Bakary Cafe

The RSPB is conducting its annual Big Garden Birdwatch this weekend.

I hear a lot of birds. I see no birds!

Red velvet cupcake from the Hummingbird Bakery.

I was tipped to the opening of the latest branch of the Hummingbird Bakery in Angel today.

Yesterday, a friend of mine pointed me to the direction of Londonist and to the new Hummingbird Bakery story in particular: ”Another Hummingbird Bakery Opens, With Free Cupcakes For The First 1,000 Customers.”

And so today… I went. I queued. I got my free cupcake.

Delicious.

Check this out! An elephant teapot (picture: Liberty website).

Elephants are everywhere…

Well… there’s a question.

I know what I would do with a few millions. We all do, don’t we? That question always comes up in the pub with friends, after a few drinks, or when you’re stuck somewhere in the middle of nowhere with too much time to think: “what would I do if I won the lottery?”

Every now and then, the thought pops into my head… if I had £x millions I would…

But £41,658 is a very specific amount.

On Airbnb, you can currently rent the Magical Mariazell village in Austria for that amount of money. Last year, for £44,862, you could (allegedly) rent the whole of Liechtenstein! Yep.

The website has loads of very tempting and unusual places to rent - planes; boats; parking spaces (!); trains and… islands. Imagine… your very own island in Fiji… Oh my.

Back to earth, I see that they also have great flats and houses, most of them with a wow factor and a more appealing price tag.

I didn’t get that many books for Christmas. Which is just as well as I’m running out of book space.

The book room (yep, I have a book room) is filling up.

I did consider the ‘one book in, one book out’ idea… and quickly rejected it.

I considered not getting any more books. Rejected that silly idea as well.

Salvation comes in the form of storage.

I got hold of Living with Books.

And I’m addicted to this blog - the perfect fix for a book lover!

You can’t have too many books… so long as you have somewhere to store them!

I found an easy way to up the number of books I’m going to read this year - finish the books I have started and abandoned for one reason or another.

I have found four of them so far.

We made bread. We made this soup. We read. Lazy days. In the warm.

Oh alright then.

It’s one of these silly things…

I cannot walk past this ‘Visit Finland’ advert in the DLR without smiling. I know. But what can I say? I smile and go ‘Oh alright. I shall. Soon.’

Not long to go now. My trip to Finland is on the horizon.

(Picture: Luke James; detail from cover of Sport - issue 240, January 20 2012)

Elephants are everywhere…

London to myself.

Unthinkable I hear you say… Hmmm.

I got Quiet London for Christmas. Amazing gift. It’s full of new places to explore and a few known ones. All of them little treasures of quietness.

I can’t wait to get exploring.