Camping in Essex

For three nights we went camping in Essex. I expected there to be a river or a couple of shops or something there - even a tiny forest. But there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just fields and roads with no shops. Fine, there were a couple of swings on the site. Really basic plastic swings designed for five year olds, and two plastic slides and this see-saw kind of swing that I could imagine finding really cool if I was half my age. But I am not half my age, and the thing nearly broke when I went on it. So I stuck with the swings. I spent quite long on them, because there wasn't much else to do. And the funny thing is, it was quite nice having nothing to do. I spent my time eating junk, drawing, eating non junk and reading. I tried not to read that much though, because I do that all the time at home and, what's the point in camping if you do the same things you do at home? So I played beach bat instead and went on really long walks, tromping all over the farmers' fields (Even though I tried to stay on the sides) and trying to get through the huge brambly bushes. My mum taught me some songs from a play she was in, too. The play is called, "Oh what a lovely war" and the songs are funny but quite sad at the same time. I think the play's set in the first world war. My sister was singing the songs all the time, 'cos they were stuck in her head, and I got a bit worried that she'd sing them in front of our German guests when we got back. 

It was quite relaxing being there, and sometimes I just lay down in my sleeping bag and rested for a while.

The night before we went home, my father took us to this Indian restaurant, with a SuPeR tasty butter chicken, and really colourful Pilau rice.

On the way home from the site we stopped at a vineyard to try the wine. The vineyard owner was a bit grumpy, but the wine was nice, especially the rose. My mum bought some wine and jam from there, so I'll remember the trip whenever I eat the jam. 

Little cafe in Marylebone

After a trip to The Wallace Collection, my mum and I were wandering around when she spotted this cute little cafe with tons of jam jars in the window. Okay, she'd actually spotted it before we went to The Wallace Collection, but this time we actually went in.

There were tons of sandwich options on some blackboards at the back.

I nearly chose egg mayo - but I saw there were baked potatoes

I ordered a baked potato with beans and cheese. My mum ordered a cucumber sandwich. We ordered drinks two.

While we sat and ate, I looked around. The place was quite old and lined with jam jars, jars of chutney and sauces.

Everything was beautifully packaged.

The shop was very old. Most of the customers were north of 35. There was a salt and pepper stand on our table with a leaflet inside, explaining how the cafe first started. That wasn't amazingly interesting - but the customers were. There were a few people whom I think the staff know. But one oldish guy was quite funny. Not really like he was making jokes, but just sort of what he was saying, and the way he talked. When he entered the shop, he said something like,
"Oh god, I need some sustenance. I've just been to the cinema. I've seen a terrible film. It was was awful. I need something to recover from it. Maybe a coffee. I wonder who vets the scripts these days. Gosh, it was terrible."

Then there was this other lady who came in and started talking to arbitrary people in the cafe about - well it ranged from how Scottish people behave at football matches to people, "With more money than sense" buying cruise liners. The thing about the football match was quite funny. Apparently she'd just seen these Scottish people preparing for a football match. She was talking about how it was so lovely, everybody singing together and being so cheerful and welcoming - how it had such a happy feel. She was half talking to this guy at the back of the cafe and half to everybody there, including us. Then the guy at the back started talking about how the feeling was always the exact opposite at the end of the football match - when the Scots lose, "As they always do"! The woman agreed with him.

The waiter in the cafe was really polite - another way in which the cafe was old fashioned - but in a totally good way. Whenever you asked for something, he said, "Of course you can."

Next time I go to The Wallace collection I'm gonna ask my mum to take me to the cafe again!

New recipe!

My mum made up just made up this rule that everyone in our family has to cook something new each week. When I went to the library I had a look at some cookery books there, but one of them, I accidentally put back, and the other, I wasn't allowed to borrow because it was from the adult's section. So I was stuck with cookery books from home - which isn't actually bad because my mum has a lot of cookery books and the recipes are good.

The books are on a high shelf. I have to stand on the counter to reach them. So I stood for ages looking for a suitable recipe: one that we had the ingredients for, sounded yummy, and wasn't too complicated or time consuming. I looked for ages, resting the heavy cookery books half on my hands and half on my knee, and trying not to fall off the very crowded counter - or knock down the mug stand.

In the end I decided on a recipe that (Surprisingly) we had most of the ingredients for - and the ingredients are quite unusual. If we didn't make sushi a lot they wouldn't be in our kitchen. The only thing that was missing was avocado; my mum went out to buy that when she found out we needed it.

When the cooking counter was clear, I began cooking.

I will now explain what I was cooking. It was from a book called, "Super Natural Cooking" by, "Heidi Swanson." Have you ever tried sushi? The dish was a bit like that. I cooked some brown sushi rice (With a lot of salt), and 

made a sauce for it.

Brown sushi rice boiling

 The sauce was made up of sugar, rice vinegar, soya sauce, orange zest and juice squeezed from the orange. You needed lemon zest and juice too but there wasn't lemon in the fridge so I used more orange. Actually, we didn't have normal oranges either: just these teeny-tiny sweet, peel-able 

clementine-type things.

Orange sauce for the rice simmering

So I added the sauce to the rice and stirred it. You were meant to fry some tofu to have with the rice, but we didn't have the right kind of tofu so my mum made a miso soup with the tofu instead. And to make up for not having tofu with the rice, I took some leftover fish fried in miso sauce that my dad had made a few days earlier, and put that on top of the rice - which I had put into four bowls. Next to the rice, was next placed some avocado, and next to that, spring onion.  On top of the rice, was sprinkled some nori (Dried seaweed) which I had crisped and crumbled up earlier. 

Dried nori (After being crisped and crumbled)

I then sprinkled some sesame seeds on top of everything in the bowls.

We ate everything with some miso soup (In mugs) and some rolled sushi (Which wasn't really sushi 'coz it didn't have sushi sauce and the rice wasn't sushi rice) - oh yeah, and some sweet soya sauce, cucumber and pickled ginger.

An early dinner

An early dinner pictured again!

The leftovers got turned into more sushi (After the normal rice sushi was eaten)

Mmm...

That was yummy!

Jamilondon

 

"Summer Camp" 2013 - and our disaster...

The day before yesterday I went to a movie making course run by Apple. Well, it was actually a three day long course called, "Summer Camp" (The central Londoner's version of a "Kid's only" wilderness holiday ;-)) and the day before yesterday was the last day of it. On the first day we got free shirts and lanyards and did movie planning. We also used Garageband to make movie music. We later went home and shot the movies. My sister and I decided to do two joint ones (Seeing as we live in the same house), one the sequel of the other.

The movies that my sister and I did were about two witches called, "Lily" and, "Jennifer." In the first one, Jennifer uses her powers to show off to people while her sister, Lily, uses them to help people and animals. Jen tries to persuade Lily to use her's properly. The movies were only about five minutes long (You were actually meant to make them about three minutes long.)

On the second day of summer camp, we edited the movie on, "imovie," which we learnt to use there, and took home a copy on a memory stick. At home we carried on editing (And adding our Garageband tracks) and shot the sequel movie. 

The next day we carried on editing both movies at home and stayed up after midnight to finish them off. We didn't manage to finish them, though. And we hadn't shot enough scenes. And we didn't have enough guns to shoot them with ;-) So we had to be very clever about things and use footage we had cut out before, and re-shape it. 

On the final day of summer camp (The next day) My sister, my dad and I got up at 7:30 to really finish the movie, and so that we could get there by 9:00. I did the last bits on the train there, and when I was finally done the computer didn't have enough battery to load the second movie onto the stick! We were so - like, really, really, so disappointed. And that wasn't the worst of the day - not nearly.

The whole point of the final day of summer camp was to show everybody your movies. And you won't believe how badly that went. My sister and I were in the last group to be called up to the front and we had to tell the audience (The other kids in Summer Camp and their parents) the plot of our movie into the microphone. That bit was fine - quite easy - but what happened next wasn't. The lady in charge of showing the movies, started playing my movie (Well, mine and my sister's movie) and only then did I remember I was holding the memory stick with the properly edited movie on it; everyone before me either had theirs already on the computer, or remembered to hand in the stick. So I had to interrupt the lady and hand her the memory stick. She started playing the actual, properly edited movie. But something was wrong, very wrong. There was no sound. So she reverted to the one she'd started playing before. And it was awful. SO boring. Totally. And, like 90% (Or more) of the editing hadn't been done in that version. There was no music, the bad bits weren't cut out, the special effects weren't there and I don't even think we had credits at the end. It belonged back on my camera, not a big screen in front of everybody. If I'd had to sit and watch that I think I'd be checking my watch. So I looked at the audience to see their reactions and most of them were twitching and not really watching properly. I don't blame them. What was worse was that we had to stand up there next to the movie. Actually, that was quite good because it meant our view of the screen was obscured. I couldn't believe we'd done all that work for nothing - and missed out on important sleep! Fine, it wasn't for nothing. But it was a real shame - and super disappointing. Not many people apart from the people managing the workshop clapped at the end. My dad later tried to convince us (My sister and I) that at least we knew that our movie was a hundred times better than what was shown - but the point was, no-one else knew. 

After our film was shown, the lady in charge of showing it said something stupid like, "Great work girls, and the film has a good moral; with great power comes great responsibility." The thing about great power and responsibility wasn't the stupid part - just the way she lied telling us, "Great work." And the way, she said it was so... monotone. Well, like she didn't even bother with trying to sound genuine. She didn't bother for the other people's either. Probably because she was stressed out at being, "On-stage" and in charge of playing the movies. She is not a bad person. I think she was very good on the days before. But I was still annoyed. 

I'd been so looking forward to showing my movie there - my actual movie. It was way better than some people's there, and no-one got to see it :-(. Fine, it wan't amazing but the special effects were fairly good and the plot wasn't too bad either. All that work - Not just mine; my dad spent valuable work time filming us and helped us upload stuff and my mum let us stay up late doing it and was really supportive - and no-one saw. Also, my favourite member of staff who is Italian wasn't there.

Afterwards, my dad went to John Lewis to return a pair of his shoes. My sister saw this advert for a cafe and (In her cheeky little sister way) asked our dad if we could go. I was surprised that he said yes so nicely (Especially since I thought the place was quite expensive) but I think it was mainly because he wanted to cheer us up. It worked. I had had a lovely egg mayo sandwich and some tea. Afterwards we had a look in a shop called, "Muji" which I really like.

Now, it seems hard to believe I was so upset about the movie. I can still remember how I felt, but it's just a movie. Other people get much worse things happening to them, and I'm writing the longest blog post on the planet and using up my mum's computer battery complaining about a movie. I think I must have repeated a lot of things I've already written, because I'm not half as upset now. In fact, I'm not upset at all. So it seems strange that I've been writing for, like, ages when I don't feel that strongly about it any more.

We have guests coming soon - more Frenchies - so I better get off the computer now.

Au revoir!

Jamilondon

Antique exhibition in Hyde park

A few weeks ago my dad took me to see an antiques exhibition in Hyde Park. The good part was that afterwards he took me to a gelato place and Subway, but the exhibition was quite nice too.


Nah, just joking! The exhibition was great! It was totally different from what I was expecting, but as good - maybe even better. What I was expecting was more of an outdoor, market-ish place where you could buy things. Well, you could buy things there too, but only if you were willing to pay £100 +, as the things were very valuable and sort of posh. When we first arrived I didn't realise that we were actually going into that building - I thought the building was just this super-fancy cafe that looked really pretty. So I was very surprised when it turned out to be our destination.


The people at the exhibition were all well dressed and - I know this sounds strange - but they were sort of calm and polite. Like, you would not imagine them to talk a lot, or go, "Yo, blood! Got some sick antiques here, innit?" One of them even said, "Evening" to us. Fine, I know lots of people say, "Good evening," and it isn't super strange, but the guy who said it didn't add a, "Hello" or a, "Good" in front of it. Just, "Evening." It was more that he was treating the as, "Hi."


Surprisingly there were some modern things at the exhibition, too: some sculptures and paintings that really didn't look like antiques, and it turned out, really were not. My dad explained to me that when people were invited to exhibit their stock (Not the Boullioun or OXO kind) there, they mainly did antiques ('cos that's the whole point) but they also showed some modern things, because it's an opportunity to do so, and because it's cool to just give a broader taste of what their company does.


My favourite thing in the exhibition was an apothecary's cabinet, because it had all these different drawers that folded out, a secret compartment at the back and it looked really neat.


I also like the jewellery in two stalls, and a modern sculpture.

HESFES Homeschool camp

Around four days ago I arrived back in London from a homeschooling camp in Suffolk. Well, the camp wasn't homeschooling, but it was for home-schoolers. It was called HESFES.

HESFES, I thought, was much better than the first camp for homeschoolers that I went to, which was called WEHEC. WEHEC is in Wales, in a very scenic location, but it isn't as big as HESFES. Also, it doesn't have as many activities going on. So if I go to another HC camp, it will be HESFES again.

There were plenty of workshops at HESFES, including bee-keeping, public speaking, drumming, canine behaviour and viking bracelets. I didn't do all of them of course, as they overlapped, but two of my favourites were kundalini yoga and public speaking. Public speaking was great because you had to give a two minute long impromptue speech in front of the rest of the class. It was so scary (I did the shaking thing again!) But you feel great once you've done it. Also, I forced myself to do a prepared speech in front of the class. Hah! So I should be better at public speaking now. Only one way to find out... 

Anyway, I liked the kundalini yoga because you do lots of difficult excercises - tiring ones - and then you lie down at the end. And you feel so relaxed. Also, the teacher (She has this really long name. Something like, "Nam prakashka.") tells you what each excercise is good for in your body, which makes it more satisfying.

So if I had to recommend two workshops, those are what they'd be, public speaking and kundalini yoga.

Everyone in HESFES was so... well, like, nice. And I know that is probably the most boring word to use, but it's the simplest, and it means I don't have to type out a list of longer words. I really like the way (Most of) the people at the camp behaved. Well, the way that they... were. I think it's that the majority of them weren't trying to follow everyone else and they weren't all trying to be cool every second of their lives. As well as that, they weren't bossy or embarrassed to be friendly and nice. Oops - there's the word, "nice" again!

Okay, I definitely want to go to HESFES again. And I know every time I go camping I say I want to camp there again, but I think HESFES is one of the places I really, really want to go to again. So I hope I can make it next year.