Month: Mar 2024

211: communications breakdown

Easter is here already, and I am relieved of the responsibility of getting anyone out of bed other than me for the next two weeks. This makes me quite cheerful. While I am known for being generally quite chirpy of a morning, this is only the case if I am allowed to have a cup of coffee and half an hour (at least) of solitary reading before I am expected to engage with anyone else. Having to coax various offspring out of their pits before my happy face is in place is known to test the bounds of my patience, and brings on what London sister refers to as my ‘psycho Mary Poppins’ persona. Gritted teeth, determinedly cheerful voice and walking (and occasionally falling off) the fine line between perky and profane.

It turns out that pulling an all-nighter in A&E with a miserable child (don’t panic, mum, she’s FINE – NHS111 sent us up there but their concept of emergency does not translate to actual emergency care) also tests my patience, especially when communications break down within the hospital and things are missed. The streaming clinician telling child they need to go to Urgent Care where they’ll be seen quickly, for example, but no one having told the clinician that Urgent Care had closed. Then, because we’d been through triage once and then got put back on the system as they’d taken her off because she’d been sent to Urgent Care (that wasn’t open), they failed to take bloods which were finally done at 4.30am – and then the doctor said they couldn’t do anything for various reasons, and to get a GP appointment. I laughed in a what was, according to the child, quite a scary way. These days you can only get a GP appointment if you phone in an arbitrary half hour slot on a Thursday afternoon, a month in advance, and there’s a z in the month. Or if you dial upwards of 50 times (my record is 96) to get into the queue at 8.30am and pray that by the time you get through there’s an appointment left. And now the nurse practitioner (lovely lady, did all the medication reviews, HRT and generally useful things) has left which will reduce options even more. The child also needs a consultant appointment – a telephone clinic – so she attempted to book online, only to find there were no appointments and to leave a number and the clinic would phone back. They did not phone back – the next contact was a letter telling her if she didn’t book an appointment she’d be discharged. I suppose the theory is that you’ll either be better or dead by the time you actually get to see anyone, which at least reduces waiting lists. You can’t fault the actual people on the NHS frontline (which includes some of my favourite friends) but something is going wrong somewhere.

AND the bloody coffee machine was broken.

After six hours I was forced to channel my inner dad, and explain that we’d been there many hours at this point, and that I did have two other children who I needed to make sure got to school and perhaps a doctor might like to talk to us so we could leave? I was extremely polite but my inner psycho Mary P was very definitely in evidence. The only plus was that we’d been there so long that the buses had started running again so at least we could get home.

We got home, I made sure the other two were at least awake and then went to bed, slept for a few hours and was in work for afternoon meetings…. FML, quite frankly. FML.

Things making me happy this week (not the NHS)

  • Monday morning coffee with an old colleague
  • Getting a lot of crochet done on my scarf – obviously I’d rather it hadn’t been overnight in the A&E dept, but there we are
  • Finishing the Rivendell cross stitch – next up, a Michael Powell kit that’s been lurking in the stash
  • Getting up to date on the temperature cross stitch
  • Discovering a rather magical new book – Days at the Morisaki Bookshop – and a whole new genre of literature (cats and books in Japan)
  • A visit from London sister, although I think my cats are trying to kill her
  • An Easter morning swim

Hopefully you’re all having a lovely Easter weekend filled with chocolate and hot cross buns.

Same time next week then!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Voodoo River – Robert Crais

Sweets – Tim Richardson

At Home/Notes from a Big Country  – Bill Bryson (Audible)

Kick Back – Val McDermid

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop – Satoshi Yagisawa

The Easy Life in Kamusari – Shion Miura

210: mad March malaise

Ah, March. People who’ve worked with me for years will recognise this as my annual ‘chuck the toys out of the pram and swear I need another job’ moment, despite the fact that I love my job and really don’t want another one. Usually it’s related to the performance appraisal cycle, when I’m reviewing my year against targets and feeling as if I have achieved absolutely nothing.

In my head I know that the targets set the previous year are SMART (but VAGUE) and often don’t reflect the things I do across the year – which in some years have included writing a unit for the London Curriculum, working on hugely successful exhibitions and applications, developing innovative sessions, pulling off high profile events, to name a few things. If the things aren’t quantified in the targets I feel like a failure.

My current role doesn’t work to the April-March appraisal cycle but it turns out my brain hasn’t worked that out, so I’ve spent all week with a horrible case of impostor syndrome and associated wobbles. Oh yes, and a cold and the tail end of a cold sore.

Tuesday was the worst day. The cats were misbehaving, Thing 2’s work experience paperwork needed sorting out, I had a headache that wouldn’t go away, Thing 2’s eczema was making her miserable and it was clearly my fault, Thing 3 was being stroppy, Thing 1 has mocks and was stressed, my throat hurt, the big piece of work I’d finished the previous week was all wrong, everyone wanted me to do everything all at once, and I was clearly failing on all counts. I was also very, very tired.

I was very, very tired as on Monday I’d been to a conference at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, which meant getting up at 4.30am, travelling 3.5 hours each way and when I got back at 8pm they were all waiting to be fed (see? all this responsibility!). It was a really interesting day, despite the cold taking hold and feeling very down – all about values-led community engagement.

One of the breakout sessions, led by the team from the Bluecoat in Liverpool, got us thinking about resilience vs vulnerability and how we define them. Resilience is a word which has been massively overused in the culture sector for the past 15 years or so – ‘resilience training’ for staff, along with ‘change management’ training, is often chased rapidly by other re- words, like restructure, reorganisation, redundancy, and (the most recent one I’ve heard) realignment, Resilience has been pushed on us by years of under-resourcing and uncertain funding, and vulnerability – especially personal – is often masked by a culture of toxic positivity masquerading as resilience. It was a relief to have a conversation with a group of people with shared experiences from across the sector, including one who’d been at one of the same organisations as me during the post-Covid ‘recovery’ process.

Chichester was lovely, too – I took a wander around it after the sessions and before the train – it’s a funny place, with about 12 phone shops interspersed with much higher-end shops (and a New Look with a frontage like the British Museum). There was some lovely street art as well, including a Stik piece, tucked away in side streets.

Pallant House Gallery’s exhibition of work by John Craxton, an artist who’d spent a long time in Greece, is worth a visit if you find yourself over that way. I adored the mischievous cats he’d captured in some of his paintings, and some of them would lend themselves beautifully to textile work.

Other things making me happy this week:

  • Little lambs seen from the train (and going on a train. I like trains)
  • Early Saturday morning coffee
  • Deep Heat on a stiff neck
  • Spring being on its way – and an office with daylight and a door we can prop open to the fire escape to enjoy it.
  • Excellent progress on the Rivendell cross stitch and the alpaca scarf

Same time next week then! A couple of four day weeks coming up with the promise of chocolate eggs, what’s not to love?

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches – Sangu Mandanna

The Unfortunate Side Effects of Heartbreak and Magic – Breanne Randall

At Home – Bill Bryson (Audible)

Sweets: A History of Temptation – Tim Richardson

Noise Floor – Andrew Cartmel

A Blend of Magic – Kate Kenzie

209: casting about

I should make it clear that there are no cats in this post, despite the cover image – it came up when I searched for ‘cast concrete’.  Cats are nice, though, as Terry Pratchett’s Death memorably said. It was the anniversary of his passing this week, so it feels right to reference him here, as one of the only public figures whose death has made me cry.

Last Sunday I finally got round to trying one of the craft kits I’d bought with the Obby voucher my lovely Young V&A colleagues gave me as a leaving gift last year. I had great fun choosing some things I’d never tried before – a wet felting pebble kit inspired by one of the artworks at Kettle’s Yard, which I’d fallen in love with on my team outing last August, and a jesmonite casting kit from Creators Cabinet which was the one I tried out. I’d hoped to do a live and in-person workshop but there weren’t any available or scheduled when I was looking, sadly.

Jesmonite is a environmentally friendly resiny concretey stuff (probably) that one of my ex-colleagues Haidee Drew uses to make beautiful jewellery, and which can be used for HUGE and small things. The kit I bought was for making three small pots – a bronze nugget pot, a marbled pot and a split pour. The kit came in a lovely box which made it feel like a present (I like presents), and an email accompanies them with a link to a video workshop.

All poured and setting for however long it was

In the kit you get a bottle of the jesmonite liquid, a mixing stick and paper cup, the silicone mould, three pre-weighed packets of the jesmonite powder, tiny pots of bronze powder and black ink, and a pair of gloves. It all feels a bit like a science experiment, measuring and mixing and stirring and adding things and swirling!

The video, presented by a nice pair of people in aprons, shows you how to do all three pots step by step. I could have done with a few more close-ups on the pouring process and when the man said ‘leave this to cure’ it would have been helpful for him to have added ‘for 30 – 40 minutes’ but otherwise the process was straightforward and Google had the answer. The paper mixing cup provided started leaking by the fourth and final mix so I had to quickly transfer it to a plastic pot, but otherwise I liked the principle of ensuring all the packaging is biodegradable. The silicone mould is reusable, and their bottles are made from sugarcane.

Doing the curing thing for 24 hours

It wasn’t too messy, and I enjoyed the mixing process and mucking around with bronze and black pigment. The bronze nugget one (the first one I made) isn’t perfect as I think I used too much bronze but I still love them and would happily have another go, They feel lovely, heavy and smooth like stone, and I’ve put tealights in them for now.

Other things making me happy this week

  • Getting to see a bit more of Islington on my way to and from a network meeting (with hot cross buns)
  • Making everybody squish the new scarf I’m making out of the lovely Drops Alpaca yarn that was a birthday present a couple of years ago. Sorry team but it’s JUST SO FLUFFY.
  • Cinnamon buns made by Thing 2 – she’s a handy child to have around
  • Joining a ‘visioning day’ with the Pollocks Toy Museum team at Holy Trinity Dalston – the church where they hold the clown service. There was excellent home made cake and I made a new friend – it’s lovely when you hit it off with someone!
  • Canneloni for dinner on Saturday – such a faff but so worth it
  • A sensible thought process: I need to go for a walk and I need to buy something for dinner, therefore I shall walk to Tesco. It was sunny and warm, for a change.
  • Good progress on the latest cross stitch – I’m using an app called Pattern Keeper which is SO much better than paper charts. I have a unfinished paper chart piece so I might try scanning the pages in for the rest of it and see if that works, as there’s lots of ‘confetti’ (single scattered stitches) in the piece and PK makes this easier.
  • Coffee and a catch-up with Heather
  • The water at the lake breaking double figures again – spring has sprung!

This week I am off to Pallant House Gallery in Chichester for a conference – a new place and a train journey! I do love a train.

See you next Sunday then,

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading

A Boy of Chaotic Making – Charlie N Holmberg

Killing the Shadows – Val McDermid

The Cat and the City – Nick Bradley

At Home – Bill Bryson (Audible)

Sweets: A History of Temptation – Tim Richardson

208: so, what do you want to be when you grow up?

So here we are at week 208 – four years of me rambling (physically and literarily), reading, making stuff, working, swimming and anything else that’s taken my fancy., Happy birthday to WKDN once again. 11,688 people have visited my little corner of the internet, which is pretty cool – thank you, especially to those people who drop in every week to see what I’ve been up to. Some of them aren’t even related to me!

Does this make me a writer of sorts? There’s certainly been a lot of words. 214,103 to be exact. Some of them have been quite cross and some of them have been airyfairy and about mushrooms and flowers and things, and a lot of them have been about various crafts. Some of them may even have made people think about things differently – I hope so, at least.

At one point in my life I wanted to be a writer, but the trouble was I didn’t know what I wanted to write about, and as it turned out I accidentally fell into a career I rather liked so that worked out quite well.

I’ve been thinking a lot about careers recently thanks to a couple of events I’ve taken part in: one for Year 10s with Inspire, our local Education Business Partnership, and one for undergraduate Education Studies students at the University of East London, but both aimed at helping various levels of students think about their career choices post-education. I’ve just signed up to the latter’s professional mentoring programme, in fact.

When I do these events we’re always asked to talk about our ‘career paths’ and in the last year or so there’s been a focus on non-traditional paths to the workplace – less of the narrow academic routes and more about apprenticeships, traineeships. Definitely less of the ‘I got 3 A*, went to Oxbridge/insert Russell Group uni of choice, got the job of my dreams and now I have a house, 2.4 kids and a dog called Volvo’ career path. I do see some of those people still around – one engineer telling students that they have to do a degree or they won’t get a job, for example, which in the middle of a white working class council estate in depressed post-Ford Dagenham isn’t really the most helpful advice in these days of student debt.

I was on a panel the other day with someone doing youth work and marketing, and he was really open about the fact that he’d dropped out of university having made a mess of his first year, and his dad made him get a job. The job turned out to be in youth work, and he loved it – so he went back to uni with a purpose and now is doing amazing things. He also had an excellent hat.

Another event saw me talking to an environmental scientist who wishes she’d gone down the apprenticeship route as she’d have entered the workplace with practical experience rather than a lot of theory. Her job, on the Tideway Tunnel project, seems mostly to involve telling the construction workers off for throwing mitten crabs back in the river.

The panel event at UEL was essentially for opening up the students’ horizons about the different careers in education: as well as the marketing youth worker, there was a teacher and someone who works in outreach in the Home Office. I always like to describe my career as accidental, as the move out of teaching came as a result of an Inset Day arranged (coincidentally) by the very EBP I did the school event with a few weeks ago. I like these circular moments.

We inevitably get asked at some point what advice we’d give to people starting out, and mine is invariably to take every opportunity you can as you’ll always learn something useful. A range of handy teaching skills, for example, actually came from working behind a bar and clearing people out at closing time. Be curious about all the people around you and what they’re doing – getting the whole picture of an organisation helps you work as a team, and builds relationships. I mean everyone, from the cleaners upwards – make friends, ask them how they are. No one is too low or too high to say hello to. Play nicely, and – this is my current office bugbear – always put your cups and teaspoons in the dishwasher.

Other things making me happy this week

  • Interesting online meetings about working with young volunteers and Bradford City of Culture
  • A surprise birthday breakfast for Rachel at the lake after a chilly swim
  • Good progress on the current cross stitch
  • Visit from Timeshare Teenager 2 and Grandthing 2
  • Coffee and world-righting with Amanda
  • Still watching Silent Witness. We’re up to series 15!
  • A visit to the Foundling Museum with a colleague
Courtroom ceiling at the Foundling

Same time next week then 🙂

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading

The Rules of Magic/Magic Lessons/The Book of Magic – Alice Hoffman

The Wild Rover – Mike Parker

At Home – Bill Bryson (Audible)

Killing the Shadows – Val McDermid

207: listen very carefully, I shall say zis only once

You may have noticed that I love an audiobook. As an accompaniment to the continuing chaos of a Central Line commute (along with a crochet project) it can’t be beaten – it’s like someone reading bedtime stories, especially with the right voice. Kobna Holdbrook-Smith is perfect for the Rivers of London series; Neil Gaiman narrating his own books is a joy; Michael Sheen could read me a shopping list, quite frankly; Esme Young reading her autobiography; Stephen Fry reading the Hitchhikers series; Zara Ramm reading The Chronicles of St Mary’s; and many others. This week I’ve started listening to Bill Bryson reading his own At Home book about the history of all the things in our houses.

The wrong reader can kill a book – the person who narrated Mike Carey’s Felix Castors series was awful, and there were a few of Lindsey Davis’s Falco books with the ‘wrong’ narrator. Tony Robinson was wrong for Discworld, Nigel Planer was a bit better, Stephen Briggs and Celia Imrie were great but the new Penguin versions with people like Richard Coyle, Andy Serkis, Katherine Parkinson, Indira Varma, Sian Clifford and others – all with Peter Serafinowicz as Death and the glorious Bill Nighy as the Footnotes – were perfect.

And then there’s accents. Sometimes – done well, and done appropriately – they can add to the listening experience, but sometimes they’re excruciatingly inappropriate and give you what the kids call ‘the ick’. Posh white readers doing ‘generic Chinese’, for example (as my lovely colleague was horrified by the other week) or posh English people doing cod Welsh, which quite ruined the final instalment of Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising sequence. This particular voice belonged to an actor I rather like, usually – known for playing quite posh people – but oh lord, he mangled the Welsh accents in Silver on the Tree and had clearly made no attempt to find out how to pronounce the Welsh placenames he was reading (despite the fact that in the previous book he’d narrated a section where the Welsh character taught the English one how to say them). It was painful to hear, and I apologise to anyone who saw me grimacing every time he mentioned Machynlleth or Aberdyfi.

Things making me happy this week

  • Catching up with this year’s temperature tracker cross stitch
  • Getting a good start on Country Magic Stitch ‘Welcome to Rivendell’
  • Coffee with Amanda
  • A chatty evening on Wednesday instead of D&D
  • A chilly but sunny walk on Monday morning (and a rainy one on Saturday morning)
  • Harry in Silent Witness
  • A chilly but refreshing swim at the lake

What I’ve been reading:

Hedge Witch – Cari Thomas

The Book Keeper – Sarah Painter

The Wild Rover– Mike Parker

Silver on the Tree – Susan Cooper (Audible)

The Owl Service – Alan Garner (Audible)

The Familiars – Stacy Halls

Practical Magic/The Rules of Magic – Alice Hoffman

At Home: A Short History of Private Life – Bill Bryson (Audible)