Final Year Looms

26.09.16 — Leeds

So it’s now been nearly two months since I touched down back on British soil, and since then I’ve moved back into a new house in Leeds, which is now finally full with everyone ready for the start of university this week! You know you’re living in a house full of designers when a day is spent with post it notes re-designing the layout for storage in the kitchen…

Redesigning the world cupboard by cupboard

During fresher’s week and alongside all the obligatory evenings spent drinking cocktails and dancing away, I also made a little tour of Yorkshire with a trip to visit my sister as she settles into the University of Sheffield and to my grandparents’ in Bradford – where my Grandma had received a card from the Queen herself congratulating her on her diamond (60 year) wedding anniversary!

Just yesterday I hopped on the bus to IKEA where I met my parents, from where we hopped on the motorway and navigated the unforgiving hills and roundabouts of Sheffield to find my sister in her new student pad! Having missed her moving in, I wanted to go and have a snoop around and see how she was enjoying her first taste of freedom.

Ellie’s university halls are much prettier than mine ever were, set in beautiful green grounds and with tennis courts and Sheffield’s Botanical Gardens just next door! Naturally we wanted to go and check these out, so after repeated and increasingly frustrated explanations of what was classed as light and dark for the washing machine, we headed across the road to explore.

The gorgeous gardens paired with the lovely sun of the day made for a lovely calming wander around the Botanical Gardens, where we had a chance to catch up out of the craziness of student halls. Ellie has settled really well down in the south of Yorkshire, and it was lovely to be visiting a university and being led around rather than acting as the tour guide for a change – and we all went out for a meal afterwords which was also lovely.

I also spent a day manning the Undergraduate Research & Leadership Scholarship stall at the freshers fair, which was a lovely chance to speak to some of the new Loiners joining us, and share stories and anecdotes from some of our UGRL antics!

As my third (technically fourth) year of university begins this week, I have braced myself for the oncoming workload, and so I am not sure when my next blog post will be – but I have a strong inkling that the two-day spontaneous trip to Madrid that I have booked myself for next week may yield some stories and photos worth sharing!

Eating My Way Through England

27.08.16 — Leeds

As you will now be aware I am back in the dull grey wetness of good old England, and so to cheer myself up somewhat I have taken to doing what I do best – eating and baking. Having collected all my stuff, jammed the car up with cardboard boxes full of dormant utensils and pillows, and drove my parents mad for a week, I have now landed back in Leeds in my lovely new house.

Between unpacking and eating takeaway upon takeaway I headed out on plenty a shopping tip, including a dash to Aldi where I got myself baking supplies (after having only borrowed my housemates’ during the whole of my second year of university), a new plant, and way too much other stuff to carry in one trip. Stubborn and determined not to pay for a taxi, however, I piled it all up and wound up stopping five times en route to my house… Yikes.

Whilst I have a couple of weeks of relatively free time, I decided to get back into cooking and try out some of the recipes I picked up whilst in Madrid, which have included tortilla española (a Spanish omelette made with egg and potato and, in my case, onion), gambas píl píl (prawns in garlic and chilli) and even an attempt of a salad in a tortilla bowl which was made using the tortilla pans you can see above.

I did, of course, have to put my new gear to good use and get back into my passion for baking – all in perfect time for the start of the most important event on the British calendar – The Great British Bake Off. Rhea invited me out to a picnic with some of her friends so I took the opportunity to destroy the freshly cleaned kitchen in order to make a lemon sponge cake in record time, and six lemons and two whole packs of butter later it was ready to be shared around…

In between all this food I have also been working on projects for Burnley Youth Theatre again, chatting with my housemates and having catch-ups with Danni, and generally settling in with posters and lights galore – photos of those to come soon. I have also recently celebrated both my sister and my dad’s birthdays, both incurring trips back home for some lovely food (here we go with the food again) and laughs with the family.

For now though I am back in Leeds, finishing off the remains of the lemon cake and drinking what may as well be liquid sugar, all in preparation for a 3am website update. Hopefully nobody will see any of that happening – it will be very ugly and I will be wondering why you’re awake and browsing my site at such an hour…

Back to the Motherland

08.08.16 — Madrid

We start this post with the kind of sad news that my time working with Erretres in Madrid has come to an end, and that in order to escape the unforgiving heat of the burning Spanish sun, it’s also time for me to go running through the airport as fast as I can with my passport and boarding card flailing as I go – not that that actually happened, of course…

So it’s true that my escapades in the airport meant that the journey home wasn’t quite as smooth as I had planned, but before that there was the task of giving the team at the studio a Great British Send Off. As the flat I had been living in had no oven, and the studio no cooking facilities save for a microwave, I had to cunningly procure a menu of easily prepared and stored British classics that hopefully would be new to the guys at Erretres. This ended up looking as follows:

Jacket potatoes with beans and cheese or tuna mayo
Tuna and sweetcorn sandwiches
Coronation chicken sandwiches
Jammie Dodgers and some Fox’s Biscuits
Cocktail sticks with cheese and pickled onions
Cheese and onion flavour Walkers crisps

Adorned with some little Union Jacks that I made and London Underground signs reading adios and hasta lluego (see you), the Coronation Chicken Sandwiches were a surprising favourite – and I was particularly proud as I had had to go running around the city looking for the ingredients to make it myself – you try finding mango chutney in the middle of Spain!

Saying goodbye to everyone wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, as I know that I’ll be back to visit the city very very soon, and I know that I’ll always be welcome to drop by and pay a visit to everyone as and when I do. The blow was also softened by a parting gift from Luis, a dashing little piece for me to wear whilst baking…

Once the crisps had all gone and my cheese and onion hedgehog was a pile of tin foil and cocktail sticks, it was finally time to head back to my flat one last time. Once there, I failed miserably at packing, leaving most of it to the morning, and when I left myself a mere one hour to get packed and ready and to the Metro station, it did indeed go as disastrously as one might imagine.

The last journey from my beloved Príncipe Pío

I did manage to get onto my flight, however, and then by midday just over a week ago I was back in the cold, wet arms of Manchester Airport. I was cheered up by my sister and dad greeting me with both the pork pies I had requested and a surprise huge personalised cookie that Ellie had picked up from the Trafford Centre. Loved it!

Since arriving home I’ve kept myself as busy as ever, heading back to Burnley Youth Theatre to start doing bits and bats to prepare them for my departure for university again, and to my new house over in Leeds where I had a lovely catch up with Beth and Rhea and managed to move some of my stuff in – and try some of the latest delicious Indian street food in Trinity Kitchen…

I also took an hour out just yesterday to head down to my local church for the village’s Crafts Fair which happens once a year, and hosts some of the best cakes and scones in the world. It was lovely to snoop around and have a relaxing cup of tea – what better way to begin my re-imerssion in British culture?

Izzy in Madrid

29.07.16 — Madrid

Just as my time here in the beautiful city of Madrid comes to an end it was time for one last visit, and so after a tiny disaster with a pair of British and Danish phone numbers in the middle of Spain, I was reunited with Izzy!

First up we paid the studio a visit, and then it was time to head to my flat so Iz could dump her stuff, after having flown in from visiting Luisa in Berlin – we’ve become a right globetrotting bunch recently! Once cooled off in the air conditioning, we headed back into the heat of the town and some tinto de verano, tapas, and then an early night.

The next day I had to head back to work and so Iz headed out on a couple of tours of the city, after which we headed straight home so she could cool off after a day on her feet in 37° heat. Later on we headed out into my new local area and found a lovely square of bars, where we grabbed the cocktails you can see above. Once again we spent the whole evening lounging around and catching up – really embracing the Spanish speed of life!

During the weekend we explored the city a little more, stopping as often as possible to tapear (have tapas) and munch on the local food. We ended up visiting a few shops such as my favorite little bookshop Panta Rhei, where I saw that the latest edition of the Matador magazine, Matador Olímpico, that I worked on was on display!

On Saturday morning we headed to a little colorful bar in my new neighborhood of Malasaña, where we discovered the amazing brunch menu and the hidden beach that they had downstairs. Naturally we both grabbed a slap-up meal to keep us on our toes throughout the day, and then went out exploring once more…

To explore a little of Madrid’s design scene, we hopped on the Metro down to the Matadero, and paid the design centre and a new art exhibition a visit. Before a snoop around the Type Director’s Club exhibition, we paused for a while in the (selfi) exhibition, an eerily dark room which was once the cold store room of the slaughterhouse – and naturally took a selfie in a spotlight placed before a huge mirror.

After another lovely evening having a few beers and some seafood near my flat, it was somehow Sunday and Izzy’s final day in the city. We headed into the city and had a relaxed stroll around before the real heat hit, and then wound up in La Central, a lovely book and coffee shop, where we stopped for a while and had one of the biggest and most delicious brunches I have ever had!

All too soon though it was time to head back to the airport with Iz, but before we headed off there was time for one last stop to grab a bunch of churros with chocolate – a Madrid staple if ever there was one!

With Iz gone and my flat sorted into four piles of stuff (take home, bin, leave in flat, and leave at work), I write this on my last day of working here in the marvelous Erretres Studio. It feels like only yesterday that I got the news, and then got all excited and packing up to move out here, and the half a year I have spent gallivanting around the Spanish capital have been second to none. Flying back to Manchester tomorrow will be very much bittersweet – I am heartbroken to be leaving this beautiful city and amazing set of people behind, but I’m also looking forward to seeing everyone back at home, uni, and work again.

I will be back next week to bring updates of the adjustment back to English life – goodbye 4pm siesta – and so until then I bid you all and this beautiful place a hearty hasta luego…

Lounging by the Lago

10.07.16 — Madrid

It’s a very sunny and sleepy weekend here in Madrid, and so yesterday I could think of nothing better to do than to head down to the shade of the Casa de Campo, a huge public green space which is just a 10 minute walk from my house. I however, being lazy as I am and the weather being as hot as it is, opted for the air conditioned bliss of the Metro to take me to the imaginatively named “Lago” stop. Lago means lake – so you can guess where I went.

It turned out to be an absolutely gorgeous spot for a lovely sunny day, with the trees along the shore and the light breeze providing some relief from the otherwise relentless heat. I even afforded myself the luxury of an ice cream and a cool can of pop, although the sickly sweets I bought didn’t go down so well and hence soon found their way into a bin.

You can see all the way up to the Plaza de España from the lake.

Having done my obligatory tourist-like snapping from every possible angle (you should all thank me for not inundating you with every photo I take on this blog or you’d be here for hours), I moved along to a patch of empty grass and sat in the shade of a tree and watched a family paddling around in their boat. I was jealous for a split second, but then I realised that in the centre of the lake they had no respite from the sun. Ouch.

If only they could go under the fountain

After an hour or so of lounging around and really not doing that much I decided to wander leisurely back to the Metro to head back to the city for some food. With just over a week left in my current flat I have questionably convinced myself that it’s too late in my stay to start buying more ingredients for cooking, and so I will just have to continue my stint of trying all the delicious Spanish food I can lay my fattening hands on…

I wound up stumbling upon some form of practically dried-up manmade water channel, arched by an unsafe looking wooden footbridge, and decided to go check it out. The views from and around it were surreal – I felt miles away from the city, in fact miles away from anywhere. I felt like if I were to discover some kind of magical creatures in Madrid, I’d probably find them here.

After helping some very lost looking Brits find their way back to Ópera on the Metro and a hearty helping of patatas bravas, I wound up back in bed for the siesta and then proceeded to head out for a lovely evening with the owner of the flat I used to live in to see some live Spanish music. I did a terrible job of taking photos but here’s the one almost-in-focus one I did manage to grab…

The evening was amazing and it was lovely to join in with the singing and get chatting to plenty of the locals – and it was lots of fun cycling home in the cool 3am air! With that lovely thought though, and as I sit here sweltering in the rising afternoon heat, I shall bid my laptop and blog farewell – if I keep this thing running much longer then its internal fans may actually explode…