Melrosiad - Some Hope

Back with a newly cleaned up Patrick Melrose this week. Having left behind his troubled 20s, Patrick and I are now pretty much the same age. I think we would get on.

"As far as I know she's driving a consignment of ten thousand syringes to Poland. People say it's marvellous of her, but I still think that charity begins at home. She could have saved herself the journey by bringing them round to my flat," said Patrick.

"I thought you'd put all that behind you," said Nicholas.

"Behind me, in front of me. It's hard to tell, here in the Grey Zone.

"That's a rather melodramatic way to talk at thirty,"

"Well, you see," sighed Patrick, "I've given up everything, but taken nothing up instead."

NW

NW by Zadie Smith

Melrosiad

Sneaky lunch-break trip to Waterstones = quality time with Patrick Melrose (now all grown up and drug-addicted)!

Ins Kino gehen

Woke up this morning wanting very much to spend the last day of 2013 at Cafe Kino on Stokes Croft in Bristol. So that is where we made our way, currently enjoying sweet potato chips and falafel, and a relatively sunny view out over the Boycott Tesco mural. Also, listening to Big Fox. Back to Notts tomorrow, and into the New Year.

The Weimar Republic Coffee Awards 2013

I sort of love the idea that the (actual) Weimar Republic might have had Coffee Awards, but I sort of also suspect they probably didn't. Which is a shame, but they were probably busy being more concerned about other things.

But let us not stop more important things getting in the way of this, the inaugural Weimar Republic Coffee Awards 2013. I have spent the past year conducting a completely unfair, unbalanced and not in any way thorough survey of the coffee available throughout our fine nation. And now the results are in.

To test coffee appropriately, my rules state you should order a flat white and an espresso. This will give you the best picture of both the quality and flavour of the coffee itself, how it works in a more complex (slightly) beverage, with milk, and also the coffee making skills of the establishment in question.

In practice, drinking a flat white and an espresso everywhere you go isn't practicable, particularly if you want to test more than one establishment's coffee in the same day and don't enjoy caffeine hallucinations. But still, I tried my best. Here are my favourites:

Flat White, Berwick Street, Soho, London


Possibly one of the first British cafes to bring the flat white to the UK? And how glad I was of this. When I first left the UK for Australia in 2008, I had never heard of the flat white. I was very much a tea drinker. And then I discovered the joyful flat white. Why couldn't English people make coffee like this? Why did we put up with those milky, bathtub sized travesties, with several inches of flavourless froth sat on top? When I came home, in 2011, I was overjoyed to see flat whites in English coffee shops. So, thank you, Flat White in Soho, and your fine flat whites.

The Bean, Stoney Street, Beeston, Nottinghamshire

My local. And fortunately so. We buy all our own coffee beans here and they grind them for us too! And they do a grand flat white.

Wired, Pelham Street, Nottingham

A new one in Nottingham. Excellent, and good food too.

Hot Numbers, Gwydir Street, Cambridge

Very fine coffee. These people are into coffee so much that I just felt like a person with a hot drink in comparison. I sampled two different espressos and several flat whites (on separate visits I must point out!).

Boston Tea Party, Park Street/Cheltenham Road/Gloucester Road, Bristol

There's a few of these around Bristol and the west, but those 3 are my favourites. Glorious rich, creamy flat whites. This one was made in the newest Gloucester Road branch, which I'm a bit in love with at the moment because it has opened up less than 5 minutes walk from my parents' house. Thanks, Boston Tea!



Well, the above are all fine contenders in the Coffee of the Year stakes. But none of them have won this coveted prize. "Who has won?" I hear you shout. Well let me tell you that the winner is *drumroll*........

..... Society Cafe, Kingsmead Square, Bath

One of the greatest espressos I have tasted, possible ever. And a fine flat white, and a wonderful establishment filled with lovely furniture and books and magazines. I wrote on the chalkboard in their toilets, to thank them. I'll thank them again. Thank you, Society Cafe. And well done!

Christmas is coming...

The tree is up! To make up for last year, when we left it so late we ended up tree-less, we were ready this year on December the first! The Pretty Dandy flea market also happened the same weekend, so we went along and stocked up on all the lovely handmade decorations, including the ceramic 'love' heart and the little fabric Christmas tree you can see in the picture.

I'm enjoying the soothing glow of the lights right now after a pretty crazy day at work. All our IT systems went down just as I was frantically trying to meet a deadline, so that was a bit of a pain; all has been sorted now though and I feel back on track. To top it all off, the heating at the office was also suffering an engineering fault, meaning that when I arrived this morning the thermometers were showing 13.8 degrees! We all sat there painfully cold, bundled up in whatever we could find until the engineers came to sort it and it slowly returned to comfortable conditions this afternoon.

After all that, I wanted comfort food for dinner, so I turned to one of my favourites: smoked haddock topped with grated cheddar and breadcrumbs, with creamy garlic mash (and for ultimate joy I used 3 cloves!). Creamy, smokey, heartwarming joy on a plate.

Catching up

Wow, the last time I posted anything in this place there was snow on the ground. Well things couldn't be more different now and the weather is warm and sunny. I love this time of year, when the days are long long long, and early nights mean you rarely see the sky darken completely. I am so energised by the summer.

I am climbing/bouldering 2 or 3 times a week, and really working hard at yoga over the past few months too. I am enjoying learning to better control body and mind. It seems to help me maintain a general sense of positivity. If I can break through the anxiety that sometimes envelopes me, I am an optimistic little sausage at heart, a sunny pie! I am exploring meditation techniques lately too, and am getting the hang of controlling my thoughts a little better. Allllllll good.

We had a little jaunt to Hunstanton on the north Norfolk coast last month, blessed with lovely weather by the fates. Sand and sun, maybe some sea although it was quite far away most of the time. We also visited the Queen at Sandringham, which is a lovely lovely house.







The gardens at Sandringham are so idyllic!







Old Father Time lives in the Sandringham gardens!