A little slice of Italy in Herne Hill | Day 10/100

All pizza is not created equal. You will only understand this if you have visited a proper pizzeria and managed to distance yourself from both a) the mundane, tasteless supermarket options and b) over greasy, throw-any-shit-topping-on take away variety*. 

No. A proper pizza means you enjoy the dough, the simple yet wonderfully blended flavours and that extra drizzle of quality olive oil which you choose to put on only after your pizza has been served to you. Opposed to the dousing it gets before arriving at your door on the back of a scooter. 

A proper pizza is what you'll get if you visit Herne Hill's newest eatery: Pizzeria Pellone. Boasting a traditional Neapolitan wood oven, clearly whatever was cooking was working on the locals, because every time the husband and I walked past not a table was left empty. So it was time to try it for ourselves. 

Are we really still in South London?

Stepping inside it was easy to see and feel why Pizzeria Pellone has become such a hit. It felt like a little bit of Italy had arrived in Herne Hill. From the white and pebble stone walls, to the large pizza oven at the back and the friendly Italian chatter between the chefs and their happy - but very busy - wait staff, it was easy to imagine yourself not in South London, but in a bustling back street of Naples (the only area of Italy I have ever actually visited).

Look at him go!

The menu consisted of 10 pizza options and side salads. A specials board offered starters that ranged from a bowl of olives to mozzarella hidden under a layer of cured meat. Tempting, but not quite hungry enough for a first course and pizza, we instead went straight to the main event opting for an Ortolana (For di latte cheese, peppers, aubergine and basil) and Capricciosa (For di latte cheese, artichokes, mushroom, ham, olives, basil and tomato) pizza with a Pecorino side salad. All topped off with a bottle of red wine. Naturally. 

Our table was positioned parallel to the open plan kitchen, so we got a great view of the chef (who we assumed to be Pellone) creating the pizzas. We sat mesmerised as he worked each piece of dough into a uniformed pizza. Casually tossing it back and forth, decorating it with the required toppings and sliding into the wood oven. Each pizza took a matter of minutes or create, but then I suppose if you've been doing it for over 40 years you'd have picked up a trick or two along the way on how to save time.

It was fascinating to watch. As well as catering to all of the orders of the seated customers, there were also people popping in for a take away. I asked our waitress how many pizza's must Pellone make in an evening. She could only hazard a guess at "hundreds". Certainly not an exaggeration, as in the time we sat waiting he got through a whole rack of dough which we roughly calculated must have made around 70 pizzas. Just in the time we were waiting. Which was only, like, 20 minutes. If that!

A big pizza pie!

When the food arrived I was glad I held off on a starter. Forgetting my tape measure, I can only hazard a guess that it was at least 15 inches. Thin base, nice fluffy crust and so much topping: Pellone's pizza did not disappoint!

As we ate, we "Ooh-d" at the sight of the calzone being brought out for another soon-to-be satisfied customer. Definitely on my radar to try next time.

In true Italian dining style we talked lots and ate slowly. Good job too, as the pizza was so big we needed time to digest and try to find space for that little bit more. Too tasty to leave, we managed to finish both pizzas and the salad.

To top it all off, the price at Pizzeria Pellone is extremely reasonable. Our total bill came to just £35, including the wine.

Feeling fully satisfied we managed to roll ourselves home in a mild pizza food coma.

Just. ate. so. much. pizza. Will sleep well tonight! @PizzeriaPellone thank you for a fabulous meal.

— Rose Crompton (@RoseC_Leic) November 18, 2015

If you want a mid-week, good feed outdoors, then definitely pay a visit to Pizzeria Pellone in either Herne Hill and now Croydon.

*Its been recommended (by my husband) that I clarify my overall dislike for crap, cheap take away pizza. He calls it "a vendetta", whereas I simply call it a willing refusal to put shit in my mouth. 

Also, sorry for not getting a photo of the actual pizza. I was too busy eating and enjoying it to remember to take a snap!

Speed Scrabble | 9/100

I bloody love Scrabble. I'm pretty average at it, but I love it. Sad thing is, it's so rare that I get to play. Mostly the husband gets frustrated with me putting low score words on Triple Word squares, or blocking them off entirely. I swear to geez, it's only because I don't have anywhere else to go. But because of that, he's reluctant to play that often. Also, games do end up lasting for hours, because we're so competitive and neither of us wants to lose to the other.

Granted, when you're playing for hours on end it can get a bit tedious. So I set myself a challenge. To play a game of Speed Scrabble during my lunch break.

I played on Facebook using the Scrabble app thing on there and fortunately got paired with someone (a randomer) who seemed keen to play fast too. 'Dots' followed 'Drag' followed by 'It'; we were steaming through the words, maybe not always with the highest point score, but the pace of the game kept it interesting.

'Squaw', 'Rex' and 'Brows' all made an appearance as we chewed through the digital tiles, me keeping one eye on the clock chasing a 222 point score. A passed turn and exchange of tiles meant I got to edge a bit closer.

Then BOOM! We were down to the last tiles and the score was 232 to my 227. It got to that stage of needing to get rid of all the higher point tiles, but we were both so limited to where we could put them. I managed 'Vogue', before she pipped me to the post by getting rid of her last few tiles in one hit.

Final score: 270 to my 263. Defeat, but fun. An interesting way to spend a lunch hour for sure.

The Infinite Jukebox | Day 8/100

You know that thing you get when you're listening to your favourite song and you think, 'Damn, I love this song so much, I wish it never had to end,' well the Infinite Jukebox is the answer to your I-need-more-than-repeat-button prayers.

When I said to a couple of friends that work in IT that I would love to discover some more fun and interesting websites - because there must be more to the Internet than Twitter and Facebook, right? - this was the first site they both suggested.

In a nutshell, the Infinite Jukebox lets you stream a song of your choice and it will find a way to continually loop it. It works by breaking songs down into beats, then matches up rhythm patterns in the song, so as it's playing it will jump and take different pathways to (hopefully) seamlessly move to different point in the song.

Once you've picked a track, the beats and paths are put into a visual diagram, so you can watch to see how it's all linked. Very clever and even more is explained about how it works on the site's FAQ's. There are controls too, so you can play a part in dictating the movement of the song, but I'm not sure I've played with it enough to appreciate what the benefit of these controls are.

As a music lover Infinite Jukebox totally appealed, so I sat picking songs and watching the tracks on my lunch break. It's pretty addictive.  

I tried a few of my fave tracks out on it. First up, Nirvana's Lithium. Love this song so much I even walked down the aisle to it. Works well, but you do kind of get caught in a 'Yeah, yeah, yeeeeaaaah, yeaaaah' Kurt loop.

Gnarls Barkley Crazy worked really well and I ended up listening that to a full nine minutes before it started to drive me a bit nuts. But it's a good example of how the app works.

For a challenge, I thought I'd stick in Korn's Twist. Yeah, it doesn't cut it. If you're able to listen to it for more than a minute and a half without wanting to punch the screen then you've done well. Infinite Jukebox manages to turn it into a little bit of torture as John Davis gets stuck on one bit. It's the same with Scatman John. Just don't do it to yourself.

Heaps of fun though and very mesmerising to watch. Play with the Infinite Jukebox here.

Crime drama done the Italian way | Day 7/100

Today's original plans got thrown out of the window early on. This was due to an ill husband that needed a day indoors and, to be honest, I wasn't adverse to the idea of having a lazy stay-inside Sunday either.


Between the snoozing, chocolate eating and sticking the washing on, we watched Montalbano, an Italian crime series about a detective called Montalbano. It's a bit like Midsommer Murders, but sexier because it's Italian.

Montalbano. Not to be mistaken for a Mitchell brother.

The hubby came across the series after spotting it on iPlayer months ago, so he's been slowly working his way through it. I tune in now and then, but it's not totally my cup of tea. I can't look at Inspector Montalbano without thinking that he looks like the third Mitchell brother that never was. There's a lot of sex in it and gratuitous scenes of hot Italian women undressing for one reason or another. I'm 90 percent sure that's not why my husband watches it and he does, in fact, enjoy the entertaining storylines.

Still, if you're looking for something a bit different to watch, don't mind subtitles and crime dramas are your thing, then check it out. Mostly I enjoy trying to pick up new dramatic Italian phrases.   

James Bond 'Spectre', was it any good? | Day 6/100

I don't feel that there are enough James Bond Spectre reviews out there, so I'm adding my own. Sticking it on here is also a quick way to answer all of my friends at once that have asked, "Is it actually any good?".

The only way to watch a James Bond film, IMHO, is at the cinema. It's one of the few film franchises that can actually convince me to pay money to go to and see it. I'm a sucker for seeing an action film on a big screen and full sound. So, in that sense Spectre ticked all of the boxes and it's totally worth going to see.

The action sequences were immense. No doubt about it. One thing Spectre did especially well was explosions. I mean, Sam Mendes blew some serious shit up on epic proportions. While some of them were obviously CGI'd (well, you can't actually destroy MI6 for the sake of a film!), one of the key scenes used 33kg of powder explosives and 8,418 litres of fuel and was awarded the Guinness World Record for being the largest explosion in film history. It lasted over seven seconds! (See, interesting.) Definitely worth going to see it just for that, because you will sit there and be like, 'Holy crap. That was massive and so very cool.' I bet whoever got to push the button will forever remember that as their best day at work. Ever.

In terms of plot line, yeah I'll roll with pretty much what ever other film reviewer has said. It's not as good as Skyfall. In places, Spectre's story was a bit weak. The main twist, which is revealed kind of early on and then repeated several times just to make sure you understood it, seemed rather far-fetched and unnecessary. I liked that Skyfall revealed a bit about Bond's largely unknown family past, but they should have left it there rather than trying to dig further, the result feeling like it's clutching at straws to reveal this big family secret. Honestly, it felt desperate and is a plot line more suited to a  TV soap. It didn't need it.

Apart from that, it was good. Plenty more cliche, cheesy Bond stuff in Spectre, compared to the last three, that will keep you smiling. Lea Seydoux, who I'd only recently seen for the first time in The Lobster (highly recommend), was brilliant. As was Ralph Finnes, as the new M. Didn't know how I'd feel about that, because Judi Dench was a legend, so replacing her would be tough. However, I loved Finnes in the role. Great fit.

Only other gripe with Spectre was the theme tune. The radio stations I listen to don't have it on their playlist, so seeing it at the cinema was my first time of hearing it. Sorry Sam Smith, I thought you did a bad job with this one. If someone was to ask me to sing it to them, I wouldn't be able to. It's not stuck at all.

So there you go. Definitely worth a watch at the cinema, but enjoy it for the action rather than any big Bond plot and you'll leave the cinema feeling satisfied that you've seen a good film.

Kinky crafting | Day 5/100

During this challenge, I'll try and keep sex stuff to a minimum. Main reason: because it's practically work for me and the idea of #100DaysOfInteresting if to find cool stuff to do outside of work. However, I was lucky enough to head to the Sexpo UK exhibition and came across a fab company called Kink Craft. It is exactly as it sounds. Crafting to create kinky items.

With crafting being totally trendy right now, why shouldn't there be a kinky version of it? The Kink Craft leaders invited me to take a seat and make my own mini flogger (that's a type of bondage whip for anyone that's not in the know). I thought, 'why the hell not?! I've never made my own flogger before, so lets find out how!'

With a sprinkling of BDSM magic, by the time I unblindfold you these bits of rope will transform into a flogger!

I was given a bundle of rope and told that using simply this, some tape and a craft knife, it will become a flogger. Andrew from Kink Craft got me started and then I was away.

Like with any crafting, it was wonderfully therapeutic. I sat around a table, with several other crafters and we chatted and helped each other as we snipped the tendrils and wove our flogger handles. So very civilised.

Weaving the handle was the most therapeutic part.

I was super impressed with the end result! The colour will match my other bondage kit nicely (ahem). Also, there's still get that proud feeling like when you craft anything. But the funny thing is, it's not the kind of crafting item you'd whip out at your next family do and say, "Oh yes, I've taken up the hobby of creating bondage accessories in my spare time." Then again, that's what made me love it more. It totally appealed to my naughty side.

Ta-da! Remove the blindfold and the rope has been transformed!

If you fancy doing some crafting with a kinkier edge, then you can actually buy the kits, with full instruction video, here and make mini and large floggers, or your own pair of cuff restraints!

Follow me on Twitter and use the hashtag #100DaysOfInteresting to keep up with my challenge and activities.    

How it feels to look at your own wedding photos for the first time | Day 4/100

I love looking at photos. I'm a great fan of actually getting photos printed, organising them into an album or frame and then revisiting them a month or two down the line. I like the feeling of happiness you get when you remember a particular occasion. And while the instant that's caught in the photo is one thing, it's all of the other little memories about that moment, day or complete period of time that it prompts which is more fun or interesting to remember.

So when my husband and I got to see the photos from our wedding we were fascinated and enthused to relive the day. It was interesting to see the result of what our wedding day looked like to someone that wasn't a friend or part of the family, but from the perspective of our photographer and we're glad to say that the vision he caught was exactly as we remembered and experienced it.

Our reactions to some of the photos were interesting to say the least. Especially any shots taken before the service as we'd not seen each other, so the photos really did speak a thousand words, prompting each of us to relive what was going through our respective minds at that point.

I could have easily poured over every photo for long periods of time, but with over 300 of them to look at and the sheer excitement of seeing what was there, what was next and what had been immortalised from the day in image, was so exciting that it was tough to linger on each one for more than a minute or so. Looking through your own wedding photos is easily as thrilling as experiencing the day unfold first hand.

Apologies that this was a bit of a sentimental #100DaysOfInteresting challenge, but you only get that feeling of seeing your wedding photos for the first time, once. So I wanted to put it down in words as best I could.