Guildford Circular Walk (Guest post: Alana)

Shake off your thoughts of a lazy bank holiday lie-in, and head slightly south of London, led by the lovely Alana, brunch buddy, Santa Con veteran, Tweep corraller and in this instance intrepid Kiwi reporter presenting from the British frontline for us!

---------------------------------------------------------------

Guildford Circular Walk

April and May have a glorious cluster of Bank Holiday long weekends. Normally I’d be using the extra annual leave days to travel to somewhere in Europe – but so far 2014 has been about keeping it local (if you ignore my visit to New Zealand, it’s ‘local’ if it’s your homeland after all!)

Online Afternoon Tea #bakeforbumps

Thank you, thank you, thank you. We did it. Somehow, through the kindness of the beautiful bloggers that I'm proud to call friends (and fellow social media addicts,) we hit our fundraising target and raised some fantastic awareness for a charity championing the health of babies. Life is good, and now much better for a few as-yet-unborn children.

All for the love of cake.

Sadly, there was a touch of rain on our parade (though luckily not our beautiful tablecloth!) as some friends were unable to make it. I thought perhaps instead I could spread an online blanket under the tree of the internet, and we could share the recipes - et voila, the DIY Blogger Afternoon Tea was born.

Follow LondonKiwiEmma's board Delicious feast recipes perfect for a DIY blogger Afternoon Tea on Pinterest.

As you'll be able to see, our afternoon tea contained all of the 3 major food groups; Savouries, Scones & Sweets, and much much more than even we chatterers could eat.

The tables in La Mancha's function room simply groaned with platters of delicious delectables.

And, perhaps most importantly a rather rustic Tea Bar.

 

I've already been fielding cries of "When's the next one?" so watch this space. Just give my waistband a chance to recover, promise?

Every one that came and also so kindly supported us, I've tried to blog stalk for lovely tea recipes, but I would adore any more recipes links in the comments below. Or Tweeted. Or cooked for me to try (I joke. Mostly).

Once again, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Twitter | Google+ | Facebook | Bloglovin' | Email

New Zealand literary greats

Living 17,000 miles away from my home country it's weird that every day there seems to be surprise from the other side of the globe that makes my heart sing. Whether it be random parcels of treats, messages from family or the rise of great Flat Whites in London coffee shops, reminders pop up everywhere.

 

Wearing a greenstone tiki with pride, a New Zealand flag adorning my home desk and my head popping up every time the rugby is mentioned, it's strange to think how moving so far away has strengthen the ties with my birth place.

 

 

"What can you do if you are thirty and, turning the corner of your own street, you are overcome, suddenly by a feeling of bliss - absolute bliss! - as though you'd suddenly swallowed a bright piece of that late afternoon sun and it burned in your bosom, sending out a little shower of sparks into every particle, into every finger and toe? ... " Katherine Mansfield

 

Every so often though, a pang of homesickness bites, and it's cardboard lined tomes that I turn to, bite sized morsels of the country that keeps my heart. I've said it before but, sadly, New Zealand isn't really known globally for a plethora of literary works (hobbit toes, rugby, amazing scenery and a lot of sheep generally come to mind first). It's such a shame when we have authors like the wistful Katherine Mansfield, evocative Janet Frame and the wonderful Margaret Mahy gracing our library shelves. Then, this year like a lightening bolt, the world literary stage was stolen by Eleanor Catton, the youngest Man Booker Prize winner with her second novel The Luminaries.

 

“Language, at least, may give up the secrets of life and death, leading us through the maze to the original Word as monster or angel, to the mournful place where we may meet Job and hear his cry, 'How long will you vex my soul and break me in pieces with words?”  Janet Frame

 

Review: The Luminaries - Eleanor Catton

 

As school children we were encouraged to read and explore national literary treasures but it has taken more than 20 years for the significance to truly sink in. We in New Zealand have a very small but rather mighty nation, and should celebrate our rich history.

 

“Reading is very creative - it's not just a passive thing. I write a story; it goes out into the world; somebody reads it and, by reading it, completes it.” Margaret Mahy

 

Review: Rangitaiki, Bob Lindsey

 

The point of my blatherings today? As usual, there's no exciting denouement, thrilling twist or incredibly described destination, just a mild thrill at the thought that there is a Kiwi/Aussie literary festival in town (they don't know me, or that I'm writing this) where I can go to satisfy my latest craving for Kiwi prose and maybe learn a few many things.

 

Man, I love this city.

 

Twitter | Google+ | Facebook | Bloglovin' | Email

The London Monopoly Board Pub Crawl

26 pubs. One iconic board game. 4 friends. 1 busy city. Who ever could have thought the above could be interlinked?

Stumbling upon the Monopoly Pub crawl website years ago, we vowed to one day complete it. Then, adding it to my 101 in 1001 goals, I never really though we would manage to schedule it in, let alone complete it.

 

 

Doing the Monopoly pub crawl means you will end up doing things that you never thought probable, let alone possible...

Have 13 drinks of anything in one set period.

Converse on the street about closed pubs with a group of blokes in top hats fake moustaches & tails.

Almost lose your shoes.

Debate how good a pub is vs. how close it is to the road.

Dance down Regent Street.

Wordlessly begin to high-five, then urge everyone to drink & run.

Set, with great reverence, on the bar of Leicester Square's busiest pubs, an arrangement of beer, monopoly property card & silver figurines.

Pose for a double selfie in Marylebone Station Loos.

Take random group photos at each train station you rampage (politely) through.

Being unable to get off a bus due to blokes in top hats fake moustaches & tails overcrowding the poor vehicle.

Watch the aghast, confused face of an Italian tourist at said gaggle of blokes.

Finish the pub crawl with a few hours to spare.

The recommended start time is 10.30am in a pub near Old Kent Road, opening especially for the groups of pub crawlers to start their long day. We raced around London in a large spiral, bussing, running, tubing, laughing and dancing. We decided to do the recommended route - there is an in-order route, but it zig-zags across London - which left us finishing our celebration pints around 10.45pm.

We drank half pints - if you drink full pints it's highly likely to end in hospital or Jail, without passing go or colleting £200. Make sure you eat well, and drink water often. The Monopoly pub crawl website recommends pubs, but we found ourselves occasionally picking them ad hoc. What a day!

It was fantastic fun but tiring. Wear sensible shoes (costumes optional), drink responsibly, make sure that you know your limits and go with good friends. Like this guy.

Twitter | Google+ | Facebook | Bloglovin' | Email

What makes good, nay great writing?

(Possibly a lack of using the pretentious 'nay' unless you happen to be Shakespeare...) I began attending a writing course a few weeks ago, and it's profoundly changing the way I think about words.

I've never been a writer, and I'm still not. I can cobble together a decent formal letter, and slap an essay up with relative ease, but they're both structured presentations and explanations of research, not really writing.

 A rose by any other name...

Our teacher says quite simply, but rather powerfully, "you need to tell a story". Pretty obvious, but rather tough in practise at times (especially when you're rolling out posts 6 days a week and working full time). But, lame excuses aside, every word has a cosy sentence niche for a reason. Why pick 'splodge' over 'droplet', 'azure' over 'blue' or use a sprinkle of the occasional raison d'être? (Carefully spell checked. Most of the time). There is a rhythm to thoughtful writing, a natural flow of phrasing that doesn't overwhelm the subject, but supports the idea and punctuates the ethos of a sentence.

 Feel the rhythym, feel the rhyme!

It's also a challenge trying to find that delicate balance between telling your personal story, and allowing it to overwhelm the tapestry of your subject. Also, the danger of being sterile - quite simply why would anybody bother reading something 'magnolia' in composition?

 All in all you're just another snail on the wall...

This isn't a cry for attention, a backwards request for a slap on the back, but simply train of musings that cried for tapping out. I've published 589 post on this here corner of t'internet but, hand on heart, I can say that I've sent around dozen posts into the ether that I would share as examples of decently expressed thought.

That said, in many ways I'm rather stoked with every post I hit that publish button on - they are a part of me, an expression for some kind of hidden emotion. Sometimes it's simply an unfulfilled craving for an eggs benedict hit, sometimes a desperation to share an unusual corner we're discovered. The nice thing (sorry, terrible phrase) joy of blogging is the flexibility of pretty well whatever you like. If I want to thread singing a song through a restaurant review, I can. If I want to add a post where I say nothing at all, I can. All I know is that it doesn't seem to scare you lot off...

What is the blog post or piece of writing you're proudest of?

Twitter | Google+ | Facebook | Bloglovin' | Email