Wednesday 23 February 2011

Al-bag & Austin (see what I did there?)

Once upon a time in a magical land of Nike dunks and false eyelashes, a girl went for lunch at an American diner on Carnaby Street and had a brilliant idea. Fast forward 18 months and the magical idea beans have turned into a magical t-shirt selling beanstalk, aka Alberg & Austin.

Named after a lost teddy and a man she once met in an actual American diner, Alberg & Austin is the brainchild of the lovely Caitriona Brown. The brand boasts a range of limited edition t-shirts, designed by a bunch of the UK’s top up-and-coming designers, and is aiming to achieve great things in 2011.

Since its launch, Alberg has been steadily gaining a following of loyal fans and has been dabbling in everything from markets on Brick Lane to music festivals in London’s parks. They have a whole host of DJ and music friends and are currently supporting Lincoln-based band Dancing Lotus on their London tour.


As if all that wasn’t enough, Alberg have just released a couple of canvas bags (below) which are perfect for the approaching summer (it IS almost summer, please just humour me) and you can get your hands on one right here!


Remember, everything is limited edition – once it’s gone it’s gone – so BUY ONE NOW OR FOREVER HOLD YOUR PEACE!!! (apologies if that was too forceful)


Anyway, the moral of this post is that Alberg & Austin is cool. The tees are cool. The bags are cool. Fact. So get buying and spread the Alberg love! Bag one now before it’s too late… they’re bags of fun… sorry.


Ooh and also you can follow Alberg & Austin on Facebook and Twitter – stay up-to-date with the lates
t news and discounts! It’ll change your life! :)




Tuesday 15 February 2011

I Choo- Choo- Choose You… NOT!!!


Ahhhh Valentines Day. A day for romantics to gush over their feelings for that special someone and for the rest of us to be guilt tripped into spending copious amounts of money on generic merchandise that hundreds of other people will also be forced into giving their current flame. And they say romance is dead!

Having spent a substantial amount of time sitting in a pub off Oxford Street this weekend, my good friend Kate and I came to the conclusion that all these lovey slushy vibes flying about the place at the moment need to be balanced out with some good old fashioned ranting. Otherwise the universe will implode. Fact. So the following is for the greater good. Huzzah!

This Valentines Day, instead of declaring our undying love for anyone, we have put together a list dedicated to the one thing we both absolutely detest. And what better way to start than to paraphrase the infamous Sonnet 43…

National Rail, how do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways…

1 – Your Shoddy at Best Service

Travelling in peak hours is similar to when you’re in the countryside and you witness a farmer herding 500-odd sheep into the back of small van. All packed in like sardines, all standing and all with no other choice but to endure their journey to the slaughterhouse. The only difference is that they’re being slaughtered and we’re on our way to work… maybe the situations are more alike than I first thought.

I guess the only comfort we can take from the whole situation is that at least we’re not as bad as Japan. Those crazy cats actually employ people to squash travellers into their carriages. Thank god we’re not at that point. Although I’m sure it’s not far off. After all, who doesn’t love a game of human Tetris at 6.30am on a drizzly Monday morning? And it’s even better is the summer months when you have to do it all pressed up against the armpit of some sweaty businessman while he attempts to read a broadsheet using only one hand.

2 – Your Contaminated Carriages

In comparison, when travelling off-peak you’re generally treated to an almost empty carriage – seats galore! An ENTIRE carriage all to yourself. Perfect? No. Because no matter where you choose to sit, sods law dictates that you’ll pick the seat that some sticky-fingered kid will have spilt their apple juice all over. And will their teenage mum have used her fake Burberry scarf to clean it up? No. She’ll have stuck the gum she was chewing to the seat just for good measure. So there you are in an empty carriage with juice soaking into your jeans and gum sticking to your arse.

3 – Delays

The only way to top the above situations is to add delays into the mix. Delays are the perfect excuse to cancel trains and reduce carriage numbers, because this is the best way to make the public’s day just that little bit more miserable.

The best thing about delays is the questionable excuse that inevitably accompanies them. Here’s a few I can think of off the top of my head:

“Awaiting a member of staff at …”
“A signalling failure at …”
“A fallen tree on the line at…”

“Ice on the tracks”
“Just nipping to Starbucks for a frappuccino”
“A southerly breeze in eastern Kenya triggering a butterfly effect and causing a leaf to land next to one of the rails”

Ok, so maybe the last two are just exaggerations but it still doesn’t change the fact that no matter what the weather’s doing, National Rail will always find some reason to FREAK OUT and screw up the entire rail network. A bit like that bit in A Bug’s Life where the leaf lands on the ant line: “I’m LOOOSSSTTTT!”

*sigh* …I’m not even going to start about the annual UK Snowmageddon fiasco. Can open, worms everywhere.

4 – Replacement Hell-Buses

The mere mention of replacement buses sends a shiver down my spine. There is literally nothing worse. It’s basically the whole hellish train scenario but placed on a slower, bumpier and grubbier form of transit. So when you turn up at the station eager to get to wherever you’re going only to find you have to spend double the time listening to screaming toddlers and avoiding weirdo’s, it’s a lot like being told you’re being taken to Nando’s instead of The Wolseley.

Not only that, but a journey that was originally going to take you two hours is now going to take you six. You could fly to New York in that time. In fact you could fly to the Costa Brava, spend an hour on the beach and fly back in that time. Replacement buses: just say no.

5 – Stupid Staff

Here’s an area I particularly take issue with. Now, I know that working on a train that goes back and forth from the same two destinations all day must be pretty uninspiring, but if you’re going to work in a customer-facing role you should really learn how to interact with other humans. And that means being able to a – understand English, and b – speak English.

A couple of weeks ago, when all the trains were either delayed or cancelled due to a leaf being on the line somewhere in Somerset, I finally managed to find a train leaving within the next five minutes and with my home town being the first stop. The main board said so, the board on the platform said so and the guard standing by the train where I got on also said so. Brilliant!

Only it wasn’t brilliant at all. Half an hour later, as my train should’ve been pulling into my stop, we were still going at full speed. Then we slowed down but only enough to see my station move past me at 10mph then fade into the darkness. 45 minutes later and there I was at my mystery destination, pretty much on the south coast, and having to fork out more money in order to get home. Thanks a lot National Rail. Not only had the doofus on the platform lied to me, but the minion of satan who checked my ticket on the train also failed to mention I was on the wrong one.

6 – Prices

It’s like paying to be kicked in the face. I know people who pay over a third of their salary in order to commute, and what do they get in return? All of the above.

Every January, in some kind of sadistic attempt to thwart any New Year glee, up go the train fares. Fair enough it's the start of the year so putting them up then sort of makes good sense, but why pick a time when everyone’s broke, slightly fatter than they should be and upset that they have to go back to the office? Why? WHY????

Then there’s the weather to contend with. January – the month equivalent of finding a load of grotty tealeaves in the bottom of your mug: miserable and surprising in a bad way. January guarantees rain, gales and snow. So when you’re stuck on a train just outside of Clapham Junction because there’s 1mm of snow in Essex, you begin to resent the fact that you’ve actually paid through the nose for this experience. Luckily though, thanks to the amount of morbidly obese people taking up two seats on trains these days, if you're stuck long enough for cannibalism to become an option, be safe in the knowledge that the fatties will last you at least a week. Every cloud and all that!

So in a nut shell… National Rail, YOU SUCK.

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! :)



Saturday 12 February 2011

You Can Have Your Cake and Eat It Too

I've been trying to write this post for over a week now. There are five documents sitting on my desktop containing half-written ramblings about various things but I guess I’m not ready to share them with the world just yet. So I've resorted to writing about cake.

Those of you who know me will already be aware of this, but to me cake is pretty much the exact opposite of what kryptonite is to Superman. If you buy me cake I will be your friend. I'd be more comfortable spending £30,000 on a magnificent dream wedding cake and getting married in the loading bay of a Tesco Metro than having a swish location with hundreds of guests. If I almost drowned I wouldn't need a lifeguard to resuscitate me, I'd need a cupcake. Well... maybe not, but you get the idea. Aaanyway... Over the past few years I've been slowly sampling all the cupcake goodness that London has to offer. There was one weekend last summer when I sampled three places in one weekend. Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Done. Don't judge me.

So in an attempt to put my useless knowledge on cake to good use, I’ve compiled a list for anyone in the market for a London-based cupcake (or five). Here’s a run-down of the places I’ve visited and a bit about them, starting with worst and ending in the best. Aaaaaaand GO!

Primrose Bakery www.primrosebakery.org.uk

This is a place I'd often been told about (apparently people like Kate Moss like it), so when I found a discarded £5 note on the floor of an ice cream parlour in Covent Garden one day, I celebrated by skipping off to the legendary bakery.

Admittedly it was nearing the end of the day and there wasn't too much on offer, but I picked out the best three and raced home, pretty smug and excited about my technically free treats! Only it wasn’t a treat. It was probably one of the biggest food-related disappointments of my life. Dry sponge combined with icing that had that ‘I've-been-sitting-on-the-counter-since-9am’ vibe about it. Not good.

That being said, they weren’t the worst cupcakes I'd ever eaten*. But still, I’m glad I didn't spend my own hard-earned cash on them. Maybe I was just unlucky. Who knows. But if you’re aiming to try them out I’d recommend going earlier in the day rather than later!

*FYI – I didn’t eat all three, the other two were donated to hungry flatmates.

Candy Cakes www.candycakes.com

I think it was the brightly coloured promise of food-colouring related hyperactivity that attracted me to this place. Their window looks like it’s part of Willy Wonka's magical kingdom and, I’m not being funny but, who could resist something like that?!

To be honest, I can’t offer too much about them. The cake is good and the icing could be better, but it’s the sweets on the top that are the best bit! Fortunately Cyber Candy is just down the road so it’s a win-win situation.

Ms Cupcake www.mscupcake.co.uk

I came across this little gem several months ago whilst helping out on a friend’s stall at the Backyard Market on Brick Lane. Having spent a large part of the day sitting around and slowly slipping into a hypothermic state, I went off in search of food and ended up at this stall in the Old Truman Brewery.

Although I was a little wary at first about buying something vegan, my body was telling my brain that this is what I needed to eat in order to carry on and so I eventually opted for a chocolate cake with strawberry frosting. To my amazement, it was pretty damn good. If I hadn’t have known it was vegan I would have never noticed the difference. To this day I still don’t understand what was in it ingredients-wise but I guess it’s all irrelevant really. Cake: good. Icing: good. If you’re in the vicinity go and treat yourself!

Hummingbird Bakery hummingbirdbakery.com

Another of the famous cupcake bakeries in London but unlike Primrose, this does not disappoint! There’s always a steady stream of people going in and out (a good sign!) and you emerge carrying your cake in a little white box with a metal handle. I know the packaging doesn’t matter in the slightest but, in this case, its simplicity appealed to mine.

They have a whole range of cupcakes smothered with fluffy butter cream and cream cheese frostings, as well as various brownies and whoopie pies. It’s a real testament to your own self-control going into that place and coming out with only one item. Perfect for indulging.

Bea's of Bloomsbury www.beasofbloomsbury.com

I visited this place after it was recommended to me by a friend. Rather than opting for just a regular cupcake, my partner in crime and I went all out by ordering the full-on afternoon tea. Sandwiches, scones, meringues, brownies, cupcakes and some questionable pink squidgy stuff which I concluded was a sweet imitation of a human lung. It all comes piled onto a snazzy tiered stand (see the photo below), the tea flows and the good times roll. The perfect way to spend a drizzly, grey afternoon off work in the City.

Fortnum & Mason www.fortnumandmason.com

Not necessarily the first place you'd think of when it comes to cupcakes, but definitely boasting one of the best bakeries in London. I LOVE this shop even though I can’t afford 98% of its stock. It’s one of my happy places and my dream is to one day buy one of their hampers.

The day I sampled their cupcakes I had initially gone in to show my friend the amazing wedding cakes they have on sale (not because I’m itching to get married – I couldn’t be further from it!). Somehow, only a few minutes later, there we were standing at the cake counter discussing whether it was reasonable or not to spend £1.20 on a mini cupcake. Clearly there was no argument. We bought two cupcakes and have never looked back. They may have been expensive, but it’s all relevant – quality not quantity right? They were pretty amazing. Next time I plan to get a full sized one!

Lola's www.lolas-kitchen.co.uk

This is my go-to cupcake place. If I could move in I would. There must be plenty of room under the counter for me to sleep but apparently that’s against health a safety regulations so, alas, the dream will never become reality.

They have all the flavours you could wish for, mini cupcakes, themed cupcakes, etc. You can even order a full cake-sized cupcake which comes with a bunch of smaller cupcakes piled on the top for things such as birthdays, parties or slow Sunday afternoons. Magical. My personal favourites are the Blueberry, Red Velvet and Oreo cupcakes – with them you simply can’t go wrong!

I also love that Lola’s make good use of Twitter - they regularly tweet a question offering a free cupcake to the first six people who come into the store with the correct answer. Brilliant marketing + free cake. What’s not cool about that? One day I will be in the vicinity, I will know the answer and I will be one of the first six. I shall have my cake and I shall eat it.

Right. That’s enough about cupcakes for today. Hopefully the next post will be about something slightly more interesting and less pointless.