nice things

Reasons To Be Cheerful (1, 2, 3)

♥ Reorganising my clothes drawers in a revolutionary way. It's the future, look!

why yes, I did arrange my tops by colour for extra OCD-ness.

My morning getting-dressed routine is now approximately 75% easier. Tip was generously provided by this awesome lady.

♥ Excellent and hilarious banter with work colleagues. I love my work buddies, they make my day so much more fun.

♥ Watching films in the bath. Safely!! I conveniently have a high chest of drawers well away from the bath where I can place my laptop and watch a film of my choosing. Seriously, people, it's the future. You just have to be mindful of wrinkly appendages.

♥ Living the high life by drinking an innocent smoothie every day at work for breakfast. It's good 'cause I buy the kids' cartons, so that I have some cute cartoons to look at before I start my day's work.

♥ Lighter nights! Seriously, it's so exciting just coming home from work in the daylight, knowing that spring is on the way and the weather can only get warmer and sunnier... well, in theory anyway. I can feel my energy levels lifting already, I think I will be bouncing off the walls by the time summer rolls around.

Baking Banocolate!

(I tried to think of something relating to muffins that began with B to continue the alliteration but couldn't find anything, so I avoided it altogether. Alliteration is awesome but it causes headaches, kids).

Today we had snow (in March? is this really necessary, weather god?) and, if it wasn't snowing, it was teeming down with rain. All in all a very miserable day. 

Days like this, however, are made immeasurably better by spending a little time in the kitchen baking some delicious goodies. I sat down with my favourite book of Nigella's, Kitchen, pondering over what I should bake, and made my decision based on a sad little group of over-ripe bananas on our kitchen table.

Nigella calls them Banana Chocolate Muffins but I thought, if Banoffee is an acceptable conglomeration of words, why not Banocolate? I think it has a kind of ring to it, so I shall be referring to this flavour combination as such henceforth.

I deviated from Nigella slightly by throwing in some dark chocolate chips in addition to the cocoa powder, and I think they were a definite Good Thing. The chocolatey-ness is not too sweet and overpowering over the banana, it's a nice balance. Also nicely moist on account of the banana, they're totally rad and delicious. I shall be baking these again fo'sho!

New Things

Following on from January's list of new stuff, I kept it up for February and I was surprised to see the list is not shorter than January's (the opposite, in fact) - considering I've been back at work since the start of the month and consequently had less free time for doing fun stuffs. Some of them are, admittedly, a little more 'minor' (boring, unimportant, tedious... Whatever you wanna call it) than all the new things I did in January, but new is new and they're all experiences, right?

☼ Wandered round Harvey Nichols (felt like I didn't *quite* belong here..)
☼ Tried mee goreng (meh)
☼ Bought a pair of proper walking boots
☼ Visited Sandal Castle
☼ Went to Red Hot Buffet (omg - amazeballs)
☼ Ate sushi (not for me)
☼ Built a snowman
☼ Went sledging (I have done this before but not since I was tiny, so for the purpose of this list it's the first time I've been sledging *as an adult*!)
☼ Signed up to a dating website (!)
☼ Went on a date with someone from said website
☼ Shared rum with some randoms, awesome people I happened to share a train carriage with
☼ Tried a Kir Royale (yum)
☼ Tried a chai tea latte (a grower)
☼ Went on a night out in a town I'd never been to before
☼ Drove my friend's Land Rover Defender. This was with the intention of learning to tow a trailer in it, and I'm dead excited - I felt totally boss driving such a large, unforgiving vehicle! I hope to report back on this more in future, as I'm really keen to learn to tow.
☼ Read four new books: The Diary of a Madman, A Hungarian Quartet, One Hundred Years of Solitude and A Tale of Two Cities
☼ Watched four new films: Prozac Nation, Elizabethtown, Stealing Beauty and Midnight in Paris (would especially recommend the latter two - so wonderful)

The Book List: Part [Who Knows]

Another two books to cross off the list and take off the slowly-decreasing stack! I finally feel like I'm making progress with it now, although I will probably change my mind when I get to James Joyce's Ulysses... I'm totally dreading that book, and I might cheat and give it up altogether if it's as tedious as I fear it will be. Why did I even buy it?

Rant over. Ahem.

First up we have One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. 

I actually didn't love, adore or cherish this book as much as I thought/hoped I would. That said, I still enjoyed it very much. The rhythm of the plot gives the book a haunting atmosphere, as do the occasional supernatural occurrences throughout the story. It's often quite sad, in a sort of poignant, reflective, melancholy way, and often very beautiful as well. Yet at the same time, the characters are imbured with so much life I didn't notice just how sad parts were until I reflected back on them.

While I don't have a particularly strong opinion about the book now, due to the writing style and the themes throughout the book, I do think that the feel of it will linger with me for quite a while. I always like it when that happens with a book, though I'm never sure if anyone else ever gets that feeling?

I've just finished reading A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens. I enjoyed this novel immensely, so that brings the total of Dickens novels I have loved up to 2 out of 2. Go me. 

I wasn't particularly taken with the subject of the novel at first (the French revolution) - I thought it would be overly political, and little bit dry. Clearly I don't know Dickens very well, as it was less about politics, more about love and bloodshed, liberty and equality, tyrannism and morality. It was a little slow to start with but became increasingly gripping halfway through. Plus, as before, excellent writing throughout.

A Tale of Two Cities wasn't quite as enjoyable as Great Expectations, for me. I think that's because there was more scope for humour and witticisms in Great Expectations, whereas of course that wasn't appropriate for A Tale of Two Cities. Nevetheless, it was still a fantastic book and I am again smarting that I didn't give him a chance earlier. I know what's going on my shopping list once my book-buying ban is over!

Top Bonuses of Being Single

♥ being able to spread across the whole of a double bed.

♥ falling asleep to music. Music that I like.

♥ painting my nails ridiculous colours without getting grief for hours afterwards about the room smelling.

♥ never having to compromise when it comes to watching films.

♥ no more nights sat in front of the TV because somebody couldn't be bothered doing anything else.

♥ singing anywhere and everywhere.

♥ more opportunities for spontaneity.

♥ FREEDOM!