beards, bellies and ale

this week we tootled along to the Battersea Beer Festival for a celebration of real ale. For those of you unfamiliar with ale it is defined as… ”beer brewed from traditional ingredients, matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it is dispensed, and served without the use of extraneous carbon dioxide”.

It is the kind of stuff that most australians would think of when they imagine being served warm beer and I have had the odd visitor turn their nose up at it but really, it is delicious. Apart from the many and varied flavours that you don’t get drinking cold lager, it is produced all over the place in small breweries which means it always has a story. So, the stories from Wednesday night included:

• Old Bushy Tail – a reddish malty beer from Bushy’s brewery on the Isle of Man
• Quadhop – fruity hoppy golden ale from Downton brewery in Wiltshire
• Hophead – an old favourite hoppy bitter from Dark Star in West Sussex
• Dogwatch Stout – chocolate aftertaste from Nelson in Chatham
• Beijing Black – lovely stout from Potbelly in Kettering

and last but not least, Madog’s Ale which according to the notes had a ‘malty nose’ which in reality translates to smelling of farts from Purple Moose in Porthmadog in Wales. 

the market at borough

borough market on a saturday is definitely one of the highlights of the week – bacon bap with brown sauce from roast, monmouth flat white and if you wander for more than half an hour, a cheeky half in the Market Porter. This morning we were joined by the lovely April who is visiting and we wandered home with a bag full of Flour Power Banana Cake, ingredients for potato and leek soup and some Cotherstone cheese from Neal’s Yard.

sunday night in bethnal green

Justin works with lots of cool people and one of the coolest is Andy Liu. He has been giving us the inside vibe on chinese food in london and tonight he took us to gourmet san in bethnal green. We had some rather tasty treats, lots of garlic, lots of chilli and the odd bit of offal. I wish I could tell you what we had properly but basically it was a cold beef and tripe salad with coriander and sesame, fish cooked in a broth and loaded with chillies and the most delicious garlic lamb skewers…

and then we caught the tube back and walking home it started to snow. Proper snow. Sometimes london is really quite rockin.

i am addicted to the web…

but how can i resist when these lovelies are around…here are just a few I can’t stop visiting at the moment:

http://issuu.com – lots of magazines, some amazing photos books and asterix comics. fantastichen.

www.designspongeonline.com – yum. tasty interiors, mini trend tips and links to great online design stores.

www.etsy.com – if you have spoken to me in the last 6 months you will know that etsy changed my life, it continues to do so…

chat bald.

live at scala

yep, we were sad little aussies and went along to see uncle paul. I was slightly relieved when he forgot the opening lines to deeper water, he must have a million songs! Scala is a kick arse venue, and as you can see from the pics you can get really close…

summery sundae

Jus and I are just back from our annual trip to leicester for summer sundae. A most excellent little festival with room to breathe, toilets with soap and lots of chidlets with little ‘ear defenders’ on.

We managed to catch Wild Beasts (www.myspace.com/wildbeasts), Camera Obscura (www.myspace.com/cameraobscuraband) and roisin murphy (of moloko fame).

We also managed to sample several of the beverages from the real ale tent – Justin dug the Moonshine from Abbeydale Brewery in Sheffield and I had far too many of the Herefordshire Perry.

Fortunately we got a bit of sun in amongst the rain dribblets and a very pleasant time was had by all. 

k x

back in the saddle

after a rather long time being lazy and not updating the blog, I finally updated our photos and thought I should post something. So here is the something, not much, but for a sunny sunday in london not bad.

london in the spring

one of the best things about where we live in london is that i get to walk to and from work. This means two things, one i don’t have to puke in bins outside the station on my arrival and two I get to enjoy time seeing the sights which in my case aren’t the inside of a tunnel. At the moment however, walking around london is a bit of a health hazard as the air is thick with pollen. After a couple of days you get used to seeing people walking past you choking on the stuff or trying to get things out of their eyes, but it does feel a little like nature is striking back. Hopefully it will all be over by the weekend, but until then i am very tempted to wear a japanese style face mask and goggles for protection…

where is Mr Darcy?

As a bit of a birthday treat on Friday we drove up to the Peak District and on Saturday visited Lyme Park, otherwise known to BBC Pride and Prej fans as Pemberley. As you can imagine I was most excited and although I requested nicely, Justin refused to take a dip in the lake in his long johns. Rather selfish I am sure you would agree.

30!

how did i suddenly become 30? as you can see from above i definitely haven’t grown up but the wrinkles and the double chin are starting to show. April, Alex, Justin and Anne helped me celebrate on the night and we are planning a birthday ale crawl this coming sat. If you are here we are meeting at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street at 3pm if you aren’t, wish you were here.

k x