I developed an old film...

Poking through a box of old things, I found a 35mm film that I never developed. The excitement! What tales from the past did it hold? Would they still be on there after what must be at least 10 years, based on how long I've had a digital camera...?

Apparently the big Boots in town doesn't develop film on site any more, so after a helpful tweet from Snappy Snaps, I headed there in my lunch hour to put it through their one hour service. Not necessarily expecting the photos to come out, I was pleased to find out they did.

And so we have what must've been New Year's Eve 2002 with friends at my sister's old flat in Tunbridge Wells. Good times!

Then a few days after, a trip down to Brighton after hearing that part of the beautiful West Pier had collapsed into the sea :(

Brighton's West Pier after part of its walkway collapsed on 29 December 2002

It's strange looking back on these photos and remembering how sad it seemed at the time - who knew what was to come... the concert hall fully collapsed into the sea shortly afterwards (January 2003), the main part of the Pier (the Pavilion) was torched in a suspected arson attack in May 2003, and the collapsed concert hall finally removed from the site in 2010, just leaving the skeletal Pavilion standing out at sea alone.

I've always loved taking photos of the West Pier on trips to Brighton, so it's lovely to have these to add to my collection. Here are a few select ones from more recent times.





Anyone else out there with mysterious undeveloped film...? :)

Slimming World sweet chilli pork burgers & Thai cucumber salad

I've reached my target weight now, but making an effort not to put it all back on again, so am sticking to Slimming World-friendly recipes most days of the week (weekends are a different story, ahem!).

Tonight I made sweet chilli pork burgers with Thai cucumber salad, and here's the recipe (serves 2):

Burgers:
400g extra lean pork mince (approx 1 Syn per person)
1 onion, whizzed in the blender
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 tbsp sweet chilli sauce (1.5 Syns per person)
Handful of fresh coriander, chopped

Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl, then divide into 4 patties (try to make them flat and fairly thin - about 1.5 cm high). Heat up a frying pan with a few squirts of FryLight and add the burgers. Fry for 5 minutes or so each side, pressing down every so often to get them cooked through.

Salad:
Half a cucumber, peeled, halved and cut into thin slices
10 or so cherry tomatoes, halved (I had a pack of mixed red and yellow ones which was a bit jazzy)
2 shallots, peeled and thinly sliced
1 fresh red chilli, chopped (I use scissors to save my fingers and eyes)
A couple of splashes of cider vinegar (probably should be rice wine/vinegar but I didn't have any in)
A few snips of fresh coriander
Half a fresh lime, squeezed
Teaspoon of Splenda
A few grinds of salt

Mix it all up to ensure the Splenda and salt dissolve. Serve with the burgers. Enjoy :D

Pilchard Curry recipe - try it, you might like it!

A girl at work is an absolute superstar at making curries. She gave me a recipe for Malaysian pilchard curry, after I revealed Mr G's tendency for hoarding things, including tins of pilchards (he had about 20 cans in his kitchen cupboard when I first knew him!), so I made it this week and it was an absolute WINNER. I tweaked her recipe (i.e. avoided the tin of fattening coconut milk) to make it Slimming World-friendly, so this is my version below. I know it sounds a bit weird, but it's LUSH...

Ingredients
1 425g tin of pilchards in tomato sauce
1 400g tin tomatoes
1 inch of ginger, peeled
2 cloves of garlic, peeled
2 fresh red chillies (deseeded)
1 large onion
2 tbsp Malaysian fish curry powder (more about this below)
2 potatoes chopped into bite-sized chunks
A few squirts of FryLight
Salt

Method

1. Put the chillies, ginger, garlic, and chopped onion into a blender with a little water, and blitz.
2. Coat a heated frying pan with a few sprays of Fry-Light, then tip in the above mixture and stir-fry for about 10 minutes.
3. Add in the curry powder, salt and tin of tomatoes and cook on a low heat for about 10 minutes.
4. Add the chopped potatoes and a tin of water, and leave to simmer for 15 minutes or so.
5. When the potatoes are cooked, halve the pilchards lengthways and add them in (the recipe also says to debone them, but I might leave them in next time as I don't mind eating them, and it's extra calcium innit...), and bring to the boil for a few minutes to heat them through.
6. Serve with boiled rice.

The recipe was allegedly for 4 people, but we were so hungry and it was so nice, we ate the lot :|

My friend gave me the curry powder from her personal supply brought back from Malaysia, as it's hard to find in the UK. However, after a bit of research, I found someone on eBay who sells it in varying packet sizes. It's called Baba's Fish Curry Powder and is apparently a blend of coriander, chilli, cumin, turmeric, fennel, dhal, fenugreek, pepper and "other spices". I've ordered a pack of 4 250g sachets for £12.50 which should keep me going for a long while. I'm quite sure the more adventurous among you could make up your own spice blend.

If you do make this, please let me know what you think!

My January Glossybox is here!

So after finally giving in last month and subscribing to the monthly Glossybox (www.glossybox.co.uk) and being very pleased with its contents, my second box has just arrived.

As Mr G is such a prolific spender, parcels that arrive here are usually for him, so it was jolly nice to get by far the most exciting parcel of the day - hah, stick that in your pipe with your hot tub filters, Grumps ;-))

This month my box contained:

• a fab-looking half-length navy eyeliner by Eyeko which has a tapered silver handle on it so no matter how short the pencil gets, you still have control over its application - great idea!
• 15ml tubes of Clarins Extra-Firming Day and Night Cream (that'll be due to the 'advanced' age group I ticked on their profile questionnaire then - sob...)
•  a 5ml sample of a rather posh-looking Murad skin perfecting primer
• a 56.7g bottle of First Aid Beauty (FAB) body moisturiser which is paraben and fragrance-free
• a sweet!

You also get a card telling you about each product, and a few special offers on certain products when you buy from the individual brands' websites.

It's £10 a month plus £2.95. You are surely worth it! ;)

An evening with Danny & Ben from Thunder

Having been a fan of the band Thunder for more years than I care to admit to, I decided to get tickets for 'An Evening with Danny & Ben' (Danny Bowes being Thunder's singer, and Ben Matthews, their guitarist / keyboard player), for the first of their two dates at Bush Hall in London. Billed as a mix of acoustic songs by both Thunder and other artists, and chat/anecdotes from their years together as a band, I wasn't sure what to expect, and I have to confess, I wasn't 100% sure whether I would enjoy it. But after last night, I completely had to eat my words!

The evening was a great balance of a few Thunder songs, a number of cover versions - some of which I knew, some of which I didn't (but probably should) - and some highly entertaining tales from the rock & roll road (some of which involved alcohol, erm... in fact possibly all of them!). I'd forgotten just how amazing Danny's voice is, and how talented and funny Ben is. It was a truly excellent and enjoyable night. Today I will mostly be dusting off all my Thunder albums and giving them a jolly good spin again. Or rather, I'll rip them to mp3 and put them on my iPhone, before you have visions of record players and vinyl!

From my scanty memory and in a very loose order, they played the following songs:

Bad Company - Seagull
Chuck Berry - Nadine
Thunder - A Better Man (almost had me welling up at this version - gorgeous)
Elvis Presley - She's Not You
Thunder - See My Baby Walking (from The Joy of Six EP)
The Beatles - Blackbird
The Who - Squeeze Box
Thunder - Like a Satellite
Adele (or Bob Dylan, depending on how old you are!) - Make You Feel My Love. This was the encore, and featured Danny's daughter Lucy duetting with her dad. He looked utterly proud of her, bless.

Here's my video footage of Blackbird, complete with audience 'bird whistle' participation - brilliant!



Anyone going to the rest of the tour dates, ENJOY. You can't fail not to :)

PS How pleased am I with my lovely new (pink!) camera, the Canon Powershot SX230. Considering I was sat about 4 rows from the back of the venue, the sound and quality is blimmin' amazing IMHO...

Eye make-up my way...

I don't profess to be an expert in eye make-up application at ALL, but as I've been doing it the same for over 10 years and I've had a fair handful of kind compliments from Flickrerers on my eye photos over the years, I thought I'd write a blog post about wot I do and how I do it.

For years, I've relied on Shroom eyeshadow by MAC, which is a subtle but shimmery cream colour as an all-over colour base from the lid up to my eyebrows. I then follow this with Satin Taupe eyeshadow (a pearlescent brown colour with a slight purple hint) also by MAC, which I put all over my lids and into the crease - and then blend with my lovely swishy MAC blending brush. I've tried deviating from this particular shade so as not to be stuck in a rut, but even the MAC assistants agree it's an absolute classic - and not in a boring way.

Eyeliner on my bottom lash line is Teddy by MAC (no I'm not sponsored by them, it's just excellent stuff), which is a brown with a hint of bronze glitter.  A little sparkle is good in my world.

Then comes what some people see as the tricky bit - flicky liquid liner on your top lid. Sali Hughes has done a great article and video for her Guardian beauty column so I'm not going to reinvent the wheel here, but I will say that L'Oreal Superliner (£6.49 from Boots) is the DOGS for getting it right and keeping it on. I've used this since the beginning of time, and have tried others along the way but found them lacking - too thin, too wobbly, too flakey, too watery. This one gets it spot on. I have even slept in it (more than once, ahem), and woken up the next day still looking like I'm ready for a party!

Next, I colour in my eyebrows - which gives the liquid liner a chance to dry before I use my eyelash curlers, otherwise it smudges. I only discovered how impactful colouring in your eyebrows is a few months ago, when the assistant on the Benefit counter showed me their Brow Zings kit (a slightly pricey £22.50 but it will last at LEAST a year with daily use) - a brown coloured wax and a brown coloured powder which you apply to your eyebrows. There are 3 shades available, and she persuaded me to go for the middle one even though I wasn't at first convinced - I thought it was too dark, but now I've got used to it, I'm tempted to go for the next shade down. I sometimes use a pencil instead (yep, it's MAC) for a more day-to-day look.

Once that's done, it's time to do my eyelashes. For me, Shu Uemera eyelash curlers are essential - they're curved at the right angle for my eyelids at least, and they give the right amount of squeezing pressure without bending your eyelashes at a horrible 90% angle. I curl one set of eyelashes then apply mascara top then bottom, so I don't lose the curl, and then do the other eye. Mascara-wise, I really have tried them all but each time I think 'ooh this new one looks amazing', I get disappointed (Benefit They're Real mascara, I'm looking at you most recently). So it's back to Max Factor Masterpiece. It gives lovely evenly-coated lashes with a velvety finish. And I have the shortest straightest eyelashes in the world, so need all the help I can get.

Erm, I think that's it! Hope that's helpful to one or two of you at least :)

Day 1/366 - One of my favourite things

No, not alcohol. This gorgeous little glass with star shapes cut into it. I found it in an antiques shop in Wimbledon Village years ago, when I still lived and worked in London. I think it was a fiver. Coincidentally, a friend with an antiques-dealing mother gave me a set of 4 similar glasses for my birthday a few years later - they don't quite match this one as they're slightly taller and slimmer, but they are just as gorgeous. This one came first though! Perfect for an after-dinner blackberry gin or the like...

Photo-a-day-ing again?

I first did a Photo a Day project in 2007 on Flickr, and I'm pretty sure I made the full year. At the start I knew absolutely nothing about photography and doing the project gave me a fantastic introduction to it - to ISO, to composition, to depth of field, to bokeh, to the wonder of the Nifty Fifty, and to a brilliant group of friends who I'm still very close to.

I've attempted the project each year since with deteriorating success, and so as usual, am making my start of the year effort. Having spent about 2 hours this afternoon just downloading, editing and processing my snapshots over Christmas to put onto Facebook, I couldn't bear the thought of getting sucked into a heavy commitment to photography as I did in 2007 (a LOT of late nights messing around in Photoshop, organising folders, culling rubbish shots etc). So I started thinking about ways I could make the project easier. The first thing that sprang to mind was to use my iPhone 4S and Instagram, which I've been using loads recently, including for the little Advent Calendar project I did in December (below).

I then thought about breaking the year down into a series of mini projects to make it less overwhelming and more inspirational, and looking around my kitchen, saw lots of things that could help kick off my thinking. So, I grabbed carefully took my favourite drinking glass off the shelf and went upstairs to play around with my iPhone and some dreadfully creased wrapping paper in a pathetic attempt to get a decent shot of it. Failed miserably. Dusted off my DSLR (Canon EOS 450D) and my 50mm lens, and tried again. Got one I vaguely liked, but nothing like the picture I had in my head. Messed around in Photoshop for about 30 minutes. Uploaded it to Flickr with a sinking 'it'll have to do' attitude. It's now nearly 2am and am I really sure I want to do this for a whole year again??!!