On the move again!

Back on the move again and it feels fantastic, to be going new places, meeting new people and getting up to interesting adventures again. This time I headed to London to meet up with a very close friend of mine. And sometimes in life you are lucky enough that your very good friend’s parents happen to have a massive mansion in a beautiful part of London! You can also get very lucky when said friend likes the alternative side of the city and takes you on tours that most tourists never visit. Ah so many highlights, so much to remember it’s all overwhelming. So let’s start at the beginning. A walk along the Thames looking at all the famous sights hundreds of tourists flock to London to see; Parliament, Westminster, Trafalgar Square and Big Ben (and for those of you that don’t know, Big Ben is part of parliament and is not located on a massive white building, also with a huge clock, a few hundred metres down the Thames…). After the mandatory walk along the Thames we stopped in at a bar on a boat. What a fantastic idea, if you stumble after a couple of beers, you blame it on the movement of the boat. Alcohol had nothing to do with it at all!! So if walking along the Thames has left you parched Tamesis Dock is a must visit. They even lend you their lighters, knowing full well that it is very unlikely to be returned… that’s what you get for being a pub that can’t find matches to give to tipsy patrons who need to light up!!

Ooooh, I wanna dance with somebody!

I forget sometimes how great it feels to spontaneously start dancing like, well, no one is watching. It all started with a hankering for the Backstreet Boys' Larger Than Life and progressed from there. How can that song not make you want to move around and act like you're Nick Carter! There is something so exhilarating about waving your arms around like a crazy person to the beat of cheesy music. Thanks to Spotify the cheese just continued with the BSBs being followed by Ricky Martin, Britney Spears, Nsync, Pink, Witney Houston, Meredith Brooks and even the Spice Girls made an appearance. At the end of half an hour I had my hair tied up on top of my head; 80s style, my shirt tucked into my bra and sweat pouring down my face! And I felt AMAZING! There can be no worries in your life when you're livin la vida loca, saying Bye Bye Bye or belting out Wannabe!

Not only does dancing burn calories but dancing is a great form of expression. You can be whoever you want through dance, tell a story, release pent up tension and jump out negative feelings all while releasing endorphins, happy drugs! Endorphins are said to have the same effects as codeine and morphin, without the negative side effects. What could be bad about that? So get out that cheesy music you secretly pretend to scorn, find some open space and go wild!

“Dance, when you're broken open.

Dance, if you've torn the bandage off.

Dance in the middle of the fighting.

Dance in your blood.

Dance when you're perfectly free.”
― Rumi

Probably going overboard on the pumpkin thing now

I just made a Pumpkin Pie. Now I’m not gonna say it was from an old family recipe, handed down generation to generation with a secret ingredient that makes it just that much better than everyone else’s. That would be a blatant lie. No, my recipe was taken, very unglamourously from the BBC Foods website. It was chosen purely based on the fact that it was the only recipe I could find that I had all the ingredients for. However, if you want an amazingly awesome Pumpkin Pie like mine, go to BBC foods where Antony Worrall Thompson is more than happy to share his fantastic recipe.

The only alteration I can lay claim to, is the fact that I did not have all spice, so I tossed in more nutmeg, more cloves and cinnamon, loads of cinnamon, because everyone loves cinnamon. Actually I probably put way more of all the spices in, but I love spices and spices love pumpkin, so I didn’t think it would hurt. And it hasn’t. Love your spices!