West London - Wood Lane - BBC Television Centre

This weekend my friend invited me to the BBC Television Centre to watch a live taping of So You Think You Can Dance.  As a dancer, I was pretty excited to see this taping, but soon realised the dancing wasn't anything to be excited about.  Let's put it this way, if the UK dancers were auditioning for the US version, they wouldn't make it past the bloopers stage.

Anyhow, that's not the main focus of this post. I'm not much of a reality TV watcher, but seeing a 'live' taping of a reality show made me realise just how not 'real' it is.  I'm not even sure if the tears I saw from the loser were real. It was definitely 'recorded' in front of a live studio audience.

To start, they taped the group dance that comes on before the results show before the show even started. Did a few of Cat's lines then as well. Then we waited for ages and the actual show started. They did all of that and opened the phone lines for voting. We waited for about 30 mins (and I missed Doctor Who while we were there waiting!!) before they played the pre-recorded bits. The 'live' band was actually filmed the day before and then the people were voted off. But to be honest, she didn't really seem that sad in real life, the family didn't look that bothered. Did they know she was going to be voted off ages before it was announced? Was she just a really good actress? Oh well, the highlight was that John Barrowman was judging!!! 

I love you sir!

Here are the few photos that I was able to take, since they took our phones and cameras away from us before we even made it into the studio.

All ended well with a beautiful sunset at Willesden Junction

North London - Hollway Road/Holiday Road

Anytime I'm walking down Holloway Road, which, as I live in Upper Holloway I do on a regular basis, this gets stuck in my head.



Your homework children, is to go and watch as many National Lampoon's Vacation movies as you possibly can. Class dismissed

Central London - SPOTTED - Free Breakfast

Woohoo! I love free stuff. It was a very pleasant surprise to my typical grumpy morning commute when I exited Goodge Street Station and was greeted by cheerful people giving me free food.  Free is always good, it's probably the first word I try to learn in any language. I wouldn't be surprised if it was my first word in the English language. :)

Free brekkie

However, these happy-little-breakfast-waker-uppers didn't mention one thing: it was a soya based breakfast. I reckon most people would cringe at the thought of soya milk but I'm here to say, it really wasn't that bad!

Soya milk, soya cherry yogurt, 2 bags of Tetley designed for soya and some vouchers

I wouldn't go out of my way to use soya products, but it was a nice alternative to milk (which I don't drink very often...it doesn't do my body good ).  If soya lasts longer than standard milk and works the same in baking/cooking things, then I may be converted.  I only had one real issue with this package...

Tetley for soya?!? Really?  You need to make a tea designed specifically for soya milk? Je suis not amused, Tetley and co.

Are there any other soya drinkers out there that have tried Alpro and can give a better judgement? Leave a comment and let me know, maybe I'll give it a try.

Did you spot the Alpro team around London? Leave your spotting in the comments.

LONDON - Maybe it's because you're a Londoner

Cooklikemumdid did an excellent take on these adverts! I completely agree and couldn't stop laughing at this. Please God don't let me fall asleep on the 43, I've done it going out West before and ended in Willesden Junction though... :S

Central London - Trafalgar Square - B&Q Free Tomato Plants

Earlier last week I came across a tweet saying there would be free tomato plants at Trafalgar Square. At least I think it was a tweet, or maybe a link to an article, hmm or word of mouth(?) to be honest I'm not even sure I really heard about it at all.

Unfortunately, working in marketing makes me get on a bit of a high horse and criticise campaigns.  I wasn't impressed with this one at all. I didn't know immediately that it was sponsored by B&Q, I heard flutterings of it on the web but [not]surprisingly, none of it was from the B&Q twitter account and when I got to the event the 'mob' I was expecting was no where to be found.

That's right they were trying to make this like a 'flash mob', but with tomatoes instead I suppose.  One of the hashtags going around was #flashgrow or #tomoatoflashgrow or...well I'm not sure about that either as there wasn't an official hashtag. It was sort of a sloppy execution in my opinion. When I arrived at Trafalgar Square around noon this was the 'mob':

I'm still not sure what the barriers were for, and why, if this campaign was mostly done through word of mouth and Twitter, there was no official hashtag at the event.  

There wasn't much information at the event either - like tips for first time gardeners or how to take care of your tomato plant.  Mine looked pretty sad to start with, but I didn't think the guy giving them away had much of a clue on gardening: He had his Nero cup of coffee sat in the same box that he was supposed to be displaying the B&Q tomatoes, we had to ask him to move it so I could take the photo

All-in-all, a sad attempt at getting people interested in something that could be a fun project this summer and an activity I've found many 'urban gardeners' enjoy doing. 

I suppose you could go to this link for more information, if it has more information to give http://projectdirt.com/profiles/blogs/flash-grow-come-and-get-a-free

Apparently these guys had something to do with it as well, and I would've like to know more about them http://www.capitalgrowth.org/

Oh well, it'd been a while since I walked down to Trafalgar Square so I at least got to see the Olympic Clock

The Olympic Clock, working