Coastal Girl to City Girl

Credit OK I shall allow all my readers & followers to kick my butt. I've been away for far too long & have not even had the chance to reply to the lovely comments that my readers have left. Last month I started a new job in a local charity shop (I'm now the new assistant manager) & to be honest this is the first time I have felt human enough to sit at my poorly missed netbook & write. (big awww). It's been great starting the job & I'm loving every minute of it but my poor brain & energy had sizzled. I don't think I have ever slept so much on my days off lol! It's physical, fun & i get to meet lovely but interesting characters. But by starting the job I have neglected my writing & those who read this blog. So this was my way of saying sorry & to let people know I haven't disappeared lol. I have also, in between working, managed to finish my degree...woohoo!! I should get my final result for the honours c...

I’ll let you into a little secret. My guilty pleasure is magazines. I love nothing better than sitting down with a cuppa & a good magazine. I buy my dose of magazines each week & also a few monthly ones. I love the glossy pages, the chat pages & the real life stories, I glance over the fashion pages wishing I had hundreds to splash on a new bag or shoes but magazine window shopping is so much cheaper! I enjoy the adverts trying to sell me everything except a new kitchen sink & then I turn to the star signs & the world could fall apart! I also buy the fiction magazines & have a good read of the short stories wishing that I had kicked my bad ass to sit & write the short story that I’ve had notes on for ages. I always stick to the same magazines. Grazia is my favourite weekly; Glamour & Cosmo are my favourite monthlies. I subscribe to Glamour & still get excited when it drops through the letter box each month! This month though I was a bit...

I’ve spotted that most people have been writing their reflection posts on the A-Z challenge. So I thought I’d better get my ass in gear & write mine. I loved the challenge, I enjoyed the idea of blogging everyday & having an excuse to actually write & get something out into the world. Every day I wrote longhand first in my notebook then typed it up & posted it. My posts seemed to be so much cleverer sounding this way than if I’d just written them straight up lol. I settled on a theme for my posts as I knew I’d probably end up rambling on about anything & everything, so I chose to write about food & drink. Excellent & easy I thought. Oh how wrong I was. It was fun, exciting & interesting but also very challenging especially when my internet decided to let me down for over a week. That annoyed the hell out of me but I came back fighting & flooded my poor readers with more posts to go through than even I would manage to read! I...

A dear friend of mine published her book as an eBook recently. I should have done a shout out when I found out, instead I sent her an email telling her how much I was dancing around for her lol. I am so proud of her though as I know how long & hard she has worked on her book to get it perfect for her audience alongside writing her other books...that will also become available once she knows they are completely right. However now she is giving people the chance to download her book for free until the 11th April. I know how good this book is & how great her writing is full stop so you must go & check her site out.  http://www.ahbrowne.com/2012/04/random-free-giveaway-of-dark-illusions.html  Pass the notice onto friends & family, lets help other writers get noticed & enjoy the books they work so hard on to produce. A.H.Browne is a wonderful, warm, kind & funny lady who will tell it as it is. So why not pop over say hello & show some love...

As a child my favourite thing was ice cream. I would only eat it during the summer months (as I felt stupid eating it in winter…I was cold enough so I didn’t colder things entering my system!) & then I’d be lost for choice when faced with the task of choosing an ice cream. Mr whippy 99 with a flake was always my favourite. The soft fluffy ice cream within a crunchy cone & a chocolate flake. Summers were never the same without having one of these. If I couldn’t have that I’d choose an orange ice lolly or mini milk or a feast. Now there’s an ice lolly. Chocolate wrapped in chocolate filled with more chocolate. Yum…a messy ice lolly but a delicious one! The one I had at home was a Neapolitan…the ice cream of different flavours in one hit. Oh my how tasty that was. Then I discovered Vienetta. Now that was one dangerous discovery lol. I would munch my way through that in days & go back for seconds. I always love the sound of the hard chocolate cracking under t...

Hamburgers. One simple word…yum! I love hamburgers especially with melted cheese on them & a dollop of ketchup. Not too much ketchup though as it spoils the taste! You put just enough in to give it a small kick. I don’t like/need/want anything else in a burger. I don’t like it when they are over filled with onions, lettuce, tomatoes etc & if I have a Macdonald’s cheeseburger then the first thing I’ll do is rip out that slice of Gherkin thingy. Yuck! One time my sister produced a homemade hamburger to me. I eyed it with fascination & with a watering mouth took a bite. Then when I looked down I gasped, to me it looked pink. I talked to her about this but the problem now with chefs is that their burgers are always served slightly on the rare side. I told her to take it away & cook it for longer. Me & rare beef do not gel. If you eat meat then it has to be cooked well & that goes for hamburgers too. I know when I need red meat as my body st...

Dancing During my time at school (which feels like a long time ago now) I took dance as a subject. I loved it & still love it. But I no longer do it. There were always more girls than boys in the class & in fact at one point we only had 1 boy amongst about 15+ of us girls. It was unfair on him, he however loved it & actually was a good dancer. We would start by doing our stretches then we’d move on to the set pieces we either had to learn & perform in front of the others or we would study techniques of other dancers & then have to choreograph our own piece of dance. It was good fun, interesting & in the end important for our grading & exams. I continued to dance at various times…mainly when I’d had a few drinks…but I have never joined a dance class. I know I would actually feel shy dancing in front of others even after doing it for 3-4 years. I get stage fright badly & this effects the things I would love to do. Dancing being ...

Gin. Personally I do not drink Gin for me it tastes too sour. But when I worked behind a bar gin was a regular drink for others. I would offer a ‘double’ or ‘single’ shot, then you’d have to ask if they wanted a slice of lemon in it & ice before cracking the top of a bottle of tonic. Now I’ve seen & been asked for some strange drinks in my time behind a bar, that’s another post perhaps, but one time I actually frowned when someone asked for gin & bitter lemon. Because I was so used to the usual gin & tonic requests this one threw me somewhat. But I served it & continued to serve it from that day on. But I never really grasped the gin & tonic thing. I know obviously people have many different drinks they like & enjoy but gin has that sour taste anyway & then tonic also has a sourish taste so what’s the point of mixing them together & who came up with that idea in the first place? Mind you who comes up with the idea for mixers...

Feta cheese. I love Feta. I’ll throw it into a salad with lettuce, cucumber, olive oil & sprinkle mixed herbs on top. It’s my version of a Greek salad but without tomatoes & olives. I have no idea why I don’t have the whole Greek salad experience except that I can’t stand olives or tomatoes. If I have a salad or sandwich that has tomatoes in I will pick them out. Therefore when I do my own salad I’ll leave them out. Adding Feta to a salad gives it that extra taste & makes it slightly different to the normal typically plain salad. It also seems to give it more oomph & for me makes me want to eat salads daily. In the summer I will happily eat Feta salads with potatoes every day, it makes me feel healthier & lighter. I could easily get addicted to Feta which may not be a good thing but when cut into tiny pieces & crumbled over a handful of lettuce & cucumber it makes a salad more inviting & sounds fantastically delicious right ab...

Scrambled? Fried? Sunny side up? Boiled? Poached? Omelette? Scotch egg? Oh how I despise eggs! I have never eaten them & never will eat them. The smell gets to me first, then the texture, then the sight of them looking all kind of rubbery like especially fried & boiled ones. Ewww. My family loves them though & throughout the years had tried to encourage me to at least taste them…let’s just say they never tried again! I remember my grandparents loving boiled eggs with slices of toast or fried eggs on slices of ham with chips. My mum liked hers boiled or poached & my sister would eat them anyway but especially liked omelettes. It wasn’t until I started waitressing that they really got to me. People would request omelette upon omelette or fried egg with ham upon fried egg with ham. All I saw were eggs, eggs, eggs. They taunted me as I delivered someone’s dinner that had a wobbly fried egg on top where I’d place it down with a smile on face cursing at th...

For some strange reason these posts are taking on a sweet toothed theme! I’ll be the first to stand up & say ‘yes I have a sweet tooth, yes I may be addicted to sugar, but you only live once so what the hell.’ Doughnuts. I love them. I love the sticky sugary icing/dusting. I love the soft doughy texture. But I hate the jam filling. Ok they may sound a little nuts, after all who loves donuts but hates the jam filling. Simple answer…me. I’m basing this in the UK. We for some odd reason fill doughnuts with sticky, gooey jam. It oozes out everywhere & creates a huge (fun) mess, I have no idea why this is done but it annoys me. I know there are many different varieties out there without jam but they are not the same & technically are not (or should not) be called doughnuts. When I was younger I had a solution to this problem. I ate round the jam. I would cut out the middle section (as that’s the only place the jam is located) & give it to my sister....

I was going to write about chicken but decided nope that for me wasn’t interesting enough. So I thought I’d write about something sweet… Chocolate. Yay! Let’s have a big shout out for chocolate. We probably all know we shouldn’t indulge in this deliciously sweet delicacy but we do & when we do it’s extremely enjoyable. Letting a solid piece melt in your mouth for a long time trying to savour the taste as it lingers on your tongue. Or even when you use it for baking & want to lick the chocolate covered spoon or bowl! The trouble for me though is that I’m a chocoholic. A few people know this already about me & we used to have great chocolate discussions about your favourite make or flavour. I would try & explain English chocolate while they would tell me all about the American chocolate…yes they seem to taste completely different. For me though I would happily scoff a whole bar of the sweet stuff without a second thought & I’d also probabl...

Beans. There are many different types of beans & in many different varieties: French bean/Green bean/Black bean/Baked bean/Soya bean etc. The soya bean is the main bean in my daily diet. I found out last year that normal dairy milk was bad for me. I had been drinking it for years but when I began to get pains & cramps in my stomach which lasted a couple of months I knew something was wrong & went to see my doctor. After keeping a food diary a food/lifestyle diary I had two answers 1. I had developed IBS 2. Milk had become my enemy. I only had milk in cups of tea & on cereal but it was really affecting me. So I changed my habits & turned to Soya Milk. At first I was dubious of it as it does taste completely different to normal milk & it looks like cream but for me it’s been a godsend as I can now have my cups of tea & my cereal without any major side effects with my condition. I’ve got used to having the Soya bean within my d...

I’ve been thinking about different ways of doing the April A-Z challenge http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/ I thought about combining it with the poetry month over at  NaBloPoMo but I knew I’d probably get stuck by the end of the alphabet. Then I wondered about doing a food & drink A-Z which might turn into a bit of a giggle when I get to Z. So having done a Google search ahead of time…I know I’m a cheat…or a good researcher…I’ve decided to try my hand at a food & drink A-Z for April. If I fail then I fail, if not then hopefully it will be a giggle along the way & when I’ve completed it (fingers crossed) then I can jump for joy & knowing my luck probably end up going off food & drink for life… ‘A’ is for apple…only joking as that for me is too obvious & reminds me of my school days learning the alphabet…When I looked up food beginning with ‘A’ a whole host of ideas came up & I scrolled up & down this list one jumped out at me & l...

  I was never really a poetry kind of person until I began my Creative Writing course & then a Literature course. I had to write & study poetry & although I enjoyed it I could never find a poem that really stuck with me. I read the Romantic poets, the modern poets & yet although I liked what they had written it felt different enjoying the poems when you had to study them. You rip a poem apart; find different meanings in each word/line/stanza & that for me took the enjoyment out of it. I feel that with poetry you have to take your time, savour each line & stanza, you have to take your time over it & let it lead you through the senses, instead of trying to find what perhaps sometimes isn’t there when doing a course & having to analyse it. I will have to push myself to read more poetry for enjoyment & decide for myself what poem I will remember instead of being forced to like certain poetry which could have the opposite affect wh...