Sunday Music: Little Barrie – Burned Out

Posted on July 3, 2011 by nicdempsey

It’s been a Little Barrie week, because there’s a new album..I’ve seen them live and they were really good fun.

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Friday Night Cocktail: Raspberry Ginger Fizz

Posted on July 1, 2011 by nicdempsey

I’m still not drinking so this is last week’s sober cocktail with an alcoholic twist…

What

30ml (2 tbs) Raspberry purée

40ml ginger wine

Prosecco or Cava

How

1. Blitz your raspberries to make a purée (smash or use a blender)

2. Mix purée and ginger wine together and add to a flute

3. Top up with the cava or prosecco

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Plans for the weekend

Posted on July 1, 2011 by nicdempsey

This weekend I’m going to Watford to babysit this little man..

His parents are off to spend a day on a boat, so Ma and I are going to have fun with Olly. Which probably means chasing him around a park…

I’m going to run on Friday night and Sunday morning and I’m going to make some cherry jam, I may also fit in a movie..

It’s not exactly rock ‘n’ roll but I’m looking forward to it..

 

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Changing my mood

Posted on June 30, 2011 by nicdempsey

I didn’t have a good start to the week. We had a 2.5 day heatwave in London on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday morning. Now people who live in properly hot places probably wouldn’t think of the weather we’ve had as hot, but I’m English and I have to commute on the tube. My journey to and from work often looks like this…

…and that’s a good day! So that at 30°C is not fun.  So I started Monday hot and tired, due to lack of sleep (’caused by being too hot!). The journey into work didn’t make me happy either and I had a headache I couldn’t shake. Work at the moment is not exactly satisfying, I’m over qualified for it and I have to keep reminding myself to be grateful for the money…

To cope with this and with the PMT that is also upon me, I ate for England.  Not good, surprisingly none of this helped the headache or my less than sunny mood. I wasn’t snappy and horrible to anyone else but I wouldn’t have said I was sunny to be around.

Come Tuesday, I still had the headache, it was still hot and I wasn’t loving the job anymore than on Monday. I was still eating for England. Oh on Tuesday, the weather turned and we had a storm, thunder, hail, etc and it was cold. I had to buy an emergency cardigan..

I got home tired, headachey and very, very grumpy.  I went to bed at 9pm and tried to sleep.

I woke up at 5.30am with the same headache and bad attitude, but something in me snapped. I couldn’t carry on like this all week, I wanted to have a better week.

So at 5.30am, I got out of bed, drank a pint of water, took some headache pills and put an icepack on my head. An hour later, the headache was a bit better, not gone but liveable with, so I got up, ate some breakfast and went to work. I also decided that if I was going to eat for England, I would only eat fruit, so I ate strawberries, raspberries, peaches and cherries….

While I was at work, I just reminded myself that I was lucky to have a job and that the people I work with are nice and I made myself go for a walk at lunchtime and I bought a magazine about running and found a 5k to run in September.

I finished the day minus the headache but I wasn’t done. I got home got my running shoes on and went for a run. It was ugly and it hurt, the pollen is up and my breathing was all over the place. But I did 5k and it was my fastest time yet…

I came home, made dinner and felt better.

Today feels like a victory, not much has changed, but my attitude to it did. I didn’t sit and moan about how life isn’t fair and my head hurts and I’m too tired to run. I did a couple of little things that helped me gain control of myself and my day.  Feels really good…

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Sunday afternoon..

Posted on June 29, 2011 by nicdempsey

On Sunday, Ma and I went to the Crematorium to ‘visit’ Grandad and his ‘plague’ (When my Grandad realised that he was dying, he gave Mum a letter with his wishes, the hymns he wanted at his funeral and so on. In it, he said that he wanted his body to be cremated and his ashes scatted around my Grandma’s rose bush and a plague to be put up! I’m pretty certain that he meant a plaque but his handwriting was always interesting – left handed, like me, no I’m left handed like him..). Anyway we went to see the amazing non flowering rosebush (once in 13 years have I see roses on that rosebush – I’m thinking about suing the Crematorium for trade descriptions…)

The weather was lovely so we had a wander around, the West London Crematorium is one of the big Victorian cemeteries in London and although some people might, I don’t think that a walk around a cemetery is morbid. A more matter of fact, less sentimental attitude to death might be a good thing and using cemeteries as public space is part of that, the dead never really leave you and one day we’ll be the dead and we’ll be part of the same story.  Doesn’t hurt to walk around and remind yourself of that story sometimes…

 

 

 

I also love that so many cemeteries in London have a gasometer close by…

 

 

 

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Home: Living Room Pictures

Posted on June 28, 2011 by nicdempsey

There’s a big white space above my sofa in the living room.

Well there was..

I looked for a print but couldn’t find anything I liked, so I left it for a while. Then I had the idea of taking one of my photos, printing and framing it. That’s really expensive though. So 4 cheap frames, 4 photos. These are the pictures…

       

Two are from Broadstairs (I think I manage a trip to Broadstairs at least once every two years!), one from the trip to Newcastle that Mum and I took in 2009 and the other from the last Grace weekend. It’s nice to have my ‘travels’ on the wall.

So this is how they look on the wall..

It’s taken two years but I’m finally really happy with the living room….

 

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Sunday Music: The Age of Revolution – The Duckworth Lewis Method

Posted on June 26, 2011 by nicdempsey

It’s June, the sun finally came out and there’s cricket. I know nothing of cricket, I know that the Duckworth Lewis Method is the way cricket calculates who wins if rain stops play. The Duckworth Lewis Method is also Neil Hannon and Thomas Walsh who write songs about cricket…and occasionally other things.

 

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Friday Night Cocktail – Raspberry-Ginger Fizz

Posted on June 24, 2011 by nicdempsey

I am training for a 10k (I may have mentioned it before!)

As the lovely Jem pointed out…if I want to run the 10k in the time I’m aiming for I need to cut out the booze for a bit. I also have a pregnant sister-in-law, so something not alcoholic, but still cocktail like was required (you may call them virgin cocktails, I will not).

Meet the Raspberry-Ginger Fizz

What

30ml (2 tbs) Raspberry purée

40ml ginger cordial (I used Rochester Ginger)

Ice

Fizzy water

How

1. Blitz your raspberries to make a purée (smash or use a blender)

2. Half fill a highball glass with ice.

3. Add purée and ginger cordial to the glass.

4. Stir

5. Top up with fizzy water.

Variations on this are endless. You could use a different fruit, peach or strawberry could work quite well. You could use tonic water or lemonade or not use cordial and use ginger beer instead of fizzy water.

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The reason I love summer…

Posted on June 22, 2011 by nicdempsey

I’m English so I’m used to the rainy summers, I’ve adjusted to always having sunglasses and an umbrella with me wherever I go. Even so I love summer…

It’s not because I can spend most of the hours I’m not sleeping wearing flip flops

It’s not because it’s so much lighter (even when it’s raining) and I’m not SAD

It’s not certainly not because of Wimbledon or cricket.

It’s not even because of the opportunity to drink Pimms

Much as I love them it’s not because of peaches, strawberries or raspberries.

Nope the real reason I love summer is the availability of these…

cherries.

I love cherries, cocktail cherries, cherry jam, cherry cake, cherry drops…generally if it’s cherry favoured I’ll try it at least once. However, fresh cherries are fabulous and the best and I miss them in the winter..

 

Happiness is a bowl of cherries and not having to share them!

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Sipsmith

Posted on June 21, 2011 by nicdempsey

The London Cocktail Society had a second evening at Sipsmith on Monday night and I got to go.

I first heard about Sipsimith in 2009 when the guy Majestic tried really hard to sell me the vodka! After the hard sell, I explained that I was more of a gin drinker and it transpired that they made gin as well. I’ve heard a lot more since about the vodka although apparently the gin is more well known. It’s good gin, a proper gin lovers gin and one of the ones I’m always happy to have.

Sipsmith is made in London (Hammersmith to be exact, which makes it really local!), in Prudence the copper still. Sam Galsworthy (co-founder of Sipsmith) talked about how the company, the still and the vodka and gin came into being and we tasted the vodka, gin and the sloe gin as well as gin and tonics.

Sam is passionate about his product and clearly how they produce their spirits (in small batches, not concentrate, cutting the spirit with water on site) is important to them, even if it means that one of them (usually Sam – he claims!) has to travel to a farm at the source of the Thames to fill a tank with water every 3 weeks!

I’m not a huge vodka drinker but Sam’s enthusiasm for it convinced me, I’m already fond of the gin what I really loved was the sloe gin, which was just right. (Other people can talk about the nose and the mouth feel and so on, I can tell you that it wasn’t too sweet, it was soft and delicate and just perfect)

 

Sam says that in the next year they are launching a summercup and a damson vodka and I look forward to trying them.

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