Lovely things to do #7: Take a wintery wander along Whitburn Cliffs

The intermission between Christmas and the New Year has been characterised by some first-rate climatic conditions; it's been as mild as supermarket cheddar, and even when it's been a bit chilly it's been as bright as an annoyingly precocious child. We've tried to make the most of it by squeezing in a couple of #lovelythingstodo, including the trip to the coast I will henceforth relate. Our normal brine-tinged haunts include Tynemouth, South Shields and the Northumberland coast up around Amble and Alnmouth. Where could we go for a change? I know: Sunderland!

Festive allotment check-up

Don't get me wrong, Christmas is brilliant, obviously. Going home and drinking tonnes of booze and forcing a week's worth of calories down the chute in twenty four hours and then meeting other people that you don't see all that often for more drinks and food and then seeing some of the outlying relatives during which why not have a bit of that leftover cake, and so on, and on and on: it's all brilliant. However, I'm also quite a big fan of the few days - if you're lucky enough to be excused from work - after which all major duties have been completed and set-piece meals consumed and you can just sort of potter about, tidy up and hunker down for a few days, punctuated only by Charlie Brooker's end-of-year thingy.

Lovely things to do #6: Go to Jesmond Food Market

Today's #lovelythingtodo comes with a side order of mea culpa and is recommended to be enjoyed while wearing thermal undies, multiple layers or whatever your favoured personal tactics are for keeping warm in circumstances which can described as nippy.

First, the guilty admission/apology: this was the first Jesmond Food Market I've ever been to. I know. As someone from round these parts with a healthy and ongoing interest in the local comestibles scene, this isn't good enough. Hopefully the following enthusiastic words, and encouragement that you yourself head along will go some way to rectifying the situation. Stood on Armstrong Bridge yesterday, enjoying what meagre heat the milky afternoon sun was kicking out, I tried to figure out why I'd never made it before.

Lovely things to do #5: Go to Newcastle Allotment Show

An empty fairground, just before the show opened.

Today's lovely thing to do, is an oldie but a goodie. It's nearly three months since we went to the 15th annual Newcastle Allotment Show, but if you think about it we're actually closer to the next one that you'll be able to attend than we would be if I'd written this up the next day, so basically this post is still relevant and totally worth me writing up. You may never have been to an allotment show before in which case you are totally missing out. Let the pictures of insane veg commence!

Restaurant Review: Sunday lunch at St Mary's Inn, Morpeth

The first thing you'll want to know about St Mary's is that it's not, despite what the website says, in Morpeth, or not quite, anyhow. The second is that merely boshing the postcode into your sat nav may, depending on your model and how recently you have updated it, result in disaster. Kasia is from this neck of the Northumbrian woods so we had a head start. When the Garmin wanted to send us down a one-track lane in entirely the wrong direction we knew better. Pro tip: locate the place on your choice of mapping application and guide yourself in using that.

Restaurant Review: Chick 'n' Sours, Seven Dials, London

London! We were up to our necks in it the other weekend, what with a rather brilliant wedding taking place in Islington between two very lovely people that we know. We just had time to squeeze in a spot of lunch in town before meeting people and doing stuff, so, being the zeitgeist-surfing trend-observing types that we are, we headed straight to Seven Dials for a spot of fried chicken. Because, in 2016, nothing says achingly cool more than doing what KFC have been doing for years, but just bloody better.