Oops, I went viral again...

Most of us have been there; writing a comment or status on facebook and then regretting it and scrabbling for that delete button. Or posting on Twitter and then wondering how it might be construed by your followers.

Mostly, I tend to work on the premise of what my parents might think if they read what I'm about to post. (My parents are quite liberal though so maybe I should think what about what my grandmother would think instead?!)

Sometimes though, you might write an email that you think is private, to a trusted friend and it can all still go horribly wrong for you.

Take the case of Harry Fildes. He was emailing his friend Sebastian Marsh to give him the go ahead to 'have a go' at his ex-girlfriend. Very noble of him. Unfortunately for Harry though, he copied in his ex-girlfriend Jenni, whom he already shared a somewhat fracticious relationship with (and a house, to really top things off nicely). When Harry realised his error, he emailed Sebastian again and Sebastian, being the great mate that he is, forwarded the email exchange onto a number of colleagues.

Sebastian has now been suspended, pending further investigations and Harry is also being investigated.

The moral of the story? Pick better friends, perhaps?

Poor Harry made a mistake and he's now rightly paying for it. But this could impact on his future career. It's common practice for prospective employers to Google you and do you really want a full page of hits detailing your misdemeanours using a work e-mail account? I think not.

It's not just Harry though, oh no. Jacqueline Howett, self-published author made a bit of a fool of herself this week too. Big Al, of Big Al's Books and Pals wrote a fair and mostly positive review of Jacqueline's Book, The Greek Seaman (not what it sounds like). He did however, comment on some of the sentence structures, spelling and grammar. Fair enough.

Jacqueline didn't take too kindly to this and angrily posted a response to Big Al's review. She then copied a couple of reader review's from Amazon to prove her point. Cue a great raft of responses from other readers and Big Al himself, who rightly said that he was entitled to his own opinion. It would seem that Jacqueline didn't agree with this though. Apparently, she only wants you to review her book if your review is positive.

To read the full and frankly hilarious article and subsequent comments: http://booksandpals.blogspot.com/2011/03/greek-seaman-jacqueline-howett.html?commentPage=1

Both of these particular stories have gone viral, which, I imagine, will be damaging to all parties involved (except for Big Al, I think he's come out smelling of roses). For Jacqueline, whilst telling commentors to "f*** off" might have been particularly satisfying at the time, I hope that she woke the next day with that cold feeling of dread and worked hard to undo the damage that she had done.

Maybe now, more than ever, we all need to think a little harder before we click "send". What we do in that second could impact on our entire futures.

*click*

A little tweeting goes a long way

It's taken me a little while to write this one up but rest assured, it's a goody! It was my birthday a couple of weeks back (cue belated happy birthday messages?!) so a friend and I met up at Giraffe in Spinningfields for a good old girly catch up over some decent food.
Having been to Giraffe on a number of occasions, I was comfortable in the knowledge that the food was nice, the service was good and the atmosphere was cosy/ I thought that I knew what to expect but this trip heralded a whole new experience!

It started in the morning, when I tweeted that I was going to Giraffe with a friend - I included @Giraffetweet and then, lo and behold, Giraffe tweeted back. This brought a smile to my face as I find that getting a mention on Twitter is a bit like receiving a handwritten letter when it's not your birthday. It's quite exciting and it makes me feel special (cue lots of mentions on Twitter???)

Anyway, when I get to Giraffe, my friend and I, in our delightfully geeky way, start to discuss @giraffetweet. Is it a man or a woman? Where are they based? How old are they? It's all very intriguing. When I later, halfway through my chicken schnitzel kiev, tweet a picture to @giraffetweet and they respond the friend and I are in raptures. It's not that tweeting is new, we know that, but it's the fact that someone at Giraffe is spending their evening tweeting to two women enjoying a meal in one of their restaurants. It made us feel special and it made us feel like we were being given 5 star customer service. We tweeted back and forth a little more and the anonymous Giraffe tweeter even emailed the manager of the Spinningfields branch (Nikki, I believe) to let her know that we were tweeting away.
After our meal, we had bill confusion and to rectify the issue (which was entirely our fault), the staff at Giraffe gave us 20% off our bill.

I liked Giraffe before this experience, they were consistently good. Now though, I LOVE GIRAFFE! I felt, that by sending just a few simple tweets, Giraffe have taken their customer service very seriously. They made my friend and I feel very special and a week later, I'm still happy to harp on about how wonderful they are. I can't count on two hands the amount of times I've been to a supposedly decent restaurant and been ignored by the surly, uninterested staff and then paid over the odds for the pleasure.

Maybe one or two others should take a leaf out of Giraffe's book? All it took was 980 characters.

Dinner

For the foodies amongst you, I thought I'd share my recipe for last night's dinner, which was epic.

Lamb & redcurrant parcels with creamy potato and onion gratin

Ingredients:
1 block of Jus-Rol puff pastry
4 lamb leg steaks
Redcurrant jelly
Few sprigs of rosemary
Egg or milk (for pastry)
700g of potatoes, peeled
1 red onion
300ml tub of double cream
40g butter
Bay leaf

Preheat oven to 175 degrees C (fan)

Thinly slice potatoes (make sure slices are very thin as they won't cook if too thick) and put in bowl of water to stop discolouration. Thinly slice onion and melt butter. Grease a large, round pyrex (or similar) dish. Dry potato slices on a clean teatowel.

Layer potatoes and 2/3 of red onion in pyrex dish, overlapping edges. As you go, drizzle melted butter and season liberally. Finish off with 4 or 5 slices of red onion on top. Put bay leaf on and then pour over cream. Cover with foil and bake for 45 minutes.

In the meantime, fry lamb steaks on a high heat in a tablespoon of olive oil. Fry until browned but still soft in the centre. Leave to rest.

On a floured surface, roll out puff pastry to about 1/2 cm thickness. You need to be able to cut the pastry into four squares, with enough pastry to wrap around the leg steaks.

Once potatoes have been cooking for 45 minutes, take off foil and put back into the oven for 30 minutes.

Place lamb steaks on sqaure of pastry. Put a teaspoon of redcurrant (or mint) jelly on each steak and a small sprig of rosemary. Brush the edges of the pastry with beaten egg or milk and fold into a parcel shape (ensuring that there are no gaps or holes for the jelly to leak out). Using a fork, prick the top of the pastry and lay these on a lightly greased baking sheet. Brush top with egg or milk and bake for 20 minutes.

Serve with creamy leeks, carrots and peas. (serves 4)

NOM.

A fresh outlook

The dark nights are drawing in sooner and sooner and the cold weather is most certainly here. So what better time to take on a new project? Well, it would be if the project weren't "Decorating the flat". Still, you don't need daylight, surely?

Turns out you do. But with the first weekend done, I can honestly say it wasn't that bad. Let me set the scene:
Our flat is one of a few, in a converted chapel. Said chapel is built into a hill. Our master bedroom (where the first weekend of painting would take place) is quite close to the hillside and therefore can get a bit damp. The damp was starting to show through the old paint and the colour was a little on the 'cream' side so we decided to give it a fresh lick of paint. However, the phrase "lick of paint" is extremely misleading. If it was as easy as a lick, I'd do it for a living. Now, the state of the flat was getting me down a bit; there was the damp issue, the moths that we'd had in the summer eating all my clothes and the walls that were in need of a fresh look!

So, we washed the walls down, we moved the furniture, we masked the carpet edges, we unscrewed the plug sockets and light switches, we put dust sheets down, we opened the window and we sent The Fat Cat packing to the living room. Now, half the day had gone and we had about 4 hours of light left. Mum and Dad B helped and by the time we settled down on the air bed in the living room, we were pleased with the progress. Fast forward to tonight and we're relaxing in front of the X Factor results show and I'm feeling much happier about our humble abode! It's amazing what a bit of fresh paint can do.

RB