nicolette kaponis

A full English breakfast with a side of hash browns and two bottles of prosecco (shared between five others, promise). They do say begin as you mean to go on and this meal seemed the right pitch for my first ever visit to Royal Ascot.  Ascot! When we left the café, smugly happy with our mature decision to line our stomachs before our race day began, we joined the well-dressed throng headed to the racecourse entrance. We immediately diverged from those of a higher class, and joined the masses in the Village Enclosure. With a perfectly blue sky above and a blanket of glistening emerald grass below, the air crackled with expectation that memories were about to be made, memories that would last a lifetime. Taking in the surroundings, a plan was quickly established. Booze. Beth. Bets. The line for the bar was weirdly under control and it took no time at all for us to get our hands on a couple of bottles of rose (this would, of course, never be the case again

Still not quite sure why I left Melbourne... It's been a long-time coming, but reader(s), I'm back! The best way I can sum up my six-month absence is... with a list. Because, deep down, we all know we would read a lot more if everything came in list form. So! Here we go: 1) At the start of this year, I went back home to Melbourne for six weeks 2) Said six weeks was filled with perfect: summer weather, food, booze, friends and family 3) Coming back to the UK post-Beast from the East was difficult 4) Coming back to the UK was made all the more difficult because I knew I had to get... a job 5) BUT I also returned to London to see not one, but TWO manuscripts that I had written published into physical books that I could hold (and NOT sleep with clutched in my hands) 6) I managed to figure out I wanted a job in a bookshop 7) I trawled through countless job websites looking for said job in a bookshop 8) Nando's was also hiring 9) I GOT A JOB IN A BOOKS