Need something to keep you engaged in the last couple of rounds? Want an excuse to reward yourself for sitting through the entire tournament? For your entertainment and edification (but not edutainment. No.) here’s a fun game for all the family to enjoy. Your very own cut-out-n-keep semi-finals bingo game!
Get a whole line? Reward yourself with a nice cup of tea and a biscuit, though not chocolate in this heat.
Full card? Break out the prosecco. You have earned it. Maybe with a few Walkers Bangers & Mash crisps. /
This week – apart from binging Elle, the ‘prequel’ series to Legally Blonde, I have mostly been watching football. This is a worrying development and builds on the week or so I spent watching the snooker in May. I like watching snooker, it’s like ASMR but with a winner. The commentators are so calm and quiet, the click of the cue ball against whatever the other colour is is short and sharp, and the audience (you can’t really call them a crowd) get ssssshed if they get overexcited. When I confessed this in the office, it turned out there were a fair few others watching it for the same reason. Honestly, you’d think we were all a little tightly wound in May or something.
Football, especially any World Cup game involving Latin/South American teams like Mexico or Paraguay, cannot be described as relaxing under any circumstances. Horns, drums, shouting, music – and that was just outside the England team’s hotel the night before. I didn’t see this game as I was sensibly fast asleep but I’ve been assured the second half was spectacular, notably for England winning despite only having ten men, for Jordan Henderson getting a yellow card without even going on the pitch, and then for breaking his arm falling over an advertising hoarding. As I write this I’m hoping to stay up for the England vs Norway game but kick-off is after 9pm so maybe not…I did have a nap earlier and am currently quite conscious so the signs are good.
I used to go regularly to club games featuring West Ham, but the international aspects of the so-called ‘Beautiful Game’ have passed me by. I didn’t even know Wales had a football team until I went to live in England as I was brought up in a staunchly rugby watching household. The Mitchell & Webb and IT Crowd sketches embedded in this post pretty much summed me up. For some while I worked part time in a West Bromwich Albion pub in Hackney and at that point could explain the offside rule with the aid of two highball glasses and a lemon but those days are long gone.
I was also scarred somewhat on the international front by the 1996 Euros game where England lost to Germany on penalties – the one Gareth Southgate* missed, bless him – which happened to be on my birthday. The angry English people watching the game – teacher training students. in a lot of cases – turning round and screaming ‘go home’ at the foreign students was ugly, to say the least. Especially as we were at uni in Wales at the time.
This World Cup, however, is proving entertaining although probably for the wrong reasons. The involvement of the Orange Basketcase in getting Balogun-the-American player’s suspension suspended, leading the Belgian manager to say he ‘didn’t know July 5th was April 1st in America’ as well as to UEFA being all self-righteous, and to England appealing against one of their player’s bans (unsuccessfully). Ronaldo was also allowed to play in the tournament under a similar rule, despite a three-match ban with two games left to serve, but I think this may be more to do with time off for good behaviour rather than interference by the Portuguese government. Infantino, the head of FIFA, is also the idiot who invented a ‘peace prize’ to award to Mr Sore Loser. Some countries who backed his presidency are now allegedly withdrawing their support. In the bad old 70s and 80s it was violent fans bringing the game into disrepute, occasionally the players in the nineties – it’s coming to something when it’s the head of the international game.
There has also been some extremely questionable refereeing – the France vs Paraguay game being a case in point, where poor Mbappe was being harassed throughout by the opposition, people diving were rolling over three times in outrageously dramatic ways, and the ref was unable, apparently, to see any of it. France won it on a penalty, which served the Paraguayans right quite frankly.
The so-called hydration breaks (a lot of advertising and additional time for managers to talk to players) even in indoor stadiums have added a lot of time onto games – as has all the extra time and penalties which can make games last forever more than two hours and delay my bedtime. The extra round of 48 teams at the start of the tournament has provided some excitement (and a lot of extra time) with close calls caused by teams like Cape Verde and Curacao for example.
The commentators are a good mix of men, women and Roy Keane’s beard which made him look quite grandfatherly but he shaved it off midweek. I like the technical explanations from the ex-US women’s coach, a full on Essex girl who started with chalk until they let her play with the computer. Why are they broadcasting from what looks like a breakfast TV set though?
Women commentators really annoy some men which is an added bonus, especially since the women’s team have arguably brought football home much more recently and reliably than the men’s. That’s something else that gets right on my nerves – the constant banging on about 1966. I mean, good lord people – sixty years! David Baddiel’s ‘thirty years of hurt’ is now twice that and they still won’t shut up. I’m not sure what they’d do if they actually won it, of course – what would they go on about then?
Right, it’s 9.20pm and the build-up to the game is starting. I’d better find some snacks and a drink and phone the friend who explains it all to me…
Gareth Southgate being a thoroughly nice chap in a waistcoat
*I have a lot of time for Gareth Southgate, of course, and have supported him and his waistcoats through several tournaments. He strikes me as an extremely sensible chap who’s still doing a lot for young men. His empathy towards his players and his gentlemanly behaviour is much better than, for example, the coach I saw getting yellow carded by the ref in a game this week.
Things making me happy this week:
Seeing schools enjoying the Centre at last – they’ve been in, I haven’t, just to be clear
This in turn meant I got to hug Chris Bailey and congratulate him on his wedding earlier in the week
House sitting in Buckhurst Hill meaning I could commute on the airconditioned Weaver Line, at least until it broke
A Wowcher offer – a 60 minute sports massage in airconditioned splendour near Liverpool St
Hackney Gelato Banana Caramel and Pecan flavour ice cream
Plotting the Little Owls story and craft session this week. I’ll be reading Judith Kerr’s The Tiger Who Came To Tea and we’ll be making tiger masks
Honestly, gang, the second half of 2026 needs to pull its socks up and do a damn sight better than the first, as none of the stuff in the past six months was on my life bingo card back in January. However, things will hopefully start looking up even if I still can’t….
Last Sunday’s operation was a success, the lovely consultant and her assistant informed me, and my eye is looking better already. I have to take their word for it as almost a week later I’m still viewing the world through a haze of swelling, bruising and ointment. It’s starting to feel less painful though I’m continuing to wear large sunglasses in public and my eyebrow is oddly quirked in a way I could never manage on purpose. Crossing roads is dangerous as I have no peripheral vision on my right side and turning my head too far causes double vision. Going anywhere – even over the road to Miriam’s or on Friday making my way to Rhiannon’s to house-sit (all of 40 minutes) is exhausting.
I was also reassured (but not remotely surprised as I know what causes this sort of thing) to be told my pregnancy test (mandatory) was negative. I think I was reassured when everyone kept asking me what operation I was in for and then drew an arrow pointing to my right eye. I tried saying ‘leg amputation’ once just to see what the reaction was….she did at least double check my notes…
The team at the hospital were lovely and looked after me really well apart from all the shining of lights in my eyes and poking me with the odd needle which was apparently necessary. There were no beds available in the hospital (again) so I got to spend all my time in recovery rather than on a ward. It was…interesting. The lovely team kept me full of tea and biscuits, and I even got to choose my lunch from the restaurant (venison stew or burgers!), but it also meant no visitors.
This rule did not seem to apply to the family of the young man who had flipped his car on the M11 roundabout on Sunday morning, who finally appeared from surgery at about 9pm. At that point about a dozen poeple arrived all claiming to be his immediate family, ignoring the nurses when they tried to say that only his parents were allowed in, and letting each other in and out in groups of three and four. I was impressed by his auntie’s fervent and extensive prayers, less so by his girlfriend’s noisy shoes, the ones who were on their way to Stansted and dropped in as it was on the way, and by the raucous party they appeared to be holding in the waiting room until 11pm. Eventually – having been told once too often by the family that the nurses ‘got no right to stop us going in, we’re family’ – the nurses phoned security at which the ‘family’ were all outraged innocence and ‘but whyyyy, we ain’t done nothing wrong’. Eventually they moved the poor lad to a ward. I dread to think what would have happened if noisy shoe girlfriend had heard about the other ‘girlfriend’ who’d been in the car with him when he flipped it.
The other drama was the poor chap who’d had his appendix removed and on waking up and being asked if he knew where he was replied ‘Of course I do! I’m in a SHAM ward in a SHAM hospital and YOU’RE TRYING TO STEAL MY ORGANS’. The poor nurse explained that no, he’d had his appendix out and was in recovery, he’d just woken up from his anaesthetic. A few moments later as they gave him something or other…’NOW YOU’RE GIVING ME ILLEGAL DRUGS! PHONE THE POLICE!’ in tones of absolute outrage. Honestly, it quite took the edge off my fentanyl buzz.
Still, the lovely team were great – so patient taking care of a whole lot of people, protecting their few beds from marauding ED managers and tolerating all sorts of weird reactions from anaesthetics. I’m glad I took my earplugs though…
Hopefully later this week I’ll be feeling up to going into the office even if I keep my giant sunnies on….
Things making me happy this week
Lovely friends looking after me
Dinner with London sister and brother in law and two of the Things
Hackney Gelato Banana Caramel & Pecan ice cream
Spoiling myself with a pedicure (thanks to family for the guilt free birthday treat!)
Long phone conversations – going old school but with unlimited minutes
And that’s it from me for the week – hopefully next week I’ll be less lopsided and able to do more things.
What I’ve been reading
Jump/Mount/Tackle – Jilly Cooper. All of these are supposed to have exclamation marks in the titles but I! Just! Can’t! (A Jilly question – why do all working class characters have broad cockney accents even the darkest depths of badly-concealed Gloucestershire?)
Yesterday was our first family event at the Centre, called All Join In after one of our founder’s books. I feel quite relaxed about the whole thing now it’s over but there were definitely a few moments this week when I was worried it wasn’t going to happen! As regular readers will recall, I’ve been off work for a few weeks post accident and all the planning time I’d blocked out had to be compacted into five days.
However – thanks to an awesome Centre team, willing volunteers and local groups, and our amazing illustrators it ended up being a lovely day.
The weather was hot but not as unbearable as midweek, the rain didn’t rain, and we were able to put up our gazebos in such a way that we were all mostly in the shade.
There were six activities for families to do, which felt bustly but manageable and the right number of people turned up – no queues but all the activities had a steady stream of people.
Such Stories, aka illustrator Laura Carlin and space designer Jo Briggs, had a dual role: not only were they helping families make a patchwork River of Wishes, they were also introducing our gorgeous new public sculpture Chip. Chip is the horse that carried a city, created with local families and schools, and he has a wishing star in his hoof that rings a bell when you press it.
MURUGIAH, who has his first solo show in our Engine House at the moment, was on hand to help families make flower faces inspired by his illustrations – we used paper plates and die cut circles to make 3D pieces for the wall.
Centre 404 and their volunteers added to a wishing tree (there’s a theme here!) while Clerkenwell Pollinator Path project made basking pebbles for bees, bee hotels and hoverfly hydration stations. They’ve also installed a bee hotel on site this week and will be making a bee bank for ground nesting varieties next week. The garden has only been in the ground six weeks and we already have 13 sorts of bee, several butterflies and dragonflies.
Our lovely gardener Zoe – wanting to save some of our hundreds of plant pots from landfill – designed portable pollinator patches with nasturtium seeds. These last two activities were by far the most popular.
Last – but not least – James and Eva of Play Build Play CIC tested ideas that will become our loose parts kit. Long term readers will recall previous adventures at Young V&A with loose parts, and I can’t wait to get it onsite. Kids were loving building aqueducts and pools inspired by the New River.
I enlisted Things 2 and 3 as volunteers, making them get out of bed ridiculously early on a non school day by promising them a Nando’s dinner… Seemed to work!
Things making me happy this week
A crochet get well flower and heart from Iona in Scotland, which I found when I got home on Monday after being told I had to have an operation to repair my eye socket. That’s today, by the way, think positive thoughts for me!
Being back at work, albeit briefly – they’re a lovely bunch of people.
Not getting on the tube on Thursday. That made me very happy indeed.
New hair by Jasmine over the road
Gorgeous bee earrings for my birthday made by And Mary, to match my necklace. https://www.andmary.com/
A beautiful lemon drizzle cake made by Thing 2 for my birthday, and cheerful flowers from Thing 1 and her girlfriend.
This week, up the mountain in Caerphilly, I have been taking great delight in watching (and hearing) a huge crowd of jackdaws swooping and diving every evening before they dive into a nearby tree and settle down for the night.
Starling murmurations are spectacular – when I was at university in Aberystwyth we used to sit in the bar on the pier and watch the thousands of birds coming in for the night, doing their aerobatics over the sea and then suddenly dropping out of the sky and vanishing.
These jackdaw flights look for all the world like a starling murmuration but Google tells me that this is actually known as a ‘clattering’. It also tells me that jackdaws are democratic in their roosting habits: some will start to squawk when they’re ready to get up in the morning and then when the noise reaches a majority pitch they all fly the roost. I guess it’s the same in the evenings, as from about 5pm they’ll start flying back and lining the ridges of the neighbours’ roofs, and when enough of them fly in the clattering begins. It really is a clattering – the noise is immense. Occasionally they’ll have a practice clatter in the afternoon and then all fly off again to do what jackdaws do – chiefly terrorising seagulls and demolishing the cherry tree next door, I think.
There are some examples on YouTube of these clatterings – I keep trying to capture it but my phone doesn’t do it justice.
I’ve written before about my fondness for the magpie family that lives in my Essex garden, which produces a noisy brood every year who run their poor mother literally ragged chasing her about after they’ve fledged. I like corvids in general (before anyone points it out – I know starlings aren’t in this family!. One year we had a little gang of them visiting the garden every day, comprising Richmond the Rook in his fluffy trousers, a pair of jackdaws and a few of the magpies. They were great fun, mastering the bird feeders together and working out how to get at the peanuts through teamwork.
I saw a raven eating a sausage roll from a Greggs bag in Clerkenwell once – huge thing, and I didn’t like to think about what had happened to the original purchaser of the sausagey treat. If the raven had come asking for my pastry snack I’d have handed it over, no questions asked.
Rooks are noisy and chatty and playful, and I always feel a bit sorry for the ones banished from the rookeries . What have they done that they have to go and find their own tree? There’s a large rookery near the church in North Weald, and it’s so loud when you walk past that it drowns out whatever I’m listening to.
Crows, on the other hand, stomp about the place looking slightly menacing, and at harvest time for all the world like they’ve been planted in flocks in the fields.
This week I’ll be back up in London, looking forward to getting back to work and getting ready for the family festival on Saturday. I’m not looking forward to my inbox though…
Also – happy Father’s Day to my excellent and well balanced dad, without whose sage advice my sisters wouldn’t be the functional, sane adults that we are today. Well done Dad…
Same time next week…
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous/Appassionata/Score!/Pandora – Jilly Cooper
Thanks to all the people offered sympathy and spare beds after last week’s post – you’ll all be pleased to hear that the swelling has gone down considerably, although my eye looks like a Pride flag (appropriate for this month) and the bruising is spreading across my face. It’s…colourful, especially the greeny-yellow making its way down my cheek.
Right now I am in the Forest of Dean being looked after by my sisters and cousins, who are warning me about tree roots, speed bumps and anything else I might fall over. We’ve also been doing some gentle crafting in the shape of Lino printing, which I haven’t tried before, and I did bring my crochet along as well.
We’ve also been out for a gentle walk with the wonderful Merlin bird app going – lots of new birds for my life list and even more evidence that I’m getting on a bit. Fortunately the cousins I was walking with also have the app..
Work sent me some glorious peonies mid-week as a a get-well.
I have been missing work, but I’m still waking up through the nights with headache and have taken the advice of my boss and doctor to slow down and take some time to recover. I’ve found it quite hard to slow down after going full tilt for so many months and juggling the separation, work and children. I’m trying very hard to relax, honest…and now I’m going to do just that for the weekend. You’re getting this post early so it’s off the to-do list!
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
Riders/Rivals/Polo/The Man Who Makes Husbands Jealous – Jilly Cooper
Last week, as I was waiting for a cab for some members of our Community Access Panel, they pointed out to me that the kerb on the vehicle access to the Centre was quite high and we might want to think about painting it to warn people not to trip over it. I made a note of this, of course, and mentioned it in passing to our facilities manager.
This week, as I was leaving the celebration event on Wednesday evening (having had one soft drink and a biscuit or two) I tripped over it and landed like a felled tree on the pavement. A cyclist swerved off the road and informed me that I was bleeding before swerving off again. Fortunately I was outside work so I staggered back in and got myself mopped up, and they put me in a cab to the station as at that point it looked as if I had a mouse on my brow and a couple of small grazes.
Onto the tube I hopped, having waited for some time for a train. With no mirror handy I had no idea what I looked like. The friend I’d been chatting to when I faceplanted had made me promise to phone Miriam and Jill and get picked up from Epping station. When Miriam picked me up she took one look at me and marched me off to a nurse colleague, who took another look and sent me off to A&E.
On the way Miriam called at Lidl and bought me a bag of frozen peas, as well as a QP with cheese from the McDonalds next door as I hadn’t eaten for about eight hours. The peas are the best vegetable anyone’s bought me since Kerry turned up in 2006 with a Savoy cabbage when I had mastitis. They lasted four hours before becoming mushy peas, which then defrosted on my top.
By this point I had double vision, was feeling quite queasy as I hadn’t eaten, and words like ‘head injury’ and ‘concussion’ were being bandied about the place. A&E at 8pm on a Wednesday was clearly the cool place to be as it was absolutely packed. I had my temperature and blood pressure taken, and about 10.30pm the clinical streamer saw me and packed me off to the next waiting room where I sat from then until 9am the following day when I was actually seen by a doctor.
When we arrived in the second waiting room the waiting time was 7 hours and there were 51 patients. At 1am a nurse came round with blankets for everyone, which were much needed, and a coffee trolley was left at some point, When the painkillers kicked in I dozed off for a bit but the situation wasn’t ideal. One person had been there since 9am the previous morning in the same chair. The nurses’ station wasn’t able to tell you anything other than how many people were ahead of you (15, at 4am when I asked)
At 4am when they updated the board there were 44 patients and 10 hour wait. At 9am there were 30 patients and a 12 hour wait. There is probably a formula for this in a GCSE syllabus somewhere, but it didn’t make a lot of sense to me.
In waiting room 3 I was reunited with some of the people who’d been in A&E the previous evening but who had at least seen a doctor. The doctor did some eye checks on me and tapped my face, took a photo and went off for some advice. A while later she came back and sent me for an x-ray in case I’d broken anything. I had an x-ray which wasn’t clear enough to be sure, so I had a CT scan which showed I’d managed to fracture my lower orbit. Another doctor said she’d go and talk to another team and she’d come back to me. At 3pm I was finally told I could go home and the hospital would be in touch with an outpatients appointment. I wandered over to Geek Retreat via Primark, where I bought two pairs of very large sunglasses. Miriam retrieved me, informed me that I was staying at her house in a proper bed for a while, and took me home. Jill brought me flowers and chocolates in the evening – unnecessary but lovely!
On Friday morning I was called back into hospital to see the opthalmology team (another 5 hours of waiting around) and on Monday I’m seeing the maxillofacial team to assess whether they need to do anything. The swelling has subsided and I can see out of both eyes again which is nice!
Of course, the Centre opened on Friday and after all the preparations….I missed it. Still, I would have scared people off with my rainbow eye! Irish sister sent me some very tasteful eyepatches…thanks Steph….
So that’s been my week. Not sure what this week will look like – can I realistically go and do a storytelling session for small people on Wednesday or will the sight of my eye scare them, or host the freelancer social? No swimming, no flying, no blowing my nose – slightly worried about the underground too, of course. Who knew a faceplant would raise so many questions?
Followers of my reading lists may have noted that every so often I fall down a rabbit hole of Japanese fiction, often featuring (in various combinations) cats, books and food. If a Japanese writer added nice shoes to the mix I’d probably be in literature heaven as these are pretty much all my favourite things.
This all started a couple of years ago with The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa, which made me cry and then – the algorithm being what it is – Amazon and Bookbub just kept recommending more along the same lines. Reading colleagues at work recommended others – notably The Makioka Sisters by Jun’ichiro Tanizaki, which did not have a memorable cat but was beautifully observed. A famous crime series popped up next featuring the detective Kosuke Kindaichi, by Seishi Yokomizo (who was an answer in the Times Daily Quiz this week, and didn’t I feel smug). Murder at the Black Cat Cafe did have a cat, albeit a dead one.
The majority of these books sit firmly in the ‘cosy’ category (even the one with the dead cat) and reviews tend to use words like ‘heartwarming’ and ‘uplifting’. Sometimes both. Often they feature a shop/restaurant/other public space where people’s problems get solved through the application of cats/books/food although not shoes*.
We’ll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida is an excellent example of this, as is What You Are Looking For Is In The Library by Michiko Aoyama.
Normally books reviewed as heartwarming, uplifting and cosy make me dismiss them instantly (especially ‘cosy crime’ novels which have recipes or knitting patterns at the end. Unless the murderer has poisoned people with the cupcakes or stabbed the victim with their best 4mm bamboo needles, garrotted them with the 3mm circulars or done something dastardly with the DPNs halfway through the second sock, I don’t want to know). I can’t get enough of these though, but luckily there seems to be a near-endless supply for my Kindle.
Other ones I very much enjoyed have included Water Moon by Samantha Sotto Yambao (and I recommended it to my mum, too) and The Cat and the City by Nick Bradley who isn’t Japanese but lives there. Honestly – if you’re in need of a bit of heartwarming and/or uplifting, let me prescribe you these books…
*not shoes yet. This is a gap in the market. Many problems can be solved by new shoes, I have found, although my family don’t agree.
Things making me happy this week
Taking Things 2 & 3 to the Quentin Blake Centre for the Friends & Family event on Saturday – now they know where I work and why I’m soooo frazzled at the moment.
Peaceful days housesitting until Wednesday when I had to go home.
Prosecco and crisps (we’re classy birds!) with Miriam and Jill on Friday night
Foot baths with Epsom salts and peppermint oil on a hot day. Trust me on this.
Not the heat though, no.
Portable air conditioning
Early morning walks both solo and with Thing 2
Bringing the Community Access Panel to the Centre at last!
This week we’re opening to the public at last (Friday 5th, tickets available online!). I’ve got a dinner date with Amanda on Monday too.
Same time next week – happy reading!
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
The Vanishing Cherry Blossom Bookshop – Takuya Asakura
The Restaurant of Lost Recipes/The Menu of Happiness – Hisashi Kashiwai
Katharine Parkinson as Lizzie and Danny Dyer’s moustache, Rivals. Belongs to Disney +, not me.
I’ve been a long time fan of the books it was based on too – or at least the first six or seven. When the late Jilly Cooper moved her focus away from the parents to the new generation they went rapidly and disastrously downhill. Dame Jilly, for all her many talents, was not down with the youth or indeed the common people. The written ‘cock-er-nee’ accents – which the youth even sported in deepest ‘Rutshire’ for some reason – are atrocious. Teenagers are stroppy and witty, rather than stroppy and monosyllabic.
The book series is campy, over the top and entertaining and the TV series is shaping up to be equally so. Danny Dyer is sweet and charming as Freddie Jones, and Katharine Parkinson makes a lovely Lizzie. I was given a subscription to the Times online recently and it’s my new favourite thing – the magazine has been stuffed with articles about the show’s costume and stars.
I’m also loving the Times puzzles, especially Quizle and Picle and access to thousands of crosswords. I can’t do the cryptic ones though… Picle is challenging my non-existent geographical knowledge. Plumping for Southampton instead of Cape Town and Mongolia instead of Romania were my low points, but I recognised the Pierhead Building in Cardiff straight off. The daily quiz has way too many sports questions, however. An unexpectedly excellent present.
Other things making me happy this week
Getting the Creative Studio into order with the help of a Dymo labeller and a LOT of Ikea boxes, and showing it off to some of our funders at an event on Wednesday.
The play benches being installed ready for the opening on 5 June
Putting my adult programme on sale – starting with an urban sketching session with the brilliant Wilson Yau on June 20th
An indulgent pedicure on Saturday, with sparkly red toes to show for it
Not the heatwave. The sun is nice but it’s wayyyy too hot.
The long weekend
That’s it for me for the week – Rupert C-B is about to get in trouble…
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading
Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon – Mizuki Tsujimura
I don’t know who’s in charge of weather at the moment but I’d like a word, please.
As an eternal weather optimist – despite, or perhaps because of my Dad at the start of every August holiday day in a caravan in Ceredigion informing us that ‘this isn’t rain, it’s sea spray!’ – I am frequently and catastrophically underprepared for May. Especially this week, when each day has opened onto glorious – if chilly – sunshine and by lunchtime has descended into chaos via hail, rain and high winds. There was a hard frost on Tuesday morning. My colleague was wrapped up in the only winter woolly she hadn’t put into storage in a fit of optimism the previous week. I was back in double layered tops to work on site and my poor Community Gardener was alternately drowning or freezing.
Luckily I haven’t had to go outside much, but on Wednesday afternoon I did have to leave the building and head to the Wellcome Collection with some of our new welcome team on a field trip. It hailed and rained on us on the way there and then we left in glorious sunshine.
The idea was that they’d do some research into how other venues welcomed visitors, whether they were accessible, how easy it was to find their way around and so on. We looked at the Coming of Age exhibition, which included a video clip of Harry Enfield’s Kevin the Teenager and a copy of Game of Life. I’m always slightly disturbed to see parts of my life on display in a gallery…
It was nice to spend some time getting to know the new welcomers before we open – once we open it’ll be harder to have these moments as we’ll all be a lot busier! It feels pretty hectic at the moment, watching all the objects and art go into the galleries and trying to unpack the Creative Studio. Still – we open on 5 June (tickets are available) and my adult workshop programme goes live on Monday including opportunities to try Urban Sketching, comic creation, urban garden design, Botanical Illustration and Printing Your Festive Cards. Test events are underway and feedback is great – it’s all happening!
This, of course, also means press activity and we welcomed a team from the One Show on Monday. I was in jeans and a t-shirt with mad hair and not enough make up, having been under the impression that I wouldn’t be involved…and then people pointed cameras at me while I was introducing the space and an activity. Oh dear. We had a class of Year 2s from a local primary school in and they were so excited by the Quentin Blake Gallery – seeing actual small people in a space was pretty exciting for us too, though, and I can’t wait for them to see the rest of the building.
That’s it from me this week – hopefully next week will include an evening at the Postal Museum (tube strikes permitting) seeing the Jolly Postman exhibition with Rhiannon.
Same time next Sunday….
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading
We’ll Prescribe You a Cat – Syou Ishida
Before the Coffee Gets Cold – Toshikazu Kawaguchi
The Chibineko Kitchen – Yuta Takahashi
House of Flame and Shadow/A Court of Thorns and Roses – Sarah J. Maas (Audible)
What Kirsty did next 