I've moved!

I've moved all my posts and becoming less anonymous on georginadawkins.wordpress.com. If you follow me here, please follow me there!

Tips when drinking

Top tip for all you guys and gals out there. Try not to sneeze into your glass of ginger beer when you are a mere nanosecond away from taking a mouthful of drink. Unfortunately I have just discovered what happens if you are taken by a surprise sneeze. "What happens?" I hear you ask... Well, if you actually have your face inside the glass as I did, you'll be more than likely to involuntarily shake the glass as you sneeze, leading your very fizzy and sticky drink to froth up significantly into your face. You will also lose a large portion of your drink onto your new trousers, sofa, floor and dog.

The only thing that would have made it even better would be if someone else other than me and the dog had been there to witness the whole thing. Sadly it was just me laughing into a ginger beer soaked tea towel and Tess who clearly thinks I'm a couple of dog food tins short of a six pack...

Right, I'm off to wash my face because I have sticky eyebrows.

Getting into gardening

Have you noticed that recently everyone seems to be ready to get their hands dirty? Everyone is getting into gardening - from the very young (some of the projects we fund through my work are gardening projects for Scout and Guide groups) to people in theior early twenties. We all know the older generation (our mums, mostly) love gardening but it's great to see the younger generation raving about home grown foods, helping out on friend's allotments etc.

At the Horniman Museum, they have a great little community garden with planters made out of all sorts of things from wellies, to raincoats (1) and gardening gloves. They have built a 'bug hotel' (2) out of wooden crates, bottles and plants to give all the bugs something to hide in. England's plentiful rainfall is captured in a water butt (3) and they even have a little pond made out of an old bathtub. It's great for kids to go and see things growing and learn to appreciate nature as soon as possible, in my opinion, and I love how inventive people can be in a small space, in central London, where there often isn't much green space to grow things.

Wellie planter

Horniman Museum community garden

As for me, I would LOVE to have a little garden of my own (this is how I know I'm getting old!), the dog would like a bigger garden to run around in, but one thing at a time. I need to move house first. Meanwhile I'm making do with a window sill on which I'm growing sage, rosemary, chilli plants and pak choi (I think it's pak choi - I 'll let you know when it stops looking like generic seedling). Also my orchid seems to be budding with absolutely no help from me. I'm not the most green fingered of people when it comes to flowering plants!

If you have an idea for a place to grow food, and need some cash to get you started, you could apply for some Capital Growth funding from the Mayor. It's what the Castle Climbing Centre (where I climb) used to get its own amazing vegetable garden up and running. Now the Castle's cafe uses own-grown food to serve to us climbers; fresh, handpicked food, no pesticides and no carbon emissions used for delivery.

On a sad and totally unrelated note, the elephants have now gone from their spots aroind London, however, they have been herded together in the grounds of Royal Chelsea Hospital where you can view the whole herd on the official viewing days from 25th to 28th June, 10am to 7pm. Admission is free and open to the public. For more information download the pdf here. If you can afford to buy one, the auction is on 30th June!

Elephant Parade

Throughout London between May and July 2010 are 250 beautiful, individually designed elephants. Similar to the Cow Parade back in 2002 (but much cuter) the Elephant Parade aims to raise the plight of the endangered Asian elephant. You can even buy them at an auction if you spot one you particularly like - and have loadsamoney. If you're not rolling in it you can buy a miniature version from the Elephant Parade webshop but be quick as they have limited amounts. A side benefit is that the elephants are getting people talking and making them stop, look around and enjoy their surroundings more than they would normally do!

This cutie is outside the Mayor's Office at More London

Those thoughtful types at Elephant Parade have even provided a route map to help you. How many can you find?

A new look...

...not for me, for this rarely updated blog. I'm thinking that maybe, just maybe, if it looks better, I'll update it more. Even if it's only a mini-post about something that made me smile.

We'll see.

Had a period of minor but impactful disasters over the last week or so. Mostly caused by the dog it seems. Apart from eating three quarters of a bag of strawberry flavoured jelly sweets (and then trumpeting in my car and it smelling of a mixture of guff and strawberries) she also ate 250g of frozen mince that was meant for dinner. After that it made its presence felt in a rather runny mess on my kitchen floor. Let's not forget she also tripped me up, causing scabby and bruised knees and a full on face-plant onto the pavement. Thanks Tess.

Oh, I also managed to cause some damage all by myself. After coming home from a great concert with friends, I took a running jump onto my (wooden framed) bed. CRACK! Yep, I broke the bed. Nothing a big bit of superglue won't fix, I'm sure.

Yesterday I found out I don't really like cheese fondue anymore, which is a shame as it was my staple diet for a good few months. I guess you can have too much of a good thing, just like when I went off the colour brown. Probably a blessing in disguise for me and everyone around me, that one.

This morning I picked up my make-up bag from the kitchen but managed to lose it before reaching the bedroom. I looked everywhere, every room, the bins, under the bed, even in the fridge (I have found a good many misplaced items in there before now). I gave up and went to feed the dog and then finally found it in the cutlery drawer.

This kind of clumsy, forgetful behaviour is just typical of a stressed me. Later this year we find out whether our company (and our jobs) get renewed for another five years, or whether we will all be unemployed come 31st March 2011. The thing is, I am the one leading the campaign. The buck basically stops here. So, six people's jobs, no pressure love. I have done it lots before, I can do it again. Wish me luck, people!

Urbaning

Amongst the many and varied Facebook status update time-wasting activities that seem to be sweeping the globe (what colour is your bra, what style is your hair etc) some of which I may have taken part in ...this one is about "Urbaning" (To look up your own name on Urban Dictionary, either for definition or myspace useage.). The idea is that you go to www.urbandictionary.com, type in your first name, copy and paste it as your status, and put the first entry of your name under comments....

It's pretty funny if you've got a few minutes to waste. Here are my results. NB they get a little crazier the further down the list you go. I wonder who writes all this stuff?

  • A beautiful name,(an angel for above) a fantastic name for a girl, Expecially when a special someone is amazing in so many ways, kind in heart and soul, but most of all a smile that lights up a dull and dark room. Beautiful in everyway.
georgina = Angel from Above
  • Georgina bold, outgoing, headstrong and shows it in the crazy way she dresses and acts. She is extremely beautiful but her strong personality often deters people. She always has to win and this sometimes gets in the way of her usually nice personality. She is good at most things she tries. Most people are secretly in love with her or jealous of her.
"Yes!!! I beat Georgina!!!"
"Wow Georgina has such cool clothes"
  • Georgina (Population 42,346) is a town in south-central Ontario,Canada, eh?
"I'm heading into Georgina, EH?"
  • A person who steals other people's boyfriends, including their friends'.
'Oh my God! She stole my boyfriend!'
'Ugh she's such a Georgina.'
  • Noun; The female equivalent of Georgie.
That boy gave my GEORGINA the bestest playte I’ve ever had!
  • A Chicken farmer in the reigon [sic] of Grimsby ontario who is a slut, likes DC and scares little children away.
Watch The Georgina scare children away.
  • a girl who has rats/mice in her room
"theres a rat", -she must be a georgina
  • a bloody fookin' funny fuckaaaaaaar whom will get killed if she shows her garter to anyone other than her wifeeeeee for lifeeeeeeee.
"she's such a georgina."
"yeahh,everythings going down south"
"check out her hannahs!"

It's funny - I always thought Georgina was the feminine form of George, which means Farmer. Clearly I was mistaken.

Anyway - I bet you go and do it yourself now! Go, on do it - and make sure you share the results with me ;o)