Scattered Strawberry Summer

If somebody would ever decide to throw me 80s themed suprise party I wouldn't mind. One of my guilty pleasures is some good old 80s hits, makes me want to dance. You should see my moves, they're totally silly and I look like I'm drunk.

So for my perfect 80s themed dance party  you definitely need these:

Never Gonna Give You Up
Living on the Prayer
500 Miles
Forever Young
Final Countdown
Girls Just  Want to Have Fun
Eye  of the Tiger
99 Luftballons
Our House
Eye of the Tiger

Thrown in a bit of Michael Jackson and we've got some good  stuff.

I'm in London again. I'm here for two day leadership training. I'm staying at a hotel, though I wish I just went home, even though it would mean I'd be home late and I'd need to get up very early to go back to London.

I went to Oxford Street but I have now decided I don't actually like shopping, I just like getting new things. Shopping is tiring, time consuming and seriously couldn't find anything I'd really like. If somebody could presort everything for me with things I might like, that would be great. I guess that's one of the reasons I tend to buy a lot of things online, so much easier to find anything.

I've been travelling more with work and I spend a bit of time on train, I use that time to read. Time passes much more quickly and I can keep up with my long year project too.

When I look at his works, I feel like I should really start painting again. Just purely for my own enjoyment.

My second week in my new job is finished (hail flexi time). I've been rather busy, a bit stressed,  very happy about the new role sitll.

I'm getting used to this role but I think it will take longer for other to get used to the fact I am now their line manager.

Next few weeks won't be any less busy. I will spend some time in London again, I will attend leadership training , which I am very looking forward  to, not only because I will be staying in a nice hotel in Covent Garden... I'm also going to middle management conference in Preston, not very exiting location but hey...business trip

I don't have any plans for my long weekend, I like it that way. Just do whatever I feel like doing without a care in a world.

I was away from my office for 3 days and I came back to this, yep  a colleague has sherlocked my monitor. I found it rather funny and thought it was quite  fitting, after last night's episode I'm still living in Sherlock's world.

And yes that flag says sarcasm, I needed it to point out when I'm being sarcastic... yep not all British people get sarcasm, weird, I know.

SPOILERS AHEAD


Back to Sherlock now, yesterday the final episode of series 3 was aired, what an episode it was. Previous 2 episodes that were very much character driven, light and humourous, this episode was very much the opposite. It was fast, plot driven and dark episode where we saw again Sherlock's sociopath side. There were some brilliant scenes, the most impressive was the scene where Sherlock was shot and had 3 seconds to figure out how to improve his chance of survival running around in his mind palace. We got to see Moriarty locked away deep in Sherlock's mind. Pure pure joy to watch it.

OK, I as many others thought Mary was going to die, but I guess it would have been too obvious but I wouldn't rule out her death in the next series. We've been warned of significant character death which was a bit of cheating really. Technically Sherlock was dead, but he pulled through. But does that surprise us? Moffat is known to lie.

CAM was incredibly creepy, interesting villain, but I wished he was more in that episode than he was. The surprise at the end  really got me.  I certainly miss Jim, Andrew Scott is excellent at playing crazy villain but I still don't think it means he's actually back. We'll see, we'll see.

This week I'm reading a book my SO got me for Christmas. It's An Appetite For Wonder: The Making of a Scientist - an autobiographic memoir by Richard Dawkins.  As you know, I love Richard Dawkins so I was very happy with this present.  

It's my first week in my new role and it's been intense. So many things to do and so much to learn.I'm in London till Friday for work. It's not as good as it sounds. I'm not doing anything special tonight, I will just read my book for my project 52 sitting on a cheap hotel bed. and that's it! Tomorrow I'll go to Oxford street and might meet sister of my SO who lives here.

I can't wait for Saturday. I love Saturdays.

 We met 2014 here as well. The wind blew smoke towards us so it obscured fireworks quite a bit as you can see in the picture above. We didn't stay long after fireworks have finished and it was good decision as on our way to hotel it started raining really badly and we got absolutely soaked.

                                      This is probably the only "Christmas Tree" we saw in Lisbon.

Overall the trip was good but the rubbish collectors strike ruined it a bit (rubbish was everywhere). I haven't booked any further holidays yet but I'd love to go to Italy, we'll see.

As part of my New Year resolutions, I decided to do project 52. At first I was thinking to do portrait every week but I think I won't be able to keep this up for the whole year and I'd rather actually read a book each week.

This week I read Happyslapped by a Jellyfish: The words of Karl Pilkington. I read it on our flight back to UK and it definitely made it more bearable. The first bit I laughed was this: "...I have been on quite a few holidays. Not cos I've wanted to, but because my girlfriend Suzanne likes it, so I always end up getting dragged along". It's the same with me and my SO.
The book is rather funny,same old Karl, some stories are quite familiar as he has already told them on Ricky Gervais Show, but it's still  laugh out loud funny.

I didn't do much else in Germany, everything was closed for holidays. We had a walk in central Dusseldorf on Christmas day, surprisingly there were quite a few people there but underground was absolutely deserted and it felt a bit creepy with nobody around! We also went to Wuppertal, it's ok but it was a bit boring with everything closed and not much too look at.

I had an early flight home and then two days later I was back there to fly to Lisbon with my SO to celebrate my actual birthday and New Years.

Happy New Year everyone!

I met 2014 in Lisbon at Praça do Comércio with my SO, but about that I'll tell you in my next post.
My year has already peaked with the long awaited (two years, it;s been two years!) Sherlock series 3. Quality of the site we were watching it on was rubbish and it stopped a few times but thankfully we didn't miss the most important bits.

SPOILERS AHEAD
















                                                                                                                                                                   So. Mark Gatiss is a funny man isn't he. Having a go at all the fans and their theories. I loved the first solution, I realised it was fake at this exact moment:




What a scene, what a scene.

It was probably the funniest episode so far and I enjoyed every minute of it. Sherlock is a lot more..humane.. he's making jokes and laughing from John's mustache, not something you'd hear from Sherlock in series 1, he has grown a lot but he still struggles to understand human nature.

A lot of people complaining about the fan service in this episode, but did people forget that A.C. Doyle resurrected Sherlock Holmes because of fan protests in the first place? You could  also say the whole series is a fan fiction, both Mark Gatiss and Stephen Moffat are huge fans of Sherlock Holmes just writing a very very good fanfiction. And I don't see anything wrong with that.


I'm not entirely sure the last solution is actually real and if we'll ever find out how he faked his death but the man thing is Sherlock is back!