new job

I have a new job. On Mondays at my new job, a box of fruit is delivered. Monday is a fun day.

On Fridays at my new job, a giant bucket of chocolate bars and candy is delivered. Friday is a great day.

Today, at my new job (fruit Monday, but still chocolate Friday remnants remain...) I wore a skirt I bought at the markets yesterday for £10.  It looks like something my mother would have worn in 1993. It’s rad. Three separate people at my new job told me they liked my skirt, then I ate a Daim bar and a pear.

Today was a good day.

Happy Monday!

ballin' in cambridge

On Tuesday night I went to a ball. A ball in Cambridge. A ball called the St John’s College 2012 May Ball, which Time magazine ranked #7 in the list of ‘best parties of all time’. Woah.
Yes, it was on a Tuesday.

The ball was more like a fairground/wonderland/insight into how the other half live. It was amazing, a veritable maze of wonder and indulgence… at one point I took a wrong turn and found myself in a courtyard with tables and tables full of port where a full orchestra was accompanying an opera singer wearing leggings. Another few steps and I was in a section which had boats full of beers, a pimms fountain and a Glee club type group singing show tunes. It was a pretty standard Tuesday night for us.

There were bumper cars, the best fireworks I’ve ever see (and I’ve seen some fireworks!) a tent which was only for jager bombs (separate to the tent which was solely focused on red bull vodkas),a drag queen show and waaay too much dub step. Duncan discovered a section with fancy toasted sandwiches (sorry cambridge, croque monsieurs), alex and ella wound up in a photo booth which had breeze coming out of the floor for your own ‘marilyn over the vent’ moment and Jules found a tent which was making skittles-flavoured milkshakes. Indeed.

My friend Jules is a legitimate Cambridge lady (cause yes, I know people who do PhDs. Yep.) she’s very fancy and I assume (based on my first view at her life at St.John’s) lives every day in a haze of champagne, tuxedo-clad men and dub-step. In her entourage, she even had some swedish men who had little medals underneath their bow ties...how fancy.

hairspray is the answer for a 10hour party.

The fruit section was, surprisingly, not a hit.

yep, thats a giant slide. and it's vertical. 

The biggest take-out for me (besides the knowledge that there is such a thing as too many cupcakes…) was how civilised and non-rowdy the crowd got. At 3am people were all still wearing shoes, no one had fallen off the bridges and there was not any smashed glass anywhere (despite the CRAZY fact that they served drinks in glass. In glass! Imagine!) and the many little tables set up in various nooks n crannies still had table cloths and vases full of flowers on them. Woah. There were even glass vases in the bathrooms (perhaps it’s more a reflection on me than Cambridge that I expect people to glass one another if there are bottles and vases around. Hmmm)

Around 4am alex was bullied by a horrible woman in the drag queen audience. She was mean and, fuelled by fancy champagne and a huge number of cupcakes, we told her as much. In a very English way, we said ‘you are not very nice’ to her and didn’t glass her.

Was prob a wise move.

At about 6am I discovered liss and jules in a tent full of beanbags and some men singing cute little ditties to them while Pablo napped in his chair. At that point, we went in search of the bumper cars to take a spin only to find it was being packed away and replaced by a giant waffle section near the men making bacon and egg rolls. We were easily distracted by this, and then the fact that 25 men stood on a stage singing harmonised Madonna songs.

fairy floss and the world's greatest beehive.

When the sun came up it became apparent that my dress trails along the floor (prob more than usual given the fact I had swapped to flats at about 11pm…), so the 9hours I had spent dancing and walking through dirt and mud had not done it any favours… but then Liss suggested that we dance in the boats full of ice and we forgot about the mud. Weeeeeeeeeee.

Even though Julia promised me endless pick-n-mix lollies at this ball yet there was no pick-n-mix to be found (and believe you me, I looked.) it was still a damn fine way to spend a Tuesday night. thanks jules xx

At about 7am we met Magnetic Man.. i think at this point we were discussing our opinion of dub step. Magnetic Man says yes.

sunrise pimms.

sunrise, and not a soul in the river... we're not in kansas anymore it seems.

Spain and The Hunger Games

At the end of May I went to Spain and I discovered The Hunger Games.

My memories of the full week we spent on the Spanish coast are so entwined with the obsession I had for The Hunger Games that it’s difficult for me to be 100% confident whether we spent each day lazing at the beach drinking gin or whether, actually, at various points we were embroiled in a giant war where my expert archery skills allowed me to shoot deer to feed my cake-baking lover Peeta. It’s all a bit hazy.


We spent the week between Valencia, Alicante and a sweet little town named Denia, which is the port to go to-and-from Ibiza. It was a town of absolute contrast: boarded up hostels on the beach front as well as fancy Michelin starred restaurants. Things were amazingly cheap, the people were super friendly and the beaches were clean and wonderful (and you could order diet cokes from your deck chairs, which meant The Hunger Games was never far away) Win.

keeping watch for The Hunger Game-style attacks. Can't trust those careers.

Oh hai sun-worshipping Valencians, i hope my spray tan has fooled you into thinking i am one of you.

Katniss in Alicante. 

a sandcastle worthy of Katniss.

Katniss on the grass.

Katniss by the pool.

It was so so lovely to be in salt water again, eat cured meat and cheese every afternoon and drink lots of gin in the sun. The fact that I survived TWO hunger games and a civil war with my archery skills was also pretty sweet.

1 year today!

this week, marks my 1 year anniversary of being in London. And to celebrate, London has gifted me with a week of sunshine and lollypops. win.

So as not to appear ungrateful, yesterday I left work early and went bike riding along the canals with my friend Angie. We ate meringues and drank fizzy water in the sun. Angie even wore shorts! big guns indeed.

There's nothing better than a sunny day in London, when it doesn't get dark until 9pm, the raspberries cost £2 a packet and you can drink beers on the street.

If it were like this all year round, i'd stay forever (except for the fact you can't buy chocolate covered liquorice here... and, most of the time it rains. oh.)

yes. that is a plastic bag floating in the canals. yes. i think it adds charm, no? oh.

Well played London summer... i hope there are a few more 'short-wearing' days coming...

xoxo

happy thursday!

hello baby panda.

i hope you get out of your cot in time for the weekend.

you're awesome.

xx

Cinema Club

What started as an argument in the desert over which one of our dad’s favourite movie was actually Lawrence of Arabia (spoiler alert: it was Elissa), has turned into our newest fad: Cinema Club.

The plan was simple: Get together each month and work our way through all our dad’s favourite movies... it sounds quite cute and sweet, but really it’s just a thinly veiled excuse to get together for wine and popcorn.

So far we’ve watched Casablanca and Lawrence of Arabia (which, for the record, was soooo long that when it actually finished we were all chatting, reading magazines or playing on our phones so barely noticed the credits role... sorry Liss’ dad) and have another 6 on the ‘to watch list’. Our dad’s would be so stoked to know that they’re the focus of our new club. Ha.

The best part about Cinema Club has been the dad’s descriptive reasons for their favourite film choices. Without prompting, each of the dads have sent back a detailed email describing their rationale...  One awesome dad started his VERY lengthy response (where he detailed the plots and his thoughts of 4 separate films before settling on Annie Hall..) with the brilliant ‘What a dilemma! Choosing my favourite film is harder than choosing my favourite daughter!’

My dad chose a film called ‘Jesus of Montreal’ as his favourite (?)... and gave a ‘highly commended’ award to a YouTube clip he’d once seen on the making-of a documentary...  If another movie turns out to be as long as Lawrence of Arabia... i’m going to suggest the youtube clip is watched instead.

The other nominations so far have been:

“A stunning French-Canadian film called Barbarian Invasions which is not as the title suggests a Sci-Fi film but rather about a man dying of cancer.”

“Midnight Cowboy followed closely by The Last Picture Show - I like the music by Hayy Nillson and i like the cast, especially Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight. the story is quite sad.”

“It was neck and neck with The Graduate, but One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest wins based on number of times watched (3:1 for those interested).”

“Casablanca...the ultimate romance”

“Local hero. It’s quirky, has good characters, great scenery and fantastic music.'

“Best comedy that still makes me laugh each time would be ‘Van Wilder - party liaison officer’. Despite how sick that may sound - based on laugh value not quality of humour or film production. This would have to be the top.” Rad.

And my favourite: “The appeal of Annie Hall is that in addition to bravely attempting to look at some of the serious issues associated with love and relationships it is devastatingly funny. The comedy is multi-layered with many fabulous one-liners but also visual gags such as captions to show what people were really thinking when they were saying something and the split screen sequence when Woody Allen’s and Diane Keaton’s characters were talking to their respective therapists about how frequently they had sex is a classic.”

Dads are pretty kewl it seems.

xx

Fifty People, One Question

i love this.



so much.