The Top Floor Flat

I am currently sitting on the London underground writing this – a marvel of technology made possible by my fabulous new Blackberry (Crackberry in every sense of the tongue-in-cheek nickname). After an embarrassingly lengthy delay since my last update, it seemed like a good idea to give this a go.

The list of things I’ve wanted to write about but just haven’t had time is growing ridiculously quickly so I must face the sad but realistic truth that I probably won’t get to them. So, without further ado, here are some of the things, in no particular order, I’ve been up to in London this month.

1. BBC Good Food Show – I attended this show last year and wrote about a number of vendors I liked. This year it has been re branded MasterChef Live and had, it seemed, fewer vendors, fewer people, and fewer freebies. While I came across a couple of my favourite stalls from last year, for the most part it seemed more like an exhibition of how the recession hit the food industry, rather than a celebration of local food and chefs.

2. Visitors – A good friend of my sister, who is studying in Paris, came to stay with me in London for a few days, giving me a chance to further perfect my whirlwind tour of the city. An addition she requested, although certainly not my choice as a Fulham FC local, was a stop at the famous Chelsea Football Club stadium.

3. Ping Pong – Ping Pong is a dim sum restaurant that has recently popped up on my radar for a number of reasons but I got a chance to visit with the Silicon Stilettos event and while there won a £50 voucher for a free dinner so got to return for the full service. Good on them, I’ll definitely be back – delicious!

4. Oxford Street Lights – I know I already wrote about this one but apparently using pictures from last year’s event wasn’t appreciated ;-). I took some pics of this year’s display so expect some photos here soon.

5. Enternships and Global Entrepreneur Week – Enternships is a great little company here in London that matches small startups with entrepreneurial and driven interns. For their launch party, and also to celebrate Global Entrepreneur Week (that’s this week!) they had a massive party at the famous London restaurant Floridita. The tech scene was out in force and it was great to see some of the people I’ve been missing lately by not having time to attend the tech functions around the city.

6. Lucky Voice Launch – In the past I wrote about the Kensington Roof Gardens, a posh club on the roof of a Kensington building. Last week I headed skyward again to celebrate the launch of Lucky Voice Karaoke’s new pop up parties, a karaoke party that comes to you. It’s a great idea but I’m rather hoping, for the sake of everyone else, they stay away from me! 😉

7. Tequila Tex-Mex – in my quest for decent London Mexican food, some friends and I decided to try Tequila Tex-Mex in Notting Hill. Mixed bag, but definitely a vast improvement on the disastorous Navajo Joe’s.

8. Meetings, meetings, meetings! – Recently my meetings for Spoonfed have been taking me all over the city and I’ve been learning about some great London clubs, theatres, agencies and areas. By far my favourite has been with the Lee Valley Park team in Walthamstow in East London where I got to learn about their Park by taking a walk through their nature reserve, visit their 50 horse riding barn and go ice skating in their rink. !est meeting ever!

9. Carnaby Street – one of the most famous shopping areas in London, Carnaby Street was having an open house and my friend and I decided to go check it out. Despite rubbish weather, it was fun to see the lights, Christmas displays, sales and music there to help celebrate the event. To wrap it all up, we had a delicious Indian food dinner, taking advantage of the special deals they were offering for diners that night. Yum :-).

10. Spoonfed – unsurprisingly Spoonfed is of course my main focus and it has been such an exciting last few weeks! Our team is growing, our office is happy and our growth is unbelievable. I’ll have a lot of exciting Spoonfed news to share over the next few weeks, and can’t believe how quickly this year has flown!

And so, with that quite high level recap of some of the things I can remember, I feel like I’m doing a slightly better job of documenting my London November. And what perfect timing… Here my tube stop :-).