden treats including music poles which were censored and played a different noise when  you moved your hand across, and a beautiful stone bridge with a little garden. I don’t know if there is a way to ever explore everything across the site but when you do find little corners you realised the size of Glastonbury. We got some lunch and stopped off at the tea bus – an old London double decker bus with tables and seating inside, perfect for watching people go by.

At around 3pm it started to spit with rain a little bit so we went back to the tents, just in time for the downpour. It rained solidly from 3 until 11pm so we just stayed in the tent drinking, chatting and eating all the hula hoops we had bought. This was the only rain we had the whole 5 days and it helped dampen the dust covering all the tracks. There is something so cosy about being in a tent when it is raining and you can hear it on the outside. Sadly though my faithful camera of 8 years was sitting in a puddle of cider for god knows how long and wouldn’t work so that was the end of the pictures my end. Luckily my friend had a camera so we shared it for the rest of the festival. We went to bed excited (and a little sad) for the music to start on the Friday.

Friday

And so the festival began. We went to The Hives in the morning and they were a perfect way to start the day – the lead singer was arrogant but making the crowd laugh with it and it was impossible not to jump around to their music, shouting the lyrics. Afterwards my friend went to have a nap and so my boyfriend and I had a little walk over to the Dance Village where we danced to some heavy Drum and Bass before finding a spot to sit and enjoy some cider and listen to the music vibrating through the floor. That is what is so incredible about Glastonbury – time doesn’t seem to exist, it can go so quickly when you are listening to a band you are dying to see and so slowly when you just want to relax.

At around 3pm we headed over to the Glade to find my old friend but as anyone who has been to Glastonbury will know meeting up with people is near impossible and we didn’t actually see her again for the whole festival but we stayed at the Glade, sat in the sunshine and listened to ACollective who were really quite good, a mixture of up tempo and slower music. It was good that we stumbled across them as they suited the emerging sunshine. After they had finished we headed back to the tent to get the alcohol for the night and to collect my friend before we headed out again to dance to SBTRKT, before heading over to see Bastille who managed to pack the whole of the John Peel tent out and then some.

After I had sung my heart out we went to go and see Disclosure who were 30minutes late starting so we had to leave to get over to the final act of the day – Arctic Monkeys. They opened with their new song – Do I wanna know? – which is my song of the moment and launched into new and old classics. I suffered the curse of being stuck in the middle of the crowd, bursting for the toilet and so we left just before the end of the set and had to dance to ‘When the sun goes down’ next to the toilets but it was all fun. Afterwards we went back to the dance village and skanked out to Rustie whilst waving our glow sticks high in the air. 

All the sunshine and fresh air must have got to us because we were in bed by 2am which by Glastonbury standards really isn’t that great at all!

Saturday

I’ve mentioned before that I was unsure whether to pay the full amount on my ticket and just not go this year but I changed my mind. Once of the reasons is because I wasn’t that impressed with the line-up this year. We spent a fair bit of time just walking around listening in on all the bands that were playing rather than having anything that we actually wanted to see. There were a few that we were interested in though so we braved the scorching heat to sit at the Pyramid Stage to watch Ben Howard who was perfectly chilled on a sunny day. At one point a single puff of cloud hid the sun and the whole field let out a sigh of relief before baking again a minute later. I got a large majority of my tan on this day, there was just no escaping it.

We went back to the tents to collect alcohol and I got changed into my dancing clothes because *shock horror* no we didn’t go and see the Rolling Stones. Instead we spent the evening dancing, first to MisterJam who made the whole crowd do the Harlem Shake (link below – I am in that crowd somewhere!)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tdoay1sZyg

Then we saw Rudimental who had everyone dancing like mad. We then danced our way over to the Other Stage which unfortunately was a little bit dead, we assumed everyone was trying to go to see the Rolling Stones, but it meant we had tons of space to dance to Example who got the crowd going yelling ‘put your hand up if your dad told you to go and see the Stones’ to which 90% of hands went up, mine included.

Then the main act of the night started – Chase & Status – who were just bloody amazing and I could have danced to them all night if I’d had the chance. They put on a really good show and nearly every one there was young and having an incredible time. I found out later that 100,000 people went to go and see the Rolling Stones which means that the other 37,000 must have been sensible and stuck to the dancing. Unfortunately my friend was feeling a bit ill so she went back to the tents after but my boyfriend and I stayed up a bit longer heading over to Arcadia to watch the flames shooting out of what can only be described as a giant spider. I don’t have any pictures due to the lack of camera but the heat coming out of the jets of flames was searing. We danced for a little bit before getting jerk chicken and heading ‘home’.

Sunday

Last day of the festival! I am obviously condensing the whole trip but even writing about it makes it seem so quick. It did feel a bit like that on Sunday – how the hell did this go so fast?! Again we didn’t have anything on for a while so we went up to the Glastonbury sign and sat in the sun for a little bit before getting some pictures by it. In the 3 previous years I haven’t been up there so it was nice to do something new. I was also very jealous of the people swinging in the shade in the hammock section at The Park as it was still scorching hot. We took a stroll over to the Dance Village and the Blues stage which had a shanty town style look to it and we watched an old Rasta man pass joints into the crowd and rap away which was unexpected but brilliant.

We went to sit in the sun at the Pyramid Stage and unfortunately caught a bit of Kenny Rogers – I say this because all he did was name drop and insult the audience. When I was looking through the line up 2 bands stood out to me on the Sunday but they were on at the same time. Flux Pavilion and Vampire Weekend. I was initially going to go with Flux but because it was so sunny and I really couldn’t be bothered to energetically dance we stayed for Vampire Weekend which I do regret now but they were still good regardless.

We went back to the tents and filled our bottles with the last of the alcohol before heading down to the Pyramid Stage to watch Mumford & Sons get the crowd going. Again I had seen them before but I reckon because they have a new album they were better this time, although I have since read that they scorned the crowd for being drug users and I don’t think it’s fair to judge the whole crowd so it makes me like them less.

As it was Sunday and people had already started to make their way home we decided to head over to Shangri-La, the nightlife of the festival. The queues weren’t too bad, like we had hoped and we had a walk around the crazy land that is Shangri-La, which had a heaven and hell theme this year. My throat was killing me by this point with all the cigarettes and screaming for the bands so I was just blowing the whistle that was attached to my glowstick whilst watching drunk (amongst other things) people stumbling around. And that concludes the festival.

I won’t go into too much detail about getting home Monday – to be honest it was a bit of a nightmare that included 3 hours on a train stopping and starting to get back to London but as always it was really sad to leave again for a year.

Glastonbury always manages to perform in its ability to make me happy and this year was no exception despite my reservations about it earlier on in the year. I can only hope that we manage to get a ticket for next year too, I’m going to have to fight off a lot of people to do so.

Dinosaurs in Fashion Hats

Vogue UK has been hacked and the mother of all Easter eggs has been planted - Dinosaurs in fashion hats....

If I was a complete genius this is exactly what I would spend my time doing! Vogue haven't taken it down yet, but it's a brilliant PR bonus for them as they will be receiving more traffic than usual.

You have to see this for yourself and believe me it is addictive.

Go to Vogue UK’s website (www.vogue.co.uk) and type in the following code: up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A. To make more dinosaurs appear, just keep hitting A. 

Sorry for just giving you a reason to procrastinate your afternoon away.....

Recipe - Mushroom, Bacon and Blue Cheese Soup

Trying to catch up with all my blog posts now I am back from Glastonbury. I will be posting about it soon but first here is a soup recipe.

I know it isn't exactly soup weather at the moment but I tried a similar one at Glastonbury and it was so good I had to try and recreate it.

Ingredients

25 g butter

250g Chopped Leek and cabbage mixture (I bought a pre-sliced bag from ASDA because I'm lazy)

200g sliced mushrooms

500 ml chicken stock

30g blue cheese

6 slices bacon, cooked

Method to the Madness

Heat some butter in large saucepan over medium heat and then add the leeks, cabbage and mushrooms. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally for 5 minutes. Whilst your veg is cooking cut the bacon into smallish squares and then fry off in another pan. Once cooked add to the vegetable pan.

Make up the chicken stock and add to your mixture, bringing to boil. Lower the heat, cover and simmer for 10 minutes.

Transfer the mixture to a food processor and add the blue cheese. DON'T DO WHAT I DID AND ADD TOO MUCH BLUE CHEESE. I've said 30g in the Ingredients but it really is best to add a little at a time otherwise it overpowers everything. My soup tasted like a blue cheese soup.

Might be best not to let any animals up on the work surface......

Blitz it in the processor. I tried to add chunky bits to mine but it didn't work – it ended up lumpy and horrible so instead I let the food processor do its work for 5 minutes so the soup was smooth.

Serve and try not to lick the bowl.

Glastonbury OOTF

So I thought I would do a blog post on the outfits that I’m going to wear over Glastonbury (OOTF if you will). Unfortunately Glastonbury often becomes a catwalk for every skinny girl to get her legs and stomach out in cutoff’s and croptops – not that I wouldn’t be the same if I wasn’t a size 10 but that’s by the by.

Before my future boyfriend had even seen me my friends had filled him in on how my nailvarnish matched my wellies and he thought “who is this nightmare girl who will probably hate camping and be going back to change every second” – of course he couldn’t have been more wrong. Yes I like to match my nailvarnish to my wellies but that’s just fun! Still my Glastonbury packing is a highlight – It’s like when you have non-uniform day at school and you want to wear your best, coolest outfit – times that by 10 and you’ve got the 5 days of Glastonbury in a nutshell (for me anyway!).

So here we are, my 5 days of Glastonbury!

Wednesday:

Something comfy to travel down there in, walk around, and pitch a tent in! I love these trousers from New Look. They are in a soft material, slightly baggy and so comfortable. Plus they are covered in tiny little Elephants, what's not to love?!

 Thursday:

All these outfits are weather dependent but if the sun is shining I will be wearing this dress. It's from Dorothy Perkins and they have it in 3 different style, hearts bows and cobalt blue. I bought the hearts but think I might go back for the blue as well. Adding a touch of glamour to Glastonbury,

 Friday:

The fun really starts now as the music properly starts. I will be jumping around to The Hives in my favourite H&M top and Primark shorts. (I avoid shorts as a rule as they make my legs look awful but it's Glasto so hey ho!)

Saturday: 

Time to get out the leggings - weather forcast says rain so far but I will be seeing Chase & Status and Example so I think these (Primark) Aztec leggings will be perfect for dancing. 

Sunday:

Last day of the festival requires a dress for some swaying to Mumford and Sons. I picked this green dress up in the sale in New Look. I do like a fit and flare dress - the necklace was from a friend.

I have also stock piled on jewellery - I do like shiny things and I bought a canvas bag, although I will probably grab one of the free festival ones once I am in. 

Canvas Bag - Primark

Neon Ring - New Look

On the Monday I will just wear leggings home as they are the most comfy and require the least effort. I keep talking to my friend about it and we are both getting so excited. I can't believe it is so close now!!!

xxx