It both frightens and excites me how much can come to change in just a year.
This time last March, I was living between three places and working countless jobs - by day, making soup in the sticks of Kent and by night, serving up cocktails. At all other opportunities, I was copywriting, helping some small Kentish businesses with their social media and blogging away about the things that I was up to.
I've always loved adventuring and discovering new things and places. While I love the countryside preposterously more, I can't say that London hasn't offered some incredible things to me, which is why I'm restarting my series 'A Cat's Life' to try and keep track of all the wonderful things I have had the opportunity to attend or discover- like the time my pal Gareth and I ripped apart computers and built a scale city of the future.
Of course, with the opening of London's very first cat cafe, Lady Dinah's Cat Emporium, I promptly made a booking - did you know it's booked up all the way into July? You didn't? Well, you'd better start planning ahead. The cafe itself costs £5 to enter but guarantees a controlled atmosphere for the cats and also means there's less people to contend with for the kitties attention.
Naturally the cats are adorable and our early slot meant they were awake and geared up for playtime.
I have heard in the press that people have complained that the cats aren't very entertaining, which, if you ask me, is quite ridiculous.
Kitties will be kitties.
The cafe itself is lovely and relaxing, my only qualms being that the food could be better. The salads were delicious but attention needs to be turned to all other areas if the cafe wants to secure return visitors. Sometimes cats just aren't enough.
Speaking of pastry, the crunch on these 'Ebi Deluxe' from See Sushi was something of a talking point the night I was invited to enjoy some of their menu.
A waterside restaurant in Paddington, See Sushi provides incredibly delicious and fresh sushi at around an average price of £20 per head. The food was faultless and thoroughly enjoyable.
What also made the venue rather special is their range of Koshu - sparkling wines- which are paired superbly with the food and speak of floral, citrus and spicy notes.
Sushi is one of those things that I have never quite got around to mastering and so for a reasonably priced and delicious dinner, See Sushi is certainly a venue I'll be visiting time and time again.
When it comes to cooking, I love preparing and sharing food and so my invitation to the Underground Cookery School was a pleasure to receive and to attend.
While the food and skills we learned were generally quite basic, I learned a few new things such as deboning a chicken, which will doubtless come in handy next time I'm stripping one off for a Sunday night feast, just like the owner Matt Kemp is doing below.
We prepared moules marinieres, a ballotine of chicken and tarte tatin. Best of all, we all got to sit down and eat it together at the end - a perfect place for team building or a fun event as a group.
And finally, I had the pleasure of attending Hoxton's latest cocktail venue 'Made in the Shade' with Caribbean-style cuisine to boot.
Paying extra careful attention to detail, the fellows at Made in the Shade bring a huge amount of global experience with them and what's more, they're thoroughly friendly gents.
You'll find your sweet and long choices but also special shorter numbers with ingredients like thyme-infused agave and lavender and pine syrup with fresh turmeric.
What's more, hosted within the building comes a wealth of interesting evening like Sunday's 'Gaslights' - a perfectly romantic evening blending the spoken word with music.
