the national burger day meat up.

last thursday was national burger day, and to help the nation celebrate it in style, i headed to brighton with the rest of the talented talkers team to host the best blogger meat up the seaside had ever seen. we arrived to a sunny sky, that within an hour, had turned to absolute carnage. it's typical really; plan a barbecue in the uk and it ~will rain. thankfully we'd thought of everything and the gorgeous house we'd rented for the occasion had a gazebo at the ready, with plenty of space underneath for our chefs to get their grill on.

thanks to asda we had fruity summer drinks begging to be drunk and a barbecue menu that covered all dietary bases. in no time at all, we were set for the bloggers to arrive. when the time was right, shaun and i headed in to central to collect them in the only thing that seemed appropriate, considering our location and expected head count; the big lemon bus - a brighton university tradition. 

bloggers in their natural habitat...with camera.

check me out, clearly the funniest lass tom has ever met.

asda's potato salad, lemon and honey sea bass, and a veggie burger. noms!

with backyard games like giant jenga and swing ball in the garden, and musical trio sarah sings jazz keeping things groovy indoors, we had the bloggers entertained for hours. thanks to asda's generosity, there was so much food and drink that we were ~forced to keep going back for seconds and thirds of everything, and eventually ended up building our own creations. my best shot at burger fame came in the form of a sea bass burger with avocado and barbecue sauce. sounds weird, but it was absolutely delicious, mind you, put avocado and bbq sauce on anything and it's incredible - the fish was just lucky really.

as indicated by the super unattractive photo of me above, i had an absolute ~blast that night. it was the first blogger event i'd been to outside of london, so was lovely to be able to put faces to so many familiar names, and hang out with some favourites like leigh (and bf james - who'd just launched their new burger blog that day - that i had a hand in naming!) and lyndsay, as well as finally meeting dan the man, who i've gotten to know a lot over the last few months.

it was a long day, and even longer night, but it was totally worth it because within a few hours we'd gotten our hashtag for the night - #asdameatup - trending in brighton; a pretty remarkable feat considering the wifi was pretty rubbish where we were! the train ride back into london with little shaun and gemma was just idle chatter about how fun that had been, and how awesome our little community is. i am so lucky to be on both sides of the fence in this job, and i one hundred percent would not give this fun up for the world.

where on earth will this incredible job of mine take me next i wonder...?