black prawn ravioli, prawn mousseline & champagne-chervil cream

It’s only two more sleeps until I’m back on the plane, hurtling my way back to London. My two weeks in J’burg feels like it’s flown by, but at the same time, I feel like I’ve been here for eons and I want to go home so that I can get back to some semblance of a normal day to day life. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been awesome being here with the team but H.E.C.T.I.C. Understatement.  It’s been work work work work work and then back to the hotel for more work work work.

But in between all this work I’ve managed to fit in tiny little parcels of fun… and time to blog, obviously, because how else would I keep sane?

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It’s actually kind of completely insane that here in Johannesburg, you can pay the equivalent of about £10 and go cuddle a lion cub. I mean, in London I have to pay £10 just to scratch my butt! And I’m not even joking, because that’s what I’d have to pay if I so much as wanted to scratch my butt inside the “congestion zone”. Pfft. Kind of makes me want to move to J’burg, except that they also have broken traffic lights “robots” at every other intersection and that makes me not want to move to J’burg.

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I should probably warn you guys that this post is going to feature a whole bunch of meat, but you can’t eat any of it. In fact, try and they might eat you, or at least that’s what I was told. With that knowledge tucked away in my little brain, I remained incredibly well behaved, kept my arms inside the truck and trundled my way through an African private game reserve and survived, lions, cheetahs and all.

How did all this come about? Well you know how there are those days when work is so bad you want to cry? There are those, and then there are days when your boss tells you she’s taking the team away for three days on a safari trip and you’re like holy shit, this job really isn’t so bad after all! I had one such day a few weeks ago (actually, I think I had one of each) and finally on Tuesday, we were shuttled off to Welgevonden Private Game Reserve for three days of relaxation and boozing bonding.

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It is currently all of 8pm and my eyes are so tired they sting. But look at me, all superhero and stuff, doing this blog post because for the next three days, I will be stuck on a game reserve in the middle of nowhere with NO WIFI and NO CELL RECEPTION and if I don’t kill myself before hand, I might go stroke a lion.

I got into Johannesburg this morning at some ungodly hour, but the hour didn’t mean a thing to me because I’d barely slept all night. And it’s not because I can’t sleep on planes because believe me, I can sleep pretty much anywhere, but the stupid woman behind me insisted on grabbing onto the back rest of my seat every time she got up, ricocheting me into my teeny tiny tv screen. And she got up a lot. All night. Because I don’t know, she has a bladder the size of a pinenut?

Anyway.

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organic porridge with brown sugar, banana & honey

When Panu’s out of town, I get up to a whole bunch of no good. Like, I bake a batch of brownies and eat half of them myself. I watch The Hills on repeat, UP LOUD, and just to be really naughty, I even sleep on his side of the bed! I know, daring. Well, on Sunday, while Panu was happily sailing around a lake in Jyväskylä (that’s in Finland, for those of you as geographically stunted as me), I rendezvoused with my other two gorgeous 6-foot-plus boys for brunch at The Pantry! Hah!

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