February 2nd - Groundhog day

I spent most of today on the flight to LA but after we’d landed, checked into our AirBnB and seen a bit of the city we crashed out. To celebrate Groundhog Day we watched the CBS coverage of Punxsutawney Phil emerged from his burrow and not seeing his shadow, predicting an early spring for us all.

The fact that the Groundhog is called Punxsutawney Phil raised many questions for me which then led me to the official Punxsutawney Groundhog Cub website where I read up on the history of the day.

“The History

The Christian religious holiday of Candlemas Day has become most commonly associated with the current celebration, but it’s roots are older than that. The celebration started in Christianity as the day, (February 2nd), when Christians would take their candles to the church to have them blessed. This, they felt, would bring blessings to their household for the remaining winter.

As time rolled on the day evolved into another form. The following English folk song highlights the transition to weather prognostication.

If Candlemas be fair and bright,
Come, Winter, have another flight;
If Candlemas brings clouds and rain,
Go Winter, and come not again.

This “interpretation” of Candlemas Day became the norm for most of Europe. As you can read, there is no mention of an animal of any kind in the preceding song. It wasn’t until this traditional belief was introduced to Germany that an animal was introduced into the lore, hence another evolution of February 2nd. If, according to German lore, the hedgehog saw his shadow on Candlemas Day there would be a “Second Winter” or 6 more weeks of bad weather. As German settlers came to what is now the United States, so too came their traditions and folklore. With the absence of hedgehogs in the United States, a similar hibernating animal was chosen. This leads us to yet another evolution in the legend and to present day Punxsutawney.”

— http://www.groundhog.org

I then went down a slight Internet rabbit hole and man is this holiday crazy!

“According to the lore, there is only one Phil, and all other groundhogs are impostors. It is claimed that this one groundhog has lived to make weather prognostications since 1886, sustained by drinks of “groundhog punch” or “elixir of life” administered at the annual Groundhog Picnic in the fall. In this respect, Punxsutawney Phil is unique; the lifespan of a groundhog in the wild is roughly six years.

According to the Groundhog Club, Phil, after the prediction, speaks to the club president in Groundhogese, which only the current president can understand, and then his prediction is translated for the entire world.”

— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punxsutawney_Phil

I then also decided to research what the difference is between a Marmot and a Groundhog as they both have celebration days today and the groundhog in the video sure looks a lot like what I would call a marmot? Turns they're the same thing! I learnt a thing!

Groundhog day… 7/10 interesting as a weird tradition and kind of novel to watch it while I'm in the US. It definitely sent me to some of the weirder parts on the Internet today.

February 1st - Bubblegum Day

Today is bubblegum day! I knew I was going to have to run around Oxford Street after work to try to find some kind of bra solution for the backless dress I've got for the award ceremony so I decided to also go to the American candy store while I was there. We were on a tight turn around to get everything we needed and get back home to pack. So I decided to split the party and abandoned David in a queue for the Primark tills while I went off on a side mission.

I got to the store and was a bit overwhelmed by how much stuff there was and how brightly coloured everything is.

I had a look for a bit and was underwhelmed by the amount of bubblegum on sale! Eventually I found some but the selection was a bit rubbish.

I ended up picking up strawberry as it sounded the best and it was good!

Bubblegum day… 8/10 I don't chew gum very often and haven't blown bubbles in a while but it's fun :)

January 31st - Backward Day

Today I decided to fly to LA, 50 hours before the flight left. David's been nominated for a VES award and we decided, fuck it let's go! He's just left being a compositor at ILM to work at The Foundry so as neither of us are now working as VFX artists we may never get another nomination between us.

Very exciting but how is this relevant to Backward Day I hear you ask. Good question...because it isn't. The point I’m trying to make is that I was extremely rushed and in a flap trying to organising getting us to the other side of the world with no notice. Visas take 72 hours to process and we're pretty much winging it. So I may have forgotten to celebrate today.

Backward day...1/10 the whole thing was a mad stress and kinda, well backward.

January 30th - Inane Answering Message Day

One of my many faults is that I very rarely check my voicemail messages. If it's an emergency people normally text and if I see I have a missed call from someone I know I'll pretty much always call them back before I think to check my messages.

It does mean though that when I do pick them up I normally have 5 or 6 and they're always from my mum and grandma and it's lovely to hear their voices.

As they're the only people that leave me messages I decided to record an answering message for them. I'm sure more people than them will hear it (in fact I'm pretty sure my work phone forwards on to it) but I don't care…

Inane Answering Message Day… 7/10, I’m sure my new one will make my mum and grandma happy :)

January 29th - Puzzle Day

A few years ago when we moved into our home David's mother bought him a puzzle of the area which we've always intended to do but hadn't gotten around to. Well today that changed!

It may only be 450 pieces but this doesn't appear to be as easy as I thought it would be. A lot of the pieces are very similar. We sorted through, got all the edge pieces and started working on putting the sides of the puzzle together. We worked on it for the about an hour and this is as far as we got.

Puzzle day… 9/10 surprisingly cathartic. Been meaning to find a new activity to do that doesn't involve screens and this could be a good one. Will update as we get through this one.

Update 1: (10/02)

We've started work on the red main roads running through the puzzle. They're almost in place!

Update 2: (15/02)

It's done! It's finally done! Check it out in all its glory…

I have no idea what we'll do with it now that it's completed but we'll leave it on the kitchen table for a bit and maybe buy a new puzzle to replace it.

January 28th - Blueberry Pancake Day

I semi-regularly make pancakes but always more crepe like ones which aren’t blueberry conducive. I threw out my normal recipe and looked up how to make thick American pancakes.

I got the ingredients together:

I mixed the dry ingredients together in a jug, cutting the recipe in half so I didn't end up with tons of pancakes.

The jug is normally big enough when I make pancakes but once I started measuring out the wet ingredients it was clear it wasn't going to all fit. I moved dry into a big bowl and wet into the jug creating all the washing up in the process.

I then whisked it all together. I could only find one whisk attachment but it was enough. Ain't nobody got time for hand whisking.

I then threw in half the blueberries (saved half to have on top) and started cooking them.

Look how unphotogenic and uncircular they are. My hob isn't flat and drives me mad, everything just slides to the front of it and I'm pretty sure my frying pan is also warped. Anyway I cooked them and made tons despite having cut the recipe down.

They were pretty good even if I say so myself and there were so many!

Blueberry pancakes… 8/10 they were yum and will probably make them again at some point in the future!

January 27th - National Geographic Day

I was aware that this day was coming up so when I was up at my parents and I noticed that they had a old National Geographic about...and I mean old, I asked if I could steal it for a bit. They’d used it for research on one of their books a few years ago and they weren’t using it. I stashed it away for a while until today came around and I could celebrate by looking through it.

Well clearly this is awesome. The articles were interesting but mainly because of what they considered far away and ‘wild’ back in 1926. Two of the main features are on events and people from Italy and Poland. The world is just a much smaller place nowadays.

I also loved the ‘Sixteen pages of illustrations in full colour’ being boasted about on the cover. They were kinda beautiful and clearly pushing the limits of what could be printed back then.

The best parts of the magazine as far as I’m concerned though are the adverts. I did a pretty thorough leafing through to try to find any old-timey misogynistic ads but surprisingly couldn’t find any, kudos to National Geographic. I loved these ones...

I was wondering if it was particularly expensive back in the day so I did the conversion and interestingly it actually comes out to roughly the same price as a copy costs now. ($0.50 in 1926 is roughly $7.11 in 2019.)

National Geographic day...7/10 I loved going through this old copy and seeing how they portrayed the world back then. I subscribed to it for a few years and used to really enjoy reading it, supporting it as a publication and the photography standards. When it became a part of the Murdoch empire and gave up it’s non-profit status though I cancelled my subscription. I’m very conscious of voting with my purchasing decisions and I didn’t want to give them my money anymore.  

January 26th - Spouse’s Day

I figured this would be an easy day as I would spend it with David and I could write about us because he’s my spouse. So I spent today with David but funny thing...it turns out he’s not my spouse :/ I thought it was like the term partner but sitting down to write this I decided to Google it and turns out it specifically means a husband or wife and he ain’t either of those things.

Neither of us are massive on the idea of marriage so I don’t know if I’ll ever have a spouse. I think if either of us was super into the idea we’d have already gotten married but we just have other stuff going on and don’t feel the need. Obviously there’s still societal (and family) pressure but I’m really grateful to live in a time and place where I can make the decision to not be defined by marriage and children.

Anyway as the closest thing I have to a spouse check out my favourite photo of early relationship David and Eme:

I forget how young we were in so many ways when we got together, we were different people back then. Check out the difference between then and last week.

It’s coming up to 6 years together now and he’s still the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

Spouse’s day...6/10 I didn’t really celebrate it correctly but I do like the idea of a day to appreciate your significant other. The world can always do with more of that!

January 25th - Irish Coffee Day

The second alcoholic drink day of the year is also whiskey based so I didn’t need to buy anything for today. I have a bottle of Baileys so I specifically looked up a Baileys Irish Coffee recipe and came across this one. I checked out the ingredients and figured I could do a bit of adapting. I don’t like cream so I decided to skip it and the Bailey’s is already vanilla flavoured so I could skip the vanilla.

Apparently though for some reason I can’t entirely explain after the fact, I chose to completely ignore the instructions (despite the minimal effort it would have taken to just scroll down the page a few inches) and got to work.

I poured the whiskey into a glass, added coffee and then went about floating Baileys on top assuming that that must be the white layer.

So yeah, surprisingly to me at the time and not at all surprisingly with the smallest amount of hindsight this was the final result. Pretty much the inverse of the look I was going for. Do you know what though it was delicious.

Irish Coffee...8/10 would drink again. (Wouldn’t serve to anyone that cared about presentation though)

January 24th - Peanut Butter Day

I've been looking forward to today! I'd never really had peanut butter until a couple of years ago, my mum doesn't like it so it just wasn't a thing when I was a kid. Since I've started eating it I've not been particularly adventurous with my peanut buttering. So this seemed like the perfect opportunity to do some exploring…

1st investigation: Smooth vs Crunchy!

I've never had crunchy peanut butter before so I had to check it out. I went to the supermarket and bought a tub of smooth and a tub of crunchy. There were a few options of each available but I went for the cheapest of each even though they look like they have differing levels of fanciness.

Not wanting to consume huge amounts of bread (I didn't want it to be my entire dinner) I went for a half and half approach.

The winner: Crunchy! It was really good and the texture wasn't at all off-putting like I thought it might be.

2nd investigation: The peanut butter and jelly sandwich!

So as well as not having had crunchy peanut butter before I've also never had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich! Now that I'd figure out my peanut butter preference I paired it with jam.

It was pretty good...but I wasn’t sold on the crunchy texture with jam, I think smooth would have been better. Just as well I own both now!

Peanut Butter day...7/10. I’m into it and it was fun figuring out my preferences but it’s not my favourite food ever.

January 23rd - Measure Your Feet Day

Tonight I went out with a friend for a walk around Canary Wharf to see The Winter Lights.

Check these out:

I had an awesome time and stayed out later than I had intended caught up in talking and wondering about. We were about to head home when I realised we’d totally forgotten to celebrate today! I’d come prepared and had warned him in advance that we needed to measure our feet. Apparently he thought I’d been joking until I pulled out a measuring tape and string.

He had a train to catch in 15 minutes so we set about it as quickly as possible. Note: It was FREEZING and getting my heavy boots on and off took the better part of 5 minutes.

He went first:

Then me:

(Note the squareness of my feet (or as my family exclusively calls them ‘paws’))

The stats: (in feet and inches as it seems appropriate)

I’d also been keen to do volume but the method I’d settled on (For those wondering - Fill large bowl/bucket with a measured amount of water to the brim, place foot in water so foot amount is displaced and then remeasure the amount of water left) wasn’t conducive to being outside and I hadn't lugged the required equipment with me.

I figured I might do it when I got home but it was after midnight by the time I got in and I needed to sleep so I gave up on the idea.

Today was a particularly weird and fun day to celebrate. Measuring your feet...7/10!

January 22nd - Answer Your Cat’s Questions Day

I'm not going to lie, today did not go to plan.

The first issue was that I don't have a cat at the moment. I know that seems like a pretty insurmountable roadblock but I'd made some plans in advance to get around it. My parents and I have a 'timeshare cat' called Bumble. He's a Mallorcian rescue, about 2 years old, a beautiful grey colour and very talkative.

He normally lives it up in the Cotswolds, roaming wild and playing with his giant rabbit friend a few gardens over (true story). For a couple of months a year though he comes to stay with us in London and gets passed back and forth when someone is going out of the country. My mum is up to speed on the whole blog thing so I asked if she could put me on the phone with Bumble when Answer Your Cats Questions day came round. She didn't bat an eyelid or have any real follow up questions, it was just agreed as though it was a totally normal request. Not a lot phases my mum.

So today rolled around but unfortunately the best laid plans of cats and women often go awry. My grandma has been unwell for a little while and had to get a scan done a couple of weeks ago. The results came back today and she needs to go into the hospital tomorrow morning pretty urgently to get seen. My mum is staying overnight at hers so she can drive her in. I called them a couple of times today to check in and during the call tonight mentioned to my mum that her not being at home had somewhat scuppered my Cat Questions day and I'd have to find a new angle.

Without missing a beat she offered to channel Bumble for me if I wanted because ‘you know, we have a really strong connection’. She was clearly joking but I wanted to see how far she'd take it so I agreed. I wasnt 100% sure if the channeling would come through as cat noises or already translated, thankfully it came through in human English. My cat Spanish is a bit rusty but apparently my mum has been practicing.

All Bumbles questions were pretty food-centric, which I can believe.

“‘Why won’t they fed me Go Cat anymore?? 😿’ ‘The vet said it made you cubby and you have to go on a diet’

’Okay but why less treats?’ ‘That’s because they’re cheap and they don’t love you as much as I do’

’Why won’t Bubu (my grandma’s cat) be my friend?’ ‘You scare her when you try and play and she just likes hissing generally’

’Okay but why is there no more Go Cat’ ‘You got chonky and we’re worried about your pancreas’ ”

Etc. Etc. I'm not going to admit how long this conversation went on for but it was a while and I think we can all agree that any time two adult women spend romately channeling a cat over the phone is too long.

Answering your cats questions day... 8/10. My mum and me 100% would have been burnt/drowned as witches back in the day.

UPDATE: My grandma is all good now and getting back to her normal self!

January 21st - Squirrel Appreciation Day

What can I say about Squirrel Apprication Day. It's been the best day so far and I know that comes hot on the heels of cheese day yesterday.

Last week I went for lunch with some friends from work and was telling them about this blog and which days coming up I was looking forward to, one of which was today. I was saying how I wanted to go feed some squirrels and Christina very confidently was like 'I know a guy'. I had many follow up questions but I was instantly on board, when someone says they have a squirrel guy you shut up and see where it goes. It was 100% the right decision.

Christina's squirrel guy turned out it be the lovely Steve. A friend of a flatmate she'd had when she first moved to London who had offered to take her 'squirrelling' before. She text him to see if he'd be willing to take us and he was! In fact he'd apparently never been on the receiving end of a squirrelling text before. We made our plans, meet in Regent's Park at 12.30 and find us some squirrels.

Today rolled around and we were all excited to go, and for Jess and me to meet the mythical Steve. Who had text Christina that he would be bringing 'friendship tokens AKA almonds'.

As we walked into the park together Steve stopped us for the safety briefing and to show us the best way to feed the squirrels. Up until this point I'd imagined we'd merely be tossing nuts at squirrels not that we'd be feeding them by hand. I was excited! The safety briefing boiled down to, don't point at a squirrel in anyway or it can think a finger tip is a nut and go for it. Apparently since Steve introduced the safety talk into squirrelling sessions there's not been any bites which was reassuring. I've always been a touch nervous about going too close to them because of a story my mum has about my godmother being biten by one years ago that latched on and wouldn't let go. With the briefing concluded I felt reassured and we walked further into the park where Steve demonstrated his AMAZING squirrelling techniques.

He has a whistle and come hither gesture that they love and within a couple of minutes all four of us had successfully squirreled. The first one I fed came up and put both paws in my hand before taking the friendship token. It's paws were surprisingly cold and he left little muddy paw prints behind. Very cute. I felt like a Disney princess!

We wandered around the park feeding lots of squirrels and lots of them numerous times. Some of them if you had more than one almond in your cupped hand would stuff two into their mouths. We also fed some pigeons (honoury squirrels). We then went up to squirrel hill in the center of the park and were besieged, it was really fun and cute. Some of them are quite shy but others are really ballsy about it.

Here's a photo dump of us all squirrelling!

Steve in action!

Check out Jess's poor technique, I rate her a harsh but fair 2/10

Christina getting some squirrelly high fives

Jess finally coaxing in a nervous squirrel

Feeding a plump honoury squirrel

Me hitting peak Disney princessness

The whole time we were feeding them we were all peppering Steve with any and all squirrel based questions. He is a treasure trove of information gleaned from many squirrelling sessions.

My keys learnings were:

• Squirrels don't have rabies in the UK

• Squirrel bites don't normally need medical attention beyond a rinse and some antiseptic. Unless they're 'raggedy'

• Squirrels preference order of nuts are as follows. 1) Almonds 2) Cashews 3) Peanuts

• If it's too warm, too cold or too wet they'll hide and most likely won’t partake in squirrelling

Before we parted ways we took a high spirited selfie for this blog.

Squirrelling... An easy 10/10. Had a great time and will go again I'm sure!

January 20th - Cheese Lovers Day

Cheese day = Best day. Clearly this was gonna be a good one! I was hyped. I was aware that this one was coming up so I'd made plans with David to go eat ungodly amounts of cheese at St Moritz in Soho tonight.

In the build up to cheesemas we spent all day sending each other cheese gifs. Including...

I got into London on the train and went straight to the restaurant to meet him and my undoing. My body was ready.

As we were standing on the pavement outside there were whafts of delicious cheeseness, we entered and they had a cheese melty scrape-y (definitely the offical name), clearly these guys did not fuck about when it came to cheese.

We went upstairs to our table and I'd forgotten just how cute the place was. I'd been a year before for the Framestore R&D Christmas lunch but it was David's first time there. It may be slap bang into the middle of Soho but it's so quaint and small with heavy wooden panelling that I really does feel like you're somewhere in the Alps. But enough about that let's talk cheese.

We split the fondue for two people with the carbiest dipping options, bread and potato. There was another veggie option of seasonal vegetables but I'm pretty sure in January that just means potatoes anyway.

It arrived and it was everything I had hoped it would be...

We got stuck in pretty quickly and was it ever amazing. Boiling hot, gloopy and delicious.

We took a break about half way through to take do some heavy breathing and I got a mid-Cheesemas photo of David.

It was at this point that David informed me that some brave soul behind me was also tackling the fondue... BUT BY HIMSELF!! It was for a minimum of two people guys and we were struggling. I sneakily look around, I'm not going to lie he didn't look crazy healthy. Clearly this wasn't his first time doing this but you do you cheese man, you do you. Newly inspired by the feat being undertaken near us we cracked on. Slowly the bottom grew closer. Dipping items (or as I call them cheese transport mechanisms) were no longer being fully submerged. 'We're nearly done' I whispered to David, he mearly nodded in response and kept going, my hero. I turned around to see how our cheesey companion was doing but he was gone, cheese pot empty, bill paid. We'd been lapped.

We hit the bottom and we were done. We definitely couldn't eat anymore. A waitress came over, I assumed to take away the bowl of shame but no. Instead she asked if we wanted her to scrape the bottom, we both said no we're done. She persisted, 'People say its the best bit are you sure?' Apparently that was all it took to convince me I could eat more cheese. She scraped the bottom and rucked up all the amazing burnt cheeseness.

New levels of cheesevana had been reached. We both ate a bit but it was crazy oily and we'd sadly hit saturation point.

We paid up and waddled home.

Cheese day... A solid 10/10.

January 19th - Popcorn Day

Today I've been staying with my grandma so I thought we should celebrate popcorn day together. In route to her house I swung past the supermarket and for a small country town was pretty surprised how much popcorn based selection there was! There was bags of pre-popped corn, fancy import popcorn in the American section, corn kernals to make it properly for scratch and the standard microwave popcorn. Microwaving it seemed like the best option, I didn't want to faff with hot oil and premade didn't seem celebratory enough.

So I meet up with my grandma and we spent the day together which has been lovely and then I bring up the whole popcorn thing and in the process explain this blog. She didn't seemed thrilled by it and thought it was all a bit wierd. Grandma / Popcorn back story: I took her to the cinema last year to see Paddington 2, she experienced her first popcorn there and was in a word, underwhelmed. So this time around I'd made the bold move of going for salted popcorn, she'd had sweet the previous time, thinking that it might be more her thing.

Later on we were watching TV (the masters snooker which apparently is great, I never thought I'd be into it) and I decided it was popcorn time!

Okay so I get it out, read the instructions and put it in the microwave for 3 minutes... Well only 2.40 seconds because at that point something smells suspiciously like burning



Yup, burnt. Apparently she has a really powerful microwave!

Second time round I put it in for 2 minutes and it was pretty perfect even if I say so myself.

So I take it through and we start eating it. All was well for about 30 seconds but then the complaints rolled in.

“‘It looks like it should be good, but it’s not’”

— Nanny

There was much confusion over it not being sweet, apparently I'd made the wrong call. So I went and sweetened it.

“I’ve known you produce better things than this Millie. This is utterly disgusting! *eats more popcorn*”

— Nanny

Apparently it wasn't much of an improvement but I was happy either way!

About half way through the bowl we had a break for a while. I started picking at it again after a bit and I asked:

“Do you want some more Nanny? No I have enough stuck in my teeth!’”

— Nanny

Overall ratings of Popcorn Day:

Eme - 6/10 it's pretty good but unless I'm watching a movie I'd pretty much always chose a different snack over it. Sweetening it a bit worked for me as my preference is always a mix of sweet and salty.

'Nanny what would you rate popcorn out of 10?...2! it's better than before... Reaches for more. It's a good thing it's not everyday and only one day a year'

Splitting the difference between us two. Popcorn day... 4/10.

January 18th - Winnie the Pooh Day

So this was a slight disorganised celebration today. My plan going in was to just eat a lot of honey and have a chilled day. I was thinking I'd have something like honey and yogurt for breakfast but then it turned out we didn't have any honey at home. No problem, next line of attack...there'll be honey at work that I can put on toast, they have all kinds of spreads. But guess what turns out they don't have honey!

I had a half day at work because I was going up to see my family for the weekend. So the next line of attack was that my mum would definitely have some honey. She didn't. I had to explain to her why I needed honey and about it being Winnie the Pooh day.

We ended up having a nice long chat about it instead. I worked on Christopher Robin last year and showed her the trailer.

I love the character design so much. The old worn toys look is so perfect 👌

As we were talking about the film I realised that I'd been an idiot as I have a crew hoodie that I should have worn today and we have a red balloon prop in the office I could have taken a photo with. Anyway...

Apparently the film was on a flight my mum took recently to China but unfortunately her screen wasn't working so she couldn't see it. I'm pretty surprised that they allowed it to be shown on the flight as amusingly any references to Winnie the Pooh are banned in China due to the presidents supposed resemblance. Lots of people used to criticise the government 'covertly' using thinly veiled references. I'll let you decide how alike they look for yourself.

Winnie the Pooh... 7/10. Could have planned more but ended up having a random and fun conversation with my mum instead.

January 17th - Kid Inventors’ Day

Today has been Kid Inventors Day! Unfortunately I know basically no children and my friends that do have them all have tiny babies that are a bit young for inventing.

In an effort to find a way to celebrate the day I had a look online at what things have been invented by kids.

The most notible were popsicles, trampolines and earmuffs. I figured I could celebrate one of those things to tick off the day. Popsicles would be easy. Trampolines harder without some planning (and I currently have a fractured tailbone so probably not advisable). Earmuffs also seemed easy until I realised I couldn't find mine and was loathed to buy more when I know I have some...somewhere! So that left me with popsicles but for some reason it just didn't sound that fun and like a bit of a cop out.

So new approach... Kid inventors sounds pretty interlinked with STEM to me and that is a thing I know about! I've worked in tech for quite a while now and I love it, but it can be a hard graft to get in the door, especially into VFX and especially as a woman . I'm really lucky that at Framestore in the departments I span (R&D and Pipeline) we have 9 whole women! I know it doesn't sound like a lot but it really is for the industry. So in this vein I googled STEM for kids schemes and came across stemettes.org!

There's a number of different ways you can volunteer with them depending on your experience and gender. The one that seemed like the best fit for me was this one...

So I signed up!

Can't wait to be assigned and meet my Sherpee in the next few weeks!

Kid inventors... 8/10. Looking forward to helping the next generation!

January 16th - Nothing Day

Today I didn't celebrate anything and I'm not writing a blog about it.

Nothing... A middling 5/10. Kind of missed the weirdness but it wasn't bad.

January 15th - Clean Off Your Desk Day

Today I realised that I celebrated Pothole day a day too early! I though I could turn it into a 2 day pothole extravaganza but the point is to do a different thing every day so instead I've gone back and done the 14th's day instead which was.... Organise your desk day!

My desk is pretty messy generally so it seemed like a good idea to spring clean it.

Before:

After:

I threw out my two dead tiny cacti that have been there looking sad for a couple of months and the lone survivor I watered. I'll try and find him some new friends soon!

I also threw out a dead battery, some broken elastic bands that I'd apparently been hoarding and then did some shredding to get rid of old paperwork I had knocking about. It was actually pretty cathartic.

Cleaning my desk... 8/10

January 14th - Pothole Day

So the first thing I need to you know about Pothole day is that I had the option to celebrate Strawberry Icecream day instead and I passed up the opportunity. I figured finding potholes would be easy and it was too cold for icecream.

Boy was I wrong, never have I been more frustrated at how well maintained the roads are in central London. I went for a walk in my lunch break hoping to spot one in the wild but nothing!

This was the worst I could find. It genuinely felt like it was taunting me.

I quickly gave up on zone 1 feeling safe in the knowledge that zone 3 would come through for me. Surely Newham one of the most deprived boroughs in London would have crappy roads. But apparently not... Our road is a patchwork of fixes but I couldn't find a single pothole.

In desperation I send out an SOS to a friend in Wales and I went out further a field East to Leytonstone where finally I found some.

Feeling pleased with my finds I headed home only to be texted these beauties....

You know you have a good friend when they're willing to go out and drive around in the dark with a torch to find you potholes without any explanation of why you need them.

Potholes... 2/10. Annoying when they're there and apparently also annoying when they're not. Who knew!