Month: Feb 2024

206: a right pain in the neck

This week has been mostly notable for a migraine which has been sulking and stropping around since Tuesday, making its presence felt in a variety of unpleasant ways. Quite apart from the pain, a full-on migraine comes accompanied by visual disturbances, nausea, light and sound sensitivity, shakes and – joy of joys, these days – hot flushes which are a new and entirely unwelcome addition to both the menopause and the migraines.

The migraine landed on Tuesday night and I beat it into submission with painkillers, heat packs and an early night, and then (thinking I was winning) I went to work on Wednesday morning. The Central Line, which at the moment is a portal into the deepest pits of hell (and no, I am not exaggerating) was crowded, hot and delayed. By the time I got to work the side-effects were back with a vengeance and the pain was gearing up for round two, I went home after a couple of hours and took to my bed, which helped, but I’ve had to be careful with my choice of activity for the rest of week.

I’ve had migraines since my late teens, occasionally triggered by food and drink (red wine, white wine and lager – halfway down the first glass, which effectively ruins an evening out; strong cheese; too much dark chocolate – all classic triggers). Sometimes they’re hormonal, sometimes stress-related; sometimes they just turn up for no good reason whatsoever. They’re exhausting, and the really bad ones leave you knocked out for several days and feeling fragile. Painkillers take out the pain, but not the rest of the symptoms – over the years I’ve tried all sorts of thing, like Migraleve and Syndol when they strike; amytriptyline which didn’t work; a nasal spray containing ergotamine which came with a long list of side effects including death, so I didn’t use that much; Tiger Balm, Kool’n’Soothe, heat packs, Deep Freeze gel, and right now I have my neck on an acupuncture pillow which is spiky but effective. It would be nice to find something that worked consistently but so far no luck. Everyone seems to have their own ways of dealing with theirs – currently I take Paramol alternating with Ibuprofen, use Tiger Balm on my temples and a heat pack or cold gel on my neck – I have seen something that recommends a bag of frozen peas on your neck and your feet in a bowl of hot water, but that seems complicated at a time when even thinking in single syllables is a challenge.

Things that were better about the week…

  • Interesting meetings – the Participatory Arts Network and a friendly rabbi
  • A great walk in the chilly sunshine with Toby and Loki the Weimaraner on Saturday morning – we anticipated squirrels and rabbits but the geese were a surprise!
  • Finishing the cross stitch that’s been on my frame for about a year and kitting up the next one
  • Finishing the scarf I’ve been crocheting on the train
  • A bit more attempting to draw – this time I liked the bricks but I need to learn about perspective and things. Somewhere I have a book but it’s hiding from me!
  • The Naked Marshmallow Company’s salted caramel gourmet flavour (thanks Tan)
  • Thing 2’s lemon and cranberry biscuits

I am off for a swim this morning for the first time in a couple of weeks – let’s hope I haven’t lost my acclimatisation!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Threadneedle – Cari Thomas

Silver on the Tree – Susan Cooper (Audible)

Neighbours from Hell?/The Wild Rover – Mike Parker

205: it’s very nice…what is it?

One of the things we believe at work is that – given the right tools – everyone is an illustrator, and we don’t limit illustration to picture books which is the answer virtually all school children give me when I ask ‘what is illustration?’ at the start of a session. That includes the Year 10s I worked with last week, and even post-graduate illustration students seem puzzled when I ask them how they’d define illustration.

We say it’s art with a job to do, the art we see all around us, the art which helps us make sense of the world. It’s art that communicates without words – though typography is part of illustration – and it’s art that’s been around since before words. There’s a lovely animation here that illustrates (see what I did there?) all this much more eloquently that I have.

I love all these definitions and the learning strategy I’m currently writing has this as its mission, and I’m quite prepared to think of myself as an illustrator but…not a very good one, and I’d never apply the word ‘artist’ to myself. For that I blame school. Art, after second year comprehensive, was for people who were ‘good at’ art. I was not ‘good at’ art – the best mark I ever got was a B- for a drawing of mum’s avocado plant which I was very proud of, but that mark was all the feedback I got – nothing constructive, no next steps, no ‘try doing this’. I don’t remember ever being taught to draw, or indeed to use watercolours, to try typography, or collage, or any other art form – these were things you either could or couldn’t do, and no real effort was made to change this state of being. Presumably this changed when you got to do art GCSE, but I don’t know – maybe the teachers gave that sort of feedback then as exam results depended on a certain level, but also there was an expectation that if you were doing the subject you were already good at it. This still makes me sad, and I can see the impact that this sort of school experience has had on a lot of the adults we engage with: ‘I haven’t done this since school’, ‘I used to love painting in school but I was no good at it.’

Thing 1 did art at GCSE, and Thing 2 is in her first year of GCSEs and she gave me a tour of her sketchbook the other day – I was very impressed. I am biased but they’re a talented pair – they get it from their Dad, who did Art to A-level, and who is able to help them with this subject. I was impressed with their teacher, who didn’t require that they should be ‘good at’ the subject, only that they were passionate about it and prepared to put the time in. This, I think, is the right way to think. How will young people ever find out if they are artists (of any calibre) if they never get the chance to find out? Even if they find out that they aren’t ‘good at it’, they might find they get great joy out of it – mot a quantifiable outcome but still a very valid one.

The artist Bob and Roberta Smith said that every school should be an art school, and even Ofsted said last year that ‘art should command an important place in every school’. I’ve written about the importance of creativity – not just on wellbeing but on general thinking – previously and posed the query ‘what happens if you replace the word craft with the word art?’ Obviously I understand the pressures on the curriculum (which sadly begins in the early years, just when children should be free to explore all the amazing art and craft materials around them) and the pressures for schools to achieve certain levels of GCSEs and A-levels, and the EBacc, blah blah blah, but I also understand the importance of being given the space to create and explore and scribble and doodle (sorry, boss) and generally play with art and craft materials, even if you’re not ‘good at it’. I understand, too, that at primary school in particular the majority of teachers are not art specialists, and have been given only the most minimal training in how to deliver the subject.

The creative industries contributed £115.9billion to the UK economy in 2023 – OK, this is only 0.4% of UK GDP, 260,000 full time jobs, but this is growing year on year. The soft skills that come with creative learning – empathy, creative thinking and problem solving among others – are among those most highly valued by employers according to research by the Edge Foundation. Unfortunately the current pressures from government, tightening budgets throughout the education, bad PR around ‘creative’ degree subjects and more are drying up the pipeline of young people into these industries.

All this, by the way, was just a lengthy preamble to what I’ve been attempting to do this week, which is to try and draw the things I’ve seen around me – from Sunday to Tuesday I did the ‘draw my day’ thing but on the days I was in London I didn’t have time. I took photos of the things I saw on my travels though – I am finding myself drawn (if you’ll pardon the pun) to signage and buildings, as well as my usual plants, Landscapes are nice but I have no urge to draw them – I like small details rather than the big pictures, it seems. I don’t think I’ll be any threat to the livelihoods of any artists out there but I am really enjoying stopping and looking and then spending time focusing on details. So keep your B-, Mrs Allan, I’m having a go at drawing whether I’m any good at it or not.

Other things making me happy this week…

  • Making an effort to go for early morning walks on the days I work at home
  • A long walk yesterday morning- the floodwaters have receded so I managed to complete the loop I tried last week
  • Volunteering in the garden at Copped Hall with my Beloved and Thing 3 last week, except there was mud.
  • Interesting site tour with colleague Laura and Studio Weave. I like people who get excited at the potential of our site.

And that’s it from me for the week – half term this week, at least for the Horde.

Kirsty x

Cover image: Dial House – https://www.radical-guide.com/listing/dial-house/

What I’ve been reading:

The Cold Calling/Mean Spirit/Marco’s Pendulum/Marco and the Blade of Night – Phil Rickman

Greenwitch/The Grey King/Silver on the Tree – Susan Cooper (Audible)

Map Addict – Mike Parker

204: unexpected water hazards

Yesterday I accidentally went on a nearly-13km walk. I’d woken up at 6am and been unable to go back to sleep, so once I’d had a cup of coffee and had a bit of a read and since it wasn’t raining I decided I’d go for a bit of a wander in search of inspiration. My plan, such as it was, was to head to the farm to say good morning to the baby cows, turn around at 2.5km, pick up some milk and be back for breakfast. Yup, that sounds pretty straightforward, I hear you say. Baby cows, milk, breakfast.

Well, once I’d said good morning to the baby cows and arrived at the 2.5km point, I was feeling full of the joys of spring, as you do when the sun is shining, the bushes are full of robins and blue tits and there’s a good playlist on Spotify (a lot of glam rock, as it goes.). 10k felt doable, so I kept going into Toot Hill and turned down towards the wonderfully Hobbitish-named Clatterford End.

This is a lane that I’ve been down before, but always turned round at 5km as I don’t really know where it goes. Clatterford End isn’t really a place at all. So – and I can pinpoint this as the moment it all got out of hand – I looked at the map. Just a little Google, I thought, to see where the road goes. I might see some interesting things to put in my sketchbook at the end of the day, at the very least, and I might find some new footpaths to explore when swamp season is over in Essex. We’ve had so much rain recently that the clay is saturated and the footpaths are running water, so offroading was very definitely not in my plan.

Well, it turned out that if I carried on down this lane and turned left I would end up going in a big circle back to Toot Hill and it probably wouldn’t be much more than 10k. So I carried on. It was all going well- I even knew where I was which, as it happened, was a bit of a blessing. My mental map of the area had just connected a few dots….and then there was a flood, So deep it had an abandoned car on one of the banks. I could not go over it. I could not go under it, and I damn sure wasn’t going through it.

Offroad it was then. You can see from the map that there’s a weird loop-the-loop. This is where I opened the Ordnance Survey app, found a route back to the road which would take me past the flood, only to find that the footpath was blocked by brambles and more water. So I resigned myself to a trek along the Essex Way and it was exactly as swampy, sticky, slippy and slurpy as I expected it to be in early February. I muttered and grumbled and slipped and slid slowly back through to Toot Hill, glaring at small streams and puddles and passing dogwalkers, said hello to the baby cows again and stomped back up the hill. I remembered the milk though, and treated myself to a hot bath followed by tomato soup and a Spanish hot chocolate. And a nap.

I did get to draw my day, and was quite inspired by some road signs mostly as I didn’t feel brave enough to try sketching the baby cows. I did try the cherry blossom from the garden, and noted down my soundtrack and a lyric from one of my favourite songs. Saturday is clean sheets day, so that was marked too, and I took a leaf out of Bob Ross’s book and turned my mistake into a bird. I enjoyed playing with pencils and markers and colours, and I’m quite pleased with how it turned out.

Also this week…

Last Sunday the entire clan visited Get To know Animals, a relatively new mini-zoo and animal experience centre just outside Epping. It was an interesting experience – Thing 2 ended up traumatised by seeing two ring-neck parakeets attacking a quail in the bird enclosure. Grandthing 1 handled a rabbit called Gandalf that was almost as big as he was, and Thing 3 was given a ferret experience as a birthday present from his big sisters. He and my Beloved were rolling around the floor with them.

Thing 2 loves a ferret, and feels I should love them too. Actual conversation:

Thing 2: You should hold the ferret, mum

Me: No thank you

Thing 2: No no, hold the ferret, he’s really furry

Me: I do not want to hold a ferret, thank you.

Thing 2: <puts ferret on me>

Ferret: <sinks fangs into my chin>

Me: OOOWWWWWW

I liked the flirty alligator though and I’d happily adopt a cloud rat or take home a tortoise or two.

Alligator side-eye
Tortoises!

Thing 3 and I had a great night out seeing the RSC’s My Neighbor Totoro at the Barbican for his birthday treat – no photos are allowed, but I can say it was absolutely magical: the special effects for the Totoros, soot sprites and the Catbus were so cleverly done, and we had an amazing evening. It was his first theatre experience and it’ll be hard to beat. Thing 2 made him an amazing birthday cake.

Also…

  • Coffee and a good catch-up with an ex-Museum of London colleague
  • Taking part in a Careers Day at a school in East Ham
  • An inspiring meeting with the wonderful Parent House in Islington
  • Coffee with a friend at the King’s Head
  • Getting up to date with this year’s cross stitch temperature tracker

And that’s it for me – it’s been a pretty busy week, in and out of London and wrestling with the Central Line every day (ugh), but that does mean I have done a lot of crochet on the leafy scarf!

Same time next week then!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Over Sea, Under Stone/The Dark is Rising/Greenwitch – Susan Cooper (Audible)

The Fever of the World/The House of Susan Lulham/The Cold Calling – Phil Rickman

Draw your Day – Samantha Dion Baker.

203: a wander through the realms of imagination

This week my team and I headed to the British Library to see the Fantasy: Realms of Imagination exhibition before it closes later this month. As I may have mentioned once or twice over the course of this blog, I love a bit of SF/F, so I was very excited about seeing this show.

Entering the space through a sparkling, fairy-lit forest portal (I knew it was going to be good) and avoiding the first hazard in the shape of a couple of school groups, we were immediately immersed in the very beginnings of fantasy through ‘Fairy and Folk Tales’. Highlights for me were glorious Arthur Rackham illustrations, a 1918 ‘Ancient Mappe of Fairyland’ by Bernard Sleigh and an earpiece playing Steeleye Span’s Thomas the Rhymer. It’s easy to dismiss fairy tales – especially if you grew up with the later, heavily sanitised Ladybird ‘Read it Yourself’ versions - but the original stories as written down by people like the Brothers Grimm were, well…. grim. One of my favourite childhood books, Alan Garner’s The Owl Service, was featured here along with a plate from the service which inspired it.

‘Epics and Quests’ was the second section, and of the things I liked about this exhibition was that it delved far deeper than the the European traditional forms of fantasy and ‘sword’n’sorcery’ tropes. Studio Ghibli’s Princess Mononoke appeared here, along with more of my all-time favourites in the shape of The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper, T.H.White’s The Sword in the Stone, Tolkien in book and film (Gandalf’s staff!), and Warhammer. Tove Jansson’s illustrations for the Swedish translation of The Hobbit were included, with a rather trollish Gollum facing off with a behatted Bilbo Baggins. Apparently her depiction of Gollum caused Tolkien to amend his description to include the word ‘small’ in future editions! Dungeons and Dragons also popped up here, Livingstone and Jackson’s Fighting Fantasy series, and a marked up script for Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I refrained from quoting large swathes of the film, as I’d like my team not to think I’m a complete geek. Ha.

Section three covered ‘Weird and Uncanny’ – Valentina and I had great fun in the interactive wibbly wobbly space where you appeared as if by magic and went all swirly. Here there was also a game called Fallen London, a text-based RPG set in a London stolen by bats. Of course! Philippa Pearce’s Tom’s Midnight Garden was included, along with Neil Gaiman discussing The Sandman and the power of being a writer. H.P Lovecraft’s Cthulhu (that’s hard to spell) featured, and the board game A Study in Emerald based on a Neil Gaiman story.

Section four, ‘Portals and Worlds’, explored the alternative realities built by fantasy writers and artists. Here was Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Map, and a whole lot of schoolchildren building their own worlds with the help of a gallery educator. We had to step over them to see Elphaba’s costume from Wicked, as they were worldbuilding all over the floor. I felt there were some gaps - not enough urban fantasy which, given the quality of work in this genre over the last 30 years or so by people like Charles de Lint and Ben Aaronovitch, felt like a real missed opportunity. Finally there were some Live Action Role Play costumes including a spectacular dryad.

It was inevitable that I was going to leave the exhibition with a reading list! Uprooted by Naomi Novik and Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia are the ones that caught my imagination.

I was quite disappointed to reach the end of the exhibition, which came far too quickly. The exhibition design was atmospheric, and managed to stay away from the whimsical in the main. It finishes later this month so get in quick!

Other things making me happy this week:

  • Mooch round the market with Miriam
  • A D&D game where I got to call down a lightning storm and be all Dr Strange
  • A birthday trip for Thing 3 on Saturday night to see My Neighbour Totoro at the Barbican, which I’ll write about next week
  • Starting a new scarf as my portable project, using this pattern. I had to adapt it as working into slip stitches all the time would be a nightmare. This is using a Stylecraft DK yarn that I bought in a sale a while ago.
  • Good progress on the temperature stitch for the year – I’m still not ready to start the books but the shelves are nearly done!

Now I must get up and make a banana cake….

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Friends of the Dusk/All of a Winter’s Night/The Fever of the World – Phil Rickman

The Chalice – Phil Rickman (Audible)

Over Sea, Under Stone– Susan Cooper (Audible)

Map Addict – Mike Parker

Draw Your Day – Samantha Dion Baker