It was Hilary’s 26 mile charity walk to Holy Island this weekend (just found out she successfully did it!), and she had to start ridiculously early Sunday morning. This meant it made sense for us to stay in Berwick-upon-Tweed on Saturday night, so we got the train up and spent the day mooching around.
Berwick is an interesting place being a disputed border town between England and Scotland for many centuries - happily in England now :-) I had been there before once ages back when I lived in Edinburgh when we got the train down to watch the proper Cup Final on TV, but too be honest we just spent all day in the pu and can’t remember anything about it.
We ended up having some food at the Maltings Theatre and Cinema, and I had something delicious I hadn’t had before - a malteser slice - which was a cake made out of chocolate and maltesers. Luckily it was my “feast day” on my diet so I was allowed one.
I’ve been a fan of country music since I spent a summer in the US 3-4 years ago and found that was the most interesting music on the radio. Unfortunately most people in the UK think it’s a bit of a joke - which I guess I did too - but there are loads of great songs and lyrics. If you don’t believe me I can send you a playlist and you can see what you think!
Anyhoo, apart from buying music for my Zune I’ve been able to feed my habit by listening to country songs on my Internet radio, and yesterday I decided to try a new station - AccuRadio Country Hits. The rotation was a bit small and a few songs were on at least twice during the day, but it was nice to try a different selection of the latest country hits.
Another day, another crap lunch in a new place near Victoria.
I didn’t expect much, but even so the rice and vegetable dish I had at Wasabi on Victoria Street was still disappointing. Very little taste and even though you got quite a lot I couldn’t be arsed to finish it.
I may go back to try the sushi which didn’t look too bad, and I think that really the last new place left near the new office. Very disappointing :-(
It was my flatmate Ben’s 30th birthday and to celebrate his partner Matt had organised a surprise evening out with friends, including a film and then a picnic in the park in Russell Square.
It was a really nice evening, and I think Ben really enjoyed it once he’d recovered from the shock! My highlight was the lanterns/hot air ballons that someone had brought that were brilliant, despite the attempt by the park keeper to spoil the fun.
Happy Birthday Ben!
It was a nightmare journey back to Tottenham on Tuesday. I was knackered after a long day travelling down to that London and some late meetings, and then the Victoria line was going slower thatn I’ve ever known it - some signalling problems at Seven Sisters or something.
Anyway while I was sitting there I did something that I realised I’d never actually done before, and read my Kindle on the tube.
Very surprising but true - even though I’m in London 4 days most weeks I don’t keep my Kindle with me unless I’m travelling to or from home in the North. Those days I’ll have a full rucksack with me and almost no chance of having enough room in the crowds to even consider getting it out to read.
The combination of a very slow and half-empty train meant I could take advantage of having my Kindle with me, which definitely helped keep me awake!
First of all I must stress the audio books were for Hilary, so she can have something to listen on her 26 mile charity walk she’s doing at the weekend (still time to sponsor her if you want to at the link above!)
Neither of us had bought an audio book before, so I braved the unbelievably shite program that is iTunes to help her figure it out. Not exactly news, but iTunes really is the worst program I have to use with any frequency - navigation is terrible and at times very counter intuitive. Obviously it’s all my fault though as everyone knows Apple’s software can’t be bettered.
Anyhoo after a couple of false starts we managed to download 12 hours or so of novels, so hopefully she’ll have enough to get her through the day!
Hadn’t done any “new” cooking for a while, and flicking through the usually reliable Simon Rimmer’’s cookbook I thought I have a go at making some leek and garlic rostis.
Now I followed the instructions to the letter, but to be honest they weren’t very nice at all. I don’t think the taters were probably cooked long enough, and maybe they were made too thick as they weren’t particularly cooked well in the middle.
Very disappointing.
The most senior sports team around here by far is Tynedale Rugby Club, who play in National League Division One (the 3rd level). I’ve been meaning to go and watch them for a while, and with the first game of the season against my mortal enemies of Stourbridge, it seemed a good opportunity to go.
Being used to watching non-league football the atmosphere was quite similar - the crowd was about 250-300 - although much more polite and much less swearing! One big bonus though was you could take your beer outside during the game.
The game was quite decent too. Tynedale took an early lead and looked like they might run up a cricket score, but Stourbridge’s much bigger forwards kept them in the game and in the end it was closer than the final score of 39-24 suggests. A triumph of skill over brawn.
I’ll definitely go again as it was a good way to pass Saturday afternoon taking into account the complete lack of half-decent semi-professional football around here.
This is dull but it’s definitely new.
Friday is usually the hardest day for new things, as I’m almost always working at home after a long week in that London and can’t be arsed to do much. Anyway, this Friday Hilary was really helpful in buying me a new type of pie from M&S. It was not bad, but reasonably helpful in my ongoing diet (still going well, 4lb of body fat lost in 2 weeks)
Most interesting thing was after doing a search (Bing obviously) the details of the pie were on the LiveStrong website with all the nutrional data. Wouldn’t have guessed that!
Tomorrow’s entry is much more interesting I promise.
Sounds a little grander than it was, but we had a nice social event on the outside balcony area at our office on Wednesday afternoon.
My Facebook friends will have already seen some of the pictures from the event, and in particular the exciting game of Jenga we had. I notionally lost after a ridiculously high tower toppled about 5 seconds after my turn was complete, but clearly it was the wind that blew it over :-)
Unfortunately I had to run off pretty early to get my train back home to the North, but it was a fun way to spend a few hours taking a break from work.
