London one-way!

Well, I’ve hit mid week and I have to say I was absolutely stuffed when I got home last night. I worked till half past six so it then took half an hour to get back, got off a tube stop before home to go to Tescos in Bethnal Green. Stupid store had no capsicums – since when does a supermarket run out of capsicums?!

As you can tell, it was Lija’s and my turn to cook, she was at work drinks till seven, and got a few ingredients, then I got the rest – minus the capsicums. By the time I got home it was ten past eight and everyone’s sitting there all relaxed. I chucked my bag in one corner, nearly knecking myself with my scarf and mp3 player which was all twisted around me, kicked off my shoes in another corner, took my top off (my top top, I still had one on underneath!) and we got down to business. Only took fifteen/twenty minutes to cook – stir fry with pork mince, pineapple, sweet peppers, baby sweetcorn, spring onions, and hoisin sauce.

Needless to say the boys loved it.

They don’t know how we can make the same thing and ours tastes so much better. For a start, we use fresh vegies, not frozen cubed ones. We use a nice sauce, not plain old sweet and sour, we use nice noodles not ramen. I don’t think we spend a whole lot more than them on it either.

And so to top off a long day, and cooking dinner for ten people, when Joel turned around and said, joking of course, “Hey luv, can ya pass me a beer from the fridge?!” I swore at him at the top of my lungs, to which the reply was “Wow, Mara’s getting a voice in the house” with a cheeky grin. And then something about “Yes, mum”, to which I was so not amused.

But I am going to miss them and it’s going to be really quiet in the house without them. The least amount of people we’ve had in the house at any one time is eight – from next week it will be just five. They did provide entertainment and a load of laughs. Watching them cook is hilarious, as is trying to squish ten people into one small lounge room. Every Wednesday is House, and it’s the only show that the whole house sits and watches so intently without talking, and as soon as the ads finish, the talking does too.

As for work, not only am I able to write again, which I’m LOVING! But I’m also learning a lot, especially about the financial side of things. Different money terms, saving, spending, figures. The online side is also interesting, my prior experience with photoshop and Fifth Estate shows my comeptence in using the system here, uploading articles and pictures.

And there’s just all the stuff you learn and experience in a social work scene. We all seem to get a lot done in the day, but still get time for the important female bonding chats, necessary in any all-female work situation. It wasn’t meant to be all female, and they did have a guy working here at one stage, but this is just how it’s worked out at the moment.

And then there’s the thing that I love just as much as writing, and that’s the research part. It’s what enables me to be a jack-of-all-trades. Jasmine is writing a story for one of the major newspapers this weekend about VW Campervans, so I’ve been researching their history and finding out all about them. It would really interest you Papa. There are over a hundred different appreciation clubs for VW’s of all kinds – and that’s only in the UK! There’s also weekly/annual get-togethers, fairs, trade shows, you name it, it exists just for the VW Transporter.

There’s one for rusty buses – you can’t join unless you have a VW that’s old and rusty, there’s one for split screen vans only; there’s terms and definitions of what you should be calling each specific type of bus according to the number of windows it has, or the type, the doors, the decade it was made in. It’s so facinating. I spoke to the editor of an online magazine for VWs. I liked what he said that “VW buses remind us of time gone by when the world was a simpler place”.

Another enthusiast I spoke to hires his four buses out in Cornwall, which is similar to Australia’s Bondi Beach. He and his wife own the business Campers in Cornwall, he told me rusty buses were the patina of originality, although he’s not a fan himself but each to their own, he says.

After doing all this research, my favourite are the bay windows from the 70s. They are cool, the height of people-moving sophistication. And we can’t forget the awesome yellow bus they used in Little Miss Sunshine.

~CELEBRITY chef Jamie Oliver sold the Volkswagen camper van he drove around Italy for one of his TV cookery shows for £41,500 yesterday. It had attracted interest from all over the world.
The 1959 Samba had a 2.4litre engine and many gadgets. Nick Wiles, of car auctioneers COYS, said: “This was any Volkswagen camper van enthusiast’s dream, coupled with a touch of fame.” Campervan blog ~
 

At the end of the day, I’ve worked my butt off, had fun, and learnt things along the way. What more can one ask for?

 

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 27th, 2007 at 12:24 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.