Treasure, and the Walrus and Carpenter

Before we lived in Brighton, M and I went to university in Bath. I worked at a restaurant called the Walrus and Carpenter, an iconic place that had been going for over 30 years. The menu stayed the same year in, year out - the owner joked that if the dishes on the ‘Special’ menu stayed there for 10 years, he’d move it to the permanent one. The staff who worked there were like a big family - we were all close and shared the same ‘quirky’ qualities that the regular customers kept returning for. I worked there for just over 2 years before moving away and for most of that time I worked with a woman called Elaine.

Elaine and I never had a moments silence between us - we’d be chatting as we moved swiftly around the tiny restaurant, dodging in between each other to get drinks and move plates around, charming the customers and keeping everyone happy. In between, we talked. Now, I talk very quickly when I’m on a roll, and Elaine could easily keep up with me, which is always such a relief! We shared stories about our lives and the ones we loved, and one day Elaine told me about a treasure chest cake she made for her son. “Oh, it’s easy, Kat! You could do it - just bake a cake in a loaf tin, slice in half and prop the top up like the top of the chest, get a load of pick n’ mix that look like treasure and you’re done!” It sounded VERY exciting, and I couldn’t wait to make it for M - even though he’s 24.

I had that conversation with Elaine about 2 years ago but yesterday I finally did it! If I say so myself, it is one good looking cake. I had so much fun in the sweet shop - I found chocolate coins (good thing about M’s birthday being near Christmas) edible silver beads, lumps of toffee that look like nuggets of gold and the piéce de resistance - chocolate liqueurs shaped like bottles, in branded foil wrappers! 

The Walrus and Carpenter restaurant closed down not long after we moved to Brighton. I went back to visit a few months ago and peered sadly into its darkened windows. Things were still left in the empty rooms - poster marks on the walls and the carpets half removed. The till was still there, with one lonely ticket still pierced onto the metal spike beside it. The closure of the Walrus such a sad thing for so many lives, but I hope everyone will remember it in its hay day, with over 100 covers on a Saturday night, people crammed onto tiny tables, tea lights everywhere lighting up the posters covering the walls; decorating the rooms with memories of plays and concerts from the last 50 years. The cocktail bar upstairs filled to bursting and bacon and cheese burgers being served at every other table. I worked with some lovely, lovely people but especially Elaine for over 2 years of weekly banter, chat and giggles. 


Lots of love x

All the Fun of the Fair

As you probably know by now, I'm getting married. I'm getting married to the man I always knew I would marry. I've been with him, and him alone since I was 17. The longest time we've spent apart was 3 weeks when I went to Australia with my family in 2005. I've been living with him since 2006, engaged since May 2010. We'll be married next June, and everything will be back to normal!

As a bride, I believe I'm expected to be blushing, giggly, incredibly excited at all times and obviously, probably, not taking the piss out of the massive hoo-ha surrounding weddings... this is hard for me. So when my Mum asked the question I'd been expecting (but by no means encouraging) 'Shall we go to this Wedding Fair?' I knew in my heart I couldn't say no. As a daughter. As an only daughter, and her first born, I believe it's only fair to go to the fair and take advantage of doing 'bridal' activities even when my first instinct is to run away!

As it happens, it wasn't too bad. I had visions of being crammed into a crowd full of baying women, eying up each other's engagement rings and grabbing haphazardly for free goodies from stall holders. It wasn't like that at all, shockingly everyone was terribly sensible. Except me, obviously.

I got the giggles (proper ones too) when a florist forced me to hold a bouquet.

"Hold it lower. Lower. You're a bride, why are you laughing? Are you really getting married?"

A girl (child) selling herself as a make-up artist forced me to sign up to her raffle for 50% off her bridal make-up trial or something. She had no website, no pictures of her work, there was a huge woman sitting on her stall eating pies which I can only assume was her mother BUT that wasn't the worst thing.

I took the pen she brandished at me to write down my name and e-mail address (yes, I'm cheap, I will sign up to anything if it means I might get something for free) and it was then that I noticed she had warts on her fingers. At least 3 on her middle finger alone! Proper ones too, like boys had at school. She's not coming anywhere near my face with those toady digits, I can tell you.

On a general cleanliness note, the other horrible thing I came across at the fair was another girl selling wedding rings. Now, if you know that all day, you'll be pointing at, holding and generally showing off wares that ARE WORN ON YOUR FINGERS, would you do it with thick layers of black grime wedged under each and every fingernail? And would you then keep your chipped blue nail varnish on those filthy fingers? Good god.

These were, to be honest, the only bad things I could find about the event. Mum and I had a lovely time trying on hair accessories and trying free samples, we came away with lots of goody bags, bundles of reading material and a sense that we were actually doing really well, organisation wise, as we kept finding ourselves saying 'sorry - we've got a photographer/venue/dress' and 'no thank you, we don't want a magician/balloons/marque hire/midget'.

To top it all off, I later met Fiancé in the pub and he turned to me with genuine enthusiasm and said 'Tell me all about it! What was it like? Did you get any good ideas?' Bless him!

Making Skin Scrub for Grandad

So what do you get the man who wishes or wants for nothing? All M's Grandad (and my adopted!) asked for his 85th birthday was his family surrounding him. That's lovely. But slightly unsatisfying - I LOVE giving presents and it feels really weird to arrive somewhere to celebrate a birthday without even so much as a card?! Crazy. So after a lot of thinking, we finally came to the conclusion that as Don loves all things natural, home made and useful, we'd make him a delicious scrub for when he's been gardening or working in his wood turning shed or .. whatever.

And this is how we did it.

Ingredients:

Fresh Rosemary
Almond Oil
Olive Oil
Lemon essential Oil
Lemongrass essential oil
Rosemary essential oil
Brown Sugar

Mix the almond and olive oils together and add the sugar to create a paste. Use more olive than almond oil. Chop the fresh rosemary into attractive but sensible sizes - you want it to blend together in the end. Add the essential oils to your own preference, careful if you're making it for someone with sensitive skin.

Sorry not to give exact measurements but it's mostly about balance and how much you want to make... it's so yummy though - and both M and I tried it out by scrubbing our muddy hands, leaving clean, soft skin! Give it a go.

Waiting for the Wedding

We’ve reached and past the year mark to our wedding - it’s now under 11 months away! M and I got engaged May 2010 and pretty much started to, at least not plan in great detail, but organise the main things that go with getting married - booking the venue, caterer, photographer etc. This year is all about the details - how does anyone do everything in under a year?!

I was never one of those girls who planned their future wedding - I never really thought I’d get married at all, especially not as young as we are, but I’m amazed at just how FUN planning our wedding is becoming. When we got engaged, lots of newly wed couples said ‘enjoy the planning!’ and I thought it was strange, surely we’re supposed to just be waiting for all the enjoyment of the Big Day? It turns out that the planning is just as entertaining as the rest of it - coming up with fun ideas for what to do during the day, how to get (what I like to think of as our ‘audience’) guests to participate and generally what will create a very ‘K and M’ feel to the whole event.

I’m amazed at how keen all our friends and family are to help - we’re getting offers of making things, booking things, designing things - sometimes from people we really don’t know that well. Everyone loves a good wedding!

Getting married has also put such a delicious blanket of safety over our relationship - we talk freely now of houses we might one day live in, the children we might raise, holidays we might go on. M says he gets jealous of men with wedding rings on their hands and thinks ‘I want one. I want to have a wife!’

Taking a less throw-up-on-your-shoes approach - there is one tiny thing about getting married that I’m fretting about. Only slightly. It’s really not even worth mentioning.... ok, it’s my name. I’m taking M’s surname. It’s a name I’ve adored for the last 7 years, a name I am fully committed to having as my own. It just doesn’t go too well with my first name.

Kat Woolley.

A few months ago I was convinced that the small, fuzzy cat (or woolley cat, if you will) was slowly disappearing the more I said my future name aloud. Kat Woolley. It’s looking better, I’ll say that. I’m still surprised when people don’t laugh when I tell them - is this bad? It could be SO much worse but it does feel ever so strange to think that I’ll have a different name this time next year. I’d never contemplate double barreling it, I hate that and Davis just isn’t interesting enough to hang onto - sorry Dad. The brilliant thing is the Woolleys have such a great sense of humour about things, I’m actually really looking forward to receiving my first piece of novelty sheep memorabilia.

All in all, I can’t wait to get and be married to M - but I’m savouring each moment because somehow the waiting is all part of it. I’m also really looking forward to a time in the future I can legitimately and dramatically say, ‘I am your WIFE!’ That sounds fun.

The Entertainment of Getting Fit

I’m going to broach the subject of fitness. As in physical fitness, rather than,
“Phoar - get a load of the buns on that!”. I’m not actually sure if anyone says ‘buns’ anymore.

Recently, I’ve been lucky enough to have acquired a few free or practically free ways of getting fit. In March, when the sun started to show it’s face before I went to work, I started to go for little bike rides along the beach.(I’d spent the winter sleeping in and eating and loving it)
Seaside cycling is lovely, but a bit repetitious after a while. Then I discovered Groupon, and with this discovery came the impulsive purchase of Boxercise classes. Boxercise is like boxing, kickboxing and circuit training in an hour long class. I recieved 6 of these classes for a mere £4!! I was chuffed, and by the end of them I felt pretty fit and, honestly, quite addicted to the pure physical exhaustion that comes from running around punching and doing burpees and such, before cycling home from Hove where the classes are.
So then, a friend gave me a month long ‘buddy pass’ to her gym. Now, gyms are places I have bad relationships with. A few years ago I was forced into signing a two year contract that was NON CANCELLABLE. Wtf. A building full of sweaty people doesn’t sound like a place I need to visit, but this was before I discovered Boxercise, the joy of group classes and therefore the joys of feeling good about yourself. I’m not a particularly big girl and have never really been interested in losing weight but I enjoy the feeling that I’ve done something to preserve my body as well as clearing my mind. That’s my story anyway.

So anyway, this gym. This gym (no names but the beginning two letters match a place in America) has classes all week that you can book yourself into, and my work friends being the health-conscious people that they are, have been dragging me to these classes. Well, last week was brilliant. I went along to Combat.
“If you like Boxercise, you’ll love combat,” says Work Friend. So along I went.
It wasn’t like Boxericse. You’re given gloves and pads at Boxercise and although its ‘non contact’ you do still punch the pads and do kicking and stuff, it’s a good way to get your anger out.
Combat was more like ‘you’re beating someone up in a dark alley and you don’t want them to get up again,’ but not even with gloves/pads - you air punch, which still works all those muscles but what was really disturbing for me was the woman taking the class. And the crazy next to me, but I’ll come to her in a second. The instructor was tiny, wearing board shorts and a little t-shirt. She wore a head microphone and shouted into it stuff like,
“Push your opponent and then kick him!” So everyone has to make violent pushing movements then kick out at the ‘opponent’. The woman next to me was brilliant. She was totally into this, and was even taking several steps forward before pushing this imaginary bloke away from her - but that’s not the best bit. She was wearing glasses (this is strange as you get so sweaty you have to be very careful with clothing decisions, glasses slip off and steam up) lyrca leggings (not unusual) but, the piéce de résistance - A THONG LEOTARD OVER HER LEGGINGS. I could see every inch of her 50 year old wobbly bum punching her way towards me. What the hell was she thinking?! Apparently she also takes the temperature of every class ‘cos the air con isn’t so great and reports it to the front desk. CRAZY.

So my next move is to join said gym. There’s a deal on at the moment for only six months and frankly - the classes are so funny it’s probably worth it. Meanwhile I’m going to start yoga on the side.

I don’t know what’s happening to me, but as I live and work so close together and spend my day sitting at a computer I have to do something or I’ll go mad. Or get fat. Either doesn’t sound great and this way it wastes some time after work before M gets home from London.
So that’s that. If you’re really lucky you might get a post about my ukulele playing, I’ve come a long way since Christmas and have now moved on to jamming with M and his guitar - JAMMING! Exciting. Oh! I didn’t tell you about my Spin class at Gym! Brilliant - just like that scene out of Run Fat Boy Run except I didn’t fall down the stairs. Awesome.

Just point me in the right direction (literally please)

Those of you who know me, and I mean really know me (because this thing I'm about to tell the world I usually keep to myself until it's really obvious) will know that I have a lack of sense of direction. Ok, that's a bit of an understatement. I get lost nearly everywhere I go. Some people seem to be born with a central navigation system pre-installed in their brain, they know where they are, which way North is, where the coastline is etc. HOW DO THEY KNOW THAT?? Apparently I had that system un-installed at birth, not even getting a chance to understand what it's like to be able to confidently say, "it's ok, we'll just go this way!" and take A DIFFERENT ROUTE.

I may be getting ahead of myself here. I will give you an example of this brain malfunction and how I 'deal' with it in daily life. Now thankfully, as technology has advanced, getting lost is a (slightly) rarer thing for me. With the ability to get sat nav if I drive, and google maps on my iphone, I'm pretty much ok with local stuff. It's really when I REALLY don't know where I am, or when I think I might actually know where I'm going. That's it - that's where I fall down. When I think I'm in control. So, to last Thursday.

I have recently started going to Boxersice classes (Groupon: £4 for 6 lessons? Bargain!) in Hove. This consists of an hour of boxing, kickboxing and general circuit training TORTURE that I keep dragging my sorry (slightly smaller) behind to every week. I cycle there and back, because a) It's quicker and b) By the time I get home I'm so exhausted I feel incredibly smug and good about myself.
So usually I go on Tuesdays, and I know where I'm going. Along the seafront, up into Hove and the hall is on Church road. Easy! Then I decided to try another class on Thursdays. Mistake #1.
I find the postcode, pop it into my clever little iphone, and off I go. I must have stopped a few times on my way to the postcode destination but I successfully arrived at the little red pin on my phone. Unfortunately, the little red pin appeared to be a very large cricket ground, with no sign of the hall 'on the corner' of the cricket ground as the direction had told me at all. There were, however, a lot of cars. And cricket players. And more cars. There's me, kitted up for heavy sweating, pushing my basket-ed bicycle across muddy, lumpy ground and the old bloke who asked me what I was doing was no help at all (and looked thoroughly confused when I tried to explain what boxersice was). Dejected, I turned around, considered going home, before discovering the hall back down the road I had come up. Sweet.

One sweaty hour later.

"Yes, yes, I know where I'm going - don't worry! I'll see you in 15, get the kettle on." I says to him.
Off I whizz, down the road, down the road, over the traffic lights - SINGING no less with the joy of not feeling like I want to die after my 4th class - when I realise I have no idea where I am. No bother! Check the map. Oops! Wrong way, should have turned off back up the road. Turn around, whizz back the way I've just come and find the road I'm looking for. But wait - the road goes both directions - do I turn left or right? I choose left. Mistake #2.
Cycling... cycling... ('ouch' say my thighs, piss off home will you) where am I now? Oh YES, I've found Church road, finally somewhere I recognise! Just follow Church road and it turns into Western road and I'm back in Brighton. Weeeeeeeeee!!

.....


I don't recognise these shops. Or these shops. Check the map. (Turns out I can now look at my phone while cycling, the drivers love that) I'M GOING THE WRONG WAY DOWN CHURCH ROAD - BACK INTO HOVE. Somehow, I manage to go, not just the wrong way, but the direct opposite way to where I actually want to go EVERYTIME. Turn my bike around. Find the seafront. Found the seafront. I'm bloody miles away, but at least I'm pointing in the right direction.

A lot longer than 15 minutes later, I arrive home damp (did I mention it was rainy, windy, misty and cold that night? No?) knackered and I'm going to be honest, a bit miserable. M pointed out I should have set my phone to 'directions' and turned the blue line on rather than trying to read the map without a line.

But how will I ever get better at this game?

A Film I Was Once In

I love this! Written by the infinitely creative Dann Casswell, I helped film and star in this short back in 2007, fun day and had totally forgotten we'd done it until Dann dug the film out from his archives. Enjoy!