Cream Tea, Finally!

Around a month ago, I ended up going to this wonderful cafe in Hove, Sussex. (I know, I should have posted about this ages ago!)
I don't usually go to this area, but went there with a friend who had an interview along the street. Whilst she was being grilled by prospective employers, I popped into Violet & Doily to see what they had to offer!
I was not disappointed...

All I Want is a Proper Cup of Coffee...

...no copper coffee pot necessary.

Proper is a cycle cafe in Hassocks, Sussex, a couple of stops up from Brighton on the London-Brighton mainline.

I'd heard about their amazing cakes, so when I found myself in the area and at a loose end - and nearing lunch time - I popped in to see what all the fuss was about!

As I don't drink coffee, I opted for tea, which was served in a cute transparent teapot.

For once I bypassed the various choice of chocolatey cakes, and went for lemon drizzle cake. I was given a generously sized slice, which was moist and had just the right balance of flavour. Yum!

Proper is a comfortable cafe and obviously popular, as it's been packed most times I've walked past. This was a rare quiet time!

If you're wondering about the cycling part, well, Proper has a cycle shop at the back of the cafe! It's also equipped with somewhere for cyclists to secure their bikes at the front, and a garden area where customers can enjoy the weather along with their refreshments.

With so many great places to cycle in the area, I think this is a really good idea! In fact, whilst I was enjoying my cake, I witnessed five cyclists wheel their bikes through from the back. It was a slightly surreal experience!

The tea and cake were great and the staff friendly, and the popularity of Proper is self-evident. Next time I'm in Hassocks and hankering after cake, I definitely know where to go.

I'm counting my visit to Proper as part of one of my goals on The List:

036. Eat/drink in 30 new places

You can see more of the places I've eaten by looking at the goal 36 tag.

What is Evil?

This month, my reading has taken up a fantasy theme that, in part, questions our perceptions of evil. With these three books, I've completed a goal from The List:

050. Read 3 books per month for 1 year

36 books between July '14 and this June!

...it's actually 41, but I only ever blogged about the first three read each month ;)

With all that reading, you'd think I would have sandwiched in some more Doing, but I digress. Here are the books I read in June, rated, as is the norm, according to my overall enjoyment.

Angelology - Danielle Trussoni (4/5)

A book I picked up after it was heartily recommended by a friend, this is yet another one that spent a fair few months sitting on my shelf, waiting for the right moment.

The right moment came, and I enjoyed all 650-odd pages of it.

Angelology is set in a world where a silent war rages between the human Angelologists and the Nephilim, a race descended from Angels but muddied through millennia of Human-Nephilim hybridisation. For the most part the story focuses around Evangeline, a young nun who knows little of her family history, but discovers the existence of the Angelologists, and of her family history, after finding an old letter in the convent archives. The closer she comes to finding out the full truth, the closer danger comes to laying its hands upon her--and a long sought-after artefact of extreme power that lurks just out of sight.

My only real complaint about the book was that some plot twists were predictable. However, they were delivered at the right moment in the storyline for it to drag on too long.

I liked how the novel took ideas from religious texts and wove them into a story that brings angelic beings into the modern world, with an explanation of how they continue to walk among us. I also liked the way the Nephilim and lesser angelic species were portrayed, as it made a change from the expected behaviours!

Honestly my writing about this book cannot do it justice, not without writing a whole bunch of spoilers.

I recently discovered that there is a sequel, and have, of course, wish-listed it ;)

Sell More Stuff and Make it Pretty!

Unwittingly, I completed a goal!

069. Complete an online course

The course in question was Store Design, Visual Merchandising and Shopper Marketing, a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) taught by Claus Ebster for iversity.

I'd meant for this goal to be an encouragement to complete some of the Udemy courses that I've signed up for, but when I received an email from iversity about this course, I was quick to sign up!

Having used iversity before (I studied their Design 101 course back in 2013/14) I knew it was a great interface for learning something new.

I mainly signed up in the hope that I'd pick up more knowledge relating to visual merchandising, but I also found the store design and shopper marketing parts of the course interesting.

The six week course came in the form of several video lectures, which were accompanied by a set of questions relating to the video content. The videos were easy to follow and presented with good humour, and many examples relating to the topics discussed. Each week included a discussion exercise and recommendations for further reading, so it was a really well fleshed-out course!

I ended up gaining lots of new insight into shoppers, and ways a store can be set up to encourage sales. What's more, I had inspiration for the place I volunteer!

Something I like about iversity is that the courses offer two different tracks: an audit track (which is free) or a certificate track (for which you pay a fee, and take an exam or complete graded coursework).
I opted for the audit track, which gave me a shiny Certificate of Participation:

This is also proof of my completing the goal. Of course, I've hidden my real name ;)

I really enjoyed this course and have several pages of notes taken from the lectures, along with lots of inspiration and a better understanding of the psychology of shoppers and the way store design, atmosphere and displays can affect them.

iversity has a number of courses on offer, so perhaps I'll end up signing up for another one...

This is NOT a sponsored post. Any products, brands or services I blog about here are mentioned of my own free will, and I have NOT received any money, goods, or other benefits in exchange for the creation of this article.

A Cup of Tea (and No Cake)

This post is rather overdue. I went to Blackbird Tea Rooms with a daytripping friend and her housemate back in May (the same day as we had a trayload of Full English at Caffe Aldo).
However, I was in two minds as to whether to post about this cute, vintage-styled tea room, as I didn't eat anything here.
Unfortunately, we picked the wrong time to go in - just over an hour before closing time, on a Saturday - and our visit was disappointing. 

Wyrd Sisters

Brighton Festival is over for the year, and Brighton Fringe is reaching its final weekend.

I made loads of plans this year and saw a whole heap of shows! Yesterday evening was the last one: a production of Wyrd Sisters at the Brighthelm Church & Community Centre.

The play was adapted from Terry Pratchett's book of the same title, from his Discworld series, and was performed by Brighton University Drama Society. I went to see it with my parents, neither of whom have read the book (I may have pestered them a little to go to the play...)

I re-read the book recently, in order to refresh my memory of the storyline. It's been a while since I last read it and I'd been really looking forward to seeing this play.

Wyrd Sisters is something of a take on Macbeth, with some good old Terry Pratchett humour and quirkiness thrown in for good measure. It includes three witches, a dead king, a group of strolling players, a mad ruler and a fool.

Singing in the Bath: Art at Brighton Festival

At the beginning of Brighton Festival, I planned to go and see some of the art exhibitions that were incuded in the listings. The festival is nearly over, and I still hadn't seen any, so yesterday I went off into the city with my neighbour, to see what artistic wonders we could find!

Brighton is a fantastic place for art exhibitions. It's a city so rich in history and architecture, with countless spaces hidden off the beaten track that are perfect for hosting exhibitions large and small.
Such a place is Circus Street Market, which looks derelict and empty, but could hide all manner of things behind those graffiti-smothered shutters. (Unfortunately it looks like there are plans to 'regenerate' this street and turn it into another characterless redevelopment that will suck more of the soul out of the colourful and surprising city that Brighton once was. Bah.)

Complaints aside (I promise that was the last one!) here are some pictures and summaries of the exhibits we saw. And more pictures. Pictures are great, right?

An Audience with Henry VIII

Continuing with this month's massive injection of culture via Brighton Fringe, I went to see another play yesterday evening, this time with my Dad.

We saw An Audience with Henry VIII at The Lantern Theatre, a one man play performed by Ross Gurney-Randall.

I really enjoyed this play and would watch again if I had the chance!

The premise of the play is that King Henry VIII has been dead for 468 years, and is still waiting to meet God. But God is nowhere to be seen.

Instead, Henry has the audience, to whom he tells his story. He boasts, he grumbles, he laments, he shouts...occasionally interrupted by an infernal imp playing Greensleeves. The music maddens him--he didn't write it, he hates it, and it's there everywhere he goes!

Within his speech, Henry rattles off a list of some of the notable figures he bumped off, and gives reasons why the wives had to go. Also, he insists, he definitely did not have syphilis.

The show ends with Henry storming off into another room of his own personal purgatory, shouting for whoever is playing Greensleeves to shut up.

The pompous, boastful, short-tempered attitude of Ross Gurney-Randall's Henry VIII was a brilliant characterisation of England's most notorious king, with excellently-delivered lines that really made me chuckle.

Written by Ross Gurney-Randall and Pete Howells, An Audience with Henry VIII was a great show and very amusing, filled with little historical factlets--why don't they teach history like this?

If you're hankering after a little comedic Henry VIII, you can find out more information and get tickets on the Brighton Fringe website. The 30th May show is sold out, but there are tickets left for the 27th!

Not a Fairy Godmother, but a Wizard

Another month, another selection of books read towards my goal of three per month!

It might appear that I've been sailing through these books fairly easily, often managing to meet my monthly goal within a couple of weeks. However, this is because I pile pressure on myself to Stop Procrastinating and Start Reading.

....Even though reading is sometimes procrastination in itself!

This month I bring you three Cinderella stories.

Okay, so calling Darwin a Cinderella character might be pushing it a bit!

As per the norm, I've rated these books out of five according to my enjoyment of them.

Howl's Moving Castle - Diana Wynne Jones (5/5)

Until only a couple of months ago, I didn't know this book existed. The only Howl's Moving Castle I knew about was the Studio Ghibli film. Which I haven't seen, but - as I discovered when looking up it up - was based on Diana Wynne Jones' book of the same title.

I liked the plot synopsis and commented to my a friend about wanting to watch the film and read the book. Then she gave me a copy of the book for my birthday! (Thanks Lianne!)

Anyway, I'm going off on a tangent here.

Howl's Moving Castle is a young adult novel about Sophie, a girl who has already come to terms with the fact that, as the eldest daughter, she'll live a dull life running the family hat shop. Jump forward a few scenes and Sophie has been cursed by the Witch of the Waste. Now with the visage of an elderly lady, Sophie leaves and begins a journey, which leads her to the moving castle of the fearsome wizard Howl, who is rumoured to eat girl's hearts...

Help! My Books are Taking Over!

Remember how, back in March, I said No More Books?

And then bought more, and then I really said No More Books.

Well, it was my birthday at the end of April. 

I received books. And money. Which I spent on books...

The picture on the left was taken on 27th April. The picture on the right was taken today, after delivery of a parcel of books (bye bye birthday money!)

I did read a book from the pile. And I gained a book from a friend which never got added to the pile, because I read it immediately. 

But then more books happened. 

It is a daily struggle as they take over more space, and I procrastinate on reading them.

These are mostly second-hand books, because a) they're cheaper b) I can't justify spending so much on new books c) most are from charity shops and therefore money to a good cause.

It's also so much easier to spend 'just 20p' or 'just £2' on a second-hand book. 

Instead of £9.99+ for one book.

Which is probably why used books are taking over my cupboard.

I should probably read more, shouldn't I?