The Kings Head, High Road, North Weald, Epping, CM16 6BU

The March Hare is coming to you today live from the The Hackney Picture House. We have come out for what could be my last visit here for a while. This morning the walk here seemed endless and I think I'm going to have to stay closer to home for the next couple of weeks. The bump has become rather too cumbersome to walk for longer than 10 minutes now and the constant need for a toilet break is proving far too distracting. Along with the lethargy that has hit me during the last day or so, I think I just want to stay indoors, eat cakes and sleep.

My tiredness has definitely not been helped by the busy week we have just had, racing around, looking at houses, but just as we were on the verge of making a very big, possibly insane, decision we have come to our senses and decided to stay put for a while. I don't think it would be fair on a new baby to be born into the upheaval of moving house, so I think we just made our first decision not based on us! Also, sniffing around other peoples houses has made me realise how much room we have where we are and actually for the first few months at least, we will be fine space wise. It feels good to have made that decision and now I can get back to the serious business of relaxing.

As well as looking at houses with kitchens smaller than the one we currently have we also went to Lewes on Saturday for a good old poke around the antiques. Unfortunately we got there a bit late in the day and only had half an hour before the shops closed at 5pm, but that didn't stop me from buying some old things I didn't need. I haven't bought any antiques for such a long time I couldn't help it. I think I've got a condition.

A small dish celebrating the Coronation of George V. I love anything Royal, I'm not ashamed to admit it and couldn't not buy this little fella. Its over 100 years old and was only £5! 

For the Queens Jubilee this summer, I could fill it peanuts. Or one mini sausage roll. Its only little.

This is a lovely copper picture frame on a chain.

It cost £6 and at some point I'll change the picture. Maybe I'll put a picture of the Queen in it. Or my beloved Judge Judy.

This was by far the most exciting purchase. Its an old wooden sledge. I've been looking for one for ages so that at Christmas I can put it under the tree with presents on. They are quite hard to find and the ones I have seen have been between £60 - £80. This one however, was £25 and is still in really good condition considering it must be at least 60 years old. Until we can put it into storage later on this week we can use it as a handy coffee table.

Yesterday we took a trip out to my beloved Essex for a Sunday Roast. We didn't really know if it would be any good but our gamble paid off. Not only did we get to drive through some lovely countryside and Epping Forest, we also saw a fox and were served by possibly the friendliest waiter I've ever met in my life. He was even more friendly than the cafe owner we met last week on our house hunt, who took me to his house so I could use the loo as there wasn't one in his cafe! What a nice guy.

Oil seed rape fields. Beautiful. These always remind me of growing up in Essex. Lovely.

Usually I can't stand foxes but this one looked so healthy! Not like our ratty old urban foxes which usually have an ear missing or a bald arse.

The extremely wonky Kings Head.

The Kings Head North Weald

The Kings Head is one of the oldest pubs in Essex with parts of the building dating back 450 years. It was originally built using ships timbers! Totes amazeballs!

Woodwormy timbers.

The Wigs Calamari.

My prawn cocktail. 

I love prawns. A prawn cocktail is my starter of choice for a deathrow dinner (followed by Spaghetti Bolognese and Tiramisu), however I have been a bit confused about the 'prawn rule' during this pregnancy and not had any for months. Can you eat them at all? Are they ok as long as they are cooked? Anyway, I took my chances and they were delicious.

Roast Beef. 

The only table we could reserve was one at 2:30pm so by the time we got there most of the roast dinners had sold out (turkey, lamb, chicken) so it was either this or the pork belly.

They had also run out of roast potatoes but I think that shows how popular this place is. 

It wasn't the best roast I've had but it definitely wasn't the worst. That doesn't really sound like a compliment but is it.

Yep, we went for it. 3 courses! 

I haven't done that in a while but since we don't know when we'll be able to do it again I thought it was worth giving myself stomach ache for.  Apple pie and vanilla ice cream. The pastry was more cakey than pastry but very nice nonetheless. 

Lovely old features. 

So, in conclusion I am going to score The Kings Head in North Weald, 9 prawns out of a possible 10. Danny the waiter was faultless, the building was lovely, we weren't rushed and the food was good. It's a great place to go if you need to take your folks somewhere for a family lunch at a reasonable price and somewhere out of London. You would definitely need to book but can do so via their website. For 3 courses each and 3 drinks, the bill came to £46 not including a tip so very reasonably priced I think and well worth it. Get yourself down there babes!

Homemade Sourdough

After 8 and a bit months of being probably the most relaxed, calm (and healthy) I have ever been in my life, I am slowly getting rather stressed out. It has nothing to do with the impending birth or the fact that the NCT girls are dropping like flies, but the whole 'moving' situation. I suppose its always good to have something to worry about to keep the brain ticking, over but I usually prefer to be worrying about something thats within my control. Moving house is not.

If I was a millionaire things would be a lot easier, but I'm not. Although I'm sure I could drum up some money if I put the baby on eBay but I don't think The Wig would be too happy about that. Of course I won't put the baby on eBay, you get a much quicker sale on Gumtree.

Anyway, I think this moving home episode is going to be a long and bumpy roller coaster ride of a ride that I'm not particularly looking forward to. I'd forgotten how irritating it can be and we've only been looking for 4 days . . .

The first house I bought with my Ex-boyfriend was lovely. If I could have picked it up and moved it to a different location, I would have done, but unfortunately my special powers don't stretch to lifting houses. The house was in Clapton, which had terrible transport links, zero things to do and awful neighbours. We also got beaten up here one Sunday which was pretty much the icing on the doughnut. I know these things have given me a tainted opinion of the place and I'm sure lots of people like living there, it just wasn't for me. If things between the Ex and I weren't strained enough after buying the place then realising that after 5 years we were complete opposites, the strain of living here definitely tipped us over the edge. I did think it was a lovely little house though . . .

Entrance

Front room.

Hallway.

Hallway again.

Study.

Kitchen.

Kitchen to little dining room.

Kitchen to garden.

Garden. This was lovely. It had been a wedding present to the couple who lived there before us. While they were away on honeymoon, their parents had sorted it out for them with bay trees, clematis, fig trees and passion flowers. It was beautiful by the time we moved in.

Spare room.

Bathroom.

I ended up living here for about 18 months before we split up, sold it and moved. It's funny looking back at these old photos now, it seems like a whole other lifetime. I don't look back at this time with any regrets though since it enabled me to buy the place where I live now and got my juices going regarding decorating, furniture and plants. There is always a silver lining to every cloud, you just might have to have a real root around for it.

And luckily,  yesterday I found a new pastime that is going to enable me to release my 'moving' frustrations legally until the baby appears, then I'm sure I will be too knackered to even think about moving. Homemade Sourdough. 

Saying it's 'homemade' is stretching the truth somewhat as the dry ingredients came out of a packet but I did make it in my home. My recent discovery is that fancy bread is very expensive to buy, for example, round these parts, a loaf of sourdough costs between £3-£4 per loaf. However, Lakeland, my new favorite place, sell 5 x packs of sourdough mix for £6. Or the equivalent of £1.20 per loaf.

To make 1 x Loaf of Wright's Simple Sourdough

1 x pack of Wright's Simple Sourdough Mix

310ml of luke warm water

4 Tablespoons of Sunflower or Vegetable Oil

* Open the packet . . . 

* Tip the packet into a bowl and add the water and oil.

* With your hands, mix everything together for a few minutes, then put on a floured surface and leave for 5 minutes.

* After 5 minutes, punch it, stretch it and slap it around for 5 minutes.

* When your arms hurt, leave it again for 5 minutes.

* When your arms have recovered, repeat abusive process.

* After a good pummeling, place the mixture in a loaf tin, cover with cling film or a damp cloth and put in a warm place for 30-40 minutes or until the mixture has doubled in size.

* Meanwhile preheat the oven to 210C (Fan).

* Once the mixture has risen, remove the cling film / cloth, score the surface of the bread and put in the oven.

* Check loaf after 30 minutes to see if its cooked. The top should be hard and the underside should sound hollow when you tap it.

* Overall this was a very therapeutic thing to do but I did find the loaf had a slightly peculiar taste. Not totally offensive (and actually the Wig said he thought it tasted fine), but considering what good value it is (and the fact that I have 4 packs left) I will definitely be making this again.

Cafe Oto, 18 - 22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, E8 3DL

Yesterday did not get off to a good start. I was awoken at 8:30am by a bald cockney yelling at the top of his lungs whilst standing on the garden wall. He then preceeded to jump into my garden and charge towards the house with a man dressed in a hoodie. To say I was enraged was an understatement. So I threw the bedroom window open and screamed. I'm not sure who was more scared by what came out of my mouth. The bald cockney, the hoodie, me or The Wig who was minding his own business  standing in his pants in the corner of the bedroom. Luckily it turned out that we were not being invaded by baldies or hoodies, it was just my next door neighbour having some scaffolding erected but requiring access from my garden. Thanks for the warning guys! To be fair, after I'd calmed down, I did feel slightly bad about my reaction but this is one incident that I will blame on the hormones. My protective instinct seems to have kicked in, and was even rewarded by a bottle of wine from the neighbour last night which I will save for a later date. I don't think he'll be jumping into my garden again anytime soon, not without telling me first at least.

Next up for putting a dampner on the day was the realisation that we had bought the wrong ruddy paint for the sodding bathroom. This was a very rookie mistake to make (basically, we didn't buy bathroom paint . . . ) which I will also blame on the hormones. So we had to swap the paint at Homebase and have somehow managed to come back with exactly the same colour that the bathroom was painted originally. All my hard deliberations about a new colour and all the money spent on tester pots was a complete waste of time and money. Moron.

The day improved somewhat though when I went to meet the NCT / Ante Natal class girls for a hot drink in the afternoon. I thought that we wouldn't meet up until after the babies were born, but we are all off work now so one of them suggested meeting up anyway. They are a really a nice bunch actually and even if I hadn't learnt anything on the course it was worth doing just to meet local people who are in the same boat as us. Not only was it nice to catch up it was also a bit of a reality check since 2 of the girls were unable to come as they had gone into labour *gulp*. One of the group said it was like being in a horror film and we were gradually being picked off one by one... It was good to learn though that I'm not the only one who cant do their shoelaces up at the moment.

We met at a cafe in Dalston called Cafe Oto. Another cafe up the road I'd never heard of but quite a nice place with lots of room which was lucky for 6 tubbies. I'm not quite ready to expose the dark corners of my mind (ie this blog) to the girls so only took one photo of this place on the way in. I felt too self conscious taking photos of the mugs, chairs and toilets in front of them. You'll have to take my word for it that the carrot cake and hot chocolate were very nice.

Cafe Oto

Cafe Oto is a cafe / music venue / private hire place that has apparently had performances by Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon (along with loads of other groovy people I've never heard of)! How groovy. Its quite stark in its decor although it looks far more fancy from the outside, but very convenient if you end up at Dalston Junction Station (its opposite) and fancy a hot drink in spacious surroundings.

Then the day took another down turn. As we need to move quite soon we have started to look at a few houses this week. The only problem is the area that we want to move to now seems to have gone up so much I don't know if we will be able to afford to do it. We first looked 2 years ago but couldn't move as I had to wait until I had bought the Freehold/extended the lease. As it's taken so long to do this we now can't afford to move to where we want to! What a ballache! London is so expensive its almost criminal. The place we saw yesterday was in a fairly good location but we would need to: render the outside, damp proof the walls on the ground floor and upstairs, change the damaged windows, move the bathroom upstairs, put in a kitchen, decorate every room, sand all the floors and sort the garden out which has been concreted over. This wouldn't bother me so much if it was just The Wig and I but I don't want the baby to be born into a world a stress. I want to enjoy (as much as possible) our first few months together, so we decided to walk away from this particular place. Good luck to whoever buys it but it wont be us. So, it's a bit of a frustrating situation but we'l just have to look elsewhere.

You know those days when you should just stay in bed? On reflection, I think this was one of those days.

Getting (rather) hectic.

I foolishly thought that maybe these last few weeks before the baby descends would be nice and quiet but that hasn't been the case so far. The way I feel at the moment having the baby will be like a mini break. Things have been very hectic and I'm looking forward to a lie down even if it means I might have to be wired up to a machine in order for this to happen.

In the last 6 days, I've been treated to lunch at Cote:

Cote

Cote is a chain of restaurants, that quite frankly you cant go wrong with. The food is always really good and not too expensive for a nice meal. The staff are also always really friendly. Cote gets a good 8 jugs of hot chocolate sauce out of a possible 10.

Then I was taken for a non-alcoholic Cocktail, or 'Mocktail'..., at the Soho Hotel:

Soho Hotel

I came here once before a long time ago and cant remember much about it so it was nice to come her sober and not be the drunk person for a change. The 'Mocktail' was delicious and a great place to come for a special occasion drink. I'm not sure you could sit there all night as its probably quite pricey but nice to come for a tonsil tickler if you are in the area. 

The next day, I met some friends at L'entrepot. It was nice to catch up but not so nice watching them enjoy so much wine and eat the veiny cheese and cold meats which I couldn't enjoy. When they started talked about having a cigarette I'm afraid I couldn't take anymore and had to waddle off home. I haven't really had fag envy at all during the last few months until that night. Luckily its passed, I'm not going to turn into Stacey Solomen. Or Kerry Katona.

This months Glossybox also finally arrived which was probably the best one yet. The last couple of months deliveries have been rather disappointing (false nails, purple eyeliner, gold eyeshadow . . . ? ) so I was going to cancel my subscription, but I thought I'd give them one more chance as I'm good like that. Even the Special Edition Harrods box last month was a bit of a wet fart. The samples were tiny!

However, this months box contained much more generous size products and actually contained things I might use. Although my photography skills seem not to have improved much. . . 

We also met some friends for breakfast at Chase and Sorensen who told us they too are having a baby, so congratulations to them! This now brings the total for our friends who are having or have had babies this year to 13! Or maybe even 14, I've lost count. 2012 is turning into a baby bonanza! As a small impromptu congratulatory gift I gave them some of my home made banana bread. 

Thinking about it now, I haven't heard from them since. I hope they didn't get banana poisoning.

Then on Sunday I had a really lovely afternoon as it was our University Sunday Lunch! Yay! I had booked a table at The Duchess of Kent on Liverpool Road, Highbury, one of the pubs in the Geronimo Inns group and they really did come up trumps. 

Pictures Copyright of Geronimo Inns.

It was a bit of a gamble as I hadn't been to this pub before but I was a bit limited about where to suggest as there were 19 of us. Luckily the gamble paid off since the staff were very friendly and patient with us, the food pretty much all came out at the same time (and was delicious) and it was only £26 per head including drinks and a tip! I would definitely recommend this place for a large group of people as the staff and the food was great. Bravo (again) Geronimo Inns.

Roast beef and yorkshire pudding. Yumsters!

Banoffee Cheesecake and berry compote.

Friends! Yay! 

It was so lovely to see everyone and obviously I burst into tears. Everyone 'cheersed' me for organising the get together and to wish us luck with the baby and that set me right off. As I said at the time, I'd like to blame the hormones but I'm a big old whoopsie that doesn't really need any excuse for a good old blub. It was quite overwhelming really, I've known this lot since I was 18 and the fact that we've all kept in touch and all still get on is pretty special I think. Among this bunch we have Ad Agency Creative Directors, Commercials Directors, An Illustrator, A Model Maker, A Graphic Designer and some bloke off the telly. Not bad for a random bunch of booze hounds.

But along with all this socialising, the serious business of hospital checks and home making have been running concurrently. There simply doesnt feel like there are enough hours in the day at the momnet. I got groped at the hospital on Monday for a routine check up and to check where the baby's head is (Me: "Oh god, you're not going to poke anything up me are you?!", Midwife: "No. I can tell from feeling your stomach", Me: "THANK GOD"). Luckily, presently, everything is in order as far as that is concerned which is good news and by the end of the week the baby will be full term. Crumbs. But we also have a man painting the bathroom, we've had a steady stream of Estate Agents round to the flat so we can get moving and also been viewing places to move into. To say everything is happening at once would be to state the obvious whilst hitting the nail on the head. Its very hectic. But really rather exciting.