Happy 2nd Birthday to “Emm in London”

Can you believe it? It is two years since I started this little blog! It has been quite an exciting year but not as exciting as the first year when I visited Turkey, South Africa and America and took a road trip around England. 

Even though I finished  my trip to New York and Washington just before my 1st blog birthday, I did post all about it in this year.  Over 500 photos and 25 blog posts chronicle my first trip to the United States and the beginning of my love affair with New York!

In the middle of July, I was Blogger Blog of Note for the day.  It was very exciting and I met tons and tons of people overnight.  More exciting than that, of course, is the amount of people who stayed to read and who I have become friends with over the past year.  It has been amazing and it certainly makes blogging worth it!

At the end of July, we went to see Mika at The Roundhouse.  I was not previously a fan of Mika or his music but his concert changed all of that.  It was brilliant and I would certainly consider seeing him again.  If it was free again.

In August I went on my first photography course and wrote all about it in London: The City, the Monument and the Bridge.  Now, almost a year after that first course and after promising to learn all of my camera features before getting a new camera, I am just about ready to move on and to upgrade.  Of course, I know nothing about cameras and will post about my shortlist soon.  Visit The Photo School for more photography courses around London.

In mid-August, Mister Emm rushed back to South Africa for some emergency dental treatment.  Yes, that’s right.  It cost less to go home, have a holiday and get the treatment than it would have cost to do it in London (and we got more than one quote!).  In September we moved house again which was pretty horrible and then my Mum moved over here from South Africa.  Let’s just agree that September rushed by in the blink of an eye and we were all happy to emerge unscathed on the other end!

In October, my friend Patrick visited from South Africa and we spent four days roaming around South East England.  It is my earnest intention to finish posting about that before I go on holiday again with Mister Emm, The In-Laws and Patrick again in October.  (Just thought I should mention that I promised similar things about finishing posting about my trip to new York in a timely fashion and it took me exactly 6 months!!!)

At the end of October, I chopped off all my hair for charity in the Halloween Haircut Horror.  I chopped ten inches off my pony tail and sent it to a charity that makes wigs for cancer patients.

In November, I was sent up to my favourite city on the planet for work.  I held a mini-competition for readers to guess where I was and many correctly guessed Liverpool.  I visited the new Quiggins Centre and the exquisite bombed out Church of St Luke.

At the end of November, I went to see My Favourite Band on Earth Ever© Cranes in concert for the third time.  It had been a pretty long day as I had dragged poor, long-suffering Mister Emm around shopping in London all day and I had forced him to watch New Moon with me too!

December began in hilarious fashion with me commenting that it was too sunny to be winter only to be proven dramatically and unmistakeably wrong two weeks later when I was very lucky to get home after heavy snow just about brought London to a stand still.

Instead of succumbing to the winter blues, we decided to turn it all around and we went off to the cosy old Hawkwell House for a charming winter retreat for Christmas.  It was everything we had wanted it to be – warm, cosy and full of Christmas cheer.

I took a rare lunch hour and decided to get Lost in Southwark.  Southwark is an area rich in history and it was also the home of Charles Dickens.  I wrote lots more posts about Southwark through this year too.

At the end of January, I went on my second photography course and learnt about camera settings and the manual mode.  I set about to capture the essence of London in my photo essay for the day.

I took the first of many walks around my new home town of Dartford.  Dartford is a really old town and there are tons of old buildings to photograph.  Which reminds me, I really should get out more and take photos.  There are Norman churches and disused graveyards featuring monuments to fallen Protestants!

There were lots of photos of winter sun and heavy snow which were both fine with me.  The only thing I don’t really like in winter is the never ending grey!

At the beginning of February, we took a trip Up North and visited the area where I lived until I was nine years old.  I also introduced you to my grandfather and told you a bit about my family history.

In February, we began the slow process of emerging from our winter hibernation and we went to the theatre to see the Garrick Theatre production of The Little Dog Laughed.  We also went to the ShockWaves NME Awards Tour 2010 which was a lot of fun.

We got our first sighting of Spring in March and I gave the first of my updates on the Shard and London Bridge Quarter development.

It was our wedding anniversary at the end of March and we took a lovely trip to the Isle of Wight.  We took a ride on the grand old Isle of Wight Steam Railway and had the most glorious four days there.  One of these days, I am sure I will finish posting about that too!

In April I began my series A Window Into South Africa where I interviewed normal South Africans in the run up to the World Cup.

I attended the launch of the Pizza Express summer menu and met lots of other great London bloggers.  It was a fab evening and we got to make our own pizzas.

We spent a rather rainy but brilliant day in Southbank in the middle of May and met up with our good friend Gavin who is living in Seattle.

May was all about the MyCommunity competition which culminated in the awesome sunset flight on the London Eye.  It was a really awesome experience and once again, I got the chance to meet other London bloggers.

In June I ran the Race for Life for the third time to raise money for Cancer Research UK.  You can still take advantage of the chance to sponsor me there and receive a month’s free advertising on my sidebar.  I also posted some gorgeous photos of St Paul’s Cathedral and the surrounding areas.

We went to see Green Day at Wembley Stadium which was amazing.  It definitely made me determined to have a new and better camera by the time I see Muse at Wembley in September!

Finally, we spent a balmy Sunday in the West End where I got together with my colleagues to watch England vs Germany and to see the play Ghost Stories.  It was a fabulous afternoon and a good reminder why I don’t go into the West End very often!

Wow.  I don’t know about you but I’m exhausted now!!!  I think this post took four hours to type up!!  The coming year is going to be a bit more exciting, I believe, with trips to Serbia, Scotland and South Africa this year and hopefully even more travelling goodness in the first six months of next year.  Mister Emm has promised to do more spontaneous travelling once he gets his British passport next year so hopefully that will mean weekend trips to Prague, Paris and Brussels for Emm in London.  Happy birthday dear blog!