All The Colours

Blood…sweat…tears…a little urine… (No, no urine really)…

…and wallah! I have written a song. It’s called “All The Colours”. I have videoed myself playing it, although I must warn you the quality is shocking and my facial expressions are alarming. I couldn’t upload it straight to this blog, as it wants to charge me like £50. I don’t have that kind of money, I’m unemployed here!

Hopefully this link will work…

http://s1102.photobucket.com/albums/g447/KarenAnneEverett/?action=view&current=allthecolours004.mp4

The instrumentation will change for the final version, I think there’ll be some strings in there, with less of an acoustic guitar sound and more of an almost instrumental backing.

Here are the lyrics so far:

I have a feeling
That this moment’s lost in time
No seconds left to go over my lines
I want to ad lib with you
But the stage is set tonight
I interject

All my life, you’ve been beside me
And your voice keeps me warm in my heart
And I know that you will find me
It just takes me much longer to start

All the colours x 3
We’ll see

This is a feeling
And it’s captured in your eyes
Like patterns in the window glint in the sunrise
Tell me you didn’t know
That I’m in love with you
All of you

All my life, you’ve been beside me
And your voice keeps me warm in my heart
And I know that you will find me
It just takes me much longer to start

You will never find x 3
Someone like me

When the sunset breaks the violet sky
And the indigo passioned sea will rise
The red hot fire rushes through my eyes
I feel alive

All my life, you’ve been beside me
And your voice keeps me warm in my heart
And I know that you will find me
It just takes me much longer to start

You will never find x 3
Someone like me

All the colours x 3
We’ll see

xx

Bonfire Night Pix..

 

xx

A Good Pick

Sorry t0 share this with the world, but sometimes, isn’t it really wonderful to pick your nose? That glorious feeling of seek and destroy, finding a good splodge and removing it from your nostril – excellent.

My friend Rachel (the cakey bakey one) totally agrees with me, and anyone who says they don’t enjoy picking their nose is LYING!

Fireworks

Halloween and fireworks night are always over way too quickly in my mind. I like to prolong the autumnal celebrations to hold off the fear of Christmas for as long as possible. But now there’s nothing stopping Christmas hype taking over the world…

We (our household – that’s me, Joe and Nathan) decided earlier on in the week that we should hold a celebratory fireworks extravaganza on bonfire night (Nov 5th for you non-brits), with a bonfire and all. I woke up Saturday morning to find half a torso in our living room! Turns out Joe and Nathan had decided to burn their old clothes in the form of a guy. So over the course of the morning, amongst other things, I watched Joe and Nath construct the rest of guy, including using a cauliflower for a head…

Our mate Guy

After which we revelled in puns such as “Well, it looks like he has cauliflower ear”, and “I think he’s turning into a bit of a vegetable” – (hahaha we’re really funny aren’t we).

I really like entertaining and I jumped at the opportunity to make food for everyone, so I invited my friend Bec (the arty one) over to help prepare the dishes. And this was our bonfire night menu:

Salt and pepper roasted jacket potatoes with cream cheese and chive topping, sweet chilli sausages, and curried red lentil & sweet potato soup. So that was the main course…. Then came the real treat – dessert! I’d decided to go for something fireworky and childish, so the whole dessert was designed around popping candy! I made milk and white chocolate bark with toffee popcorn and popping candy, all broken into smores – it was delish! We’d also dipped some marshmallows in the leftover white and milk chocolate and then the popping candy as a kind of appetiser if you will. (We also made a backup plate of bark without the popping candy, but I consumed it today)…

I’ll treat you to the recipe for the soup and the bark:

Curried red lentil and sweet potato soup:

Curried red lentil and sweet potato soup

1 white onion
1 sweet potato
2 carrots
half a red chilli
a knob of fresh ginger
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp cinnamon
a few cardamom pods
a good slug of red lentils
boiling water
salt & pepper
1 lime
a bunch of fresh coriander

1. Boil the lentils in a good amount of water for approx. 20 mins.
2. While you’re doing this, chop the onion, potato, carrots, chilli, ginger and garlic and fry them in a little oil for approx. 5-10 mins.
3. Add the dry spices to the frying pan and fry for a further 10 mins until the onions are translucent but not browned.
4. Add the fried items (but not the cardamom pods) to the red lentils (which should have doubled in size), make sure you scrape all the dry spices from the pan into the lentils.
5. Boil the whole lot together for approx. 20-30mins until all the veg are squidgy.
6. Puree (or pulverize as I prefer to say) with a hand blender until really smo0th.
7. Then reheat and add salt, pepper, coriander and lime juice until spiced to satisfaction.
8. Serve in mugs with plastic spoons! – That’s how we did it

Popping bark:

Popping bark

2 packets milk chocolate
2 packets white chocolate
1 bag toffee popcorn
lots of popping candy (I don’t know how you’d buy it where you are, but I went to our local sweet shop – Mr Simms – and bought 4 packets each a different flavour)

1. Chop up the milk chocolate and put in a bowl – heat on high in the microwave, taking out every 30 secs to stir, until fully melted. Do the same with the white chocolate in a separate bowl.
2. Meanwhile grease up a baking tray or some sort of flexible flat surface with either butter or oil. You could probably use flat baking parchment as well.
3. Liberally spread the milk and white chocolate onto the tray making a flat surface, retaining some for drizzling over the top.
4. Drop the toffee popcorn and popping candy into the chocolate surface, retaining some popping candy for topping.
5. Drizzle over more milk and white chocolate.
6. Top with more popping candy.
7. Leave to solidify (I put ours in the fridge) for a few hours.
8. When solid, attempt to remove the bark from the tray (you might have to heat the base of the tray by sticking it over the hob for a bit – don’t do this if you used baking parchment)!
9. Break it up into smores (I used a kitchen knife).
10. Serve!

Back to fireworks…

After food we all mooched into the back garden to burn Guy. I’d actually become quite attached to Guy throughout the day, it seemed a shame to burn him…

Guy's hot stuff!

We then moved onto fireworks. Joe (the firestarter) was in charge of the display, which was pretty bloomin’ good!

Baby you're a firework...

Then there were sparklers – there had to be really, it wouldn’t be complete without them!

Sparklers

And that pretty much was the end of the entertainment – then came beer.

All in all, a great bonfire night for all… except Guy.

I’ll do another post with all our bonfire night pics on… watch this space…

Last week’s temping

Was actually really good, glad it happened, wanna be doing more of that… It only lasted 3 days though, I think I worked too quickly.

Interview

So I had my interview with the BVA on Tuesday, but I don’t think I got it. They were meant to call me back on Friday and they didn’t. In the cold dark miserable world of job-seeking, I don’t think that’s normally taken as a god sign…

Next week

I might get a part-time job in a shop, we’ll see…

I leave you with…

…the fact that I just made oat biscuits – yeah! xx

Halloween Dream

It’s Halloween tomorrow so HAPPY HALLOWEEN to you all! (Or SPOOKY HALLOWEEN if you prefer, it’s your choice, take it or leave it).

I made a cheeky pumpkin carving, and yes you should be incredibly impressed, this is the first pumpkin carving I have EVER done in my life…

Pumpkin!

I was so chuffed! Incidently I just had the biggest camera-computer malfunction, it was literally touch and go. There were raised voices (well just 1 raised voice – mine) and expletives. Crikey, it was quite an ordeal! So much so that I had to actually go and buy a yorkie. I’m eating it now. It’s really good.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, yorkies aren’t for girls… Well I challenge ANY man to eat a yorkie quicker than I just did. Hell, I could even fit in more, I laugh, nay, quaff at your yorkie, ha ha ha!

I’m getting off topic here…

Back to pumpkins… I carved some little ones too, wanna see?

Munchkins

They’re dinky. In the shop (Sainsburys) they were marketed as munchkins, which is just so cute!

I think Halloween is a really underrated holiday in the UK. In the USA it’s massive, people dress up and have a right old jolly time of it – we just get drunk – nice. I made a slight effort to dress up this year and felt sorely out of place amongst the group I went out with last night! Last year was amazing, we all made an astonishing effort and really looked the part. I dressed up as Lady Gaga, it was literally awesome.

Temporary employment

So next week I actually have some temporary employment! This will inevitably make me sound like a nerd, but I’m actually really looking forward to it. I’m even a little bit… dare I say it… excited?…

It’s only data entry but I’m just delighted to be leaving the house. I also have an interview on Tuesday, which I believe I’ve already mentioned in a previous post. However, I cannot for the life of me find the job description for the role I applied for! It’s for Marketing Officer at the BVA in London and I’m really excited to be invited to the interview, I’ve done my homework and researched the organisation, looked thoroughly through the website, etc etc, but it would be the cherry on the cake if I could find the role description…

This is a major downside of unemployment, having no reason to leave the house. I could potentially spend all week indoors if I didn’t force myself to leave the nest sometimes. Not that my home isn’t lovely, it’s just the outside world is really something isn’t it?

Musical whimsical fantastical…

I appear to have a wealth of songwriting inspiration at the moment, which is always a good thing. I have half written a folky sounding song and intend to finalise the words this week. Once I’ve written the bare structure of it (without thinking through the instrumentation or other such things) I’ll record it just me and guitar and see if I can upload it so you can hear. We’ll take it from there. Would be great to get some opinions once it’s uploaded!

I never heard back from Thorntons about me gigging there – boo. Although I don’t feel as bothered as I probably should…

Itchy feet

No guys, I do NOT have a rash!

A foot

Following on from being bored with sitting around on my ever expanding arse all day long, I’ve been really thinking about this travelling malarkey and have come to the conclusion that it sounds grand. There’s only 1 place I really want to go to and that’s America… and while I’m there I may as well visit Canada, it would be rude not to!

In true Karen style (that’s me) I would like all this to happen immediately. THAT MEANS NOW! But I do feel really selfish for wanting to do this, however many times people keep telling me it’s not. It’s just that I know my parents will be upset at me for wanting to go, and I know it will upset the delicate household balance I live in because while I’m living with my boy and his friend they’re able to save up to go travelling themselves, which they wouldn’t be able to do if I left. Although now I’ve just written that down I’ve realised that what’s happening is that I’m forfeiting my dreams to support theirs. That’s not fair is it? But if I follow mine, I doubt they’ll be able to follow theirs.

I am in a pickle people, a little help here?? Please?? I don’t want to hurt anyone but I want to do what I want too!

Arrangements for next week

I MUST remember to record Due South, or life will not be worth living!! (Melodrama – gotta love it)

Peace out y’all xx

A package awaits…

I’ve just had a surprise package delivered here for my friend Vicky, I’m pretty sure it’s nail varnish, oh God how I want to open it!…

This is the same frustrating feeling I used to get when Avon orders were delivered to my house. It literally used to take all my will power to not open them and use them myself!

Spicy sweetcorn soup

I made spicy sweetcorn soup earlier, really tasty, although I think it would be even nicer with a swirl of natural yoghurt or creme fresh, and some coriander sprinkled on top. Anywho, here’s the recipe (ends up making about 3 bowlfulls of soup):

Ingredients

1 average leek
4 shallots
2 cloves garlic
half red chilli (seeds removed or left in depending on how hot you like it)
1 large potato
a small knob of fresh ginger
1 carrot
1 stick celery
a large amount of sweetcorn (I used frozen but any kind will have the same effect, it’s probably nicest fresh off the cob)
1 cube veg stock
salt & pepper
tsp veg oil
boiling water

Method

1. Heat the oil in a large pan, then fry all the vegetables, the chilli, garlic and ginger for around 5 minutes to soften them.
2. Crumble in the veg stock cube and add enough boiling water from a kettle to cover all the veg in the pan.
3. Bring to the boil, then simmer for 20 minutes.
4. Take off the heat and pulverize (I couldn’t think of a better word for this bit) using a hand blender.
5. Reheat and add salt and pepper to taste.
6. Administer the soup into bowls (I managed to fill 3)
7. Consume!

As I said above, I think it would be even nicer if it was even creamier, with some natural yoghurt or creme fresh, and a touch of coriander wouldn’t go amiss. But it’s a tasty soup all the same.

After much searching, I have found my camera – hoorah! Here is a picture of the fabled soup (there’s only 2 bowls because the third met its end in my belly…)

Spicy Sweetcorn Soup

As you can see it’s a delightful sunshine yellow colour – great for slurping. Please feel free to share this recipe with friends, family, colleagues, even enemies, hell, it might even stop them from hating you!

Temporary assignments and other interviews

After a drought lasting several weeks, I suddenly seem to be inundated with calls about work, temping, permanent positions, etc etc. Good news people!

On Tuesday I was invited to attend an interview in London for a digital marketing role – all good stuff, except the interview only took about 10 minutes and I’d travelled all the way to London! I hope something comes of it, otherwise I will be ANGRY!!

Yesterday I received a call from a temp agency in Witham who asked me to attend an interview this morning – great! I got back from Witham at 10am today, I think this is a positive step people.

Then I checked my emails and I’ve been invited to an interview for a role of Marketing Officer at BVA in London! This will take place at 12:45pm on Tuesday 1st November – eep! Better brush up on the old interview skills and such…

So when I said inundated above there, I really did just mean 3 things… I really must stop exaggerating…

Empowerment

You know when you’ve been waiting for something and you don’t know what that thing is, but when it comes you realise and it makes a huge difference even though to someone else it’s totally insignificant? Well yesterday I had one of those things. I can’t really explain what it was, it was just really important and it signified a turning point in my life (wow this is getting deep)!

I suddenly felt like it was time I started doing something for myself. Like it was ok to start taking care of what I need for a change. I have to say, I’m a typical woman, I tend to care about other people over myself, sometimes to the detriment of myself, which is really bad because that never helps anyone. But yesterday I decided no more! So now I am on a mission to just have plain good old-fashioned fun for me and no one else! The only problem is I don’t have any money to have fun with. Rats.

Free fun

OK my mission over the next week, should I choose to accept it, is to research things that are fun and free or only require a very small cost.

Wish me luck!

Mess

This place is really messy – check it out:

Really Messy!

Man I hate cleaning and tidying up xx

Happy Monday Everyone…

…And welcome to the last week in October! Yes, as of tomorrow it’s officially 2 months until Christmas – yes you did hear me correctly – yes it is terrifying isn’t it.

PANIC!

Cleanliness and other things

I think you’ll all be pleased to hear that our shower is FINISHED!! This means that no longer shall we remain smelly beasts in this house. No longer shall the stench of yesteryear prevail! However I am still sitting in my pajamas and it is midday…

Unemployment prospects

Yesterday (Sunday) I went to our local shops with my friend Rachel (just one more plug, promise it will be quick! – Rachel is an excellent maker of pretty celebration cakes and cupcakes, check her out at www.cakesfromrachelxx.com). We mooched, drank tea and coffee, and the great news is that I spontaneously decided to go for a part-time job in our local Body Shop. So it looks like I’ll be doing this part-time from now until Christmas! Now, I’ve still classed this as unemployment prospects because it’s not a career. That’s the whole point of this blog, it’s a move away from a traditional career. Besides, if I only work under 15 hours a week, I think I’m still eligible for job seekers allowance? Maybe? One can hope…

Musicianshit

Something I’ve probably not mentioned before, I am a bit of a typical struggling musician. I got my music degree in the summer of 2006 and since then have pretty much done absolutely nothing of worth with it. Having tried teaching, a regular office job, marketing, being an independent Avon representative and shop jobs, I have finally after 5 years of trying to make it in a traditional job in the big bad world, ended up right back where I started. It was this time 5 years ago that I remember facing a crisis of unemployment, knowing that the pressure was on from all sides to select a career and make enough money to settle down, knowing that I’d just come out of a turbulent relationship and I needed to calm down and move on, and not really wanting to hurt anyone in the process of doing what I knew was right. Consequently I ended up not moving at all. That’s the funny thing about having too many ideas, someone very wise once told me that the worst thing is to have too many ideas, because it’s paralysing! You can’t pick one over the other because you don’t know if one is more right than the other.

Do I stay or do I go now?..

The right thing at the time sounds ridiculous to other people, but it was right for me. I wanted to get as far away from everyone I had known before as I could and start completely fresh in  new place with all new people, somewhere fun I could pursue my dreams. Now, doesn’t that sound like a mighty pipe dream! I wanted to move to California. I was all set to do it. Then through certain circumstances that arose at that time, I ended up having to face a choice, do I stay or do I go now?

California

I ended up staying, thinking that surely this is the right thing to do, unfortunately my gut kept on telling me otherwise, I stupidly ignored it. 5 years on from that moment in time, and that feeling has not gone, it’s just gotten stronger and more frustrating.

Annoyingly it is in fact ni on impossible to move to or work in America if you are a UK citizen. There appears to be very few options:

1)   Camp America – now this looks really fun, if you like kids… It also seems to be aimed at people a lot younger than me, maybe that’s just me being picky though, I’m aware that I am a raving perfectionist!

2)   Bunac volunteer – this way you’re on a scheme, although you’re not earning any money…

3)   Travelling with no agenda – at the moment, this seems like the best option, because you’re free to make your own decisions and choices once you’re out there, you can meet anyone you want and if your trip takes certain twists and turns you can just ride the current. This is the option that will take the most convincing other people (i.e. my family) as they will no doubt want to know my exact location at any one time and know when I’m coming home and what’s happening next. Unfortuntely this is exactly what I’m trying to escape from. Is it really so selfish to want my freedom? The freedom to decide what I really want to do, who I really want to be? I only want to try my best, is that selfish? It feels as if it shouldn’t be, but my family will see it that way. I don’t know how to get around this, any advice would be welcome guys…

4)   Become insanely good at something and become invaluable to the American economy (ha!)

Have you ever put off doing something you know you have to do, and tried to cover it up and ignore it with lots of other things? If you have, then you’ll know that anything you try to do in denial ends up failing. Hence my life over the past 5 years. The longer you postpone something inevitable, the worse the fall out when it happens. Because it WILL happen eventually, if it was meant to be it was meant to be, and nothing will be able to stop it. You catch my drift?

Gig success!

So back to Sunday’s mooching trip…

Whilst at our local shopping village on Sunday I also spontaneously popped into Thorntons and asked them if they’d have me play covers of cheesy pop songs for an hour or so in their cafe area. SUCCESS! I exchanged contact details with the manager of the shop with a view to arranging a suitable slot sometime this week!

Cheese

I promise to let you know how it goes. I haven’t performed in public in years and I’m actually quite scared, I’m sure it will be fine though.

Tell you what, I’ll record it and upload it onto YouTube so you can see for yourselves, watch this space!

Due South

This show is brilliant – enough said.

Due South

Love! xx

Humble beginnings…

So today we’re having our bathroom refitted by a very jolly chap named George, in fact, I just heard him grunt from upstairs. It’s nice to have some different people in our house for a change, breaks up the hum drum of just me, the tv and the cat.

A typical messy shower - this is not our shower!

Unemployment prospects

Yes unemployment is on the rise in the UK, with the worst hit being incredibly intelligent women in their 20’s, this unfortunately includes myself. I say unfortunately, but I’ve actually never felt more fortunate! Yesterday (which was a Friday – a regular boring working day for most) I had a really lovely day out wth friends. You see, the wonderful thing is, that since losing my job in September, I’ve discovered that it’s only around half the people I know who actually work 9 – 5, the rest of them are either unemployed like me, self employed, working irregular hours, or working from home, one is even going back to university in London, which is where I ended up yesterday…

How to make it in the big city

After meeting my friend Bec for coffee (Bec is a talented surface pattern designer – check out her blog here: littletree-blog.blogspot.com, shameless plug **cough cough** who said that??) I gently persuaded her to come to London with me to meet another friend Charlotte (Charlotte is also a talented surface pattern designer/illustrator: check out her website here: www.charlottedaydesign.com, another plug – who keeps inserting these!?…) So we formulated a plan: Bec would take her car home, I would walk back to my place (I live right in town), pick up my car, drive to Bec’s to pick her up, drive back to mine, leave the car and walk to the station. Success! We caught the train to London. We arrived in London around 2.30pm, ready to mooch around the V&A museum – incidently, I’d never been there before, it’s really swish!

So we had a great time at the museum, it was so nice to leave the house, especially to go somewhere so stylish and arty. Of course Bec and Charlotte chatted about all things art. Now, I’m no artist, sure I like art (well I like pretty colourful things at least) but I know nothing about it. Bec and Charlotte are pros, and they have very similar interests – needless to say a large portion of their arty conversation was going over my head, but it was still nice to appreciate my surroundings with friends.

The British condition

After a mighty cultural injection we decided to sit down in the V&A cafe (which looks like a period ball room) to tea and cakes, except I was healthy and had a fritata and salad. Then we moved on to alcohol. No matter where I go or what I do, most activities gravitate towards alcohol, it’s the British condition. We ended up in the Tavern at London Bridge, which is the only pub I’ve ever been to in London, and I’ve only been there twice. Second time around, it was good but busy! Charlotte’s boyfriend and his brother turned up to even out the genders. Even so, we spent a good, healthy amount of time talking about how dreadful men can be (sorry men, some of you are lovely)!

West side

We left the Tavern shortly after 9 and arrived at Stratford way way too early for our connecting train, therefore Westfield and fast food was in order. We munched our way through burger king fries and pancakes with syrup – yum, before hitching our ride home.

And the moral of this story is…

Everything is best enjoyed with friends. Pancakes are best enjoyed at moments of severe weakness. London is best enjoyed in flat shoes. Burger King fries are the best french fries in the whole wide world, I implore you to prove to me otherwise! I also took away the great lesson that most of the people I’m close to are just like me, I guess that’s why we’re friends. We all want something more than just 9-5. We all want to make our mark on the world, rather than toiling away at a profession that is ultimately meaningless. I’ve come to realise that right here, right now, my unemployment is a blessing, and I need to use this time to start something meaningful before it’s too late.

The Cafe at the V&A museum

The end?

Oh it never ends.

xx