Where are we meeting again?

I had Dave’s leaving drinks last night – he’s heading back to NZ and Alex is following not long after.  A sad day for all, seeing them leave dirty grey old London town.  Not sure why they’d want to live in Auckland – I get so sick of the blue sky, harbour, beaches, to die for fish and chips, sunshine, good food and friendly people.

I set off to find Prohibition pub, which is where we were meeting. I had my iPhone for directions but sometimes that map is a bit dodgy and the blue marker (me) goes awol, leaving me just as much in the dark as trying to read a map. With some helpful directions from random people I finally made it there… people feel great if they can help you, so I feel that asking others for directions is my good deed for the day.  Ok it’s not so good if they don’t know, but these are the chances we take.

I pushed my way through the crowd, hitting people left right and centre with my oversize handbag and my laptop bag. Note to self: do NOT take your laptop bag to a crowded, heaving, hot pub.  For 15 minutes I battled my way through the crowds, feeling like a little kid at the mall who has lost their mum.  I know my eyesight isn’t the best but I thought I’d see SOMEONE I knew.  

I retreated to the relative peace and quiet of the main street to do a ring around.  Problem is, no one answered their phone.  I eventually got through to Matt who said he was at the main door… Thank god, so was I!  But no he wasn’t… So I went inside… he wasn’t there.  I went back outside, he still wasn’t there!  I asked the doorman if there were two doors, nope.  I had that ‘you’re on candid camera’ feeling and half expected someone to finally come and get me and say ‘you should have seen the look on your face’ … But no.  Then I lost Matt’s call.  The light dawned (slowly) so I texted and asked him what bar he was in… The Abby.  FARK!  Prohibition was SO 3 weeks ago!  The Facebook invite and all subsequent emails had referred to Abby Bar.  Which I hadn’t taken any notice of obviously.  I finally made it to Abby, feeling the need to mainline my glass of wine by this stage.  It was fun seeing people I hadn’t seen for ages but I have to admit… I’m too old (and happy about that!) for loud bars where you can’t hear yourself speaking, let alone anyone else.  I could see mouths moving but didn’t have a clue what people were saying – so then everyone just smiles and nods, until it’s obvious more of a response is required.  If you don’t want to talk to anyone then loud banging music is ok and I would still fancy cutting up the dance floor … but tonight I had my laptop bag, my sensible work dress and some goodbyes to say.

I think I said goodbye to Dave about 15 times before I finally left…. he promised to let me come and stay with him and Alex in NZ, so long as I don’t block the loo with a make up wipe and flood their whole house – but that’s another story (sorry Matt and Michelle).  We’ve got Alex for a little while longer, so I’ll have a few more opportunities to say goodbye to her, but I was truly sad to be saying goodbye to Dave.  Bye again Dave (16 times now, be off with you already!) 

Good luck in NZ and I’ll be coming to stay when I’m down next.  The make up wipes will go in the bin, promise.

 

Magic Morrow

Red Hot Chilli Peppers

I caught up with Suse last night at Wahaca in Covent Garden.  It’s a very popular Mexican Cantina with a HUGE wait for a table.  I got there a few minutes before Suse so put our names on the list and made my way to the crowded bar.   On the way I saw these big platters of pink and turquoise packets and helped myself to a couple.  I collect matches wherever I go, a girl can never have too many.  As I get to the front of the bar Suse arrives so we nab a bench and sip our drinks while we wait.  In the same fashion that a sommelier matches wines with food, in my mind the only match for Mexican grub is a kick ass salt rimmed Margarita.  So we waited, sipped and waited.  We enquired how long it would be, not long apparently.  He said we were next and then seated two couples in front.  We got a seat to wait on eventually and we were reassured to be moving up the pecking order of waitees.  I enthusiastically showed Suse the turquoise and pink packets and pocketed a few more… it was a very long wait, I deserved them.  After much eye contact, pleading smiles and enquiries we eventually got seated, not because of these things, simply because we were finally at the top of the list.  How cool would it be to slip him a 20 and be in first.  I’m sure it happens. 

So imagine after that big wait if the food sucked!  We weren’t disappointed though.  The favourites of the night were Slow Roast Melt in Your Mouth Pork Pibil Taco and Nearly Burn Your Face Off But Still Delish Beef Salpicon Tostadas.

Nearly Burn Your Face Off But Still Delish Beef Salpicon Tostadas

As we were eating we noticed a group of waiters gathering around a table, anticipating a riot due to a lack of tips we looked on expectantly.  It was someone’s birthday and an enthusiastic rendition of Happy Birthday echoed through the restaurant.  This only ever happens to me when I’m with Suse.  Our last dinner at Grand Bazaar the whole place broke out into song, every table clapping, singing and some even busting a few moves!  Then the lights come back on and the spell is broken.

Feeling stuffed and happy we moved to our second stomach for chocolate churros and a mint tea.  A lovely finish to a perfect evening… the wait was worth it. 

Cheeky Little Chocolate Churros

The waiter came over with the bill and presented us with a pink and turquoise packet each and said something about chilli.  We were a little confused and opened them up as he walked away.  Inside are little pepper seeds on a stick which you insert into potting mix.  I didn’t have a handful of match packets in my bag, I had a small garden of little red hot chilli peppers!  That is a challenge that I’m going to take up, lets see if I can nurture a jalapeno pepper into existence.

My stash of jalapeno pepper seeds

Social Tourettes

So the social ettiquette when someone is at your house for dinner is to be genial, polite and friendly (but not too friendly)… WELL that lasted about half an hour.  Lovely Sands was cooking pancakes for us – will blog about that separately on dinner@mine.wordpress.com tomorrow.  I just had to share this part, which isn’t about the cooking (which was lovely!), it’s about my severe case of social tourettes.  So Sands invited me (probably best, because I live here and would have been loitering picking at her food anyway) and her friends Paul and Simon.  I got here late, yes what a surprise, and made small talk with Paul while watching Lisa cook pancakes.  We sat down to the table and the first topic of conversation was what we did for a living.  Paul runs his own company so I asked him what it did.  He replied recruitment.  Ok, I am known for being slightly blunt but I’m not normally socially retarded – I just blurted out, ew, yuck, I hate recruitment people.  Then realising my error I tried frantically (and rather unsuccessfully) to recover by explaining that we get about 10-20 calls a day from recruitment agencies who adopt all sorts of tactics to try and reach our bosses.  (I think I exaggerated for the sake of the story and said 100 but that didn’t help much).  They come through on our sales line which is how I end up answering the phone, hoping it’s a potential customer!  But no, it’s a pushy recruitment agency who has already ignored our IVR message about our no recruitment agency policy (see, here I go, on my rant about recruitment again).   I then went on to explain that some of them are really pushy and abrupt and quite often I hang up on them.  Sands chose that moment to go out to the kitchen and I happily followed her.

Damn that I was born without a filter!

London Fashion Week

So I was thrilled, delighted, overjoyed, excited (you get my point) to be invited by Dani (THANKS Dani) to LondonFashion Week. 

I was freaking out about what to wear, so everything I own was given the once over and rejected.  I had some killer pink and black peep toe heels but nothing to wear with them!  After being told by Bec (an hour before I had to meet her and Dani) ‘Bron you really don’t have time to go and buy another dress’  I chose a safe grey one from my wardrobe. 

Thank goodness for my new SPANX dress to wear underneath, its fabulous for sucking in, lifting up and firming all those bits that would be firm if I was a gym girl.  To those not in the know, its a VERY tight dress that smoothes out all your curves.  I put it over my head and that’s as far as I got, I was officially stuck.  Thoughts of suffocating under a spandex dress and having a gravestone that read ‘Suffocated by Spandex, if only she’d got a size bigger’ flashed through my mind and I started to panic, jumping frantically around the room, contorting myself into weird positions to encourage the dress to move the right way.  Even though I nearly lost a breast in the process I was glad to be  safely strapped in and two sizes smaller! 

Now came the hardest bit, walking down the road pretending to be a girl who knows how to walk in heels.  My hobbling gait involves walking and pushing my butt out, whilst simultaneously jamming my foot back into the heel to make sure the bloody thing doesn’t fall off.   Yes, I look very attractive and attract looks for ALL the wrong reasons… although I did have one admirer that day – you take what you can get.  A teenage boy checked out my shoes as I walked (hobbled) past him and said ‘I love your shoes’.  I had immense affection for him and wanted to shout back, I love your hoodie, and your boxers hanging over the top of your jeans!  I restrained myself and gave him a grateful smile, giving my shoes an admiring glance… even though I couldn’t walk I loved them too. 

I finally made it (last, as usual) to the meeting point, where a fashion photographer had been trying to take Bec’s photo, but she was slightly camera shy.  I am notoriously UN camera shy but we walked straight in so he didn’t have a chance to ask me – or for me to ask him to take my photo!  Dani and Bec looked stunning, and the epitome of the true fashionista.  Both tall, blonde and slim wearing gorgeous fashion forward outfits.  I wanted to get a photo of us outside the London Fashion Week sign, yes, I am tre uncool.  They flatly refused, which in hindsight was probably a good thing. 

We strolled around looking at clothes and accessories but the real attraction was the wine bar.  Free wine, free is good, I like free.  We went into a corporate hospitality bit because we’d seen some canapes being passed around but they must have run out because we loitered for a good five minutes and they didn’t reappear!  We tried to blag a VIP bag too, with a similar lack of success.

It was quite amusing to walk around looking at how everyone was dressed, and to see people look you up and down as you walked past.  It was like a meat market, for girls – and they didn’t want your phone number, they wanted your handbag, or in Bec’s case her rabbit fur coat!  We’re still undecided whether it’s ethical to buy an old fur, I think if it’s old fur it’s been dead for a while anyway.  It wasn’t your desire for the coat that signed the death warrant for the bunnies, so I think you’re in the clear Bec.  Just reuse all the old fur, it seems a waste to throw them away and it does look super styley.  Here is her complete ensemble.

We took our seat in the Jenny Packham show and realised that the FRONT row seats one ahead of us were empty, so we hopped over the seats and sat there like we owned them.  Hopping over the seat was VERY hard in a Spanx dress I would like to add.  We sat there with our goodie bags (chocolates and a tulip) and waited for the show to start.

The show began and all three of us gasped, not at the intricate beadwork, nor the stunning beauty of the model – more so for the wasted look and skin and bone appearance of the first model.  If she had not eaten for a week I wouldn’t have been surprised.  This photo isn’t of her but all the models were similarly skeletal.  This photo makes her look curvy to how they are in the flesh.  There is no softness to their bodies at all, gaunt faces, no muscle in their arms, their upper arm is slimmer than my wrist.  Gross. 

 The catwalk was lovely to see but seriously, those models are going to die at a very young age.  How can they survive?  I can’t get across enough what stick insects they looked like!  I was in Krakow last week and after seeing photos of the concentration camp survivors – they look 3 times the size compared to these girls.  Being such a foodie I just can’t get over how you’d choose a career where you couldn’t eat!  I suppose the copious amounts of drugs they ingest instead must take the edge off the hunger.  Some of them looked quite wasted.  So we left the show and delved straight away into the goodie bag and all three of us scoffed the chocolates like we’d never seen food before.  They were delish! 

Just one last thing about the catwalk show… if you ever go, don’t wear sunglasses in the front row (or inside at all) you look like a twat.  Anna Wintour you are not and wearing sunglasses makes you look like a try hard.

Our night evolved from high fashion glamour to a pub showing the football where we met Dan, Alex and Martin … they say they didn’t know the football was on… mmm.   A beautifully cooked dinner of fish and chips sealed my fate as not being cut out for catwalk model material.  Ok, lets not mention, age, weight, height or lack of heroin chic looks that sealed my fate long ago.

Come on DOWN Little Miss Sunshine!

I love my new blog background, its very Little Miss Sunshine!  So this is a blog about all the random things that happen in my life.  I’ve also got a dinner party blog called Dinneratmine – but that is a very niche subject, and as I don’t have dinner parties every week I’d struggle for things to write about!  My first post will be about London Fashion Week but I will do that tomorrow as I’ve spent FAR too much time tonight adjusting my dinneratmine blog – I’m all in for an early night! x