Work, weddings, gigs and tattoos

Hi there.
It's certainly been a while since I've written anything substantial on here, but there's been lots going on in my life lately.

Work
 I completed my first big project at work about a month ago (a Spring/Summer update of new books in our catalogue), which I'm really proud of, and went to London twice in one week for London Book Fair and London Wild Bird Watch, both of which were really good experience, albeit a bit knackering!

Romanian stand at London Book Fair - loved the hanging books!

 I got to spend some time with uni friends at the same time (and randomly bumped into another on his way to a football match!) which was just great. I'm now working on the main catalogue for the year which is party a quite tedious job, so I'm looking forward to finishing the amends/proofing stages and getting on to the more creative design side of it. I'm also working on a website refresh project which is going to be an ongoing thing, but am enjoying seeing little things change bit by bit, and working on some proposals to link up with a few people in the industry, which is very exciting, and again really good experience.

Weddings
 In other news, my friends Steve and Jemma also got married a couple of weekends ago, which was just a brilliant day. If you've read any of my previous posts about the wedding you'll know that Tom and I had agreed to play guitar and sing respectively at the ceremony in addition to other wedding party duties - it was really fun learning new songs together and despite being horribly off-key at the start of the first song (I'm blaming the nerves) we got into it and it ended up sounding quite nice and the bride and groom enjoyed and appreciated it, so that's all that matters in the end.

Luckily enough I also managed to get a new prescription for my labyrinthitis that has recently made a comeback, which has made a huge difference to the dizziness (so no falling over in Church!), and also meant I could have a couple of drinks at the reception as well, which was a real bonus!

The Portal companion cube cake with Halo 'Bride & Groom'

Everything was just so much their personality at the reception it was just awesome. The cake, the name cards, the decorations, their entrance music (the Halo theme!) - everything was just perfect for them. The speeches were great too, especially Andy (best man) - despite his fears, it was funny and very well judged, so well done Andy! :)

I might put this on my desk at work

Jemma and Steve got gifts for all of us in the wedding party as well which was really sweet - the boys got personalised cufflinks (Tom had motorbikes!) and I got a gorgeous notebook and pen set, and a lovely turquoise pendant, which will always remind me of the day (it's the same colour as the wedding colour scheme). It was really thoughtful of you guys so thank you!

The party was great fun - the Transformers theme as the first dance, the band, the 'Jaeger-train', and the last few songs secretly planned by Steve (1000 miles by Vanessa Carlton made me cry). All in all it was one of the best weddings I've been to, and it was great to be staying at the hotel too - we all met up for breakfast in the morning to laugh and joke about the night before, pig out on fried breakfast and copious amounts of tea, or nurse hangovers as the case may have been.

The next day the wedding party (parents excluded) all went to Alton Towers, and again we had amazing luck with the weather - it chucked it down on the Sunday and then was glorious all day long on Monday! - and there was hardly anybody in the park so we managed to get a go on all the best rides at least once (I finally got on Air and Sonic Spinball!). We also tried the new new 'ride' Nemesis Sub Terra which isn't really a rollercoaster, it's more of a scary experience based on the Nemesis backstory - it didn't last very long, but was prett good for what it was, just don't expect a rollercoaster. I'm just glad I didn't have bare legs, put it that way... Here's an ad for the ride:

Gigs and tattoos 

The fun didn't stop after the wedding and Alton Towers though, as I'd booked tickets for the following weekend (for Tom's Christmas present) to go see one of our favourite bands Alkaline Trio on their 15th anniversary tour. When we got there we discovered that one of the support bands was in fact The Dear & Departed, who are fronted by Dan Smith, who is also a tattoo artist who works with Kat von D at High Voltage Tattoos in LA (where LA Ink was filmed). Having seen the band featured on the TV show it was great to see them live and in person, and besides the cool factor, I genuinely really enjoyed the music and they were really good live.  

I want a butterfly in this style

After their set we went to say hi and had a chat and a photo with Dan. We started talking about tattoos (couldn't pass up the opportunity!) and discovered that he's actually going to be working in Swansea in September so we agreed I'd e-mail him an image of what I was after and hopefully we'll sort something out with his assistant to get an appointment booked. It's very exciting, and because what I want is a little different I wasn't 100% confident that it was something your average tattoo artist was going to be able to achieve in the way I wanted it. At least this way I've seen lots of Dan's work, and I'm confident he's a real professional so if anyone should be able to do, then he should.

After the second supporting act, a guy called Dave Hause (who sang a cover of the Hold Steady's Constructive Summer - yay!), we finally got to see Alkaline Trio! They opened with 'We've Had Enough' which is one of the songs I've been listening to a lot lately, followed by another favourite of mine 'Time To Waste, which they didn't play last time I saw them, so that made me very happy! This is the best video I could find on youtube (my videos were terrible quality) of the opening.

They did quite a few older songs as well that I wasn't so familiar with, but since it was their 15 year anniversary it was to be expected. They did some brilliant acoustic songs including Crawl and Blue In the Face with Dave Hause joining them on stage. I didn't get a good video of this (plus you'd hear me singing in the background which would ruin it slightly), but I found a decent-ish video on Youtube of the same song performed in London a few nights later on.

So that's pretty much everything life-wise so far. I've got a separate post coming up for Cooking Challenge and general food updates, but also lots of other things to be looking forward to as well. I'm going to work at Chelsea Flower Show in a couple of weeks so will be an opportunity to see London friends again, and then I'm planning on looking at wedding dresses again with Tom's sister after that, which should be fun. Then we've got my best friend's birthday weekend and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, then Tom's birthday, then Australian Christmas, my sister's graduation, and loads more!

Buy for now!

Lettie xx 

(Belated) Valentine's gift idea: The Story of Your Relationship

Hi there,

I know I've not been updating the blog (especially the Cooking Challenge stuff) very regularly lately and that's because I've been working a lot on Tom's belated Valentine's present in the evenings when he was out climbing, and on weekends when he was at work, but it's finally finished (in the sense that I'd done as much as I could do) and although it took many, many hours (and involved a bit of cursing) I'm really pleased I stuck with it.

Cutting that window and lining up the photo required a lot of patience

Basically it's a scrap book of our relationship (soppy I know) but I read about getting a book made in a print shop of your relationship, and saw a video about making art out of old books so I thought I'd just combine the two ideas. I didn't know who the poet was whose book I was butchering, but I wanted a nice looking, sturdy hardback, that someone else had written notes in, and at £2 from the market in Welshpool, this was perfect. I may well add a 'title' of some sorts over Cowper's name on the front at some point in the future, but for the time being I'm happy with it. I've filled it with our background story (condensed version: we met at high school and liked each other, but never got together, stayed really close friends, and eventually got our act together 8 years after we first met), photos, poems, and memorable moments from our past as friends and since we got together, like concerts we went to, when we moved into our house, and so on. The idea is that as time goes on, I'll add more things to it, hence why it was never going to be finished in the proper sense of the word, as that would imply our relationship was over!

I'm not going to include pictures of everything I included because, well, it's personal, but I just wanted to share the idea as I really enjoyed coming up with all the different things to include and different ideas of how to present them. It's a little bit messy in places as I kept changing my mind about how much writing to include, and how to include the writing over the original typed text, but it gradually became more like a diary summary over the past two years so I needed to write more. To do this I cut out pages of my current journal and just glued them over the book pages, and wrote in them like a normal diary (I used my journals to remind of dates etc). I also made use of some nice paper that I got free with a load of craft magazines I bought when I was researching the industry for a job interview back in November, but I didn't want to make it too girly, because it was supposed to be a gift for Tom, although I couldn't resist a bit of vintage floweriness in places(see below).

I tried to include as many pictures in the book as I could but when I took my original batch of photos to Boots to develop, I realised that it would have been absurdly expensive to print them all, so I had to cut back and just print the ones I thought were most appropriate. I also experimented with creating windows in the pages with glued in photos showing through the gaps, but the pages turned out to be quite difficult to cut without tearing and making a mess. Even with brand new Stanley knife blades it posed quite a few difficulties.

When I first started the project I also purchased a glue gun with the idea of sticking in photos, or glueing pages together with it etc, but it proved to be far more hassle than it was worth. Maybe the equipment I bought was too cheap, or maybe I didn't allow the glue to warm up sufficiently, but it just came out really thick and then seemed to dry and harden ridiculously quickly, so it was pretty much impossible to use. I initially stuck the front cover image on with the glue gun glue but it very quickly lost it's stick, so in the end I just used god old reliable Pritt stick!!

 I love this poem by Carol Ann Duffy (Poet Laureate) from her collection Rapture; in fact it was this collection of poems that got me thinking about a special Valentine's present in the first place. The bit didn't quite turn out as tidy as I wanted, but I basically wanted the verses of the poem to stand out as being on top of the original type (which was itself the first poem of the original book), and going round the edges of the journal paper with a black felt pen actually gave it quite a nice, almost reverse-emboss effect, it just could have been a bit tidier. I might go over it one day if I get round to it.

One of my favourite parts of this project was cutting the photos into different shapes and sizes to fit with the words I wanted to include. Once I got the hang of the Stanley Knife it was really quite easy and weirdly satisfying slicing through the photographic paper. What wasn't quite so easy was the mini-project I decided to do at the last minute and which took absolutely forever to finish.




I'd read another poem by Carol Ann Duffy in Rapture called 'Finding the Words' a few months previously and just felt that it completely reflected what I felt when Tom and I eventually got together. I'd been really hurt by my ex and had been in a place where I could see myself becoming really cold and emotionless about guys I was dating before Tom and I started going out, and this poem just seemed to convey what it was like to find that I could love and be loved again.

Because of the name and nature of the poem I wanted to try to compose this copy of the poem with words 'found' and cut out of the original typed text, but this proved to be a mammoth task. I had to cut out pages and pages from the back of the book (I didn't want to use the Stanley Knife directly on the book itself as I was afraid of tearing the old paper) and ended up learning an awful lot about this Cowper chap through repeatedly scouring his letters for the words of the poem. In the end I had to construct some words out of other words. I became disproportionately excited when I found a word I could use (a certain Mr Palmer very kindly donated the 'palm' and Wordsworth lent his 'Words'. The letters for the title I managed to glean from the headers of his letters, and 'Oxford University Press' lent it's letters towards 'Our Story' at the very front of the book. This might seem sad, but having set myself this stupid task I was damned if I wasn't going to finish it, so every new discovery was a small victory of sorts.

I particularly liked this idea of drawing a calendar page for a memorable occasion, although again, I'm sure someone with more natural artistic talent than myself could achieve much better results. On this day for example we drove up to Manchester to see The Hold Steady and it was one of the most fun concerts ever. Afterwards, we chilled out in the Thirsty Scholar (the pub under the railway lines at Oxford Road station), and then I drove us home with cool music on the stereo and we saw in Valentine's day on the journey home. It might not seem like much, but it was just the coolest experience.

 I subsequently decided to add the little calendar pages over photos I'd already stuck in as another scrapbook-style element.

Like I said I didn't want to include too many personal elements of the book (some of it is copied from old diary entries), but I just wanted to show some of the different ideas I had. As a first attempt I'm really pleased with how it came out (even with my silly stick drawings illustrating the first night we kissed!), but I'm looking forward to adding to it, and developing techniques and other interesting ideas for other projects as they come along. I really enjoyed going back through my journal and sharing thoughts and feelings that I might not otherwise have shared with Tom.

I'm not going to lie, it was a little scary including some of my most private thoughts in the book, and though I'm definitely a believer in maintaining hobbies and doing some things as individuals (basically not becoming one half of a relationship) that it's still important to share your feelings, hopes, fears, and dreams with the ones we love the most.


Anyway, this has already become a pretty long post, so I don't want to harp on. Hope this has been interesting in some way!

Bye for now,
xx

Being a book worm....

I've just finished yet another great book, The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls. Whilst it really was a very good story (and surprisingly a true story), but I'm actually quite glad it's finished now as I've been staying up late reading a lot lately and I hate feeling groggy in the mornings...not great since I've just started a job in the book selling industry, which is the first step into what I hope will be a successful book-related career.

It's funny, but the last three (non- Dean Koontz) books I've read have all been about the lives of children and their families, particularly children who are growing up in unusual or unfamiliar circumstances.

The first book was Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman about a young and ingenuous boy Harrison who moves to England from Ghana with his Mother and teenage sister, and who must learn about 'growing up' in a curious and at times violent place, without the guidance of his father who has stayed in Ghana with the rest of the family until they can afford the plane tickets, and without much intervention from his mother who works long hours as a midwife. It's a brilliant story told through the eyes of an naive outsider in a world that is both exciting and and full of wonder - every day it seems Harrison, like a sponge, absorbs some new information about his new home and the people in it - but it is also a dangerous world, full of corrupting influences and 'role models' as Harrison struggles to maintain his christian and moral values as the temporary 'man of the house' at the same time as trying to fit in with his peers. I don't want to spoil any of it but some of it is quite sad as it deals with violence and what seems like senseless crime, but in spite of his somewhat grim surroundings, Harrison is such a cheerful, family-oriented boy who rejoices in the small things in his new life, things that others don't necessarily appreciate, like the way his baby sister shouts his name over the phone back in Ghana, making footprints in wet concrete, running in the rain with his eyes closed, and chatting to the pigeon who comes to perch on his balcony, even though everyone else tells him it's nothing but a filthy bird. I suppose what's most sad about Harrison's story is that, although a lot about England is unfamiliar and unusual to him, the story of gang violence in deprived areas and the struggle of immigrant families is all too familiar in the UK...

The second book that I read recently about a child in unusual circumstances is Room, by Emma Donaghue. This is quite simply one of the best books I've ever read. It's told from the perspective of Jack who is 5 years old and has spent his whole life locked inside an 11ft squared room with his Ma and knows nothing else of reality. The language used by both Jack and his mother reveals bit by bit the life that they have built inside their little 'planet'; furniture and household items, such as Rug, Blanket, and Meltedy Spoon all have special significance for Jack and become characters of their own in this strange but creative world. Despite the circumstances of their existence, which becomes apparent as the story unfolds, Jack's Ma is able to create a happy and educational routine for Jack out of the meagre resources available to her, making toys out of leftover egg shells, like Snake who lives under Bed, telling him wonderful stories where he is the main character, singing along and dancing with Jack and his friend Dora who lives in TV, and every day or so playing Scream - stacking furniture up on Table underneath the skylight and shouting as loud as possible - as Ma cryptically says, 'just in case'. Every night Jack is tucked up to sleep inside Wardrobe with the doors shut tight, always before the door beeps to signal Old Nick coming in...

I read this book in one day, I was absolutely, 100% absorbed in it, so compelling was the story, but also the language. For about two weeks after I'd finished it I was still capitalising items of furniture in my head. So imagine what it must be like for little Jack who has known nothing else but Room and all his friends in it, to suddenly find out that there is an Outside. With this life-changing discovery he has to try to comprehend why all his wonderful friends in Room, why everything he has ever loved is no longer enough for Ma, and what that means for their future. Again I don't want to reveal anything too specific about the story, but it is just brilliant. I've lent it to my Mum right now but I think I'll read it again when I get it back, or give it to Tom to read, and then read it again.

The final, most recent book that I read is The Glass Castle, which is the true story of the dysfunctional and impoverished upbringing of Jeannette Walls and her three siblings by her highly intelligent and aspiring, but alcoholic father Rex, and her artistic and at times immature and irresponsible mother Rose Mary, who are constantly dragging their children around the country as they do the 'skedaddle' from one place to the next. In spite, or perhaps because of, her chaotic childhood, Jeannette is determined to make a success of herself, which she eventually achieves as a well-known journalist and columnist in New York, but she later struggles to reconcile her new lifestyle and successes with her roots, feeling guilty and ashamed about her swanky apartment in Park Avenue, while her parents are sleeping rough on park benches.

My own mother is the polar opposite of Rose Mary Walls - my Mum was (still is) a feeder, who I believe has an addiction to food shopping, and while I was at uni she used to insist that I had a friend (preferably of the large, male, rugby-playing variety) to walk me across the large and well-lit open space of Great Court at night, just in case some pervert had managed to sneak past the porters (Cambridge-speak for ex-army security). I always used to joke that he'd have to be the flattest pervert in the world to hide amongst the well-cut lawns of the courtyard, but at least my mother didn't abandon me to the prying hands of actual perverts, or spend all her money on paint instead of clothing her children, or leave us to feed ourselves from rubbish bins at school. Although there are some moments where you feel the love that Rex in particular has for his daughter, and you can appreciate what they were trying to achieve in the 'education' and life experience, in particular the appreciation of nature, that they gave their kids, this book made me feel damn grateful for everything my Mum (and Dad) have ever done for me, and makes me even more keen to make sure I do well in this job, so that I can eventually pay them back (not necessarily financially) for everything they gave me.

Although I absolutely loved each of these books, lately I do feel as if I've read too many brilliant books too quickly and in too quick succession, which I think is why I want to read Pigeon English and Room again, to give them the time and respect they deserve individually. I've been a bit of a book worm of late, which I think is an apt description of how I've been reading. I'm not normally a reader of bestsellers, as my personal tastes are a bit 'different' to the mass-produced consumer market, but it's fair to say I have certainly 'consumed' a lot of literature over the last couple of weeks. Like I said about the Diving Bell and the Butterfly, it's not always a good idea to read books too quickly, and since I hate the idea of books as a 'consumable' item, to be discarded as soon as you've 'used' it once like so many things in today's society, I think I'm definitely going to read some of these books again. I may or may not intersperse them with some Dean Koontz, just to balance out the brilliant-trashy book ratio :)

Ok, it's getting late and I've needed to go to the bathroom for about half and hour now, so I think that's enough rambling book talk for one night. I'll leave you with this, which makes me smile every time.

Goodnight everyone!
xx

First day at new job!

First of all, thanks to everyone who wished me luck with the new job which started today! My first day went really well. Everyone was really friendly and helpful, and they'd got all sorts of stuff prepared for me which I wasn't expecting. And I managed to get started on analysing some Marketing data for them which has been really useful for getting to grips with the kinds of customers we mostly deal with. I'm amazed by how much I remember from my old Quantitative Methods sessions at uni (well not from the lectures, they were less than useless, but the textbook was great!).

Even though it's only a fixed term contract, I'm feeling really positive and excited about this job. From the sounds of things there's going to be a lot of variety in what I do in terms of the Marketing for the book business and I get quite a lot of responsibility for individual projects as well which will be really helpful for learning lots about the industry. Plus I get to use my language skills; one of the first things they asked me to do was translate a couple of sentences they needed for some packaging, which wasn't hard and only took a couple of minutes, but I'm sad and really love translating.

They've also asked me if I want to be involved in some other multilingual tasks in the future (I'm not really sure how much I'm allowed to say, so best be cautious), which is quite exciting and gives me the opportunity to practice my German as well.

Don't mean to gush, but I'm really, really happy I got this opportunity. I've even enjoyed spending time this evening learning about XML for the job - I never would have thought in a million years I'd enjoy learning a computer language, but life's a funny thing!

To celebrate the new start, I decided to crack open a special bar of chocolate I've been saving since Christmas.

The Chocolate Library - clever AND delicious!

Bye for now!
xx

Things to look forward to in 2012

Because the last post ended up being pretty long I thought I'd start a new post with stuff for this year! Unfortunately I haven't actually done any blogging since my post on the 3rd so my original list of stuff to look forward is already partly out of date... oh well. Here's the new and updated list anyway.


Things to look forward to for 2012

1. Starting my new job at the end the month in publishing - so excited!

2. Celebrating my friend Cara's 29th birthday at some point in the year (it was going to be on the 29th Jan but we've had to postpone as she's in the middle of relocating)

3. Going to some energetic, sing-along gigs: Reel Big Fish in Liverpool on 3rd Feb, Bon Jovi Experience (the only Bon Jovi tribute band to have played with JBJ) in Stafford on 17th Feb, and Alkaline Trio (woohoo!) on May 5th at the Manchester Academy

4. Jemma and Steve's wedding in April  - we got the bridesmaid dresses last weekend (for a bargain as well) and the official invite arrived yesterday. It's coming up so fast...

5. The 2012 Olympics - just watching on the TV, but I do really like the athletics and I also enjoy the Gymnastics, despite sometimes being creeped out by some of things people can do with their bodies


Things I *want* to do in 2012

1. Read more great books (and finishing some ones I got a long time ago).
Current reading list: Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (now finished) Sense of an Ending (on second reading now - I highly recommend it!!), Persuasion, All Quiet on the Western Front, and more Paolo Coelho books (loved The Alchemist). Any suggestions, please leave a comment!I may even get round to joining the local book club :)


2. Clearing my overdraft and starting to pay off my student loan (very slowly!)
 

3. Saving up for another motorbike holiday (maybe Germany this time?)

www.blessthisstuff.com

4. More cooking, and using my new kitchen toys like my hand blender, and my super cool new garlic rocker by Joseph Joseph (how cool is that??)

No idea what the original source for this is, sorry!

5. Getting my first tattoo. This is my current inspiration in terms of the colour blending and soft watercolour style, but I don't think I want something quite this big. I'll probably just go for one butterfly to start with. I'm currently thinking of something in peacock blues and greens.


That's it for now, but I'm sure I'll add to the lists at some point in the year!

Hope you're all having a great start to the New Year!

Love Lettie xx