Nightmare on Evelyn Street.

Frankly, Halloween did not live up to my abnormally high standards this year. There were no parties, no spontaneous trips to Venice and nor was there a single pumpkin to be had in the days leading up to all hallows eve. For a very short while Jenny and I contemplated going on a ghost walk around Peckham, but decided that our lives would be in safer hands if we declined. Still, I made the most of a bad situation and spent a fine evening at home, hiding behind a pillow so Jen could watch horror movies, wearing my Max costume, drinking orange hot chocolate and baking/eating festive cupcakes with pumpkins on top. Here have a recipe:

Ginger Cupcakes:
200g unsalted butter, diced, at room temperature
175g dark soft brown sugar
3 tablespoons black treacle
150ml semi-skimmed milk, at room temperature
4 pieces of stem ginger, drained and chopped
2 large eggs, beaten
300g self-raising flour, sifted
1 tablespoon ground ginger
Pinch of salt

• Preheat the oven to 160°C (fan)/180°C/350°F/gas mark 4 and line two 12-hole muffin trays with the appropriate size and number of cupcake cases.
• Melt the butter, sugar and treacle in a saucepan over a low heat. Cool briefly and then stir in the milk.
• Add the chopped ginger to the beaten eggs and then beat into the butter mixture. Sift the flour, ground ginger and salt and add to the warm mixture. Combine thoroughly.
• Carefully spoon the mixture into the cupcake cases, filling them to about two-thirds fill. Bake in the oven for 30-35 minutes. To check they are cooked, insert a skewer in the centre of one of the cakes - it should come out clean.

Ginger Fudge Icing:
140g unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
4 tablespoons ginger syrup, drained from a jar of stem ginger
300g icing sugar, sifted

• In a large mixing bowl beat the butter for a few minutes until really smooth, then add the remaining ingredients and beat again until the icing is smooth and creamy.
• Enjoy.

N/A.

I don't know what to say. Clearly some things can't be put into words and clearly (sometimes) it's best not to try. Right now I think the best thing to do is eat birthday cake and make lists/fun/the best of a bad situation/do and mend.

Megafuss.

Oh the witty transport puns. They just keep on coming.

It's just my luck (or lack thereof) that the greatest stories I have to tell, revolve around my rocky relationship with public transport and with that great "money-saver", Megabus (one part wonderful, two parts evil) in particular. Yesterday, we went to Cardiff for Emily's birthday. I had a lovely time; we ate at Old Orleans, drank sweet and sour cocktails and went to Glam. Emotions were high; I sat baffled and consoling in the bathroom and on the pavement and eventually we finished the night in KFC. A very nice/cold/standard night out. This morning we walked back into the centre of Cardiff and made a Nando's stop, so that Amber and Cat could tend their hangovers with chicken and perinaise. Then, following the quickest shopping spree ever I set off for the bus station and the 3:45 coach to London.

But wait. Did you say bus station? WRONG. Logical though it may seem, the megabus does not depart from Cardiff bus station. National Express? Sure. Twenty plus local services to Merthyr Tydfil? Why not! Megabus? NOOO. Thus it was, with fifteen minutes to go until ETD and nothing but the rough directions of a friendly Welsh bus conducter to go by, I found myself running down the road in the direction of the castle. With five minutes to spare I reached the castle, realised I had no idea where to go next and gave up. Ish. Rather than conceding and catching the train, I decided to walk about a bit and see whether I could find the megabus stop under my own steam (or indeed any bus-stop for that matter) and catch the next coach instead. I walked down one road, stopped a group of students (surely they travel on £1.50 buses) and was immediately pointed in the opposite direction. Walked down another road and the same thing happened again. Eventually, I found myself sitting on a wall, all but ready to cry and contemplating the next step. I looked around for some sort of divine intervention and realised that I was sitting on no other than the wall opposite Glam, where I had spent much of the previous night. Oh how the mighty have fallen. So, I rang Gaz and asked him to help me.

The story as followed involved shuffling into the Hilton Hotel, armed with rucksack, sleeping bag and Primark bag and looking like the dictionary definition of student; a clean-cut receptionist stepping out from behind his desk and directing me to a previously undiscovered bus-stop around the corner; sitting in Starbucks for two+ hours, wasting money on frappacinos and wi-fi cards, in order to access the tempremental megabus website, buy a new bus ticket and make it back to the bus-stop a couple of minutes before departure. Then there was the bus journey itself; four hours and a jaunt through Bristol, one-hundred-and-fifty pages of Don Quixote and when I arrived at London Victoria? Well, nothing says "Welcome to London" like a burning car on an empty back-street. What a day.