325: you should see the other guy

AKA: Pavement 1, Kirsty 0

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?

Watch this face…no, space….

Kirsty x

324: I’ll prescribe you a book…

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

Days at the Torunka Cafe – Satoshi Yagisawa

323: the 80s called and they want their stilettos back

This weekend I am housesitting for a friend slightly deeper into the forest than where I live, and right now I am being extremely indulgent and binging the new series of Rivals. It’s glamorous, glitzy, glossy and all those words that used to be applied to the shiny side of the 80s. David Tennant chews the scenery as a baddie (named Baddingham), Alex Hassell poshes it up as Rupert Campbell-Black, Aidan Turner and Danny Dyer sport ludicrous moustaches. The sheer quantity of hairspray in use would have dissolved the ozone layer if it still contained CFCs. There are horses, dogs, champagne, canapés, polo, pools, lots of sex and scandal. Equal opportunity nudity is the order of the day, which is unusual. Quite frankly, I am loving it and it’s perfect escapism at a challenging time.

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

Water Moon – Samantha Sotto Yambao

322: four seasons in one day

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.

Things making me happy this week

  • Dinner at the Corsinio Lounge in Caerphilly with Jen on Friday – a good catch-up on politics, people and other important stuff.
  • A banana Biscoff chorus bun. Bliss.
  • Toby Carvery, people watching over a roast
  • Apple TV’s update of Time Bandits with Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement. Great fun.
  • The Times’ Picle and Quizle puzzles
  • An evening at the Dead Canary for cousin Sal’s diamond birthday on Saturday – seeing cousins and Jen again
  • A walk with Thing 2 on Sunday down the rhododendron path to Epping, where we ran into Sue and had a cup of tea and a chat

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)

321: what were you thinking, people?

This blog post comes to you from sunny Essex, where the locals have seriously let me down in the last few days. Apparently the 43.9% of people who turned out to vote on Thursday (the largest turnout in decades in the county) were all the people who have confused the local with the national and who think voting Reform is a good idea.

I should have known it wasn’t going so well when there was a queue at the polling station for only the second time in the 13 years I have lived in the village. The last time was Brexit, and look how well that turned out. I wonder whether they were the same people who turned out to vote again? And – just a thought – if they’d bothered to vote and take any interest in all the other elections, they’d have more of a clue about what might actually be about to happen in the county? I think I can guarantee that the hotels won’t be closed on demand and that the potholes won’t be fixed any quicker than they are being already.

The elections did give me the chance to go and do something new with Thing 1, who has never voted before – she was interested in the results on Friday, and followed them through the day. I think she’s now considering leaving the country.

I voted tactically in the county council elections, for a man who has done more to divide the local area, waste taxpayers’ money and generally make a show of the local council. I feel slightly grubby for doing so, but needs must when the devil drives as someone much wiser than me once said. He is, at least, better than the alternative but it was a real rock and a hard place choice.

Plotting to move back to Wales and the sanity of proportional representation is underway.

A night at the Empire

On Wednesday night Amanda and I went to Hackney Empire – another gorgeous restoration by Tim Ronalds Architects, who are our architects too. We had tickets to see the historian David Olusoga and his show ‘A Gun Through Time’ – a strange premise but a fascinating talk. He spoke about the Brown Bess, the Short Magazine Lee Enfield, the Thompson machine gun and the Maxim machine gun. He discussed the developments that made them possible, the impact that things like the ‘Tommy Gun’ had on criminal activity in the US during prohibition and the rehabilitation of the weapon for use in the Second World War, and the long, long history of the Maxim which is still in use in Ukraine today shooting down drones, and being used in the trenches.

We had dinner at Bone Daddies in Old Street beforehand – tonkotsu and sour cherry soda – and were impressed by the jar of hair ties on each table which seems like an excellent idea.

Other things making me happy this week

  • Lunch and a good catch up with Shivs at the Garnon Bushes on Saturday afternoon – so lovely to sit sand chat in the sunshine
  • My new team member starting on Tuesday, the garden being planted and my fabulous producers sorting all the materials in the learning centre on Friday while I wrestled with a training module for our volunteers on our safeguarding policy
  • The return of the sunshine today, especially as the tumble drier remains out of action
  • Salad. I like salad in the summer.
  • My left hand being stable enough to pick up my crochet hook and yarn again
  • The lovely people who reached out to me across WhatsApp, various relatives, FB and the actual telephone after last week’s post. I am fine, thank you, and I love you all for caring.

That’s it from me for the week then – next week I’ll be back in Wales for a birthday and another catch-up with a friend, and I’m very much looking forward to both.

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

The Big Empty – Robert Crais

Diary of a Rock’n’Roll Star – Ian Hunter

Murder at the Black Cat Cafe – Seishi Yokomizo

Mornings With My Cat Mii – Mayumi Inaba

320: navigating murky waters

This weekend I’m coming to you live from halfway up a mountain in Wales again, which is rapidly becoming one of my favourite places to be. I’ve been here since Thursday and am making the most of a long weekend before the madness of pre-opening hits. We announced last week that we’ll be throwing the doors to the Centre open on 5 June – tickets are on sale, celebration planning is underway and it’s all happening…

A bit of mental getting myself together is sorely needed, I feel. I’ve mentioned in previous posts that there’s a lot going on in my life these days. The biggest change is that I split up with my partner in March and we are navigating our way through what sharing a small house, five children, five grandchildren and three temperamental felines looks like now. I hate to use the term ‘conscious uncoupling’ à la Gwyneth Paltrow but essentially that’s what’s happening at the moment, after 22 years together.

People keep telling me how brave I am to have made the choice, and one or two have offered to help me negotiate the weird world of dating apps. I have thanked them and declined – I spend enough time hearing about the terrible people on these apps that the mere thought fills me with horror. Of course there are some nice people (like my friends) and successful relationships that have come from these apps, but they are few and far between.

Navigating both situations simultaneously has been tricky at times, to say the very least, and I’ve been extremely grateful for the support of friends and family – offering beds and emotional and other support, while recognising that there’s no easy solution. This is just as well as the doctor already has me on the maximum dose of my antidepressants….

The hardest part of all these things is telling the children: while they’re all in their mid to late teens it’s still inevitably going to be a big change in their lives. Thing 2, being an MI5-level investigator, interrogated her father within minutes of the event and wormed the situation out of him despite an agreement to tell them together at the right time. This put her in the position of knowing something her brother and sisters didn’t, which wasn’t fair on her, and meant that we had to tell the others sooner than I would have liked.

Thing 2 takes a while to process things and now is beginning to ask questions like ‘are we going to have two Christmases?’. That’s nine months away so I don’t want to make any assurances, of course, but what do you say? At 17 she’s incredibly perceptive and sensible which in some ways is great but in others…not so much…

Thing 3, being a 15 year old boy, took it very much in stride – at least I thought he had, until one evening when he said ‘why are you sleeping in the living room, mum?’. When I reminded him that his father and I had split up, his response was ‘oh yeaaahhhh!’. Perhaps he just wasn’t listening to his aged parent as usual.

Thing 1 was mostly angry and upset, and didn’t speak to me for several days other than in monosyllables. I told her the news when she was with one of her older sisters so she’d have support. Their father spoke to the oldest one over the phone. Both the Timeshare Twenty-somethings have been incredibly supportive – I still get to be their step mum and Granny K which is lovely. I think they’re just used to me now.

As the unmarried, unstable daughter my next biggest worry was telling my parents that my relationship has failed at the age of 52. It’s daft the things that you think about at these moments – I know that all they ever want is for their children to be happy and I very clearly wasn’t. London sister explained the situation to them and I phoned them the next day. They were, of course, supportive and wonderful as always and at my age the ‘balance and options’ conversation with Dad is taken as read.

I don’t know what the next steps are, but I do know they need to be carefully navigated. A previous boss, now a valued friend and mentor, talks about moments like this as being swimming in murky water: being able to see what’s straight ahead but not knowing what’s under or around you. This seems apt.

Things making me happy this week

  • Dinner at Caravan in Granary Square with Amanda on Monday, and this week we have an evening with David Olusoga to look forward to.
  • Moving all the learning materials and kit across to the new Creative Studio and buying storage crates to put things in. For someone whose alignment in D’n’D is always chaotic (and mostly good) my love for a good storage solution can’t be underestimated.
  • More sunshine than rain in the forecasts.

And now I am off to appreciate the weather while it lasts…same time next week!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading

Kathy Reichs – Evil Bones

Jonathan Kellerman – The Ghost Orchid/Open Season

Ian Hunter – Diary of a Rock’n’Roll Star

319: is it safe to come out yet?

This blog post finds me lurking in my lair, dear readers, while untold numbers of small children and twenty/thirty somethings rampage about the garden in the name of GT2’s birthday. There are Fruit Shoots in industrial quantities, brightly coloured icing, one of the twins already has a split lip and there has been a minor meltdown over a small and innocuous beetle on the trampoline. Thing 2 has discovered my hiding place and is querying what I am doing up here….send help, or at least quantities of rum. I have written before about my feelings on children’s birthday parties but apparently when you live in the venue it’s not OK to drop and run. Motherland was entirely too accurate at times, I can tell you. Thing 2 has made the most amazing cake, so I’ll show that off next week – Spiderman and Bluey and other things three year olds like.

It’s been a funny old week all round, to be honest, with things not going terribly wrong but also not going terribly right either. There’s been two days of tube strikes – but not nice polite tube strikes from midnight to midnight, oh no, but midday to midday ones which meant I could get to work or from work on any given day but not (crucially) both on the same day. I support people’s right to strike of course, and more than half of services were running in the end, but it wasn’t guaranteed that the ones you needed would be online.

So I have been at home since Monday and have been really missing my commute – I know, weird but as I noted in lockdown before being happily furloughed, that hour long slice of day between work and home allows my brain to process the difference between work me and home me. So, in desperation, I have been for a long walk every evening after work to clear my head. Thing 2 joined me on Tuesday as we hadn’t been out on Sunday (I went for a glorious lake swim with Rachel instead, and tomorrow I am going with Jill) but on other afternoons I have been out by myself.

I have used the time for the occasional non-work phone call while I’ve been walking, and on Friday it was so sunny and nice that I walked to Toot Hill and had half a cider (knowing I had to walk home and being rubbish at drinking these days) in the courtyard at The Green Man while making friends with some cute dogs and relaxing. It felt like a real treat.

The rest of the week has been conspiring to irritate. On Monday I managed to see a doctor – I had an actual list of things to speak to him about and the 30 minute wait to see him after my appointment time only honed my determination. The ongoing wait to see the rheumatologist consultant again (I now have an appointment over the border in Hertfordshire at the end of May, and I’ll work out how the heck I’ll get there nearer the time), the latest unwanted menopausal symptoms (I had to suggest a solution to him after doing some reading, as he’d have been OK with things carrying on but he’s not living with it. ‘Oh yes, that might be an option’ he said) and the possibility of getting my med review out of the way. It was a helpful visit but then I was that person who left the pharmacy with a large bag full of drugs. Let’s see if things improve, shall we?

Alongside that, my beloved GHD hair straighteners had decided to give up the ghost on Monday morning, with a pretty shower of sparks, an odd crackling noise and strange smell. And I was only halfway through my hair.

On Tuesday night I found the idiot cat calibrating in the middle of the airbed I am currently sleeping on and shortly after I tucked myself up I discovered I was slowly deflating and decamped to the sofa. Fixed the suspiciously claw-shaped puncture on Wednesday but failed to spot the second one, so after another night on the sofa after that sense of deflation, I finally got it sorted with the aid of some sticky fix-everything stuff. Cross fingers it seems OK now, but I now have an emergency airbed just in case.

At work we were supposed to be moving our kit from the offsite office to the Creative Studio but since we had no guarantee we could all get that’s now been postponed to this week when it’ll be done in a patchwork when people are in. I’m only in till Thursday lunchtime before heading to Wales for the long weekend again, but V in my team is queen of the resources so she’ll get it sorted. Let’s hope it all runs smoothly!

And now I had better head down and join the party for a bit….you can thank the newly three year old for the early blog this week!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Fire and Bones – Kathy Reichs

318: here come the girls

Friday night was girls’ night over at Miriam’s house, which is something we don’t do often enough for a variety of reasons – children, life, work, the ton of stuff that just sort of happens when you’re a grown up person with responsibilities. Dinner getting out of hand, the fact that you’re in your pyjamas and your bra is off and you really don’t want to put it back on again, you’re tired after a week at work and you don’t have the headspace to people any more that day. This one has been in the offing for a while, and Jill forgot that she was at Cub camp all weekend, a couple of others were doing family things and so on. See what I mean?

Anyway, six of us made it, plus M’s two daughters, and the plan was simple: pizzas, prosecco and inappropriate board games. Board games are always involved somewhere in the planning if not in the actual execution… S brought an excellent chocolate cake, there were savoury snacks and dips, and a variety of drinks. Conversation ranged from Mr Handsome the geography teacher; a person most of us knew separately for an interesting range of reasons; weird celebrity crushes; why eyelash curlers are a bad idea after the age of 50; kids; the menopause (the 26 year old has all this to look forward to… sorry Edith) and all its associated joys; pole dancing and more. All this before 11pm! M’s husband is an honorary woman and takes everything in his stride, bless him, but their lodger made a hasty escape when they came back at 10.

It was exactly what I needed, as it turned out – as I have mentioned a few times, life is challenging at the moment for many reasons and I left feeling a whole lot better about everything.

I’ve been very lucky with my girlfriends over the years – the family of choice when you become an adult and have to manage a lot of the time without the blood ones (who are always there when you need them but some of them sometimes need a bit more notice due to living plane rides away).

I had a hard core of friends at school, most of whom I am still in touch with although we’re quite scattered these days. On my first day in Preston I met Amanda and we’ve been friends ever since – early morning coffees whenever we can, the odd dinner and evening out, and a lot of cemeteries, museums, exhibitions and life moments have been explored together.

In Bethnal Green there was Kersti and Nicky, who I was able to catch up with over the last couple of weeks in London. When the relationship that brought me to Epping went down in flames, I was adopted by an amazing bunch of women (the Pink Ladies, but not the racist ones – just because of the sheer quantity of pink wine we were able to down in those days. Yes, even me, though I am a cheap date these days.) Spa weekends, nights when the staff at the Peking Garden (RIP) gathered round the table dropping hints that we should all go home – we refined our menu to the hors d’oeuvres, duck and pudding as we never managed to eat all the main courses, Christmas visits to the theatre. Without them I would not have made it through 2003.

When I moved to North Weald, the kids had made friends with the twins two doors away and as it turned out the mum and I had a mutual friend. I got roped into the local mums’s group raising money for a new play-park round the corner. We used to hold meetings (with an agenda!) in the pub and quite often we’d even manage to make decisions. We organised events in village halls and on the Common – Easter egg hunts, Halloween and Christmas parties where Jill got to indulge her am-dram panto ambitions, and memorably a carols and mince pies evening in a marquee pitched in what was essentially a swamp in the pouring rain. The play-park is well loved and as a result I have a gang of friends with whom I hurl myself in freezing water, fail to play games, go for lots of walks with dogs and each other, have annual traditions and between us we have a bunch of kids who we’ve watched grow up into excellent young adults.

I’m also very lucky to be part of a hard core gang of girl cousins, to have gig buddies like Jen (who I get to see unexpectedly next month!) and museum friends too like Cath and Rhiannon. All bases are covered..

I wouldn’t be without a single one of them – there’s nothing like a girlfriend for cheering you up when you’re down, for promising to provide an alibi and a spade if it all gets too much, for cracking open the prosecco/cider/Baileys at the slightest excuse, and for generally being the folded beer mats under the table leg of life. I love them all.

Things making me happy this week

  • A helpful chat on Thursday afternoon which went a long way to sorting out my brain
  • Baby Cow season!
  • Coffee last Sunday with Miriam and Edith
  • Seeing Nicky and Alan again before they headed back to NZ (don’t leave it 20 years again!)
  • A walk in the sunshine on Saturday morning, following squirrels through the forest and making friends with lots of bouncy dogs as I had a coffee at Julie’s Cafe in Stonards.
  • The very beautiful rainbow on Monday even if it meant I had to shelter in a stable for half an hour to get out of the torrential downpour
  • Unexpected time with the twins on Saturday, and they have developed excellent baby giggles
  • Simple sewing projects in the shape of some strappy dresses that came together very quickly
  • Working to the sound of 6 Music on Friday
  • Sharing playlists on Spotify

That’s it from me – looking forward to a swim in the morning with Rachel and to the tumble dryer repairer actually turning up….

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Common Murder Val McDermid
The Bone Hacker Kathy Reichs

317: the gift that keeps on giving…

It is a truth universally acknowledged and so on that if  a group of middle aged women get together these days they’ll inevitably start talking about menopause. I mean, forget annual magazine or cheese subscriptions or whatever, menopause really is the gift that keeps on giving.

This week’s tick on the menopause bingo card was a bout of vertigo – I’d had a few twinges last weekend but only when bending down, but it landed fully on Wednesday and I couldn’t even sit up without feeling dizzy and sick, so I had to take a day off work. It is apparently all to do with oestrogen receptors in the inner ear. Why does one even need oestrogen receptors in the inner ear? It’s not like we have to listen to the damn stuff. Answers on an HRT patch to the usual address, please.

Luckily I was recovered by Thursday as I had a dinner date planned with old friends – Kersti (old school friend and ex-flatmate in our early days in London) and Nicky, over from New Zealand for the first time in years. Nicky had her two daughters with her so we had to mostly behave, but it was so good to see them both and briefly Nicky’s husband too. We started with a drink in a pub in Farringdon and then headed for the Market Place Food Hall in St Paul’s as none of us could decide what we wanted to eat. Kersti and I ended up at the Argentinian Grill while the others ate Nepalese dumplings.

Saturday was also a busy one: Thing 2 and I went to the cinema to see Project Hail Mary, starring Ryan Gosling, Ryan Gosling’s cardigan and a (not The) rock. Based on a novel by Andy Weir, who also wrote The Martian, it was fairly long at about two and a half hours but was completely engrossing. It’s a buddy movie in space. We laughed. We cried. We were utterly invested for the whole thing and my copy of the book should arrive tomorrow.

The jumper, starring Ryan Gosling. Amazon MGM photo.

Ryan Gosling sort of passed me by until La La Land and Barbie but he’s wonderful in this. Go and see it. Take tissues.

A spur of the moment decision saw me out in the evening as well, at The Eric Morecambe Centre in Harpenden with Miriam and family watching a comedian called John Robertson and his The Dark Room show. The world’s only live action text-based video game experience, apparently, it’s described as ” improv comedy + retro gaming
fused into a deranged heavy metal game show” and I can’t think of a better description. I’d never heard of him before, but since this is a year of trying new things I decided to join the outing and had an excellent time. It’s hard to explain without ruining it, but it was very well done and perfectly timed. He did photos at the interval, took questions at the end and called everyone Darren. Also recommended!

Today is a walk with Thing 2, coffee with Miriam and Edith and then some interminable ironing…same time next week!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Report for Murder/Silent Bones/Common Murder – Val McDermid

316: break from the old routine

This week I am coming at you live from sunny Wales, where I’ve escaped for a bit of a break from the old routine. It’s been a fairly hectic couple of months and with opening looming excitedly on the horizon I can’t imagine it’s going to get any less so. The weather for the first day was a bit stormy so there was a lot of TV watched, including two good films (A Complete Unknown and Deliver Me From Nowhere). Both Timothy Chalamet as Bob Dylan and Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen were excellent, even keeping me awake past 10.30pm which is a miracle. A couple of glasses of wine, good company and good music made for a relaxing start to the long weekend.

Even if it was only a three and a half day week for me it felt busy, with every day in the office for various meetings. I am so over internal meetings on Teams that I’d rather brave the commute and do them in person. This meant, too, that I got to see the site twice this week – the changes over even a week are so fast, with railings in place and things coming together. The novelty of being able to see people’s faces on what’s essentially a high tech phone call has very much worn off.

On Wednesday I actually got to remind myself why I got into this career, which was to get people all excited about visiting not just us but all the other spaces where they can see art and culture and history and stuff. I also like hearing their ideas as they look at the world in a very different way to me. It’s been a while since I’ve delivered a talk of any kind, and I do love it.

The session in question was an online chat with the fine art, graphic design and photography students from Medway School of Art and came about thanks to a chat with lovely Babs at the World Skills UK Finals last year. Serendipity is a wonderful thing! I heard some of the students’ ideas about what matters to them and how they’ll communicate that through their various art forms, and told them in turn all about the Centre. I can’t wait to get them all on site.

We also met the next tranche of our volunteers at a session on Wednesday afternoon: illustration and animation students, people who were volunteers in our old home in Granary Square, people who loved Quentin Blake’s illustration growing up, people who want to get their hands dirty in our new gardens. There’s so many poeple who want to get involved, and it’s really heartening at times of stress to meet them.

Things making me happy this week

  • The ‘young people’ in the office telling me my outfit on Thursday ‘slayed’ and I was dressed very Gen Z. Basically I was wearing what I’d worn in the 90s as a Gen Xer. Jeans, slip dress, baseball boots and top. There’s nothing new under the sun… But I’ll take it from the cool kids I work with!
  • Coach drivers who tell you to look at the pretty sheep when you’re stuck in traffic.
  • Buying Easter eggs for my team as they’re amazing.
  • Hanging out with cuddly dogs.
  • A random evening in the pub with Jill and Miriam midweek – prosecco and a lot of giggling like idiots.
  • National Express being much classier than the Megabus. No one was throwing up, for a start.
  • Long walk with Thing 2 through Tawney Common last Sunday. Sometimes we chat, sometimes we have our earbuds in and just walk but whatever – it’s lovely that she wants to spend time doing things with her mum!

This week I’m looking forward to another four day week, with a dinner date with Kersti (one of my oldest friends) and Nicky (back from NZ for holiday – it’s been wayyyy too long!)

Same time next week, and may the Easter lagomorph bring you all the Mini Eggs your heart desires.

Kirsty

What I’ve been reading:

Light Perpetual – Francis Spufford
Restless in the Grave/Bad Blood/Less Than a Treason/No Fixed Line/Not The Ones Dead – Dana Stabenow
Silent Bones – Val McDermid