Christmas 2014

Merry Christmas! We've been enjoying a week of basically hibernating over Christmas - the temperatures have really dropped and we've heartily embraced all the best British traditions of this time of year including staying inside for most of the day, eating chocolates and leftovers till we're stuffed, and children's movies online (especially enjoying all the Wallace and Gromit the BBC is putting online!).

But, thankfully, to ensure that we did actually change out of our pyjamas on Christmas Day itself, our friend Megan came over, bringing some very fancy Christmas crackers with her, and helping us to make a dent in our feast. For no other reason than why not, we had lobster mac'n'cheese, with roasted veges, garlic aioli, soy lime Brussels sprouts and garlic bread, then for dessert, flummery, pavlova and ice-cream. It was delicious! (And with the amount of cheese that went into the mac'n'cheese, so it should be...)

The flummery was something that I hadn't made before, but while flicking through the Edmonds cookbook to find the pavlova recipe I saw it and thought it would be fun to make. I remember Granny making it so it definitely brought back some memories! Mine had a jelly-like layer on the bottom (as opposed to the top bit which was all fluffy) - maybe next time I'll chill the evaporated milk for a bit longer... But still delicious all the same!

We polished off several bottles of bubbles, played some competitive games of cranium and blokus, and made some clementine candles - totally recommend you give the last thing a go, they were really good! Just make sure you make the top hole big enough as they burn quite easily.





Who knows where we'll be next Christmas, but Iran is looking like a possibility so we'll have to save some pennies for that... Here's to a productive 2015 in the interim!

Get lucky!

Picking all those pennies up off the ground must have had an influence on my luck, because I am on a massive run!

First, I won an absolutely beautiful print of the sea at Golden Bay from Mike Hill Photography:

And then today, my name was picked out of the hat from a competition that I entered via Oxford Today and I've won a £65 'flare' saucepan!

I had read about these pans in a magazine somewhere and was really impressed - they take about 40% less energy to cook compared to a normal saucepan due to the heat being channelled up the sides of the pan by the 'flares' in the side. However, given their price and the unlikely possibility that we would have gas cooking back in New Zealand (possible, but not as ubiquitious as it is here in the UK) I dismissed the thought of getting some. But clearly the universe was listening and my I came up trumps!

So, while this is a horribly boasting post, I'm writing it so that hopefully my accumulation of luck gets shared with you all and lots of lovely things start happening to you. And don't forget, see a penny, pick it up, all day long you'll have good luck!

Gratefulness part II

Rounding off the final part of my gratefulness challenge, here are the last two days:

Day six (3rd November):
1. A free workout as a result of doing a favour for a friend
2. After many, many bad kiwifruit this year, finally a perfect one today
3. A beautiful sunset from the office stairwell

Day seven (4th November):
1. My new shampoo bar that arrived in the mail – can’t wait to try it!
2. Looking forward to a (hopefully interesting) talk tonight on the role of language in society as part of the ESRC festival of social science
3. And finally, the best part of each and every day, this guy.

So there you have it, seven days of gratefulness. It was actually pretty good to stop and think about the little (and big) things that make you happy. Some days there were lots of things (like today I found two pennies on the ground within a minute of each other - lots of luck for me!) and while other days were a bit simpler, there was no shortage of good things. I firmly believe that happiness is a state of mind and being optimistic and looking forward to the future plays a big part in that. So here's to lots more exciting things happening in the coming years!

Gratefulness

I was recently challenged by a friend to do this gratefulness challenge online - basically, you have to say three things a day that you're grateful for, for seven days, and then each day, also nominate someone new to take up the challenge.

Realising that most of you who read this aren't also on Facebook, I thought I would repeat it here. I've already done five days out of seven, so I guess I'll split it into two posts.

Day one (29th October):
1. The wonderful people involved with LSE Bees! Despite the rain, we had a brilliant honey festival today (I will put photos on the LSE Bees blog at some point too...)
2. There being a single bus from my house all the way to uni that I can get on rainy days like this, laden with things
3. The freedom to spend my morning icing cupcakes and my afternoon talking to people about bees – I will miss you PhD when you’re gone…

Day two (30th October):
1. Lunch with a friend rather than at my computer
2. Looking forward to dinner with some of my lovely NSEP peeps who continue to delight me so many years down the track
3. My awesome new 'party pants' - if you can't have fun with fashion, what's the point?

Got so much love for my floral trousers!

Day three (31st October):
1. An inspiring and productive meeting with my co-author
2. Sunny London weather making for an invigorating ride in and a beautiful view out over the city from my office
3. Great new tunes from the 2014 Mercury Prize winners Young Fathers:

Day four (1st November):
1. Bopping out to cheesy music while spending a Saturday in the office
2. Stunning fireworks display in St Albans and having the opportunity to hang with lovely peeps after said day in the office
3. Finally finding the perfect outfit (not) to wear for when I finally graduate (read the reviews, they're hilarious)

Day five (2nd November):
1. A lovely lazy sleep/lie in complete with masala tea from Nepal and listening to the rain beat against the windows
2. Making roasted butternut squash seeds - I really like finding a way to do something with things that you may otherwise have thrown away
3. Buying tickets for next Friday for this completely random cabaret - I'll let you know how it goes!

And that's it so far - stay tuned for the last two days!

Planting poppies at the Tower of London

We had a very unusual Thursday morning today, as instead of going to work, we went to the Tower of London as volunteers to help plant poppies for their remembrance art installation for WWI called Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red.



There are 888,246 poppies being planted in the moat to commemorate every single British death and each poppy is handmade and then planted by us, the volunteers. Apparently there are nearly 300,000 left to plant which seems incredible given how many there were already there! Here's a short (3 minute) video showing how they're made:

It was fun to be part of, both making the steel rod/washer combos to support the poppies, and then the actual installation of each poppy. The fact that it's something so iconic is great as well, particularly given how much I enjoyed our trip to the Tower of London a few years ago - absolutely one of my tourist highlights of London. I also laughed at all the tourists taking photos of us - total paparazzi!






There are some more photos here, and if you're interested in buying one, they're selling the poppies for £25 each after Armistice Day here in support of six different service charities.

Apparently they also need volunteers to help remove them come November, so get involved!

Bestival

A couple of weekends ago we finally went to something that we've been looking forward to for months (having got the tickets absolutely ages ago) - Bestival! Bestival is a music festival on the Isle of Wight, and is basically the last festival of the season (and generally always happens on the first weekend of September).

It's got such a nice, relaxed vibe to it and generally gets lots of bands and other musicians who we like, so having first been five years ago in 2009, we headed back this year with big expectations. And fortunately it didn't disappoint! The weather was absolutely amazing - warm and sunny, although not too sunny that you couldn't sit outside for hours (which was our main festival activity of choice), and it clouded over most nights which meant it didn't get too cold. It's also got a fancy dress theme, and this year it was 'Desert Island Disco' which saw all sorts of brilliant takes on sequins and Hawaiian shirts. Although the complete ubiquitousness of bum bags was somewhat astonishing - clearly I'm way too old to know that they're in fashion now!

We went with a group of friends and because it's a reasonably small festival (unlike say Glastonbury which takes forever to get anywhere and you're never going to meet up with your friends no matter how hard you try), we managed to just run into each other most days or meet up for lunch etc. between bands which was great.

Favourite acts for me included Beck (despite him falling doing his brilliant dance moves and hurting his knee), La Roux, Sam Smith, Disclosure, Laura Mvula, Candi Staton, The Kooks (surprise guests!), and DJ Yoda, as well as the brilliant Mr Motivator - an '80s exercise instructor who got the crowd up and moving on Sunday lunchtime.

We also did all sorts of silly things like have a go on a toboggan ride, try out unicycling, learnt all sorts of cool stuff in the science tent (did you know that sounds make a difference to how you perceive the texture of the food you're eating? For example, if you crumple some crackly paper, it will make potato chips seem more crunchy in your mouth - something I did not know!), and just generally hung out and had a good time. The rest of the photos are here if you want to have a look.

Here's to more festivals in the future!

Making friends with our local parks

We live close to a couple of quite large parks in South London, and either cycle through or past them daily. As a result of that, and being curious about the notices put up at the gates etc., we've stumbled upon some great (free!) nights out lately.

The first was in Burgess Park, where they had a pedal-powered screening of Pan's Labyrinth. With some friends, we turned up bright and early and helped power the music pre-film, as well as pedalling throughout the evening. It was a good way to keep warm, especially when it rained halfway through! The film was every bit as gruesome as I remembered - definitely not one for kids - but the idea of a pedal-powered film was brilliant. We had to keep it above 14 (not sure whether that's RPM or what) otherwise the whole thing would shut down! Love this great photo from Electric Pedals of the night:

And then last night, we went on a 'Bat Walk' in Southwark Park. The local council's ecology officer gave us a short introduction to the bats we might encounter, handed out a few bat detectors, and then off we went! We had to wait until it was pretty dark, but soon enough, woosh!, there they were, swooping and diving over our heads. We walked around the park's lake (as there's more insects there, and therefore, more bats coming in to eat the insects) and listened out for the noise from the detector.

We saw lots of these guys: the common pipstrelle (pipistrellus pipistrellus). Click on where it says 'listen to a common pipistrelle' in the link to hear the noise that we could hear through the bat detector (set at about 45 or 46 decibels).

Photo source

They're the most common bat in the UK (lots more stats here) and due to the great backlit clouds, we could see them reasonably well (although taking photos would have been impossible due to the low light and how fast they were moving). I had no idea that there would be bats in our local park or that we would see so many of them, so it was a really interesting evening.

During a walk around Southwark Park in the pouring rain on the previous Monday we also found out that we can play lawn bowls for only £2 a go, as well as go boating on the lake. So, inspired by our recent successes, we'll definitely be keeping an eye out for other events in the neighbourhood - who said you had to go far afield to have fun??

You spin me right round baby right round

It was a pretty exciting week this week as we finally got to taste the honey from our Connaught House beehives for the first time! I went down to the Bee Collective in central London with some other LSE colleagues where we uncapped the frames and then spun out the honey in a centrifuge, before trying our liquid gold for the first time. It was delicious! I can't wait to try it side-by-side with the Passfield Hall honey as I wonder how different it will taste.

You can read all about it (with lots of other photos of us in those fetching hair-nets) on the other blog I currently write: LSE Bees.

And let me know if you'd like a jar! They're selling like hotcakes (I've pre-sold 70 jars already)...

Homebody - kitchen edition

So as I said, as well as tending to the garden, I've been doing lots of cooking and baking over the summer. The latest season of the Great British Bake Off has started (which is essentially the only television show I watch all year), so I joked that I should make things to match the theme of each week, and then the idea just kind of stuck!

First up was cake week, so Adrian was treated to a banana cake (best banana cake recipe ever) and a carrot loaf. Last week it was biscuits and I made some oatmeal raisin cookies (disappointing, I don't recommend the recipe). This week it's bread week - any suggestions for what I can make??

On the weekend I made this delicious granola:



We've been eating granola on the weekends (changing it up from our usual muesli/rolled oats combo as a treat) and this actually works out cheaper than buying it and is pretty good if I do say so myself. We've been toying with the idea of making it for a while, and finally got all the ingredients together (normal size, not ground to dust, rolled oats are surprisingly hard to find and expensive in the UK). I'll definitely make it again!

I've also recently made these amaaaazing truffles - you would never in a million years guess that the main ingredient is dates (they're vegan!) and it's been pretty hard to keep them in the freezer and not eat one every five minutes...



The other interesting thing we've made were some brandy snap baskets to take to a friend's house for dinner - I couldn't believe how easy they are! It took a bit of experimenting with different size things to work out the perfect size to mould them on, but we eventually got there and they tasted delicious. I was fascinated with the process too - it was so interesting to watch them spread out and go all lacy in the oven:

I have a long list of other things to make, so I'm sure there'll be more updates! Adrian's definitely getting his reserves in before triathlon training starts in earnest next year that's for sure...

Homebody - garden edition

To make the most of the summer, and to make me feel like I'm getting at least a bit of a holiday, I've been taking both days of the weekend off (normally I try to put in a half day at least on the weekend to make sure I get enough stuff done). We've also been trying to be very frugal and save money (well, not so much save it, just not spend it!) as my funding has come to an end and I'm now living on savings.

As a result, we've been spending a bit more time at home and I've been doing all sorts of stuff in the garden and the kitchen, so today I thought I'd tell you about our horticultural adventures. First up, the thing I'm probably proudest of, our beans! In the words of Fatboy Slim, they've come a long way baby - I planted them from seed and grew them inside on the window sill before planting them out on the 26th of June:

They grew pretty quickly; this is a picture from just a few weeks later on the 12th of July:

And then again on the 29th of July (the amount of growth in two weeks is pretty astounding I think!):



It was a bit hairy when cyclone Bertha came through as we weren't sure whether they'd make it or not. I couldn't put the poles very far in the ground unfortunately, so it was multiple guy ropes to the rescue!:



But they survived and are looking bushy and healthy (luckily no aphids in sight) and we had our first harvest for dinner last night! I made this recipe and they were delicious. The variety is 'Moonlight' in case you're interested.





In other garden news, we had an amazing one-day-only flowering of a cactus, and we've also been enjoying the roses, strawberries, herbs, and actually learning the value of pruning things to make them grow back stronger (our chilli plant inside is pretty miraculous as a result of a good prune). We've also been told that we needed to 'turn' our compost, so did that this morning to great success (I now realise that our flat layers of stuff weren't actually going to do anything, but it now looks pretty good).



Adrian's still on a mission to try and fix the lawn (it's being taken over by rampaging dandelions and other weeds), we have a dead lavender that shows no signs of being able to be resurrected (and it died instantly on being brought home from the supermarket and put into a pot which is a bit annoying), and successfully growing coriander is still a mystery to me, but one step at a time! It's been such a great summer and having a garden has been so nice. Here's hoping autumn is benevolent and we can enjoy it a bit longer...

Le Tour à Londres

The Tour de France came to London today, and along with thousands of other people, I popped down from my office to Embankment to have a look (helmets helpfully identified - I don't think otherwise you'd be able to see them in amongst all the people!). Where we were standing you could also feel the District line trains rumbling under your feet - a very strange sensation.

As you can see from my photo it wasn't that great a spot (although being under the trees did save us from the dreary London drizzle), and they all came whizzing through so fast, but it was fun to see and leaves you with a renewed appreciation for their athleticism (hoping that it's natural, not artificially enhanced). 

It also brought back memories of the last time we saw the tour in Lourdes - can't believe that was six years ago! Time is seriously flying...

A Swedish wedding

Continuing my tradition of jumping all over the place in time, I'm going to interrupt the India travel story to give you some photos of our long weekend in Västerås and Stockholm. We were there for my friend Stina's wedding and it continued the tradition of beautiful weather and wonderful hospitality that have been the hallmarks of every trip I've ever taken to Sweden.

We helped them set up the venue (a beautiful barn) and then enjoyed all the festivities - despite everything being in Swedish! The food and wine was excellent, we loved the fact that the DJ played a ridiculous amount of ABBA, and it was so much fun being in the sauna and (wood-fired!) hot tub at 3am with the sky being nearly as light as the middle of the day. 

Stockholm was great as well and this time we finally made it to the Vasa Museum which was really interesting and well worth a visit. We also had the most delicious lunch at Nybrogatan 38 which is a little restaurant in the upmarket Östermalm area of Stockholm. We arrived late (the Vasa Museum had held us captive for much longer than anticipated) and even though they were operating a reduced menu it was still really good and great value. Just check out the size of my salad:

Thank you so much to Stina, her family and friends for making it such a great visit. We promise we'll come back and take you up on the offer of cross-country skiing!

The rest of the photos are online here.

The Golden Triangle: Delhi

(I can't believe I never posted this...better late than never I guess!)

As part of my part-time job last year, I was incredibly lucky to be able to go to India, somewhere that I've wanted to go to for ages, and which I've heard so much about from Mum and Alexandra.  I worked for several days at a conference in New Delhi, and then had a week to go exploring.  I was supposed to travel with a friend, but unfortunately she couldn't make it, so it was just me tripping around.  I didn't feel unsafe really at all, although being a white female by herself you certainly got a lot of looks outside the main tourist locations.  I did do some shopping at the Lajpat Nagar market on my first few days to get some clothes to blend in - a couple of shalwar kameez which were actually the best things to wear, nice and loose and light.

While the conference was on we did a bit of exploring, including the Hauz Khas complex which was very relaxed and a lovely green respite from the city, as well as the Qutub Minar, which is a 73m tall minaret which was built between 1192 and 1368.  The complex has got this fantastic iron pillar in it which is rust resilient, and quite advanced for the time of its construction (unknown, but predating the Qutub Minar at least).

After the conference I moved to a B&B  in the Defence Colony and spent three days doing some exploring around both that area and the central city.  As it was monsoon season it was a complete washout most days, and apparently one of the days was the third heaviest day of rain they'd had in 10 years - I can believe it!

Thigh-high water in my road in the Defence Colony - just don't think about what you're wading through...

While I was in Delhi I packed in as much as I possibly could.  I saw the Jama Masjid mosque, which is the largest mosque in India, holding up to 25,000 worshippers, the beautiful Red Fort, Indira Ghandi's house, the Ghandi Smriti (site of martyrdom, including an amazingly modern and interesting museum, full of things to interact with), Safdarjung's Tomb (taken there by mistake after the rickshaw driver didn't understand my directions), Humayun's Tomb, the shrine of Nizam-ud-din-Chishi (where I nearly lost my shoes after coming out a completely different way than I went in and taking about 20 minutes to walk around and find my original point of entry where I'd left my shoes in the first place...), the Jantar Mantar (a huge outdoor observatory) and the incredibly elaborate Akshardham Temple on the outskirts of Delhi.  You're not allowed to take photos inside the temple, but here's an image I've found online of the amazing elephant reliefs - so detailed (and there are 148 elephants in all, surrounding the base of the main temple).

I also got taken on a tour of Delhi by a very enterprising Sikh rickshaw driver who, as well as taking me to the inevitable shops, also took me to the Gurdwara Bangla Sahib, the largest Sikh house of worship, in Delhi.  They feed, for free, an astonishing 10,000 people per day which is pretty amazing.  I tried the food and it was pretty good!  I also got a tour around the kitchen which was churning out food on a pretty incredible scale given the basic nature of the equipment.  Loved this guy who was overseeing potato preparations:

After Delhi I was supposed to get on the train to Agra, but fell hook, line and sinker for a scam at the train station and was conned into getting a car and driver for the whole round trip.  I was completely suckered in by the fact that everyone talking to me was in uniforms and seemed completely legit.  I should have known that it was all a big, fat con, but ah well, never mind.  These things happen!  In the grand scheme of things it wasn't that expensive (and they refunded me the price of my train tickets), and it was probably safer to travel that way as opposed to on trains by myself given I had just shown myself to be overly gullible!  My driver, Mantun, was actually really nice and friendly (and I am sure not in on the scam itself), and he took me to places I would never, ever have seen had I been on the train, so I'm happy to see a silver lining in it after all.

But that's enough for this post, next post, Agra and Jaipur!  (Although if you want a sneak peak of all the photos, the album is online here).

Natural History Museum soapbox

One of the things I'm really interested in is how does research make a difference in the 'real world' - how does it get out there, and get communicated to the public (who are the ones who most often pay for it in the first place!).

So, while it's one of the themes in my research (although mine is more about interactions between research and policy, rather than the general public), I'm also trying to practice what I preach.  I recently had the opportunity to speak at the Natural History Museum's most recent late night as part of their Universities Week programme. 

The late night saw a whole heap of different universities turn up to the museum to talk about their research, and I was involved in the 'soapbox' event, where individual researchers stood on a platform for 45-60 minutes, talking to people as they went by.  We each had a question in front of us to draw people in (mine was, do climate sceptics matter?), and it was surprisingly enjoyable!  It was great interacting with different people and finding out what they thought.

There's photos and more info on the LSE website here.

Next weekend I'm also going to something called LSE Shout, which is a weekend away where we're learning to about creating research impact.  We're going to be looking at posters, web design, stand up comedy and films - should be interesting!

Finally summer!

Obviously I've been extremely remiss in keeping up the blog as of late - I'm going to completely blame it on the wedding (more on that soon though once we get all the photos!) - but I've made a resolution to try and be better about doing smaller, more frequent updates.

So, seeing as the topic on everyone's minds here at the moment is the fact that we've finally started to have some lovely weather, I thought I'd share a few photos from the last couple of days.  First up is our new garden, where the roses are in full bloom and all the wild strawberries are bearing fruit (which taste absolutely amazing).

Then on Sunday I went for a walk in Kent with some friends from LSE - fields of flowers (including some early lavender and poppies), gorgeous riverside houses, and the biggest cheese ploughman's lunch you've ever seen...

And finally, from less than an hour ago, lunch with Adrian (who's on call this week, and thus free and easy during the day) in Middle Temple gardens (only open to the public during summer).  The fuchsias were in particularly full flower - they look almost cartoonish in their shape I thought.

So, fingers crossed we'll have a lot more sunny days like these!