Tag: coffee

B362 – THE ANNUAL SPEAR FAMILY TRADITION

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First off let me start by saying Happy Easter I hope everyone is doing exactly what they want this weekend, I plan on catching up with the family and eating chocolate, lots of chocolate. Right now though I have ended up waking up at like 5am and decided that this is probably the best time to sit down and write a half decent post, in about 30 minutes I’m expecting the kids to wake up and a massive game of hide and seek or tag to kick off and I want to be in the best possible position for what ever game we end up playing and not have worry about getting this post done.

Today is the day of the Spear family Easter egg hunt and for those of you that have been reading this post of the past year will know from last year’s egg hunt, its not something that can be done lightly. It’s a full blown Egg hunt by which everyone (the kids) has their own bag and run around the garden collecting eggs, there aren’t any winners or losers just the person with the most eggs is what the adults tell the young ones Flo (age 4) and Phoebe (age 10) but that’s not the way I see it, right now its war and when chocolates on the line it’s every man or toddler for themselves. Watch this space people.

One thing that does feel weird when I think about it, is the fact that I was doing this blogging malarkey and this is now my second Easter post, its crazy to think how much my writing and photography skills have improved. I’ve gone from being that drop out dyslexic kid who struggles with all things grammar and can’t really write, to someone who’s now confident in the content I put out there and actually enjoying the process of writing and getting my ideas from my head. Don’t get me wrong there are still many mistake that make it through but when you think about the first posts I wrote, they were literally 2 sentences long and full of mistakes, to now writing mini essays about topics that I find genuinely interesting. It’s a massive change. I’ve gone from having a writing age of about 7 years old to now probably a solid 16/17 years old and that’s something I’m pretty proud of and I have a whole website where I can show the improvement. I just know that its something I need to keep up and try to push to new levels and see just how far I can take this whole blog thing, I’ve got some really interesting plans / ideas for when this 3 a day is over and I hope that I can continue to interest you guys into reading my posts.

I was going to leave those “cringy” reflection posts for the last day but to be honest I couldn’t think of anything else to write so I just thought I would give you guys an insight into what I think of my writing. Moving on from that, its time for my second cup of coffee and to get prepped for the Easter Egg hunt, they maybe family but its time to get my head in the game and find those eggs, may the best person win, good luck Flo and Phoebe, you’re going to need it.

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– Stopping off on the way to Michelles for a quick beer –
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– And relax –
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– I cant believe ive been doing these post of a whole year and havent taken a picture of Kings Cross or maybe I have and just forgotten –

 

B361 – THIS IS GIVING ME A MINI HEADACHE

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you know how I said yesterday that I had a pretty cool place to go and check out, well, heres a kind of mini story the day. At the start Amy and me headed out for breakfast in Covent Garden, it had just started raining that really heavy and wet rain that gets through even the best gortex jacket. We had just finished our starter at brunch in this really cool little greek restaurant and the conversation came up about how we were going to get to the location and then we realised that trains weren’t stopping near by and the bus was just not really an option. I know what you are thinking, uber? but to be honest, it would just have been a pain getting one there and then getting one back would have been a nightmare. things really wern’t looking up for us and this plan, it was time to make an extreme decision, so…

After our meal we headed across the road to a coffee shop to think of a new game plan, we were both pretty clear that we didn’t want to head back to the flat and spend the rainy day inside watching movies and eating food, we wanted a mini adventure and to see something new. it has been the first time in like 6 weeks, where we literally have the whole day to spend together, one of us didn’t have to work in the morning or disappear in the evening, so we wanted to do something fun and make the most of it, but every idea we had didn’t work out, see a last minute west end musical? not one on at the right time. London Dungeness? Nope, just nope. Then, just as we were about to finish our coffee’s, Amy had the idea about going to the design museum in Kensington and boom we had a plan and somewhere to go!

For yesterdays mini adventure I decided to take the 28mm lens, its something that I think has real potential and one that I want to get to know better. I like to think that I know how to get a lens to focus and can take an OK picture with basically any lens you put on my camera. After all, I have been doing it literally every day for the past 361 days. but for some reason I just cant get the focal length right for really any picture, its so annoying. I cant seem to get it perfect, its giving me a headache. But Im not just going to put this lens on the side and not use it again. it must have been made for a reason, and I’m sure its portraits and street photography, maybe I just need to spend some more time with it and get to the bottom of what it can be used for.

Heres some of my shots from yesterday, I hope you like them and just so you know, I will be using this lens again today and will do my best to figure it out!

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– us sitting across the road trying to make this day work out –
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– we found a big puddle with some water fountains so I decided to jump in it –
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– see I just cant work out the focal length of this length, maybe I need to use the aperture to make these photos sharper, but this is a stair case inside the design museum –

B230 – A CHINESE BREAKFAST

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I never seen Chinese buffet for breakfast and don’t think its something I have much of an appetite for, but you cant knock it till you tried it right. so this morning was all about me digging in for a proper orientatal breakfast with chop sticks the lot.  I decided to go for the cold noodles, rice and some other things which im not too sure what they were, my mistake involved soy sauce, I over did it a bit meaning it was all a bit too salty. but I dont think that was my main mistake, if I played it safe and stuck with rice, rolls and weird green thing I would have been ok. it was all the other stuff that put me over the edge.

A few hours later and its lunch time, thats when I really regretted my breakfast, it was more rice, noodles and other Chinese food. I definitely think a ham and cheese croissant for breakfast goes down a lot better with a coffee. rice and coffee isn’t really a good mix. I was a bit suprised at the cold chow main noddles as well, I thought that it was a global tradition to eat noddles hot, cold noddles are bit to weird.

most of the time when i’m eating Chinese its at 3am and I’m in the middle of London somewhere trying to book at taxi home and struggling to remember my address, so eating one from breakfast felt unnatural, but who am I to judge. it they like it then thats there choice, i just hope one day they try and full english breakfast and understand what makes a great breakfast.

I know this is a bit of a weird breakfast review, but I hope it makes sense and doesn’t make me look naive.

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– dont ask me what was on my plate, I have no idea –
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– the pastery section i think –
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– sorry for the bad photo, it was taken on an iphone –

B087 – WE HAD BREAKFAST AT A GAS STATION

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Nothing absolutely nothing beats breakfast on the side of the motorway in mainland Europe. the One euro espresso that comes in that weird brown plastic cup is probably the best coffee you can get your hands on, that with a ham and cheese baguette is the best meal you can have, breakfast, lunch or dinner it really doesn’t matter. I recommend it to any!

Thats exactly what amy and me did the other day, we said screw it to the croissant, fruit and coffee machine, we grabbed a spicey salami & cheese baguette at the local auto grill and a coffee to wake us up, not only did they warm it up for us but they also gave us cutlery, well a spoon to stir sugar into an espresso, but cutlery is still cutlery. they  even sold big versions of junk food, from 5 litre bottles of popcorn to massive tubes of pringles. its was almost dreamy.

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– Never drive past one of these without stopping –

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– I know it doesn’t look a lot but this place is does the best food  –

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– these packs of pringles aren’t messing around –