Jane Goodall

A friend posted this video on Facebook and I thought it was too good not to share. Not only is Jane Goodall an amazing human being for all that she's already done, but she's such an inspiration to keep on doing everything you can to make the world a better place for as long as you can.

If I'm 80 and still as articulate as her I'll be very pleased!

PhD graduation

Those who know me well have known that I absolutely love graduation - and that this one, for my PhD, would be particularly special because I would finally achieve the "floppy hat" that I'd been working towards for so long.

Outside the Old Building

There's just something about graduation - you spend so much of your time during a degree stressing about your work and whether it's good enough, and so to finally have the occasion to step back and really celebrate what you've achieved is really special. The fact that this graduation would be my last (I cannot see myself doing another PhD!) and that Mum and Dad had made the big trip over from New Zealand for it also made it one that I was really looking forward to.

Proud family!

We had a really lovely day - lunch with my supervisor Richard and some uni friends in Lincoln's Inn Fields, the actual ceremony itself which was great (especially the bit where they read out your thesis title), then cocktails up the Shard and dinner at the Oxo Tower. It was all quite fancy!

The big moment!

I loved my floppy hat and was pretty pleased to have been able to find a maternity dress that would go with my purple robes - not an easy task I tell you! Another special highlight was having Jon from LSE Sustainability open up the Connaught House roof for us so that Mum and Dad could see the beehives that I'd talked so much about! I really miss my bees and so it was lovely to be able to go visit them.

Saying hello to the bees!

All in all a fantastic day - totally made all the hard graft of the PhD worthwhile!

Dr Sharman!

Life around here

Wow, I have been pretty remiss at keeping up the blog this year I must say - the last post before this was in June! I think because it's so easy to send photos via WhatsApp etc. now, that it's taken the place of the blog a little, but seeing as I do enjoy looking back and keeping track of all the things that we get up to via the blog, I'll do my best to keep updating it even if it does continue at such an infrequent and erratic pace...

So, life around here... The big news, which everyone knows in real life but I haven't mentioned here so far, is the imminent arrival of the baby! I'm currently only three days away from my due date (9th Oct) and feeling as big as a house. Thank goodness for stretchy clothes from H&M! I finished work a couple of weeks ago which has been great (sitting for long periods of time was getting pretty uncomfortable) and have been filling the freezer with risottos and pasta (obviously I'm having an Italian phase) and waiting for essential deliveries like the car seat, mattress for the pram, nappy bag etc. It's interesting, I've hardly bought anything "in real life" for the baby actually - I would say at least 75% of what we've bought has been online (either from stores or from things like eBay) - I'm definitely part of the digital generation!

Last day at work - 16 September 2016 (end of week 36)

So, while it's hard to get out and about too much lately, we did have a great gender-neutral baby celebration with our friends at one of our local pubs where we had a surprisingly difficult quiz (highest score was 5/10, sorry guys!) and lots of fun predictions on the baby's sex, name, arrival date etc. Lots of predictions for a girl (69%) and mostly past the due date so we shall see how accurate they are!

But, let's go back in time and work forward from where I last updated... At the beginning of July we spent a weekend on the Pembrokeshire coast with John, Jules and Benjamin which was really relaxing - unfortunately John, Adrian and I all got sick which wasn't great, but it was still a nicer location to lie about in the sunshine than in London!

Going for a walk

Gorgeous coastline

View from where we were staying

Mum and Dad came back from their jaunt around Europe for graduation (I'll make that the subject of a separate post) and one of the things we did was to climb Monument - something I've been wanting to do for absolutely ages. We also had some really nice days walking about the city and people watching, going to market etc., as well as having a quick look around East Dulwich and then visiting Dad's Uncle Albert which was really nice (especially the giant chocolate cake he'd got for us!).

View looking east from Monument

Monument staircase

Adrian fulfilled a long-held ambition which was to have a T-Bone steak at Hawksmoor. Even though I've been eating meat during the pregnancy, there was no way I was going to be able to help him get through it all, so Pam came along and we had a really fun evening.

Getting ready to eat! 

The remnants of the bone marrow and the T-Bone!

One particularly fine weekend day we decided to pop up to our local park, Southwark Park, and have a jaunt on the row boats. Most other people were on the pedalos, but a row around the lake followed by an ice-cream in the sun made for a pretty relaxing afternoon. I also loved the looks from people as they saw a heavily pregnant woman rowing her husband around!

Keeping on an even keel 

We went for a swim at the Olympic-distance swimming pool in Stratford - it's a really fantastic facility: loads of lanes, not too many people and great water temperature. If we lived in the area I'd be down every day!

At the Olympic pool at Stratford

I also went to a very interesting insect day down at our local reserve - Stave Hill Ecological Park. It was all about identifying different types of insects, such as the key differences between bees and flies (antenna length is a key one there) and bush crickets and grasshoppers (leg angles are important in that case). I went with a colleague from work and a current member of LSE Bees - and the funniest thing was that literally a day or so later we had a bush cricket in our bedroom and I could identify not only what it was, but that it was a female because of its ovipositor. Very cool!

My colleague Alex checking out a specimen

One of our local pubs, the Wibby Wobbly, has been closed for a little while now. It was unique in that it was on a boat in the docks, but now it's been taken over by pirates! Love the juxtaposition of the squatters with the bright lights of money-making Canary Wharf in the background...

Pirates at the Wibbly Wobbly

Adrian and I fulfilled another one of those, "I've wanted to do that for ages" London things - a candle-lit visit to the Sir John Soane's Museum. It's a museum dedicated to the artefacts collected by Sir John Soane, a 19th century architect, and is absolutely chocka-block with stuff inside. The first Tuesday of every month they light the entire museum by candlelight and it's extremely popular - check out the queue! It's just around the corner from LSE and so I'd seen these queues for four years and it was great to finally be seeing what all the fuss was about. Not so comfortable to be sitting on the pavement for over an hour in my condition as part of the queue, but an experience to be had nonetheless.

Queue for the museum - can you spot Adrian?

Exterior of the museum - no photos allowed inside unfortunately

We made the most of a very sunny Sunday afternoon to cycle down to one of the pubs on the river in Rotherhithe for a drink - turns out it was my last cycle ride before the baby comes! It was really lovely just soaking up the sun and chilling out.

At the Salt Quay in Rotherhithe

Chilling in the sun (with a non-alcoholic beer...)

And then there's just been lots of other miscellaneous things going on - like brunch with Adrian's sister Emilia at Lima Flora (really interesting Peruvian food), eating mille feuille in St James' Park, strolling around Greenwich, and heading out and about using my "baby on board" badge to catch up with friends at various events around town.

Delicious!

A selection of the dishes at Lima Floral

Walking around a rainy Greenwich

Hanging out in Shoreditch

On the tube

Basil and blackberry cupcake at the Lower Marsh market yesterday

So there you have it - a complete update of things round these here parts. Now we're just hanging out, waiting for baby to arrive! Fingers crossed it won't be too much longer...

Garden explosion

Summer is here! (Even though it's been raining heavily on and off for what feels like weeks now)

The difference in just a few weeks always astounds me - it's been such a colour explosion! The strawberries are coming faster than we can eat them and the roses are so heavily in bloom it feels like they're threatening to collapse the entire bush. The beans are still a fair way off, but they're winding up their bamboo stalks more and more each day.

And how about the photo of the cactus in bloom! We haven't seen that flower before and it must have been all this rain that's finally inspired it to open up - and such a bright, vibrant colour too. 

Now all we need is the sun to appear so we can enjoy it...

A very green garden (8 June)

A fortnight later (22 June) - the rose bush is nearly collapsing under the weight of all those flowers!

What a stunning pink cactus flower!

Oatmeal raisin cookies

It's been that kind of day - miserable inside and out. It's been pouring outside and I'm inside with a cold feeling rotten. But it just came into my head that I wanted to eat some oatmeal and raisin cookies and I couldn't shake it, so off to the internet I went to find a recipe.

The below is a riff on this recipe, but I've halved and changed up the type of sugar, added another egg and some extra spices and they've come out quite soft and cake-like (rather than crispy) which is perfect because that's exactly what I was looking for.

They came out really well and were delicious! Give it a try and tell me what you think.

Oatmeal and raisin cookies
Makes 34

Ingredients
100-150g sultanas or raisins (or whatever dried fruit mix you prefer)
150ml vegetable/sunflower oil
100g brown sugar
2 medium eggs
2tsp (or more) ground cinnamon
1tsp (or more) ground ginger
1tsp vanilla extract
140g plain flour
1/4tsp bicarbonate of soda
300g oats

Method
1. Heat oven to 180C and line two trays with baking parchment. Pour 50ml boiling water over the raisins and leave to soak for 20 minutes or so until plump. (Note if you add more fruit, add slightly more boiling water to compensate). Drain and reserve the liquid.

2. In a large bowl, mix together the oil and sugar. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then the reserved liquid from the fruit, the cinnamon, ginger and vanilla extract. Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda and a pinch of salt into the bowl and mix. Then add the oats and mix, and then finally the raisins.

3. Using a tablespoon measure, drop flat measures of mixture onto the baking trays. I got 34 cookies out of this mixture but you could make larger cookies (and just increase the baking time). Mine didn't really spread at all during cooking so I placed them reasonably close together (depending on the size of your tray you'll get between 12-16 cookies per tray).

4. Bake for 12-15 minutes until golden (I baked for 13 minutes). Leave to cool on the trays for at least 10 minutes. Will keep in an airtight container for a few days, or will freeze well.

Hope you like them!