Abandoned Bread & Other Nonsense

22.10.17 — Madrid

As today is Sunday and my third week working here comes to an end, it’s time for me to swing by and update everyone on the latest nonsense that’s been going on during the week. Naturally we kick things off at the office, where we’ve been having fun with a special mat which is used by Japanese children as they learn to draw the complicated strokes and forms of the Japanese alphabets.

My little mascot the Beefeater has been watching over me in the office as we work away on our many projects. I brought him with me as a gift that Amber got me when we met up before I left! Speaking of Amber, she’ll be here in less than two weeks, so I’m busy working on the 5th version of the Madrid Guide I made for visitors when I was last here!

I was also given another gift by the guys at work during the week, in the form of my very own set of business cards. I am very happy with them as I am quite a fan of the dark blue and every designer cannot resist a good bit of spot foiling…

I’ve got my own business cards, so I feel like a real adult now.

After work last Wednesday I headed over to visit Heidi’s new flat, and brought along some ingredients and the cake tins I had brought over (little luxuries, eh?) and we attempted to create a Victoria Sponge. I say attempted as we didn’t have a whisk, any kind of measuring equipment, or even a proper mixing bowl, so everything was roughly thrown together in a big pan and stirred with a fork until I thought it looked kind of okay…

Once the mixture was done it was time to put it in the oven, at which point we discovered that the wear on the knobs meant that we couldn’t see exactly what temperature it was at – great! Roughly estimating the 180° mark, we eventually put it in and hoped for the best. All seemed to be going well and we were getting a good rise on it, until I realised the oven was on the wrong setting and we had to change it, meaning the air escaped and the cake collapsed quite spectacularly. Damn!

We cooked it through though and eventually had something resembling a cake put together. We cut it up and tried a little, and in the end it actually tasted quite nice, albeit a little too sweet for my exacting sponge cake standards. Maybe next time things will go better!

It was by no means a wasted evening however, as we also took time to catch up over a glass of wine and admire the lovely views from the rooftop terrace just above their fourth floor apartment.

As ever the next day it was back to Príncipe Pío and to work for me, however on the Thursday we had leaving drinks as one of my colleagues celebrated her last day, and gin and tonic at one’s desk is never something to moan about…

Seemingly within a blink of an eye it’s now the weekend again, and yesterday I met back up with Heidi and Loredana to have some food in Lavapiés before heading out to a rather special event, called “Luna de Octubre“ or “The October Moon”. This is a huge festival of nocturnal light installations which takes over the city once a year, very much like previous Light Night events which I have attended whilst at university in Leeds. In fact, my very first blog post ever was reporting back on the very first Light Night I attended back in 2013 during my first year of uni! Wild.

Anyway, back to current events, I have plenty of photos and videos to share of Luna de Octubre so I shall have to let those wait until later on in the week when I have a bit more time to organise them all. For now though, enjoy another photo from Heidi’s flat, this time during the evening when a gorgeous pastel sky set over the city. I swear I could spend hours on end watching the city from that place!

In other news this weekend, I just got back from the Apple Store where I was worried about my unresponsive iPad, and where they confirmed that it is indeed completely dead. Turns out, however, that when I bought it I took out insurance and so I am basking in the relief that once they get some more in stock it will be replaced at no cost. Phew!

Whilst the iPad is out of action, I have been increasingly doodling with actual pens and paper, and after my little bit of typography last week I thought I’d try another style this week. These lettering doodles may end up filling the whole black paper section of my notebook – maybe I’ll have to eventually upload it here to my website as a little personal project!

I’ll share more progress on this doodle as I finish it off – I’ve since added some nice blue highlights and a couple of illustrations of the sickly sweet Blackpool Rock I used to eat as a child. For those who don’t know, the so-called “rock” is actually a stick of flavoured hard boiled sweet which is usually twisted to create a spiral pattern along it’s side, which inspired the twisty lines of the typography above.

Anyway, as I round off this post you might be wondering why it is called “Abandoned Bread & Other Nonsense”, and I shall indeed explain. Last Sunday evening and after writing my previous blog post I went for a wander in the local park, and what should I discover along the way but a lone baguette perched atop a bollard down a quiet street in my neighbourhood. As a huge fan of bread, and given the quality of the stuff here, I was absolutely distraught that it had been left forgotten and forlorn. I leave you with a picture of it – I am not joking when I say I have been thinking about that wasted loaf of bread all week…

A lone loaf sits atop a bollard, forlorn and forgotten.

Lazy Sundays, Crazy Mondays

15.10.17 — Madrid

This weekend hails the end of my second week here out in Madrid, and as you’d expect I’ve been using my time to explore and see what I can see. We begin things last Sunday, where me and Heidi headed into the city and have some coffee. Heidi had plenty of reading to do for her masters course so I took a book along with me to just draw and watch the world go by. Here’s the beginnings of a little typographic doodle I managed to rustle up…

In further procrastination, I had heard that world famous architect Norman Foster had an exhibition on in the city centre, so we headed to the Fundación Telefonica and took a look at Futuros Comunes, an exhibition dedicated to exploring the infamous buildings designed by Foster + Partners. The coolest exhibit for me was a scale model of what the new Apple campus, Apple Park, will look like.

Unfortunately Heidi had to head off, and so I didn’t get a chance to take as much time as I would have liked to look around, but I’ll be sure to return and bring more photos and updates from the exhibition soon.

Later that evening I found myself down at the Matadero, visiting the design centre who were running a poster series themed around the phrase “Madrid: La Cuidad Ligera” or “Madrid: The Light City”. This was open to interpretation so there were posters with all kinds of concepts, however my favourite one just read: “mi cuidad es ligera cuando saltamos todos al mismo tiempo”, translating to “my city is light when we all jump at the same time”. Genius.

A reminder of how to move around the Matadero

I was thankful for this helpful reminder of just how to use my legs.

Sundays soon turn into Mondays, but that didn’t bother me so much however as I was looking forward to getting stuck back into the design projects at work. There my desk is starting to become overrun with post-it notes, I think I should work out a better system for keeping track of all the new vocabulary – it’s starting to feel like college Spanish lessons all over again!

At the studio a busy couple of days soon ensued, and so on Tuesday night I did a spot of therapeutic cooking after work, creating a huge batch of the cinnamon-flavoured Spanish treat torrijas for everyone to enjoy in the office the next day.

With last Thursday being a national holiday as the Spanish celebrate the “Day of being Spanish” on the 12th October, we went out for some celebratory drinks on Wednesday night after work. We all headed a few streets down from the office where one of the restaurants has an outdoor terrace with a beach bar area, and so we all clinked glasses and chatted for hours over the sand.

I feel like everyone just uses any excuse to sit outside and drink gin.

Having stayed out on Wednesday night to the early hours of the morning singing karaoke and meeting tonnes of new people, my Thursday off was spent dozing around in bed and doing some housework in my flat, however things perked up on Friday as it was time for an aperitivo at work on the terrace as we bid goodbye to a couple of the team.

A few beers and hugs later it was the weekend once more, and I spent Friday night in the city watching the sun set over the lake at Retiro – a gorgeous sight.

This weekend has been a little less busy than last weekend, however I did manage to head out yesterday with my friend to try the burgers at a place I have been meaning to visit since I first came to the city – Goiko Grill. I ordered one with fried breaded Monterrey Jack cheese, mushrooms, bacon, smoked bacon mayonnaise and lettuce. The portion size was huge and the burger was to die for – I’ll definitely be back again soon!

Today is another calmer day as I’ve just whipped up some pisto, a Spanish dish of vegetables flavoured with paprika in a tomato sauce, and I’ve to get some washing done and try to dry my shoes. That doesn’t mean that it’s not an exciting day though, as I’ve now got two exciting events coming up very soon in my diary!

First up is that my friend Amber is coming to visit me in less than three weeks to spend a very long weekend relaxing in the city! It’ll be lovely to have her again after she visited last time, and I can’t wait to have a good catch up and do what we usually did back in England – sit around with a glass of wine and put the world to rights until the bar closes.

The next little trip I’ll be going on is back up to the north of Spain to see Kevin once again in the beautiful city of Oviedo! Me and Kevin met whilst he was studying Erasmus at Leeds University, and last time I went to Oviedo just a few months ago I had an absolute blast. It’s only a Friday evening until a Sunday evening, but I know that with Kevin’s plans we’ll squeeze so much in to the two full days that it’ll feel like a two week summer holiday all over again!

Anyway, I can hear my pisto sizzling away in the kitchen and it’ll soon be time to head up on to the roof of my block to hang my washing out to dry, so I must dash off. If you need me, I’ll probably be sat on the roof next to my washing, looking over the city and sipping on a can of Mahou from the corner shop. ¡Salud!

First Week At Erretres

07.10.17 — Madrid

As you can probably imagine this week has been a hectic week to top all hectic weeks, as on Monday morning I headed off on the metro to be reunited with the guys at Erretres and begin my first week working as an adult in a full time job – scary stuff!

Coming back to the office was just like coming back home, and after a shower of hugs I presented a gift which I had brought – scones with jam and butter for the entire team. They went down pretty well, although I was upset I couldn’t bring along clotted cream instead.

Anyway, we were soon whisked into our weekly planning meeting and I was soon assigned my first project, which had a quick turnaround – we had to get part of it ready for Friday! Between designing for that however, there were some other things to do as part of the initiation ceremonies, including moving my head for the announcement video on Instagram – here’s Álvaro doing his…

As usual I can’t really discuss any of the work which is going on behind the big closed metal doors, but I’m having a blast in getting stuck into some big design projects and working with a bunch of cracks (what the Spanish have taken to mean fun people). I’m even enjoying the challenge of balancing the books as an adult, meaning I’ve been making the rounds to Mercadona (a bit like a Spanish Tesco/Aldi combo) to get my 36¢ tins of tomatoes…

Outside of work I have obviously been making the most of the sun before it begins to cool down as October wanes on, including wandering around the centre which is just a few minutes walk from work. I love being able to walk out of the office and be passing the royal palace and gardens in a matter of minutes – and then onwards for coffee and a sunbathe in the park!

As you can imagine the shock of moving from casual hours to full time has meant that I’ve been pretty tired every weekday, but today is Saturday and so I had plans ready to make the most of my free day – tomorrow I shan’t be working either of course but most of Spain is shut on Sunday so it’s a bit of a write off. Last night I couldn’t be bothered to cook, so the owner of my flat showed me a nice local spot to grab some food at, and I enjoyed a lovely seafood cannelloni – something I’d never heard of before!

Today was another jam packed day though, as me and my flatmate Heidi had arranged to go out and do plenty of things out and about in the city. We started off at Parque del Retiro, Madrid’s huge public park, where there was an exposition of dogs and cats which were looking to be adopted. We went along to see all of them and I was happy to notice that most had stickers over their little signs announcing that they had found a new home – and also happy that there were so many dogs! I just love dogs.

Once we’d had out fill of our feline and canine friends, we headed to the lake in the park to stop and have some lunch, and we had a lovely long chat whilst I managed to spill all the sweetcorn from my sandwich all over my new white jeans. Genius idea to wear those…

I found it really pretty how the seasons are quite visibly changing here, with some of the trees still lush green and others turning a vivid orange as autumn creeps up on us. It’s also definitely cooling down slowly but surely, I woke up with cold toes this morning! Maybe I’ll need to actually start putting a blanket over myself… Que locura.

One we’d managed to find our way out of the park we made a quick visit to Dealz (basically Poundland) and bought some chocolate teacakes to try tomorrow – Heidi grabbed a bar of Cadbury’s Caramel and we certainly enjoyed that as we continued on with our explorations, explorations which eventually took us back to the centre and around the royal palace.

It was then time for me to finally visit one of my favourite spots in the city, a tiny little Mexican bar which I think serves the best tacos in the entire city – I’d mentioned it to Heidi and we decided we had to pay it a visit. The food was as delicious as ever, and I washed it down rather nicely with a fresh green apple margarita. I didn’t know different flavours other than citrus existed!

After this Heidi had an appointment to make and I was getting tired, but our progress was stunted by the passing of a very extra baroque-inspired procession. I didn’t manage to shove my way very far forward but I did capture a quick photo of the extravagant outfits of the dressage section…

I want one of those hats.

Having just got back to my flat about half an hour ago, and at only 10:45pm local time, I’m already pretty knackered after having been on my legs all day and so I think I’ll probably put myself to bed pretty soon. The day tomorrow will be a pretty relaxed one, as I’ve just to do my washing and a few other admin tasks, and then I’ll probably take myself up to the local park and do some sketching and reading before watching the sun set over the east of the city. It sounds kind of idyllic but I’ll have to report back as to whether it’s as good as it sounds…

Moving To Madrid (Again)

01.10.17 — Madrid

I sit in my bed writing this post exactly 18 months after a blog post called “Moving To Madrid” – and so I’ve had to tag “Again” on so that WordPress doesn’t shout at me for having two blog posts with the same name! Last time I’d just moved here to start work with Erretres as an intern, but this time I sit in bed awaiting to start my full time job with them tomorrow morning.

As you probably know by now from my last blog post, I have accepted a job to work here permanently and so just yesterday I left from England to start my next chapter here in the big city. The moving process kicked off well before then however, as I had to scoot around Leeds and Burnley to say goodbye to everyone I could get hold of!

As you can see above, I started with a couple of days in Leeds, where I visited everyone I could including a bunch of friends who are either designers or have somehow been sucked into our design world. Convening at Belgrave, I had a lovely evening catching up and seeing everyone off whilst sipping lemonade (no cider due to a bad head) in one of our favourite old haunts.

After hugging and waving everyone off it was time to head back to Burnley for my last day at Burnley Youth Theatre, where I’ve worked on and off for almost six years. What I didn’t expect was a big surprise buffet, complete with a theatrical hand-clicking opening and a background of Spanish music!

After helping ourselves to heaps of chorizo, jamón, olives and even some nice warm churros, the team gathered and it was time to make a quick speech – something I am hopelessly bad at, but I gave it a go. More hugging ensued, and sooner or later it was Wednesday morning and still without having packed a thing I was roused early to go to visit my sister Ellie in Sheffield, where I’d agreed to make her university room a bit more homely by installing the lights I used to use in my university room – better than them being stuck in a loft!

On Thursday I was back in Burnley again, where I headed out for coffee with a friend from high school, then went to get my hair cut, then out to lunch with Amber. Unfortunately amidst the excitement of a leaving present she’d bought me (a hilarious mechanical walking beefeater) we forgot to take a photo, but thankfully we took one whilst we were catching up in the pub the week before.

That Thursday night I still neglected to do any actual packing, however I did manage to pull out a few piles of clothes and toiletries and group them together ready for packing. The next day was Friday and that heralded my last day in England, but my mother insisted that I spend half of it with her picking my sister up from Sheffield once again. I know the road to Sheffield like the back of my hand now, I swear!

Anyway, we eventually picked Ellie up and returned back to Burnley for our last supper together as a family, but on my return I abstained from packing once again and instead had a nap to try and stave off a gradually worsening cold. Once I woke up it was panic stations as I rushed to get everything organised and packed into a mere 30kg total baggage allowance – it may sound fine but it’s not much for everything one needs for the foreseeable future!

Once I woke up it was panic stations as I rushed to get everything organised and packed.

Needing to be up at 2:30am to make it to the airport in time to catch my flight departing at 6:30am, it’s no surprise to discover that I didn’t sleep at all once I’d climbed in bed at about midnight. Fuzzy headed I said goodbye to my room, my sister and then my parents once I got out of the car at the airport, and then made it through bag drop and security in a tired daze. I don’t remember much of the flight, I popped on a new pair of headphones I bought in the airport (one last treat before the budgeting begins) and I think I drifted in and out of sleep for the whole 2 hours.

Sooner or later I found myself whipping out my trusty Madrid travel card which gets me super discounted travel throughout the city, and eventually wound up at the door to my new flat. Being shown my room by my lovely host, I soon met my flatmate and was invited out for a meal of tapas and sherry with one of her friends – an offer I couldn’t really turn down!

After a lovely evening of chatting, dining and of course drinking, we headed back to our flat relatively early as I was (and still am) full of a cold and we both wanted to get rested. We did, however, take a quick detour to Plaza Mayor, where there was an installation consisting of a huge circle of grass which brought a breath of new lease of life to the square – everyone was sat down and enjoying the ambience!

Today it is Sunday (I say this more to remind myself than you guys, it has been a busy week), and I had a relatively calm day visiting Lush and IKEA to buy a few essentials (yes, their rosewater scented solid shampoo is an essential). As I mentioned at the start of the post I am sat in bed having watched the sun go down from my window, a photo of which I attach below.

At 9am tomorrow I will be headed to the Erretres office to begin in earnest, and make no mistake that I will be back on my blog to tell you about all the shenanigans of my first week as soon as I can next weekend! Until then however I must bid everyone dulces sueños as I should really try to get some kip in!

Surprise News

30.09.17 — Burnley

I have to admit that I’ve been hiding a little secret from the general public for a couple of weeks now, as I wanted to ensure that everything was concrete and sorted before publicly breaking the news. If this post seems like it has a familiar tone then you may remember my last blog post which contained exciting news which was posted in February 2016. At that time I had managed to secure myself a work placement with Erretres in Madrid for six months, and I was over the moon!

As some of you probably know by now I had a great time whilst I was out there, from my initial move out to moving studios to eventually having to come back home for my final year of university. After this and a fun and stress filled final year I graduated this summer and suddenly I was thrust into the big bad adult world of trying to find a job and balance the books.

My family have been a great help in allowing me back home and I once again began working at Burnley Youth Theatre where I have been involved in various capacities since 2012 – they really helped me find my passion for design and get me on track for further experience all through university. After working with an array of fabulous people and companies such as Sky, Elmwood and indeed Erretres, I was faced with the dilemma of deciding where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do.

I always knew that after my time at Erretres I somehow wanted to move back to Madrid, a city which I fell in love with during my first visit back in October 2015, but I did also love working as part of the great team at the studio. To this end I got back in touch with creative director Pablo and began discussions about possibly returning, and so it’s at this point I can reveal that I have accepted a job offer to return to Madrid and join the Erretres team!

The past week or two have been absolutely crazy, especially with a trip to Lisbon thrown in, but I have been managing to slowly get my arrears together in order to move to Spain. It’s all still a blur, even though as this post goes live I will be sat on a plane flying to Madrid, and I cannot describe how excited and mildly terrified I am. I land today, Saturday 30th September, and my first day back at the studio will be Monday 2nd October. No rest for the wicked!

It’s all still a blur, even though as this post goes live I will be sat on a plane flying to Madrid, and I cannot describe how excited and mildly terrified I am.

This all means that I will be now permanently based in the Spanish capital for the foreseeable future, and my trips back to the UK will probably be somewhat sporadic and infrequent due to the cost of flying at peak times such as public holidays. Have no fear however, as I will be updating my blog just as often as ever to bring you all the goings on from my upcoming big city life – which from now on will all also be posted in Spanish too as my fluency (hopefully) improves!

As ever I extend an open invitation for anybody I know who’d like to come visit or is passing through the city – most weekends I’ll be free and more than happy to show people around. Just let me know in advance!

Until then I’d like to thank everyone who’s helped me achieve what I’ve always wanted to do; be in the city I love working amongst some hilarious people for an amazing design studio. I shall, to that, raise a sangría – cheers! Or maybe that should be a hearty ¡salud!…