Bittub

04/07/2022

You may have noticed over the past three years that I go to quite a lot of events, especially around Christmas time. I have a multitude of different outfits I switch around and rotate throughout the year, however every year I treat myself to a new dress that just makes me feel a million dollars. Seeing as you lovely lot always seem to love my dresses and party outfits, I thought I’d put together a little Christmas Party Dress Guide for you all, full of some of my favourite dresses for this season.

1. ASOS Sequin Cowl Back / 2. Oasis Lace Shift Dress / 3. French Connection Lace Encrusted / 4. Fashion Union Dress / 5. Oasis Textured Check Dress / 6. Ted Baker Islaay / 7. Warehouse Embellished Shift Dress / 8. ASOS Spot Midi Dress.
You may have seen from this post that I actually have number 3. myself, but in black. Sadly the black version is now sold out online, however I adore the red berry colour too! Number 1. is the perfect NYE dress, and I love number 5. and 7. for the work Christmas party, while number 2. is a great Christmas Day dress if you’re into dressing up for the day.

I’m really loving shorter dresses this year as usually I’m stuck wearing long dresses for fancy-pants black tie events. Sadly I’m giving the annual Christmas Ball a miss this year (see previous posts here) – I’m off to a friend’s Christmas party instead which will make a nice relaxed change. Although I love dressing up, it does get tiresome sometimes and I’m really looking forward to just sitting around eating mince pies in my Christmas jumper. Don’t panic though – I’m planning on getting back into the swing of things in 2015, starting with the Royal Overseas League Burns Night Dinner at the end of January!
What are you up to over Christmas this year?
Have you got your Christmas party dress yet?

04/07/2022

When a little email landed in my inbox from Caprice Holdings telling me that the booking lines for The Ivy Market Grill were open, I immediately booked brunch for the Saturday after it opened. I’ve never been to The Ivy as everyone I’ve spoken to says the food isn’t that great and it’s all a bit outdated, however I’ve eaten at sister restaurant Le Caprice a number of times and love it there, so thought I’d give The Ivy’s little sister a try.
The Ivy Market Grill has been designed as a more casual and relaxed younger sibling to the world-renowned original. Yesterday Jemima and I went to finally check it out. I had major issues getting there and while I’m usually early or bang on time to absolutely everything, I was a whole 50 minutes late. TFL decided to do roadworks on the Hyde Park Corner roundabout on the last Saturday in November (idiots), which meant it took me 45 minutes to just get from Belgravia to St James.
I then dashed onto the tube and managed to get to Covent Garden a disheveled and snivelling stressed-out mess. Jemima soon calmed me down and we ordered our food while taking in our surroundings. The restaurant feels very traditional and very similar to Corbin & King restaurants (those behind The Wolseley and The Delaunay etc). It’s all dark woods and green, and quite similar to the original Ivy interior from looking at photos.
the Ivy Market Grill Eggs Benedict
The Ivy prides itself on serving home-cooked food well, so I thought I’d put this to the test and ordered my favourite dishes; Eggs Benedict, Zucchini Fritti, and a Creme Brulee (hey, it was a stressful day ok). The Eggs Benedict was not your usual ham or bacon, oh no, this one was Avocado and Spinach (two of my favourite things), and it was delicious. Sadly my eggs weren’t running *sob*, but apart from this it was absolutely perfect and just what I needed.
Jemima went for the Veggie Breakfast, which looked pretty tasty!
Ivy Market Grill Veggie Breakfast
The Ivy Market Grill Covent Garden
The Zucchini Fritti were much skinnier than I expected rather than nice big chunky pieces of Zucchini. Nevertheless they were still very tasty, albeit it a little too salty. The Creme Brulee was the piece de resistance though, it was perfect. I had an absolutely dreadful Creme Brulee last week with a soggy top (ugh!), so it was lovely to finally get a proper one. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ll know that a good Creme Brulee is one of my favourite desserts, if you’re knew…well…now you know.
The Ivy Market Grill Creme Brulee Dessert
The atmosphere in The Ivy Market Grill is calm and relaxed, with groups of women having lunch, an older couple enjoying one another’s company, and a mother and daughter near us having a good ole catch up (their steak sandwiches looked pretty incredible!).
The Ivy Market Grill Covent Garden London
By the time we left the restaurant was emptying out, although some people were starting to arrive to have afternoon tea. The bill wasn’t too much of a shocker, standard London really and very similar in price to brunch at the likes of Granger & Co and The Providores. What I did notice though was that they charge you for a teeny tiny bowl of nuts on the table, and they also charged us for what we thought was tap water (it was just water in their own bottles which had already been opened/weren’t new or anything), which really annoyed me.
Anyway, overall it was a wonderful experience and I’ll definitely be back. I really want to go in the evening and try out their dinner as the menu is full of classic favourites, and the bar looks so lovely! Also the great thing about Market Grill is that unlike it’s older sibling, it’s much more accessible – only half of the tables can be booked, the other half are for walk-ins!
The Ivy Market Grill Bar Covent Garden

04/07/2022

Last week Edd and I ditched Ralph Lauren and their interiors event for ice-skating at Somerset House with Google. After all, it is Christmas, so ice-skating outside is pretty much mandatory. We went along with Google Local London, and bumped into the lovely Laura and Helen while we were there!

Before getting on the ice we were treated to prosecco and canapes in Somerset House with the top reviewers on Google+. I am a huge advocate for Google+, I absolutely love it, so it was interesting chatting to the people who write so many reviews on there of local London businesses, and hearing what they do for full-time jobs.

We took photos with the Google logo (you’d think that working so closely with the Google peeps for my full-time job, I’d have gotten used to all this stuff, but it never seems to stop being a novelty), and then sat down for a rest before we went skating. We sat down next to a couple of girls, and one of them looked at me, introduced herself, and told me she was a reader of my blog! It was so lovely to meet her! *waves* Hi Leanne! We chatted for a bit and then went out to finally go ice-skating.

It was freeeeeezing outside, but thankfully we soon warmed up when we got on the rink. Edd kept making fun of me because I have my own ice-skates (see more about me ice-skating here), he was expecting me to get on the ice and start spinning and jumping around, so I had to break it to him that I can no longer do that.

We spent about an hour and a half on the ice, and I then spotted Laura and Helen having a lesson with one of the ice marshalls. I skated over to them to say hi, and helped to show them how to skate backwards.

At first it was pretty quiet and I loved it, then it got a bit busier and people kept encroaching into my personal space and falling over around me. I had a couple of horrible ice-skating accidents years ago when I did figure skating, so my confidence on the ice isn’t exactly high, and I freak out whenever someone gets too close to me. I trust myself on the ice, but not others. This was my face when people kept coming too close to me…

So. Damn. Attractive.
Also I spotted this GIF on the Google+ page of Edd and I skating, HA.

After skating we headed back into Somerset House for more drinks and canapes, and the cutting of a huuuuuge cake! The cake was incredible, It looked like Somerset House, and inside the colour of it was all of Google’s colours; yellow, blue, green, and red. The roof sections at the top were Toblerone covered in icing. Yep. It was delish.

30/06/2022

Claire and I have been wanting to go for a weekend break together for ages. We decided to finally just do it, and after comparing both of our ‘to-go-to’ lists, Kraków in Poland was on both of them, so we booked that it that very same week and then last Saturday hopped on the plane to Eastern Europe.

Exploring Krakow's main square and jewish quarter in Poland
The flight was only about 2 hours long, and as it was only 6am I promptly fell asleep as soon as we took off, and didn’t wake up again until we landed. We walked off the plane to be hit in the face with icy cold air.
After getting through immigration quickly we jumped in a taxi and headed to The Sheraton Kraków Hotel. It was a typical American five-star hotel, it felt quite business-y, but the staff were amazing and allowed us to check into our Club Level room at 10am. We had a lovely view over the river!

We dropped off our stuff, piled on our thick clothing, coats, and boots, and headed out into the city to explore. The main square of Kraków was just a 5-10 minute walk from the hotel, and although it was raining and cloudy, there was no denying how beautiful the city was.
It felt more like an over-sized medieval town than a city, but everywhere you look the buildings just take your breath away.









We started by wandering around the square and exploring the famous Kraków Cloth Hall. It was busy and bustling and we didn’t know where to look first.
We took our time, walking from one end to the other, looking up, down, and all around us.





Suddenly we heard singing and a band, so walked around to see some sort of protest happening in the street. We still have no idea what it was all about!



On both of our lists was the 12th century St. Mary’s Basilica, which features the famous 13th century Altarpiece of Veit Stoss, which is the largest Gothic altarpiece in the world!

The church itself is absolutely stunning, it was only when I was half-way round that I realized I’d been walking around with my mouth hanging open. Everywhere you look there are beautiful works of art adorning the walls, frescoes, and chandeliers.
One of the things I love about being Catholic is that the majority of our churches are basically huge works of art, you enter them and you’re surrounded by hundreds of years of history.





The Altarpiece has a really interesting history; when the N***s invaded Kraków they removed the altarpiece and had it shipped to N**i Germany. It was eventually discovered after the war in the basement of Nuremberg Castle. Every day at 12 it opens to reveal the scenes within, we timed it really well so were there just in time!

After seeing St Mary’s we walked down some of the little Medieval backstreets.



We then headed over to a restaurant that had been recommended to me by someone actually from Kraków; Restauracja Miod Malina, or in English, Honey and Raspberry.
It was a very cute little restaurant with images of raspberries everywhere! We perused the extensive Polish menu and chose; Goose liver terrine with parma ham topped with red onion preserve, Stewed sauerkraut with mushrooms and sausages served in a bowl of bread, and the sauerkraut and mushroom oven-cooked dumplings.





Everything was absolutely delicious. I particularly loved the dumplings, which were (unusually) deep fried (so naughty, but SO good), and the sauerkraut and sausage bowl was insanely good and really moreish.
Claire avoided a dessert, but I saw my favourite on the menu and couldn’t resist; Forest fruits with creamy mascarpone cheese under almond crumble. Oh my days this was amazing, and the best way to finish my meal.

After lunch we walked to the Jewish Quarter, Kazimierz. It was strange, seeing the Jewish Quarter underneath the dark clouds and rain. In blue skies I’m sure it’s a beautiful part of Krakow, but in the rain and clouds it was eerie.
We silently walked through it, stopping just to see the Jewish square and snap a couple of photos, and on to Schindler’s Factory in the old Jewish Ghetto.







This was a strange part of town, you cross the river and the feeling just changes, it feels deserted and full of sadness, as if you’re surrounded by thousands of ghosts suffocating you with every step you take.
Maybe it’s just me, I get weird feelings like this in certain places, I just got an awful feeling from it that I just couldn’t put my finger on, and couldn’t wait to get into the Schindler museum and off the cold, foggy, darkening street with the railway line and deserted wasteland at the side.

It gave me goosebumps thinking about what happened in that Ghetto all those years ago. The persecution, the grief, the horrific animosity.
We spent a couple of hours in the Schindler Factory Museum, and were surprised to discover that it’s an entire museum, and you can’t actually see any of the old factory. Apparently it was used as a factory and commercial building a few times after Schindler’s Factory closed down, so the insides of it were never the same as they were during WW2.
The museum was good but we were disappointed that there wasn’t much information about Oskar Schindler and his factory workers, it was mainly about the Polish Jews and WW2 in general.
After the museum we headed out into the cold and got a taxi back to our hotel. After freshening up and watching a bit of National Geographic, we wandered down to Hotel Copernicus where we were having dinner that evening. But, more on that tomorrow!

30/06/2022

Every year for the past few years I’ve gone ice-skating at Somerset House in London. It’s basically a tradition now. Each year I say I’ll try out one of the other London ice rinks, then I always end up going back to Somerset House. I really do love it, it’s always so much fun. Heck, I’ve even done ‘ice-reeling’ with a group of friends in the middle of the rink, and last year Edd and I went ice-skating there with Google.

This year I was invited along by Somerset House in partnership with Fortnum & Mason. I took Dan along with me, he loves telling everyone about my blog (cringe) and has been on it a fair amount over the past year or two. He reviewed Sake no Hana’s Sakura menu with me back in April, and as I hadn’t seen him for a coupla weeks since Halloween, I thought it was time he came to something else.

Sadly he destroyed his ankle while drunk a few weeks ago (which resulted in a rather hilarious night at The Savile the other week), so couldn’t actually take part in the ice-skating. So I went on the ice with Laura while Dan stood at the side and laughed at everyone falling over. I left my big DSLR camera at home as I didn’t want to smash it when skating, so sadly only have mobile phone pics – sorry!

When the rink got too busy I headed off, changed my boots, and we went to check out the Fortnum & Mason pop-up shop. We did some whisky tasting, which Dan loved and I despised. Blergh, it is not my poison of choice. Then we played Hook-a-Duck to try and win a dram of gin. I failed miserably, and I discovered Dan is really good at it. So he won.

We then went next door to the Fortnum Lodge for some food. Just as we were finishing our cocktails and Dan was finishing his Salmon Blinis Laura and Helen joined us. We spent the next hour or so drinking cocktails, eating the most delicious potato and cheese bake, and feasting on cheese fondue. And we’ve all persuaded Dan to start his own fashion blog, he even joined in with the food-photo-taking!

Laura’s face at Dan’s photo-skills in this photo makes me laugh so much!

We had a really fun evening; the ice-skating was awesome (if a little too busy), and the cocktails were delicious! Thanks for having us Somerset House!

30/06/2022

Hey y’all. This is a hella lazy post because it’s 10pm and I’m drunk on three cocktails and I don’t *really* have time to blog at the moment because life is pretty crazy and all. But anyway, this restaurant is too good not to tell you about, and looking at the photos made me all hungry and s**t again, so I sorta feel like I need to write about it RIGHT NOW.

The Ninth is awesome. Claire and I went last Friday before our trip to Poland, and we absolutely loved it! It’s located right on Charlotte Street (aka, foodie heaven in London), and is the very first restaurant from Jun Tanaka, who’s worked for the likes of Le Gavroche, Marco Pierre White, and The Square.
After a long career in television, Jun has finally launched his own restaurant after years of hard work. The Ninth got it’s name because it’s the ninth restaurant Jun has worked at. *all text from hear onwards was written totally sober and at 8am in the morning*

The restaurant itself is very trendy and had quite a New York warehouse vibe about it, with exposed brickwork and copper everywhere, and marble tables (yes, they clearly know what we bloggers like ;)). It was beautiful.

Even though everything is meant for sharing, we chose a coupla dishes each that we really wanted, then just tried a little bit of each others (I’m not very good at sharing food…). So we started with Oxtail Croquettes and Duck Scotch Egg from the ‘snacks’ menu. Both of these were divine and I’d recommend you order both – you won’t regret it.

We then moved on to the Sea bass carpaccio, salsa verde and pickled kohlrabi, and the Ossobuco tortellini and bone marrow. The sea bass was fantastic, but I would have preferred slightly less salsa on it.

After this we opted for spiced cod, mouclade of mussels and roast cauliflower and the succulent smoked duck breast with caramelized chicory and walnuts. On the side we chose some very autumnal thyme and honey roast winter vegetables.

And then we finished with the absolutely incredible Tarte Tatin and rosemary ice cream for two people. The rosemary ice-cream was a bit of a shock at first, but it really grows on you and complements the tarte tatin well. The photo below is of just my half of it – it was huge!

Honestly, the food here is incredible. I’d never eaten Jun’s food before, but the food exceeded all expectations and some. We left exclaiming how delicious everything was and how not one course was a disappointment (very rare when you have so many dishes). The only downside for me was that the staff were a little tooooo friendly, I’m one of these people who just likes to be left to eat in peace, but I’m guessing it’s just because the place is new and they’re interested in hearing feedback from customers, which is fair enough.

25/06/2022

You don’t fully appreciate the simple act of breathing until you can no longer do it. You do it so often that you don’t need to remember to do it, your body does it automatically. Until you have an asthma attack.
This post has been sitting in drafts for a while, it’s one of those posts that I’ve been unsure about posting as it’s fairly personal and I don’t often do ‘personal’ posts. But alas, I feel it’s needed. A few times now when I’ve had an attack while by myself on public transport, it’s struck me how people don’t notice what’s going on and simply don’t know what to do or how to help.Only once has a woman stopped to help me; she sat me down, got my inhaler out of my bag for me, and made sure I was OK before leaving me to carry on with her journey. Quite often people ignore it, other times they ask if you’re OK and repeatedly ask again when you don’t respond….they don’t realize that often you can no longer see them or hear them, and often you just can’t speak (I mean come on, you’re barely breathing!). Which leads me to the main point of this post….

What is it like to have a full-on asthma attack?
Usually my asthma isn’t too bad, I’ve had it since I was 14, and I only have an attack a few times a year. But back in November I had a nasty cough that I’d had since September. The cough wouldn’t go, it was coming from my chest, and gradually my asthma was getting worse by the week. It would just take a bit of stress at work, a particularly smoggy day in London, or running for the train to trigger it. On this particular day I had ran as fast as I could for the train; from the office to the tube, down the escalators, onto the tube, out of the tube, change tubes, next tube, run as fast as possible up the escalators, out into Waterloo, and onto the train. I made it with seconds to spare.
Usually I’m not fussed about standing on the train (heck, today I stood for an hour on the train), it’s only a 15 minute journey to Surbiton where most people get off, and there are far more people who need a seat more than I do. I took a position standing by the pole near the seats – the only space left. I had my winter coat on and my thick woolly scarf wrapped tight around my neck, I could already feel my chest wheezing and getting tight, I was sighing and yawning a lot (I think it’s my way of trying to get air in), and I felt hot. So hot. I was feeling irritable and felt the need for fresh, clean air. I stood there in the crowd of people desperately trying to draw breath in to my tightened chest, unable to reach my inhaler due to the train being overcrowded, and not particularly wanting to draw attention to myself anyway.
Gradually it got too much and I needed air. I could feel my lungs screaming in pain, aching from the desperation of trying to inhale air, and my head starting to go dizzy from lack of oxygen, my limbs feeling weak. I pushed past people to get to the window and flung it open. Two woman opposite me started tutting and then the tuts grew into ‘Oh bloody heck, what did she do that for!? It’s freezing!’. I gave them a death stare as I struggled to stand, my body limp and held up by the bodies around me pushing me against the pole.
A man shifted as the train rattled on, and I managed to unwrap my scarf from around my neck. My vision started blurring, and the sighing got worse. By this time I was full on gasping for air, desperately trying to get something, anything, into my aching lungs. Not one person even so much as looked up at me from their phone or newspaper. The women just carried on tutting at me about their feeling a little chilly. I gave them a big ‘f**k you’ inside my head.
Finally we reached Surbiton and most of the people got off. By this time I was literally clinging to the pole to keep myself upright, holding on tight as hard as I could, as my hands were so weak they kept falling off to rest by my side, as my knees started bending down towards the ground. I must have looked like a right mess. And not one person gave a s**t. I’d love to see the CCTV from that journey.
I clambered past my fellow commuters, grabbing onto the tops of the seats to pull myself along the aisle towards an empty seat. There were a set of four seats, three were now vacant and one gentleman occupied the other. I collapsed onto the two next to each other that were free, and pulled my coat off. By this point I could feel my head drowning, I could no longer see clearly, my vision was blurred and everything was just different colours. I felt like I was about to pass out. My heart was thumping so loudly in my chest I feared everyone could hear it, and my arms wouldn’t work.
My weakened arms rummaged in my bag desperately trying to find that little blue tube of life, and finally I found it. The gentleman opposite me asked if I was OK, but I couldn’t speak, I tried and nothing came out, it hurt too much. I took a puff but my hands weren’t strong enough, it was too weak-a-puff. Another. This time I used every ounce of energy inside of me and hit the jackpot. Another. Another good one. OK. It’s OK. I’m going to be OK.
I sat there slumped against the window, and gradually my heart rate got back to normal, the tightness in my chest subsided, I could feel air rushing through my lungs, and my vision came back. My arms took a little longer to get some strength back, and even then they remained weaker than usual for a few hours. Exhaustion set in as the gentleman opposite me asked again if I was alright, I nodded and thanked him, the relief of being able to breathe washing over me.
You honestly don’t know how truly beautiful fresh air is, until it’s flowing through your lungs after an asthma attack.
I don’t think many non-asthmatics know what an asthma attack is like, and I don’t think they know the severity of it. A few years ago an old school friend of mine died from an asthma attack, she was just 17. Her attack caused her to go into cardiac arrest. Three people every day die from an asthma attack in the UK, seriously, this should not be happening.
If you see someone in distress and struggling to breathe, please do the right thing, don’t ignore them and hope that someone else will help. Ask them if they’re OK, if they’re clearly not OK and can’t answer because they’re struggling to breathe – call an ambulance on 999. Help them before it’s too late.

25/06/2022

25/06/2022

25/06/2022