I had my cheapest night out ever the other night when I met my good friend Mo who has her second baby due 3 weeks before me. The kind of nights out that Mo and I used to share would involve gallons of pinot Grigio, far too many Marlboro Lights, possibly some Queen Karaoke and no memory of anything after about 8:12pm. How times have changed. On Tuesday night we spent 2.5 hours talking (and me crying a bit) and the princely sum of £17.00. I don't think seventeen quid would even cover a 20 pack of Growlers (fags) these days
This pretty much sums the old us up.
Mo is back left with the beer bottle and I'm at the front being supported from behind. Happy days.
Anyway, we met up at Bank in Ye Olde City of London for a spot of supper and soon realised that apart from lots of people in suits rushing around, there really isn't a huge amount of places to go to for food in that part of town. There's no denying The City is a beautiful part of London, its just a bit void of pit stops. Obviously my terrible photos don't do it justice but I think you might be used to my terrible photos by now and its the thought that counts.
Then, rather fortuitously, I remembered the glorious One New Change by St Paul's Cathederal. Normally the walk from bank to St Pauls wouldn't take very long but for 2 waddlers it seemed to take a rather long time. Due to our lack of mobility we went into the first place that we came to, a place called Bread Street Kitchen, imaginatively named thus as it is situated on Bread Street.
Bread Street Kitchen (On Bread Street, geddit? . . . ) is a fairly new establishment set up by loud and sweary Gordon Ramsey (although he is actually extremely charming in real life as he made me a Nescafe on a shoot for The Times once). I'd never heard of it but was very impressed. Unfortunately, it wasn't until my companion and I popped to the latrine before we left that we realised we had been sitting in the wrong part of the building all night. On arriving at Bread Street we had grabbed the nearest table we could find to the door, but this turned out to be a bit of a mistake. While we spent the evening drinking tap water and sharing a bar snack of a Pizzetta (a small thin pizza) and a chocolate tart, there was a whole nother world going on upstairs. If only we hadn't been so exhausted after our 200 metre walk to go upstairs when we first arrived.
Amazing looking restaurant upstairs (picture from their website, my camera would never take a photo as good as this).
Downstairs bar area where we sat. All night.
Surprisingly delicious pizza type thing.
Chocolate tart with Caramel Ice Cream and Honeycomb.
The upstairs is a huge restaurant with amazing views of St Paul's and beautiful decor. For more pictures of it and the menu, check out their website above. I'm gutted we didn't make it up there, but I'll definitely be back. It also looks like they do a nice line in breakfasts if you are ever in the area which would definitely be worth checking out. If the bar food is anything to go by then the restaurant food will be really good.
Speaking of food, which I often do, I have grown some cress this week. I have no idea why I did it or what I'm going to do with it but it gave me something to do this week after 2 jobs I thought might happen, didn't. At this rate I really don't know if I'll be working again before the baby comes but if it all goes tits up in advertising maybe I could become a cress farmer. It only took 3 days and the seeds were extremely cheap.
But the home projects do not stop there, no siree. Today I finally finished knitting my second blanket. It is absolutely massive and only looks good from one side due to the appalling way I joined all the wool together, but I'm pretty pleased with it. In retrospect I should have bought a lighter coloured wool but I think it will be lovely in the winter. All in all I think I used about 25 balls of wool which cost around £45 (balls are so much cheaper if you buy in bulk) and I don't think I could buy a blanket like this for that price, so it was definitely a worth while exercise. I might get some bright coloured wool next time I'm out to do a blanket stitch around the outside which will make it a bit less Edwardian Workhouse.
The only problem is, that now I have finished it I have no excuse not to tackle that knitted bear I have been challenged to make. Balls indeed!
Not a terrible photo in sight! Well done with the blanket as well! :)
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