Brighton Summer

Towards the end of summer, my lovely Jodie came over from Sydney for a (much too short) visit. We decided that a daytrip to Brighton was in order. Despite London being typically wet and grey when we left in the morning, by the time we got to Brighton, the weather had decided to behave, and we had a glorious day by the seaside. 

One Night In Paris (Part Deux)

Sorry to inundate you with more Paris photos, but well...maybe I'm not really sorry! It is impossible to go to Paris and not want to take a gazillion photos. And yes, of course gazillion is a proper number. The photo above was taken on the steps just outside the Sacre Coeur - there's a platform where you can see almost all of Paris. 

We also had escargots - it probably isn't to everyone's taste, but Shad and I loved it so we were looking forward to it all day. These ones were pretty good, served with lots of herby garlic butter and not overcooked. They came with some fancy forks and special escargot tongs, and we had to concentrate on handling the tongs to avoid a repeat of that scene in Pretty Woman. You know the one...she's in a fancy restaurant and has to use the tongs to pick up her snails and her dinner ends up flying off into a waiter's face. We were both too hungry to remember the name of the restaurant, but there are plenty of places around Montmartre serving them up if you want to have a go.

Shad and I also paid a visit to Shakespeare and Company - it's a haven for bibliophiles, and has been visited by writers including William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Henry Miller. There is an antiquarian section, as well as a lending library and some boxes outside containing a selection of curiosities you never knew you needed. 

One night is Paris simply isn't enough...

The Birdman of Circular Quay

Manbacon and I spent the first two weeks of February in Australia, catching up with family and friends and generally behaving rather badly. More photos and words will follow shortly, but first, I want to show you all one of the best things I saw in Sydney - The Birdman of Circular Quay!

Cameraphone photo - my first sighting!

Narwhal Twins

Scarred for life.

Pony Club

Pretty ponies at the Singapore Zoo, January 2012.  

Bruges

Bruges, Belgium. May 2012

Bits of Krakow

Dragon's Den on Wawel Hill (nope, not that Dragon's Den).

 Lovely buildings covered in greenery. Probably not great for preventing damp or letting much light in, but still gorgeous nonetheless.

 Stare Miasto - the old town.

P-p-p-poniesssss!

Bleeding Ghoulies

While the cool kids were out trick-or-treating this past Saturday night, I was holed up in my kitchen, cackling in glee as I knelt in front of the oven. The reason? I was waiting for my little ghosties and jack-o'-lantern cakes to come out so I could devour them. (But the real reason is that I'm way too uncool to be invited to any Halloween parties, and I suffer from acute social phobia.)

These little cakes are an homage to the Satan cakes Googy and I used to bake while we lived in the Pony Club - so named because they were devilishly delish. They're gooey chocolate cakes with a spoonful of Nutella hidden in the middle, and a far cry from the sickly, vapid fairy cakes supermarkets tend to offer. 

I've been sworn unto death not to reveal the secret of Satan cakes, though, and these ghoulish cakes were the result of me throwing some ingredients together, so I haven't got a recipe for you. What this post is, instead, is a kind of 'how-to assemble your own bleeding ghostie cake'. 

The silicon ghost and jack-'o-lantern moulds came from Sainsburys, but it's not a big deal if you can't find them. You can always bake them as regular cupcakes, then draw scary faces on afterwards.

You'll need:

Ghost/ Jack-o'-lantern silicon moulds (if you can find them)

or

Cupcake liners

Your favourite chocolate cake recipe

Your favourite red jam (I used a raspberry conserve)

100gm white chocolate

50ml milk (I used vanilla-flavoured soy milk*)

1. Preheat your oven if needed, and grease the silicon moulds. Make up the chocolate cake batter.

2. Drop a couple of tablespoons of cake batter into each mould, then add a teaspoon (or 2) of jam on top. Add more cake batter until each mould is about 3/4 full.

3. Bake for time required. Remove cakes from moulds and let them cool.

4. Once cool, start preparing the white chocolate ganache for the top. Finely chop up the white chocolate, place it into a heatproof bowl and heat up the milk. Pour the milk over the white chocolate and stir until you get a smooth, homogeneous mixture. Pour or drizzle the mixture over each cake, leaving a thin layer of ganache on top. 

5. Try and wait til the chocolate cools before eating. Watch as they magically disappear into your tummy! Spooky!

*The combination of white chocolate and vanilla-flavoured soy milk makes the ganache taste like condensed milk. I'm a fan. 

Sean Serenades

Two posts in one day, not bad, huh? 

Yes, yet another cat with laser-eyes. I could be turning into a crazy cat lady. I just keep finding pictures of cats whenever I buy frames from the op-shops, and I can't resist cutting them out. This collage is gonna be in the next issue of The Great Unwashed, the little zine that my ponies and I have been putting out for the past two/three/four (?) years now. 

By the way, if anyone reading this is from Sydney, Googy and Sunny will be hawking their delightful wares at the MCA Zine Fair on the 25th of May, so pop on over and grab yourself a copy, or just say hi to them. You know you wanna, baby!

Summer Camp

Mystery roll of film found --> brought for developing --> lo! and behold, memories galore!

Well, I guess 'galore' isn't really the right word for it, since only about 8 photos actually came out. The photos on that mystery roll were taken on my Action Sampler pretender, and it was a real blast from the (not so distant) past when I finally got my pictures back from the shop.

These were taken in all February 2007, when my ponies and I went for our sort-of-annual camping trip up near Forster, in NSW.

We slept till noon every day, then trekked to the beach or lake and ran around singing 'Wuthering Heights, ate  way too much chocolate cake, played with sparklers, and hung out at the pool across the road pretending we were fancy ladies at an expensive resort.

A Good Mail Day...And A Giveaway!

Some people have postie troubles. Me, I love my postie. Why? Because he looks like Tom Baker, and this morning, he knocked on the door and handed me three packages, all with my name on them! It's been an excellent mail day today.

These are what I found when I opened the packages. Moving clockwise from the bottom left corner - some beads I ordered, the lovely cross-stitch patterned brooch I won in Alice's blog giveaway, and lastly, a letter and a copy of The Great Unwashed zine from Googy.

The zine had to be done in black and white this time as Googy doesn't have access to an office colour-copier anymore, but she managed to 'borrow' some colourful paper before leaving her last job so it's still pretty colourful anyway. Office supply cupboards pretty much help us keep putting this zine out. We spent the last couple of months sending each other snailmail with drawings and stories to get it all together. Working on a zine isn't that easy when your partner-in-crime is thousands of miles away.


Anyway, to celebrate this awesome mail day, and because I'm feeling generous, I'm going to do a giveaway for one of my new tardigrade brooches, which I'm thinking of putting into the Etsy shop soon.

All you have to do to enter is leave me a comment telling me what your favourite bug or insect is, and also which colour tardigrade you'd like to have. I have them in 4 colours - red, white, blue and yellow. I'll do the draw on Sunday the 21st and get in touch with the winner.

Good luck, everyone!

Pony Club Time!

Back in Sydney, in time for New Year's. I left London on Boxing Day (a cold winter's morning), and after spending about 36 hours in a flying machine, I arrived to a sweltering summer's day. I guess going halfway around the world does have it's rewards sometimes.

The ponies were there to pick me up from the airport. It's pretty much been holiday-time since I've been back. All we've been doing is swimming, waking up late, cycling around the water, watching movies.
In the three days that I've been back, I've probably cycled more than I have in a year in London. I stacked it on the first night, and I've been a little bit more cautious since. I was going downhill, and couldn't find the slopey bit at the end so ended up just flying over the kerb. Flying's great, it's just the landing that's not so fun. I knew I couldn't do anything to stop it though, so I just tried to enjoy the ride. My hands and knees are a little bit grazed up, but nothing too life threatening. I'm just a lot more cautious on the downhill bits since.
I wish I could tell you about the spectacular items I've been knitting with all my free time, but the truth is, I haven't done anything.