Gardening Leave: A last minute trip to Berlin

- Michael 10 Comments

Tube strikes. They’re the bane of many people’s lives (whether you support them or not they are disruptive) and when the last one was announced it fell across my last couple of days in my old job. This chucked up the issue of “working from home” which, let’s be honest, wouldn’t have happened. So my old job put me on gardening leave for the last couple of days and I suddenly had a whole week off between jobs. I jokingly tweeted about taking the chance to sleep on twitter and my friend Rae of Love From Berlin intervened:

I quickly checked some flight costs and made sure she wasn’t actually joking and booked a last minute flight to Berlin to hang out with Rae her cats, eat loads of food and explore a city I’ve heard a million good things about. So that’s how I found myself on a coach at 4am on a Sunday morning on my way to Stansted airport (I can get the coach from basically outside my front door, that’s dangerous for me to know) and an adventure in Germany.

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Music Monthly: August Jams

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It amazes me that it’s somehow part way into September already. The temperature has already dropped and British Summer Time is coming to an end. So what you’re all eagerly anticipating (or not as I don’t think anyone reads these particular posts) is of course my Music Monthly (old posts here) post for August. With Hevy Fest at the start and a trip to Berlin it’s been a fairly playlist heavy month. But I’ll start with a band (and then a couple of playlists which I listen to fairly often).

Thrice – Back Catalogue

They are my favourite band and have been for many years. They reformed and headlined Hevy this year (the main reason I was there). They basically matured musically as my own tastes started to mature. I could go on for a while here so I’m just going to stick a playlist of all of their songs for you to educate yourselves with instead.

Top picks: Red Sky (Vheissu), In Exile (Beggars), Anthology (Major/Minor), Phoenix Ignition (Identity Crisis), Silhouette (The Artist In The Ambulance), Image Of The Invisible (Vheissu).

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Cinnamon & Walnut Buns with Coffee Glaze

- Michael 6 Comments

Cinnamon & Walnut Buns with Coffee Glaze

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve left my old job. I started my new job (a new shiny role as a Content Marketing Manager at a different agency) this week. My previous job is the one that got me down to London and I’m thankful for that. I met some great people and it gave me more experience to add to what I already had from my time at Epiphany in Leeds. As a farewell I decided to bake them two separate things to remember me by. I opted to re-bake the Caramel Filled Choc Chip Cookies (replacing the Galaxy Caramel with Lindt Salted Caramel, my new fave) and to finally make cinnamon buns again after a long while without trying them. Most of my office is addicted to coffee so making cinnamon buns with a coffee glaze just made sense.
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East London Summer: Burgers, Bikes, Coffee & Parks

- Michael 2 Comments

Victoria Park
So I finished my old job, so long iCrossing, you were good to me. I even got put on Gardening Leave (thanks tube strikes, that then got cancelled) for the last few days. Which meant I finished on a Friday and had a whole week and a half off work to look forward to. I booked in a last minute trip to see my friend Rae in Berlin (more on that to follow) but started with an absolutely gorgeously sunny Saturday pootling about East London with my friends Gabi and Erica. We met up for a burger at the new Patty & Bun in London fields, where I had possibly the messiest burger experience of my life (worth it), before walking along the canal down to Victoria park.

Patty & Bun

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Top 3 – London Burgers

- Michael 9 Comments
Patty & Bun - Smokey Robinson

So for a very long time now I’ve been meaning to start doing restaurant reviews. Partly because I eat out so often so it makes sense and partly because I thought it’d be fun to add an extra element to the blog. The more that I’ve been thinking about it and now I’ve increased the lifestyle type posts I was thinking that I may do a slightly different angle on this. So rather than doing individual posts on a restaurant I’m going to start blogging my Top 3’s. This will be something like: “Top 3 Burgers” or “Top 3 Fried Chicken Dishes” so it may not be restaurant specific but more food/dish specific depending on the post so I may mention the sides in passing say, but will focus on the core element. There’ll be no specials as you may not be able to grab it, so what’s the point in me telling you what you can’t have? Specials will have their own dedicated lists. These lists will primarily be based around London but I’ll blog about other places from time to time as well.

To kick things off I’m going straight in with the burgers. I’ve eaten a fair few of these over the last few years and I will happily say I’m spoilt. So here goes with my top 3 burgers in London, in no particular order:

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