Stuff of Nightmares

FINAL UPDATE: I'm home! I managed to switch my booking, and I got home on Wednesday on the first flight out! I have been lucky really, there are so many people who haven't reached where they want to be yet.
I am finally able to enjoy the snow, and it looks like it is going to be a white Christmas - the first one I have ever had!

UPDATE THE SECOND after five hours of me and my mum clicking and refreshing pages, I have managed to get a ticket on a flight on the 22nd. Let's just hope it isn't cancelled.


UPDATE - My flight from Las Vegas was cancelled, so I didn't set off. I have no idea if/when I will get home, I have been up since 4 trying to find information, the desk at the airport doesn't open until 2pm

Don't read this if you don't like hearing people moaning, but I need to recount my day in full somewhere to get it out of my system and this seems like a good place!

Today has been a nightmare - I woke up this morning ready to spend a leisurely day packing and sorting things out before my flight in the evening, only to find out shortly after that my flight had been cancelled, due to "adverse weather conditions" (i.e. a bit of snow and ice) at Heathrow.  The earliest I could rebook was for the 24th - meaning I'd get home on Christmas day in the afternoon. This was not happy news. 5 days does not sound like very much, but it is rather significant if you are only going somewhere for 2 weeks, and I had so much planned for the week before Christmas - meeting friends, going shopping in London, carol services etc. After weeping down the phone to my parents a few times, I packed hastily and went to the airport ($40 for a taxi each way) to try and talk to someone, where I stood in a line for two and a half hours, but after this, things started looking up!
Thanks to the (very friendly and helpful, despite being confronted with 3 jumbo jets' worth of passengers) BA staff, I have been put on an alternative route, so tomorrow I will be flying into Gatwick via Seattle and Las Vegas. The timings are a little tight, especially considering the only time I have had a plane journey with a transfer was when I was 11 and pretty much asleep, but I should make it home 16 hours after the start of my first flight, which is really very good.

The thing that I really marvel at though is how one of the busiest airports in the world can grind to a halt for 3 days after a snowfall - it is ridiculous! There are thousands of people stranded in places they don't want to be, all because Heathrow can't get their act together. They need to take a lesson from airports in places where it snows frequently, where they just get on with it, and the flights come and go with only minor delays.
Anyway, rant over. Please keep your fingers crossed for me!

Artist of the Week - Dear Reader

Last artist of the week before I go home! Quite a short one this time. Since next week is going to be pretty busy (and who is going to be reading this blog in Christmas week anyway?) I probably won't be posting an artist of the week. You have no idea how excited I am to be going home for Christmas! It feels like such a long time since I was home last (well it has been almost 4 months), and I can't wait to see my friends and family, and give Molly the dog lots of cuddles. I have one exam left, on Saturday, then I am flying out on Sunday night!

Artist of the Week - Dear Reader

Dear Reader are a band from Johannesburg, South Africa. I first saw them at a festival a couple of summers ago, playing in a cowshed! They have released one album, Replace Why With Funny, and numerous singles.  I really don't know much about them apart from that, and that I really like them! I wanted to have something a bit different this week as I have been featuring lots of miserable men in the past few weeks!

Way of the World
This is probably my favourite song of theirs, along with Great White Bear. Very catchy!



Great White Bear
Great song with a tragic video




Dear Heart
Fun take on a love song



The Same
Talks about the relationship she has with her home as a white south african - interesting stuff.

Chilli Weather

Sorry it's been a bit quiet here on the cooking front recently, but it is exam time at the moment. It's hard to feel inspired to cook something interesting when you are weighed down by the thought of finals!  I have a bit of a gap before my last exam (chemistry '~' ) though, so I thought I would cook something that actually required a bit of planning, rather than some ridiculous stir-fry or a boring pasta sauce. Having said that, my food store is a bit limited since I am going home at the weekend(!!!!!) so I have to work with what I've got.

Just so you know, I am planning to do some much more exciting cooking once I get home for Christmas, in our lovely big kitchen with the lovely big cooker, so stay tuned for that!

This is somewhere between chili con carne and moussaka - sounds strange but tastes good!

Spiced Aubergine (Eggplant) and Beef Bake
serves 4
1 Aubergine
1 onion
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 pack lean beef mince
1/2 tsp chili flakes
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tin chopped tomatoes
grated cheese
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 190C/375F

start by cutting the aubergine into thin slices - no thicker than 0.5cm. I happened to be using one of those long japanese aubergines, but any kind will do.

Lay them in a colander or sieve like this, then sprinkle them with a bit of salt. This will draw out some of the water and get rid of any bitterness. Leave them like this for half an hour, or while you prepare the rest of the dish.

Chop up an onion,

and saute it with the garlic until it starts to go translucent

Then, add the beef and cook until it is nice and brown before adding the chili, cumin and tomatoes, and seasoning with salt and pepper.

it will look a bit like this! Bring it to the boil and simmer for a few minutes, then turn off the heat.

Next, lay half of the aubergine slices in the bottom of a baking dish

and cover with half of the meat sauce, using a slotted spoon so as not to transfer too much liquid from the pan - the aubergines still have a lot of water in them, and we don't want too much in the finished dish.

Repeat the layers, then top with some grated cheese. If you have more cheese than I did, you should also put some in between the first layer of meat and the second layer of aubergines, that would be yummy.

Cover the dish with foil and put it in the oven for 45 minutes. Take the foil off for the last ten minutes, so the cheese gets all tasty.

and that's that! Simples.

Serve it with rice, or if you are really clever, you could make it into some freaky lasagna by adding extra layers of (very) al dente rice or pasta!

Christmas Traditions

Today was the day of my old school's carol service - but was I there? No, I was writing a biology exam. This time of year is one of the times when I really miss being at home - around now, we would be doing chritmassy things in school on the wind up to the last day of term, then after school on the last day, my family would go and buy a christmas tree and decorate it together. Since I will be here at university until the 19th, we have pushed back the tree decorating, but I don't really mind that. What I do miss is the school carol service in the nearby church.

Up until last year, the carol service had been a part of my Christmas every year for something like 12 years, and I loved it! For the last 9 of those years I had been in some kind of choir (I ought to point out here that when I left school, there were 6 different choirs), and it was so much fun! Each year, we would look forward to the first choir rehearsal when the music teacher would bring out the battered sheet music for all the favourite carols, and we would still be singing on the way to class afterwards. I really miss belting out all the descants, and just singing alongside my friends and getting all festive, so I will try to relive the magic here by listening to the carols that the choir would sing every year, year on year.

Of course we sang all the carols that traditionally go with the 9 lessons - it always starts with Once in Royal David's City, and ends with O Come All Ye Faithful and Hark The Herald Angels - and of course, as a soprano in the senior choir, I got to sing all the descants (brilliant fun). We would sing a selection of congregational carols, and the various choirs would sing on their own of together.  There were a few carols that the choirs always sang (sometimes with the help of the congregation), with the same arrangements, that I really miss - so here they are:

(some of the arrangements are a bit different - just bear in mind that I went to an all girls school)

Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day
This was always the first one that we would start rehearsing in November




In the Bleak Midwinter
I loved singing this one, especially the last verse - that "give my heart" bit is really satisfying to sing




See Amid the Winter's Snow
The different choirs and the congregation sang different verses of this one - some old girls would always come back for the service and sing the fifth (I think) verse




Sussex Carol
The descant on this one is so much fun




Personent Hodie
One of the big finales, when the lower school choir moves up to the front of the church to join the older girls - I remember when I was in the lower school choir, I couldn't wait to be in the senior choir so that I could sing the third verse, it always sounded so beautiful with the three part harmony and without the organ. So much fun, and everyone would always be singing at the very tops of their voices by the end!

(Imagine the harp is an organ and the choir is 100 strong)

Music Round-Up

I thought I'd mix it up a bit, so instead of Artist of the Week, this week I'm going to do a little round-up of some of the music I've bought in the past couple of months.  Having iTunes has meant that I am prone to buying single tracks rather than whole albums, so these are some of the people that will most likely never make it to Artist of the Week, but who I want to share with you anyway.

Gravity of Love - Enigma
I heard this on a youtube video and thought it was pretty interesting. I'd only really heard Enigma on that Sarah McLachlan song before this, and hadn't given them much thought, but they sound cool.

Always A Woman - Fyfe Dangerfield
I'd been meaning to get this for a while - I already had a couple of Fyfe Dangerfield tracks, then this was on a really popular advert back home:


I love his voice on this song.


Chicken Payback - The Bees
I love this song, it makes me want to dance around like a mad thing.  Complete nonsense, but in an intelligent way.


May Colven - Emily Smith
A traditional song that I have heard a few times before - most notably by Bellowhead as the Outlandish Knight - it's nice to hear the scottish version sung by a scottish girl.

Life is a Minestrone - 10cc
I heard this on the radio and was so amused/confused I knew I had to get it!

Song to the Siren - This Mortal Coil
Another radio one - this was on the chain on Radcliffe and Maconie. I just think it is entrancing.


(It's Not War) Just the End of Love - Manic Street Preachers
One of the new singles from a band who's songs I remember from childhood - a bit of nostalgia, but also a really catchy song!

Acts of Man - Midlake 

Another Radcliffe and Maconie one

Waterbound - Michael McGoldrick
This one really grows on you. A good winter song.

1000 Years - The Coral
Sounds old, but only came out a couple of months ago

Don't Look Back Into the Sun - The Libertines

Another one that I have been meaning to get for a while. Any Gavin and Stacey fan will know this one!