Weekend In Pictures

This has been one of the loveliest and most relaxing weekends I've had for a while.

On Friday I put on my new polka dot dress and met Thomas from work for 'just one drink' in The Lansdowne. Well of course, we ended up staying for dinner and then a few more drinks... and just like that, 7 hours had passed. I don't understand pub time: how can 7 hours at work draaaaaaag soooooo slooooooowly, yet the equivalent time spent in the company of my favourite person, in my favourite place, goes in the blink of an eye?

Saturday dawned bright and breezy, and we rode our bikes into Leicester to hit my favourite vintage shops (no luck, sadly) and pick up picnic supplies before riding down to the canal, where the annual Riverside Festival was going on. Beautiful boats, a floating jazz band, bunting fluttering in the wind... it was well worth a visit. After a picnic on the park, we watched my friends' band - Abandon Her - play their set before riding home across the nature reserve to have dinner and watch movies.

Thomas is madly trying to finish his thesis, so was working on Sunday. Left to my own devices, I spent a very happy day pottering in the garden, weeding and re-potting, reading and drinking tea. A weekend spent almost entirely outside has done wonders for me: I feel properly chilled out for the first time in weeks.

Highlight of our weekend, though, were the daily visits from our new feline buddy. This little cutie comes to see us most mornings and evenings and loves to explore our house. On Saturday evening, she got so comfortable that she curled up and went to sleep next to me on the sofa. It broke my heart a little to have to turf her out and hope she'd find her way home. She (we've decided she's a girl) has a love/hate relationship with the ginger & white cat who's also started hanging out in our garden. Basically, T and I have become crazy cat people who encourage a whole gang of local cats to visit us. It's sad, I know, but it makes us happy.

A trip to the Botanic Gardens

Saturday was one of those weirdly hot, muggy, cloudy days we seem to be having a lot of lately. It's like the weather hasn't got the memo about it being almost October but instead of nice sunny days, we're getting the worst kind of summer weather. The forecast had promised some lovely sunshine so we'd packed a picnic and made plans to visit the annual Sculpture in the Garden exhibition at Leicester's Botanic Gardens. When the day dawned overcast and grey, we decided to stick to our plans and off to Oadby we went.

We've been talking about visiting the gardens all summer and in a way it's a shame we waited so long, as the majority of the plants are past their flowering now. But the sunflowers were still spectacular and I enjoyed crunching through the autumn leaves.

The Sculpture in the Garden show runs every year from June until October and features a wide range of art. I love the way in which the natural surroundings of the garden blends with the sculpture; sometimes very literally, as with this spider web.

Cool places in Leicester: The Lansdowne

This image source here - all others my own

There are so many cool places to eat and drink in Leicester, and I've been meaning to start a blog series about them for ages.  First on the list is The Lansdowne, a large bar on London Road, about 8 minutes walk from the city centre and a couple of minutes from the train station.  It's a favourite with The Boy and I for numerous reasons: amazing playlists, great lagers and ciders on tap (neither of us are real ale drinkers, but I'm pretty confident they'll have decent ales too), incredible retro furnishings (including lots of sofas to chill out on), and perhaps most importantly, plentiful vegan food options.

 

They always have at least four vegan, and numerous more vegetarian, options on the main menu, plus veggie or vegan specials from time to time.  Yesterday, The Boy opted for the red pepper houmous and roasted vegetables ciabatta with potato & sweet potato wedges, which was the weekly sandwich special, while I had a Brie ciabatta.  The photograph above is minus one half of the sandwich - we'd already tucked in by the time I remembered to get my camera out!

 

There are loads of options for drinks on tap, including Aspall cider (my favourite), plus a plentiful cocktail list and fridges bursting with interesting soft drinks and fruit juices.  The food is reasonably priced considering the portions are hearty, with a sandwich costing around £6, plus a bit more if you want wedges, and main meals hovering around the £9-£10 mark.

 

Most important to me in a bar is the atmosphere and the Lansdowne always delivers, with friendly staff and great music (on Saturday's visit it went from Johnny Cash's Boy Named Sue to Fleet Foxes to the Sam Cooke soul classic You Send Me in the space of minutes).  As it's very close to the city centre and train station, but also to the university and Clarendon Park (a lovely, if gentrified, residential area to the south of the city) it tends to have a nice mixture of customers, from young families eating lunch to groups of office workers, lecturers from the uni, students, or people killing time before their trains.  One thing that can be guaranteed is that The Boy and I will be found there regularly, chowing down and enjoying a couple of pints before making our wobbly way home.

 

 

 

We are not graffiti artists

Round the corner from my house, some very creative people (not graffiti artists) were at work last night.  Either my neighbourhood has a budding David Shrigley or there were some kids with an excellent sense of humour getting busy with the chalk.

I didn't take photographs of everything, and now it's dark I'm regretting that. Other favourites included a paving stone with a huge cross on it and "Don't stand here" on the next slab and, after a row of "I am not stolen..." arrows pointing to parked cars, a massive, "I WAS stolen!  Phone 999!" on the last car.  Seriously, the whole thing was genius and made me very very happy this morning.

List #8: The things that are good about my town

I ended up in Leicester by accident.  Or, to be more precise, I ended up in Leicester because I did sod all work during my A Levels.  My first choice university was Manchester (selected on the basis that every great band played there when they toured).  Leicester was my safety net, my second option.  A city I'd visited twice for open days and hadn't minded the look of.  A city which (at the time) still had a few good venues and therefore featured regularly enough in the NME gig guide for my liking. 

And then I got my grades, and they weren't good, and Manchester University wouldn't take me but the University of Leicester would (that right there should have been a warning sign: I ended up hating my degree here).  And so, at the end of September 1996, we packed up my parents cars and drove down the M1 from Bradford to Leicester, and to my great shame it is here I have pretty much stayed ever since.

Weird, really, because most people who know me would characterise me as being pretty adventurous and open to new experiences.  Just not, it turns out, new places to live (although I have moved sixteen times in my seventeen years in Leicester, so...).

And it's not that I actively dislike Leicester.  That's kind of the problem, really.  It's hard to leave somewhere so comfortable, somewhere that fits me like a boring/cosy/secure/dull* jumper.

All of which is a needlessly long introduction to my list!  And a weird way to introduce the things I love about Leicester, which - although not exactly legion - do very much exist.  I wrote a '10 things to love about Leicester' post last August, which focused more on actual places, so I'll try not to repeat myself too much and, this time around, will talk about the more ephemeral stuff...

1. My familiarity with the place.  The fact that, walking or driving or cycling, I know my way from A to B via X, Y and Z without even thinking.

2. The brilliant bars here.  I may be biased, but I'm convinced that Leicester has cooler, nicer places to drink than many bigger cities.  My favourites are all super chill and indie without being hipster.  If you're visiting Leicester, check out Firebug, The Orange Tree and The Lansdowne as your first ports of call.

3. The ease with which you can get great vegetarian and vegan food here, which is linked in large part to number 4...

4. ... The multi-culturalism of Leicester. 

5. Walking in Bradgate Park - a huge deer park, with actual hills (rare in Leicester), on the outskirts of the city - on a clear, sunny winter's day.

6. The fact that Leicester is a small place - it can feel like everyone under a certain age knows everyone else, by face if not by name.

7. Being called "m'duck" by random shopkeepers.

8. Visiting the amazing independent cinema/digital arts centre, Phoenix Arts.  I never used to go to see films until they reopened the Phoenix in a great new location, complete with cool cafe and bar.  Now we go at least twice a month to see everything from blockbusters like Gravity to more indie fare such as Inside Llewyn Davis. 

9. Having other bloggers nearby: in the past two weeks I have met two whole internet people IRL!  What is coming over me?  The Girl wrote a great post about our day together in Leicester, and then last night I met up with B from Make, Do & Spend at my book group, which was super cool.

* Delete as appropriate to my mood

Lately...

READING a very interesting book about what makes the English so very, erm, English, and very much looking forward to losing myself in this fabulous tome - How To Be A Heroine by Samantha Ellis - which has had universally glowing reviews and was a gift from The Boy.  Lucky me.

WATCHING endless New Girl after getting the DVD box set for Christmas.  On a more rarified note, my brother and I went to the RSC on Saturday to see Wolf Hall.  Hilary Mantel's much-garlanded novel is one of my favourites, so it was fascinating to see how it translated to the stage.  Ben Miller was particularly good as protaganist Thomas Cromwell, advisor to Henry VIII.  And finally, last night I went, with two friends, to see Rent.  This was my fourth time seeing it on stage (I must have watched the - far inferior but still brilliant - film at least another eight times) and I loved it just as much as ever.  The past few days have mostly been spent listening to the soundtrack on repeat.

GETTING exciting news of not one, but two, new babies in our social circle.  Well, in The Boy's social circle.  In The Netherlands, it's traditional for the parents to send cards announcing the birth; I love the modernist design of this one, announcing Lora's birth and designed by her art teacher father.  Also, some lovely flowers from The Boy, which have lasted and lasted and lasted.

EATING lots of plain rice, hardboiled eggs, and apples.  Sound boring?  It is, but I've been on hardcore antibiotics (see below), which have played havoc with my already sensitive digestive system, so I've been trying to eat very plain food that won't irritate my stomach.  Tonight though - 4 days post-antibiotics - I am making a soy 'chicken' red Thai curry.   Fingers crossed my tummy can take the excitement.

FEELING absolutely fucking terrible just about covers it.  I wrote a post/rant about this on Friday so won't bang on about it much more.  Ironically, though, since publishing that post my jaw and head have been almost pain-free, which has been amazing (now if my digestive system could sort itself out, I would be very happy).  Thanks, also, for all your lovely comments and texts and emails after that post; I got some very good advice as well as lots of love.
 
MEETING my very first, in the flesh, blogger (well, a 5 minute hello with Make Do & Mend not excepting)!  Rebecca from Random Day Dreaming came down to Leicester for the day on Saturday, and I showed her 'the sights', aka the lovely shops in The Lanes, vintage delights in Dolly Mix Vintage, and great food at The Orange Tree pub.  AND next week I will hopefully be meeting another blogger - B of Make, Do & Spend - who is joining my book group.  I tell thee, all this socialising is most unlike me.

PLANNING train trip upon train trip.  Nottingham tomorrow, London next week, Glasgow and Leeds during the Easter holidays (we are getting the sleeper train up, and I am so excited about it)... my notice board is currently covered in stacks of tickets. 

Day 28: The great outdoors: Bradgate Park in pictures

If you're from the East Midlands, you'll immediately recognise this landmark.  This is Old John, a folly on top of one of the only hills in Leicester.  Visible from all around the county, it - and the surrounding deer park and ruins of Bradgate House - makes a cracking walk on a fine late autumn day.  I convinced The Boy to play hooky from his academic research during my day off recently, and we wrapped up warm, walked up hills, ate beans on toast in the cafe, "oohed" at deer and generally blew the cobwebs away.  It was lovely.

 

 

 

Day 19: Cool creatives @ Maker's Yard

On Saturday I visited Maker's Yard in Leicester, an amazing new venture supported by the city council.  Located in the oldest hosiery factory in the city (hosiery historically being the main industry in Leicester), the building has been beautifully and sympathetically renovated to house studio space for ten creative business.  From glass blowing to sewing to felting to screen printing, it's an incredible space that offers local artist and designer-makers a place to work, make and teach.

I enjoyed browsing the wares and picking up flyers for workshops; I took (and enjoyed) a sewing workshop run by Maker's Yard tenant Ruth Singer a couple of years ago, so top of my list now are the clothes upcycling sessions run by Re-fashioned and the felting workshops with Sushila Pillai.

My favourite stalls were those run by illustrator Will Wright, whose screen prints I loved, and Martha Ruth Harris, whose cute animal print totes, cushions and cards won my heart.  How adorable is the little robin Christmas decoration?!

 

 

It's an inspiring space to walk around, the old industrial heritage having been carefully preserved and restored in some places while being sympathetically updated in others, and the people taking part in the open day were a great example of how creative business are thriving in post-industrial cities.  I'd love to hear about similar spaces and studios around the UK; let me know if a place like Maker's Yard exists near you.  And if you're near Leicester, their next open studio event takes place on Saturday December 7th.