Month: Jan 2024

202: my body is in the chair but my mind could be anywhere

On a trip up to Upper Street in Islington this week I was secretly quite excited to spot the estate agent Hotblack Desiato, whose name(s) were borrowed by Douglas Adams for the frontman of his fictitious rock band Disaster Area in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, book two of the The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy trilogy. I’ve seen it before, of course, as I find myself frequently at that end of Islington for work at the moment, but it never fails to make me smile and I will always associate it with Ford Prefect. I wonder how many houses they have sold to Adams fans?

H2G2 – as it’s affectionately known – was probably one of my earliest introductions to SF/F, as my Dad had the original trilogy up on the top level of his bookshelf along with Anthony and Asimov (it was a very well-organised bookshelf, which filled an alcove in our living room and he made it to measure using wooden dowels and things. It was also very full). I still love it (though not the final Eoin Colfer addition, that’s bloody awful), although some of the other SF/F I was reading at the time is now a little dated, especially some of the sword and sorcery and Robert Heinlein, who was a very odd chap.

Places that appear in much loved books have such a hold on the imagination that sometimes I am afraid to visit them in case they don’t live up to it. I have read so much about Los Angeles, Chicago and New Orleans (OK, in crime novels, but still) that if they didn’t have the noir of my imagination I’d be very disappointed. I blame an American Studies module called ‘Images of the City in the American Mind’ for this – one of Sara Paretsky’s V.I Warshawski novels was on the reading list, featuring a wintry Chicago as a looming backdrop. The equivalent American Gothic course failed to capture my imagination in the same way, for some reason: Moby Dick, meh.

Similarly, I’d love to go to San Francisco after reading Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City (thank you Amanda for introducing me to these) but only in the 1970s and 80s. 1930s Berlin as lived by Christopher Isherwood in Goodbye to Berlin (the one Cabaret was based on) is also on my time-travel bucket list. The magical France of Joanne Harris’s Chocolat series, Charles De Lint’s Newford, Tony Hillerman’s Navajo country – all these places have physical presence in my mind. I need a TARDIS or a bridge to Terabithia or something.

Even places I know well are enhanced by that fictional overlay, especially if what you’re reading is a little bit atmospheric and magical. Right now I’m re-re-re-reading Phil Rickman‘s Merrily Watkins series, set around the Welsh border country where we grew up and featuring a Diocesan exorcist. Drawing occasionally from local folklore (black hounds, apples and more which you can also read about in Ella Mary Leather’s Folklore of Herefordshire) and more modern aspects of Herefordshire (the SAS), along with aspects of police procedurals and mysteries, I recommend them frequently. Especially to people who also grew up there and understand just how weird it can be at times. His standalones are also good, with enough recurring characters across them all to build a believable world – Glastonbury, the border again, and a mossy bit of Manchester. (Phil, if you’re reading, can you crack on with the next Merrily please and thank you? At some point I’m going to run out again.) The TV adaptation of the first couple of books was dire, unfortunately, despite the presence of Anna Maxwell Martin as Merrily. The novels are grounded enough to be believable - as Phil himself says,

The aim here has been to keep it all as real and authentic as possible while allowing subtle elements of the uncanny to creep in, just as they often do in real-life. If I find I’ve written something I can’t believe could happen or be perceived to have happened, it has to be drastically re-written, or it has to go.

Phil Rickman, in A Letter from Ledwardine

There’s probably a link here to my other reading pile of pyschogeography books – Ian Sinclair, Tim Moore, and other people armed with an A-Z and handy with a pen. London fascinates me in fact and in fiction and – unlike many of the places listed above – is easily accessed.

This week my team and I are having our monthly meeting at the British Library to see their Fantasy: Realms of Imagination exhibition, and the Malorie Blackman one if we have time.

Other things making me happy this week

  • An early morning walk through to Toot Hill on Saturday – chilly and sunny and it’s baby cow season already
  • Early coffee with Amanda in London
  • Late afternoon coffee with Cath in Epping
  • Making a personalised toadstool for Miriam’s birthday in her favourite colours
  • Lots of cross stitch and crochet
  • A really good nap (or ‘quality time with Lulu’, as she usually joins me for these siestas)
  • A Museums Association training course on Wellbeing at Work.

And that’s it for me for the week – I have some reading to do, you know.

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

To Dream of the Dead/The Secrets of Pain/The Magus of Hay – Phil Rickman

The Chalice – Phil Rickman (Audible)

201: baby it’s cold outside

Well, this week has been a refreshing blast of actual winter cold between Storm Henk disappearing and Storm Isha landing. Short of snow, gorgeous cold sunshine is my favourite sort of wintry weather, with frosty mornings and ice on puddles to crack. We drove back across from Brittany to Calais on Monday, with Tan delivering a running temperature commentary as we went - zero degrees was the high point. As I’m doing both highs and lows on the temperature stitch this year I should be able to show contrasts in a way that I haven’t before. 

The needle minder felt appropriate for this pattern!

This year’s tracker is the ‘Goth Stitch-a-Long Temperature Cabinet‘, by GrandmaBeWildin. As you can probably guess from the title, it’s a little less of a colour explosion than the last couple of years though for consistency I am going to use the same thread range for the temperatures. I’ve chose a printed aida fabric again, this time a parchmenty colour which reminds me of old library books. The cabinet is underway (only 4500 black stitches to go!) so hopefully by the end of the month I’ll be ready to start tracking. This year it’s a ‘book’ for every day in the high temperature, with a band that shows the low.

Of course this lovely cold snap also meant that Redricks Lake was frozen, with ice a good three inches thick. Yesterday’s dippers had fun with mallets breaking enough of a hole for people to dip, and despite the rise in temperatures today we still got to dip with the ‘bergs. It was our coldest dip yet at just one degree, so we were in for about three minutes before running for our robes and a hot chocolate!

Note the northern tans….

Other things making me happy this week

  • Tea and cake with my gang of ladies, with the best china. Plans were laid for an alternative village WI which doesn’t meet on a weekday afternoon and which has interesting speakers.
  • The Brothers Sun on Netflix – Michelle Yeoh on top form
  • Restocking my supply of Surf-fizz at Carrefour
  • Lots of reading. Lots.
  • Breakfast meeting at Bench to start planning National Illustration Day 2024
  • Getting on top of the paperwork!
  • Meeting the Education Committee at Copped Hall Trust to talk about their schools programme

And now it’s time for a quick nap before the Things start demanding feeding…

Same time next week?

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading

The Prayer of the Night Shepherd/The Smile of a Ghost/The Remains of an Altar/The Fabric of Sin – Phil Rickman

The Last Devil to Die – Richard Osman (Audible)

The Chalice – Phil Rickman (Audible)

200: surprise!

Here we are at post number 200, which is quite a lot and probably I should look back at the last 200 weeks and be all marvelly at what I’ve achieved. 200 posts is what I have achieved, despite Covid, labyrinthitis, new jobs, children, and general life happening all at the same time. Thanks to all of you who have been with me since the beginning (hello Mum, hello Dad, hello Fi), and to everyone else who’s dipped into my ramblings, roamings and adventures with the sewing machine.

Anyway, this week I am coming at you from a cold but sunny Brittany, where London sister and brother-in-law and I rocked up on Friday evening to surprise my mum for her significant birthday. I can’t tell you how old she is as she may make me sleep in the garden. Dad had managed to keep the secret, even sneakily making up the beds, hiding the extra baguettes in his office and putting the fizz on ice without Mum noticing.

A snowy coffee
Winter fun in Le Shuttle terminal

Having left Ealing at 6am for a morning Eurotunnel crossing, we made good time across a snowy Normandy and a not-snowy Brittany – spotting the dozens of birds of prey, deer and trees full of mistletoe (at least while I wasn’t snoozing) and only running into a bit of traffic on the Rennes rocade where a combination of roadworks and rush hour conspired against us. At 7.10 Tan dropped me off at the bottom of the drive so Mum wouldn’t hear the car, and clutching the magazine featuring Irish sister Steph* I knocked on the door. Dad had apparently delayed their dinner as long as possible, so when the door went he said he hadn’t finished and made mum get up. She opened the door and stood and looked at me for about 30 seconds in total silence while her brain processed the fact that the daughter who was supposed to be in Essex was on her doorstep. And then I told her I’d hitched a lift with Tan and Darren…there were tears and hugs and much joy, as well as cursing Dad for being a sneaky so-and-so**.

On Friday Tan, Darren and I went for a walk along the Blavet to see if we could spot a coypu in the lagoon. We didn’t spot a coypu but we were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of a kingfisher, a heron, a kestrel, any number of ducks, a buzzard and a cormorant in its favourite tree. It’s a canalised river which flows through to Lorient, and the towpath is popular for walking and running. Last winter we did a 10 miler along there with a total ascent of about 3 metres, which tells you how flat it is!

One of the great mysteries of French life is when the polite passing greeting changes from ‘bonjour‘ to ‘bonsoir‘ – if you open with bonsoir, you can guarantee that they’ll come back at you with bonjour, so mostly we’ve given up and just start there. Yesterday’s walk was no different. On the outward stretch we bonjoured away merrily until we’d almost reached our turnaround point. Tan bonjoured a French gentleman who responded with ‘Non! Bonsoir! Nuit est arrive!‘. When we met him again close to his turnround point in Pont-Augan, I bonsoired him….to which is his response was ‘trop bonsoir!’. Er, what…. had we bonsoired him too many times? Was it too evening, in which case was there a third option of ‘bonne nuit‘? Duolingo – or, indeed, Mr Morgan French (to distinguish him from any other Mr Morgans at the school)- never covered this clearly tricky aspect of the language. Is it some secret French thing designed to catch out the tourists? Answers on a carte postale to the usual address, s’il vous plait.

We are here till Monday, when we’ll make the marathon trek back across to Calais. By then I confidently expect to be approximately 75% baguette.

*Women’s Weekly, since you ask, in a feature all about her live interpretation business, Time Steps. Steph had promised to send her a copy….

**censored, for the delicate ears of my readership

Other things making me happy this week

  • A great meeting with Little Angel Theatre about where we could work together
  • Kicking off a new project with our illustrator Alaa Alsaraji and Holborn Community Association’s Digital Arts Club
  • A swim with Sue and Rachel – the temperatures are heading downwards to extreme sports levels again!
  • Getting organised for this year’s temperature tracker and starting a new Hydrangea blanket as well as mounting last year’s.

Same time next week, mes amis

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Midwinter of the Spirit/A Crown of Lights/The Cure of Souls/The Lamp of the Wicked – Phil Rickman

The Last Devil to Die– Richard Osman (Audible)

Map Addict– Mike Parker

199: there’s a map for that

I picked up book called Map Addict in a charity shop a few weeks ago, by a chap called Mike Parker who apparently does all sorts of stuff on radio and telly about maps. I hadn’t heard of him, as he’s not doing it on Absolute Classic Rock, and I can’t bring myself to commit to Radio 4 quite yet. He may not still be doing it, I don’t know – I checked with my beloved who listens to R4 in his van, but he hadn’t heard of him either. Anyway, this book is described as ‘a tale of obsession, fudge and the Ordnance Survey’ and while I haven’t come across the fudge yet I am enjoying the story of the Ordnance Survey, and associated things like the politics around the prime meridian, the A-Z and the tube map.

Perhaps surprisingly for someone with no sense of direction, I love a map. I am building up my own little collection of OS maps, although sister Tan will tell you that me possessing a map is not the same as me being able to locate myself or, indeed, anything else. She has an excellent sense of direction, whereas I can’t find myself on a circular route unless we start at the beginning. Heck, who am I kidding? I can’t find myself in a large Sainsburys. I have found the OS map app very handy in the last year or so, as it has a little arrow that shows me where I am and which direction to go next. I love walking around my local area (aka ‘the flyblown wasteland’ as Tan refers to Essex) and take mental notes of footpath signs to explore when I’m rambling. If I can locate those on my paper maps when I get home I can plot out a rough route, and just hope I can follow it…

Google Maps is more of a challenge, however. On the rare (usually only once per driver) occasions I was handed a map and asked to navigate in those exciting pre-SatNav days, I discovered that the only way I can make sense of them is to hold them in the direction of travel. If you try this with Google Maps the phone autorotates and so it can take me three or four attempts to make the little blue arrow go down the right road. As for TfL directions which say things like ‘continue down Acacia Avenue for 500m’, well – this is fine when you’ve just got off a bus, but less so when you’ve exited a tube station from several levels underground and have no idea which way that is. External meetings in my new role were an adventure for the first couple of months as it was always hit or miss whether I could navigate back – my mental map of Farringdon is a bit better now, fortunately! I had the same problem when I started at Docklands, as Canary Wharf was very disorienting and the museum wasn’t very well known. After a few months I start building up my mental map, and I try and take different routes around the area to embed it.

As a form of illustration and source of information, though, maps fascinate me. When my Dad would occasionally have an interview in other parts of the UK – like England! – I loved to look up places around it and find funny village names on the map (Piddletrenthide, anyone?). I like the OS maps for finding little curiosities like archaeological sites – even if there’s nothing to see there now, I like knowing that something was there once. The London Underground map is a work of art, and colleagues have been known to use me as a travel planner (although not for walking routes), and I can spend hours falling down the rabbithole of sites like Bombsight (sadly not working at the moment), Layers of London and the Booth Maps, making links between modern and old London.. Maps in fantasy novels enchant me, and I’ll be making a trip with my team to the British Library’s current exhibition Fantasy: Realms of Imagination later this month.

Anyway, Mike Parker’s book is great – if you, like me, enjoy finding out how places like Greenwich became the centre of navigation (to annoy the French, apparently), and whose brilliant idea it was to triangulate the whole of the UK and what happens when bits fall into the sea, then I recommend this book as an entertaining and informative read. I’ve just ordered his book on the history of public footpaths, too, and added a few more to the wishlist.

Other things making me happy this week:

  • New Year’s Eve with friends
  • New Year’s Day swim with several of the same friends
  • A mooch round the market with Miriam (and a new jumper)
  • Early morning hot chocolate with Amanda
  • Finishing the Temperature Supernova and deciding on this year’s tracker
  • Finishing my very snuggly cardigan using The Maker’s Atelier Raw-edged coat pattern, and binding my Double Down Dress
  • Seeing my sister’s company featured in Woman’s Weekly magazine this week
  • Not the flipping rain though, no. Or tube strikes when I have to get to work. Not them either.

See you next week!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Map Addict – Mike Parker

December/Wine of Angels/Midwinter of the Spirit – Phil Rickman

The Man Who Died Twice/The Last Devil to Die – Richard Osman (Audible)