Saturday, May 26, 2012

Sunday 20 May - Designer dinner of dreams



Current location: Somewhere in the east, on a bus.
11.11pm, On our way home from Bethnal Green.
Andy and I had been to our amazing friend Siobhan's house. Siobhan is a designer, a very talented one, and she is working with Andy to produce his new book. It's a very exciting project, of which I will be blogging more about in the coming months, and tonight I came over to help with sub-editing the book. It was a big job but I was given a glass of wine or three and cooked an INCREDIBLE meal as payment. A great meeting of creative minds (Andy's and Siobhan's) and delicious dinner.

Saturday 12 May - Dress-shopping!


Current location: Oxford Street, Central London
11.11am, Waiting outside the tube station for two of my sisters, Claire and Kate, and friend, Sarah.
A few weeks ago, on this awesome weekend, Claire told us that her and her lovely boyfriend Matt are going to get married!! I am so excited for her, and today we got to go DRESS-SHOPPING. It was a real girlie indulgence to hit the shops, go for lunch, swoon and squeal over Claire looking amazing in wedding dresses and then heading back to Kate's house for wine and wedding chats. Yippee!None of the dresses looked like these, luckily.

Picture taken from Eternal Treasures.

Friday 11 May - Goodbye and happy birthday, to two of the best

Current location: Soho, London
11.11pm, In a pub, having a small weep. Today is a good day and a sad day. It's good, great even, because it's the 50th birthday celebration of my boss/friend, Debbie. She's been a really fab boss in the time I've worked here and, last year, she had a pretty major health scare. The fact that we are all here celebrating her birthday is even more of a celebration, given how ill she was. So that's amazing, and I'm so happy about it.

However, tonight our celebrations are also for our friend Harry (above), who is leaving work/England, to move to Sweden - tomorrow! Harry is one of the loveliest people I have ever met, and one of my best friends at work and in life, and I don't know what we will do without him. He's a superhero in my eyes, balancing fatherhood, a busy social life, sport and lots of hard work and, although i wish him loads of good luck in his new life abroad, he will be sorely missed by everyone here.
Lots of love to you both!!

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Sunday 6 May - A Derbyshire barn dance


Current location: Youlgreave, Derbyshire
11.11pm, Cleaning up and drinking up. Tonight was the Hewitt barn dance and, oh, how we danced. As well as dancing to every song the band played, I also had two very gorgeous girls to play with, Maya, 3, and Naomi, 1. It's quite to hard to barn dance at the best of times (for me) but doing it while carrying a little girl and holding another's hand was something different altogether – but a lot more fun! We all had such a good time and managed to keep ourselves rehydrated with lots of wine.

When the dancing and eating was over, all the 'kids' piled into the back room to start the clean-up, helped along with Jägerbombs, courtesy of Dan (youngest Hewitt son).
When everything was looking shipshape, we all wandered back up the hill in the dark to carry on with hours more board games and drinking.

This has been such an amazing weekend. The unbeatable combination of old, good friends, camping, dancing, eating amazing food and getting lots of fresh air in the great outdoors. I was so sad to leave.

(Image taken from Smoo's Barn Dance)

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Saturday 5 May - Peak of the week


Current location: Youlgreave, Peak District
11.11pm, Playing board games. I've been putting off writing this blog post until some ace pictures turned up (I didn't take my camera) but I've got bored of waiting.
The picture, therefore, is an aerial view of the village we were staying in (courtesy of Google Maps), which I think shows pretty well how in-the-middle-of-the-countryside we were!

We went up to stay with the Hewitt family, to celebrate Mama Hewitt (aka Dianne)'s 60th birthday. Here's a nice story about the Hewitts: Before I was born, Mum and Dianne became best friends and both lived in a small village in Cornwall. Mum went on to have four daughters, while Dianne and her husband Jeremy had four sons, who are roughly the same ages as my sisters and me. We grew up together until the Hewitt family moved away when I was a child.

Anyway, Mum and Dad have always stayed in touch with Dianne and Jeremy so, when I heard the Hewitts were having a barn dance for their anniversary/Dianne's birthday celebrations, I wangled Andy and me an invite and up we went to the Peak District.

It's been about 16 years since I was last in their house and it's just as awesome as I remembered it. The windows look out on lovely countryside as far as the eye can see and, as we decided to take our tent up and camp, it felt like a great outdoorsy weekend.

When we arrived, we all crowded around Di's kitchen, eating home-made soup and  playing with Matt (one of the sons)'s gorgeous daughters, Maya and Naomi. Mum and Dad arrived soon after, with more people arriving as the day drew on, and we all had a fab afternoon, which turned into a fab evening as the homebrew got passed around. Then out came the board games and it wasn't until 3am that we all went to bed, tired but ready for some rousing walks the next day and the barn dance the next night!

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Tuesday 1 May - The cabin in the woods


Current location: Chester
11.11pm, In the cinema. I love scary films, and I also love Grey's Anatomy so imagine my delight when I discovered that Avery from Grey's is in a scary film, The Cabin in the Woods! We went to see it, thinking it would be another cheesy, jumpy film with hot young people in – the type of film I love, for the record – and it was, really, but had some pretty cool twists in it. Not like any other scary film I've seen before; the storyline was pretty unique. I don't know what to say apart from go and see it and I can guarantee you'll both laugh and jump.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Saturday 28 April - Back up north


Current location: Chester
11.11pm, At Anita's kitchen table. Anita was my boss when i worked for Candis magazine, a women's magazine based out of Hoylake, Wirral. It was my first job after my Master's and I stayed there for two very happy years before moving to Berlin (and starting this blog among other things). It was my job at Candis that made me realise how much I love subbing (yes I know this makes me sound like a geek) and I was lucky to start my career at a magazine with high standards, and with lovely people. Luckily, every now and then I get to come back and do a bit of freelancing and see everyone again, which is why I am up north this weekend.
I got to Anita's in the afternoon and it wasn't long before the first bottle of wine was opened...we had a fun night, which involved eating, chatting, drinking and...er, moonwalking.

Friday 27 April - Family Friday


Current location: Ongar, Essex
11.11pm, Sitting around the Kerwin kitchen table. After work, Andy and I met in Stratford to head out to Essex to where his family live. And who was with Andy when I met him? His parents! They're over from Australia for a couple of months to have a holiday, see family and catch up with all their British friends. We went to Andy's sister's house, which is in a beautiful place in Essex, and had a delicious dinner, lots of glasses of wine and some good-for-the-soul times.

(Picture of David and Val © Nick Lawrence)

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Sunday 22 April - A marathon day



Current location: Embankment, London
11.11am, Eating breakfast on the South Bank and planning where to stand to go and watch runners competing in the London Marathon. We had a few friends running in it so went along to support and cheer. It really is the most incredible atmosphere, like nothing else I've ever experienced. There is so much good feeling, joy and enthusiasm from everyone lining the streets, whether they're holding out sweets for the runners to take, calling out people's names as they walk past or holding up banners to encourage their friends to keep running! And the awesomeness of the crowd is nothing compared to how awesome the runners are. It's such a huge feat to put your body through and we saw lots of people struggling... It's so inspiring to watch tens of thousands of people run, walk, skip, hula-hoop or whatever other way they decided to complete the 26-mile course. I watched with tears in my eyes and cheered until my throat was sore, and was so amazed and proud of everyone that raised loads of money and got so far. Good work, marathoners!

(Picture taken from International Medical Corps)