This weekend Miss G and myself met up with some friends from back in the north west at Canteen in Spitalfields Market. Canteen, www.canteen.co.uk , is a four restaurant chain in London and I think it’s great. I’m a regular at the restaurant in Royal Festival Hall so was looking forward to going to Canteen. Whilst it might not be one of the more cool venues in Shoreditch we choose it as it is dead easy to find for people who don’t know the area. The result though was that for a Saturday night the place was pretty much empty. I was ok with this though as there were 14 of us and it was almost like we had made a private booking for the restaurant. It also meant that there wasn’t a floppy fringe and pair of skinny jeans in sight

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I’ve just finished my first full week of training for the London Marathon and I’m quietly pleased with how it has gone. This week I did some interval training alternating between sprints and relaxed pushing at the track, some gym time and a six mile push and an 11 mile push in Greenwich Park.

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Its official my marathon training is now underway. Since Saturday I’ve been out three times in the chair and have done consecutive 6 mile pushes and 8 ½ miles last night. The great news is I’m loving it and currently am feeling no ill effects. Well apart from a few bloody fingers caused by some gruesome looking blisters. The relative freshness might have something to do with having done some actual research rather than just diving headfirst into training. I’ve got a great book on stretching, have pulled together a 14 week training plan, bought some decent running gear and have even managed to find advice on marathon training nutrition on a gluten free diet.

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A few months ago I blogged about a wonderful new gluten free tuna sandwich that Starbucks had introduced http://www.rockupandroll.com/post/1554468958/a-gold-star-for-starbucks . I loved that sandwich, ok it might not have been the best sandwich in the world but it was edible and gluten free and that was good enough for me. Well you can imagine my dismay when recently I took a trip into my local Starbucks to find that the sandwich was no longer there. Feeling a bit desperate I consoled myself that you are never more than about 20ft from a Starbucks so I tried the next nearest one with no joy and the next one with the same outcome. Bereft I resigned myself to the fact that this must have been a trial which Starbucks had decided to stop.

Well you can imagine my joy when I took a trip into Starbucks this morning and saw a thing of beauty. That’s right a gluten free sandwich and not just any old tuna creation but a bang spanking new chicken, spinach and green pesto creation. Now you don’t need me to tell you that lunch could not come quick enough today and when I put the lovely creation to my salivating mouth it did not disappoint. A good helping of chicken, a nice salad, a hint of pesto and not to dry. All in all a good effort. Although I have to say I do slightly miss the tuna sandwich, it will always have a special place in my heart as it was the first they brought out.

One of the things I miss about home living in London is the chance to watch the mighty Blackburn Rovers on a regular basis. Before I moved to the capital I’d had a season ticket for about 15 years and giving it up was harder than I thought it would be. Still, being in London does mean there are at least five opportunities to see the mighty Rovers each year. Yesterday I took the opportunity to take Miss G to Stamford Bridge as we made the trip to the out of form Chelsea.

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For 2011 I have decided to set myself a new challenge. Not content with all my open water escapades last year and keen not to rest on my laurels I have set myself the, some might say daunting, some might say ridiculous task of taking part in this year’s London Marathon.

I love this race, I love the determination people show to haul themselves round and I love the fact that first time runners can compete against world class athletes. I actually blogged back in April about how much I want to take part in this event http://www.rockupandroll.com/post/548460797/marvelling-at-the-marathon.

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As it is a new year I thought I’d expand the blog a bit for 2011 and start to give info on some of the places I go in the big smoke. I’ve started to get increasingly frustrated in trying to find useful access info for places to eat, drink, see a film, grab a coffee etc. So as well as giving not so useful updates on my beard growth and jumper buying habits I’m going to start rating and giving a short description on the places I go in London. If anyone has any suggestions for other criteria I can use to rate then please let me know by emailing info@rockupandroll.com.

First up is Giraffe in Pimlico http://www.giraffe.net/restaurants. I normally find Giraffes, that’s the restaurants not the animals, a bit hit and miss and if you pick the wrong one you can find yourself crammed in amongst a sea of baby buggies and tourists. This one though is great and has a really nice feel to it. It is, at most, a five minute push or walk from Victoria train and bus station and the Palace and Apollo theatres where you can see Billy Elliot and Wicked.

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First things first, season’s greetings one and all. As you can see I’m feeling festive, in-fact I would go as far as to say I have the Christmas groove on big time. So much so I may have just over done it and I promise to never say the words Christmas and groove again in the same sentence.  That being said I do love this time of year. I love the food, I love buying and I’m not ashamed to say receiving presents, I love spending time with family, I love Christmas films, tinsel, trees, rubbish songs, the extra gluten free stuff I can buy at this time of year, marzipan and Christmas stockings both the saucy and presents filled type. I could go on but I suspect you get the picture. But there is one thing that I might just love more than anything else and that is the Christmas jumper.

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Today after 15 years I felt a small victory after getting my own back on the snow. Let me explain. I hate the snow. I hate it so much I’m going to use caps lock, bold and underline. I HATE THE SNOW. There I feel a bit better now. I think to be honest though I have good reason. In January 1996 there was a particularly bad winter in terms of snow. It was so bad that it made the recent cold snap we are going through look like a balmy summer’s day. The snow was that severe that in my hometown of Darwen in Lancashire pretty much everything came to a standstill and like most teenagers I decided to make the most of it and go sledging.

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