Chaos in the city

We've had a bit of drama in London - an underground electrical fire (which is still burning, more than 24 hours after it started!) meant havoc, evacuation, and power cuts for a fair chunk of the central city yesterday and today.

We were all in the office yesterday when the lights started flickering on and off. Knowing that that couldn't be a good sign I saved everything I was working on and backed it up. Thank goodness I did because a few minutes after that all the power died. Now we're on the 11th floor so have a pretty good view out over the city. We could see people streaming out of the Royal Courts of Justice and someone remarked that they thought it was pretty hazy in the air. We also heard a lot of sirens, so definitely knew it was more than just a small power shortage. Here's a video of the smoke:

Twitter to the rescue meant that we could see it was a fire on Kingsway and there was all sorts of conjecture about what exactly was on fire (initial photos looked like it might be coming from the road underpass under Aldwych but it was actually from a cable fire in an underground tunnel - check out this dramatic photo!).

We, along with apparently 5000 others were then evacuated - we all took our stuff thank goodness, although I had to leave my bicycle as it was chained up downstairs in the basement and we also left all the food in the fridge which was going to be cleared out later in the day due to the Easter break. So, what do you do when you're evacuated in the middle of the day?? Off to the pub of course! The first pub we went to, the Edgar Wallace (great decor with amazing retro cigarette posters and coasters all over the ceiling) eventually lost its power too and so it was off again to one of my favourite nearby pubs, Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese. Much discussion of divestment, the failure of the economics profession etc. ensued...

Today, I was certain that it would all be fine (naively) and so hopped on a bus to get to uni to spend the day working (even though it's the uni holiday shut-down period already, we're able to go into work on the non-public holiday days). What a mission!! All the buses stopped at Elephant & Castle, it took forever to get to one even near Waterloo, then I had to walk over Waterloo Bridge to LSE as it was shut to vehicles. All of this should have been a sign that power was still out - and is expected to be out until at least midnight tonight. Fortunately I managed to collect my bike, save the perishable food and turn off the main switches to the printers etc. so it wasn't all running while we were all away. But what a palaver! Let's hope it's all systems go by the time I want to go back in on Tuesday...

I love this photo (from this BBC article) taken from the London Eye last night of the area affected. Certainly quite a stark difference to  the rest of the city!

Life round here

I really can't believe it's 2015 and that I'll be handing in my thesis this year - the past three and a bit years have absolutely flown by (cliche I know). It's also somewhat amazing to realise that we've been in London for over five years now. That time really has disappeared! So I'm making an effort to try and capture more of the little things that we've been doing, to remember what daily life was actually about. So here's a few shots of life round here, circa February and March 2015.

I organised a celebration of Waitangi Day at university, mainly so I could have an excuse to try these delicious NZ-themed doughnuts (the kiwifruit jam one was particularly good).

To continue the baking theme, Adrian's been baking up a storm with all sorts of innovative and delicious bread. These are two of the best: a braided white loaf and then a swirled wholemeal cinnamon and raisin loaf. Now you know why I married this man!

At the amazing skip-fit classes I go to at uni, Adrian managed to come to one and get a special one-on-one boxing lesson. He got beat up! (Not literally)

Also at uni, we got our brand new red cedar hive delivered which everyone's very excited about. The wood is extremely soft but smells really lovely. Can't wait for the bees to arrive and make it their new home!

We went up to Cambridge for the weekend to see a friend (I got the train and Adrian cycled - Ironman training has already started!) and visited the Fitzwilliam Museum. While we were there a recital was on - it was lovely hearing the music echoing through the rooms. My eye was also caught by these beautiful tiles from ancient Egypt. Incredible how the colour has lasted so well for so long.

We've also been thinking about some of the differences between the UK and NZ, like the price of food. This is our weekly shop (barring a few other bits bought at another supermarket) from Lidl - £25, or about $50. I definitely won't miss all the unnecessary packaging on the fruit and vegetables, but the cost is hard to beat!

Suffice to say, we definitely eat well around here. Here's dinner from Friday night - a delicious red pesto and goats cheese pizza, with baby corn, mange tout, red capsicum and rocket. Yum! We're using every occasion to use our brand new (to us) KitchenAid mixer. It's pretty amazing what it can do!

And finally, the piece de resistance - my new chair! Because we live in a cul-de-sac, our road is a magnet for fly-tippers, and there are always all sorts of things out by the rubbish bins. One thing that arrived one day was this chair. It's missing a bottom stabilising piece of wood, but I think it looks pretty good in its brand new shade! The paint was left over from a university project and after five coats and a few more coats of varnish, I think it's pretty nice. Definitely brightens up the living room and not bad for a total outlay on varnish of £4.99!

So there you have it, five weeks worth of photos and stuff going on. Pretty homebody stuff, but given I'm now completely unemployed and focusing on the PhD and triathlon training has started, it suits us fine! Stay tuned for more updates - the weather's just starting to warm up so I'm sure there'll be all sorts of things to report on.

Walking in Epping Forest

To help banish the winter blues, I decided to organise a walk in Epping Forest for my birthday. We followed most of this route, although we started a bit further north at Leytonstone and in the end, finished a bit further south at Theydon Bois. I'm guessing it was about 19km all up and although we tried to follow this excellent 1970s guide, GPS was our saviour on the day as even though I'd read that the route wasn't very well-marked, I wasn't expecting there to be no markers at all! I also think, given that we were doing it in the middle of winter, the paths probably weren't as visible as they may be in drier conditions...

We started bright-eyed and bushy tailed, despite some unexpected rain slightly dampening the party (although happily it got sunny later on).

After a bit of a false start (hence the need to bring out the GPS) we got back on track and picked up the pace. Well, that's not true. We tried to pick up the pace but the mud was just a bit too much!

Here we are a bit over half-way making the most of a pretty lake for a photo opportunity, and me contemplating whether I'd just stop where I was and sleep there the night...

 

And finally the end! It was pretty tough going for us city slickers, particularly given that my terrible boots ripped my heels to shreds (I'll refrain from posting that particularly unsavoury photo), and I've definitely got some sore legs now, but definitely landed on the side of fun overall. 

I'd also arranged for everyone, as well as some other friends, to head to a local pub for drinks and dinner - our large group of 20 mostly mud-covered hikers definitely stood out like a sore thumb amongst the extremely well-groomed and glamorous other patrons! I hadn't even thought we'd be heading into Essex territory (epitomised by a TV show called 'TOWIE' for those in NZ) so our muddy trousers being out of place was the understatement of the year so far... Cultural appreciation was had by all though - we'll have to go back when we're slightly cleaner I think...

So, overall I'd recommend walking in Epping Forest, but probably not again in winter! Maybe we'll head back there when all the leaves are fresh and that lovely new Spring green. 

Birthday chronicle

Despite being told by a friend that 34 is a bit of a 'nothing birthday', the fact that it's winter over in London means that I think it's all the more important to make a bit of a fuss about a birthday that you're used to spending wafting about in the glorious heat of summer.

Fortunately, I was lucky enough that the terrible weather forecast didn't really arrive (think torrential rain etc.) and was instead gifted with a beautifully sunny and crisp day. To start with, I got the coveted front seat of the bus which meant I got a stunning 360 view of the Thames from my favourite bridge in London - Waterloo. You really get a sense of how the river bends from Waterloo Bridge, and you can see nearly all of the city's most iconic structures. Here's the view looking east where you can see St Pauls, and the Gherkin hiding behind the 'Cheese Grater' (love the random names of all the buildings):

The reason I got the bus in was because I'd made an Italian apple cake and didn't want to get it all mushed up in my panniers. Here's a half-finished shot of the cake - it took six apples and it was pretty delicious if I do say so myself!

After an extremely decadent lunch of leftover lobster mac'n'cheese from Christmas (which, when separated from all the other rich food we had at Christmas, was discovered to be insanely cheesy), it was time for a quick birthday visit to the bees. Fortunately our remaining hive is doing fine (no further sign of varroa which is great) and we're looking forward to seeing the entries to the beehive painting competition, due next Friday. Here's a birthday selfie I took from the roof looking south over the Thames where you can see the Shard in the background:

And then to top it all off, Adrian took me out for a fabulously fancy dinner at Roux at the Landau (in the Langham hotel in central London). We had a glass of champagne, delicious bread, an amuse bouche (cheesy choux buns), starter, main, dessert and petit fours (quince jelly, rum and raisin macaron and handmade chocolate). It was excellent and I would highly recommend it.

The final photo above includes a shot of Broadcasting House, the main BBC building on Regent Street. I've gone past it so many times but never really stopped to look. It looks great all lit up at night I thought.

So there you have it, a chronicle of a birthday. As I said to Adrian, hopefully by the time my next birthday rolls around I'll be a Dr! Viva timing dependent obviously, but here's hoping!

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!