I know this great little place ...

Living in London, you would think I'd have my pick of superb restaurants, swish bars and cosy drinking dens. You would think I'd be spoilt for choice. Well, quite frankly, there's TOO MUCH CHOICE.

When you live in a city so vibrant, it's easy to feel overwhelmed and go to the same old chains for the sake of simplicity. However, after a pretty wonderful night in cosy Ruby's bar in Dalston, I've made myself the promise to forego bland chains for the sake of these secret London gems more often.

I won't lie: Dalston is not easy for me to get to but, boy, is it worth the trouble. Heading Eastwards, my date and I would have walked passed its inauspicious façade were it not for a dilapidated sign above the door: a cinema listing board adorned with wonky 'MWAH.' Going by this picture from London On The Inside, they are always a little enigmatic :)

Downstairs the low lighting revealed pealing walls (gotta love that shabby chic!), a bar replete with amazing cocktails in old school milk bottles, chilled music and a great crowd.

It's made for a lovely evening and I couldn't stop smiling all the way home.

So, this is my recommendation to you! I would love any recommendations you might have to help me in my quest for originality: any city, any country, anywhere - I want to know!

13.1

I've always run (well, I say always ... before I learned to walk as a baby, it was certainly more challenging) but I'm pretty sure I don't have a competitive bone in my body. So, when I say 'run' you should picture a mixture of jogging, walking and down right slow-motion dawdling whenever a smoochy love song comes on the radio.

But no more. I've set myself a goal: a half marathon by the end of 2013. I've created a training schedule, found GPS enabled sports watches, looked up local running clubs. I feel this could be the start of a beautiful metamorphosis from a fairly sub-par jogger into a fully-fledged runner (...sort of).

It. Is. On.

Normally, I don't look for results from my runs. It's more about getting out, exploring my area and taking some time for myself. However, recently I've really enjoyed pushing myself each mile. Here are my results:

28th Dec                                                                    29th Dec

Total time - 45:14                                                         Total time - 30.77

Total distance - 8.36km                                                Total distance - 5.47km

Average pace - 5.36m/km                                            Average pace 5.29m/km

I love running and thought a half marathon would be a challenging yet achievable goal for 2013. I'd love to know what sports are your favourites and what goals you have set for yourself in the past or future. If you're a runner, do you have any tips for me? I'm sure it isn't going to be an easy ride!

Embarassing work moments

They happen to the best of us - something in your teeth, phone buzzing away during an important meeting, tripping up on your way past the whole floor. Let me wash away your personal embarrassment with the tale of how my levels of dappiness (already well known to family and friends) reached new levels at work today.

So, my manager, who is not based in London, asked me to go down and bring up Karen. She tells me that Karen's here for a meeting and has short blonde hair. I think to myself, that sounds like a highly doable and not at all complicated task. Off I pop downstairs and, after a quick scan of the lobby, I find such a lady. I go up to her and ask if she's Karen. She replies yes, that she's here for the meeting with Richard. Perfect! I sign her in and we head upstairs to look for the meeting room. I make polite chat in the lift despite the fact I've no idea who Richard is, a fact I put down to my bambi-esque freshness. Searching the floor, Richard is nowhere to be found so I ask my manager if she's sure of the meeting room as we can't find Richard.

"Who's Richard?" she asks perplexedly.
"The guy Karen's here to meet", I answer straightforwardly.

It's at this point Karen pipes up. "Who's Karen?" Cue blank stares from my manager and me. "I'm Susannah." Excellent. I've essentially kidnapped someone from the lobby, brought them to the wrong floor, made them late for their meeting and goodness knows what's happened to Karen ... the real one, not this imposter Karen.

By this point, imposter Karen is getting a bit shirty. She's on the phone to Richard.

"Richard, which floor are you on? I'm on the fifth. I'm with a very confused girl."

I felt like calling up my friend and saying "I'm with a woman who can't even remember her own name" but, you know, I'm highly professional so I restrained myself. I popped her in the lift and headed back to the office.

My manager gave me the look as a mother to a child. I got the feeling she was contemplating how on earth I got the job in the first place ...

Driving Miss Daisy

After I finished finals, I found myself facing a seemingly endless expanse of time before my new job started: over three and a half months, around 105 days, roughly 2208 hours ...and I get bored quickly.

Not one to hang about, I got straight on the case:
I found myself a job in a local shop, a gorgeous little place which has everything you in no way need, but really really want.
I got involved with a think tank, realised I know nothing about taxes and care to know even less.
I signed up to help out at a summer school
I booked some time to see my sister in the south of France.
I realised that England clearly wasn't bothered about summer this year and so I went and booked three more weeks in the south of France.

Delightful, if chaotic, times. However, there was another, less than delightful, task to be done: learning to drive. I'd been gearing up (no pun intended. Ok, fine, it was completely intended and took me the last two paragraphs to think up) to it for over five years. That's right. I am 22 and 1/4 and I still can't drive. Suddenly mysterious phrases like clutch control and stalling made sense (sort of). It's all rather like a stressful, non contact version of bumper cars. Yet, I still can't check the feeling that I'm in a machine which with one lapse of concentration could be lethal... Eek!

When did you learn to drive? Did you enjoy it?

Un Jeu de Tarot in Kensington

Last night, I was invited to a dinner party in West Ken. I fell in love with the flat before I'd even reached the door. As I walked down the street, lined with tall Georgian terraces, I narrowly missed being knocked out by a cricket ball as two guys played casually in the road. The endless rain of this English 'summer' had ceased at last and the sun fell low on the buildings. The flat was stunning - top floor, huge windows looking over leafy gardens, high ceilings and furnished with excellent taste.


The food was better still - avocado, tomato and mozarella salad to start, followed by a delicious vegetable-laden pastry dish, then possibly the largest portion of crumble I've ever seen in my life before finally cheese, grapes and port. Conversation was easy although I did get the giggles when one of our hosts tried to introduce us to a French card game called 'jeu de tarot.' Needless to say, I didn't have a clue about the rules but threw myself into it anyway. It didn't not go well. I lost every time. 


I love evenings with good food, wine and company even if it did take me two hours to get home because I went in the wrong direction completely in order to chat with my friend for about 10 minutes longer. Excellent logic, n'est-ce pas? Here's to more to come! Cheers! Tchin!

It's the final countdown

Tomorrow, I have my penultimate final. As ever, I'm unprepared! So far, these exams have gone by in a blur but these last two are beginning to drag as everyone around me seems to be finishing. There are carnations, confetti and cries of joy all over college and it's becoming harder to keep my focus. I don't have the same determination I did at the start of this (near three week long!) process and am not really putting my heart into these last exams. I think my slight apathy is exacerbated by my worry about what I've done so far plus thoughts for next week with lots to organise and lots going on. I should be focused on my last two papers. Instead I'm thinking: when will I have time to get ready, when will I pack, will I be able to fit this event in; have I made the right decision to sign up for this, did I remember to book that train...

I think it's obvious that I need to breathe.
Then focus. Two more days. Less than forty eight hours. If I've made it through four years of trials and tribulations I sure can't let this last couple of days drag me down. However it's gone so far, I have the decision about how to act on these two, even if it's only a desperate decision to hurl everything I've got. Four and a half more hours in my exam hall and I'm finished.

Time for some tea, me thinks.

Isn't it a pity

I quite like Valentine's Day - I love that, despite how busy everyone can feel, it prompts people to make thoughtful, unique and loving gestures for those who meant most to them. And, no, I'm not talking about the people who grab petrol-station flowers on the way home; I'm judging them.

But, tonight, I feel positively seething, the result of some rather thoughtless comments from a supposed friend. This Valentine's day, when I told him that, no, I wasn't really looking for any guy, he had the audacity and social obliviousness to say, "Oh, that's so sad. You really should" before launching into some trite how I needed to find myself at the man of my dreams asap.

Should? According to who exactly? I'm completely baffled as to what this comment was supposed to achieve. Either, I'm really not looking for anyone, in which case I couldn't care less of what I 'ought' to be doing. Or, if it did bother me that I didn't have someone to share things with, how is such a judgement comment in any way constructive? What was he expecting? That I'd turn and say, "You're right! If only someone had mentioned my inadequacies sooner!"

It made me so angry that I inhaled a whole portion of tiramisu. This was not in the plan. What made me more angry was I was so blind-sighted by this supposed sympathy or encouragement or however he chose to delude himself that I didn't have a good reply for this horrible comment. I just smiled. Urgh! I wish I'd told him how rude he was being, that he should focus on his own life rather than mine and that his alleged pity was even worse than a barefaced insult.