Month: May 2024

219: you are entering the Twilight Zone

As it turned out, all the weirdos were lying in wait for full moon week before lurching out of the woodwork to talk to me. I thought we’d gotten away lightly last week. Perhaps they don’t venture south of the river.

Whatever, they certainly latched onto me this week, virtually every time I found myself waiting for buses.

On Tuesday afternoon, on my way back from work, I had just missed a bus and with time in hand before the next week I was quietly reading my book, listening to music (The Airborne Toxic Event, if you’re interested) and enjoying the sunshine. A man asked me if the Harlow bus had gone (yes), we briefly chatted about the weather (nice) and then he left me alone. This is my preferred method of conducting a bus stop conversation. Mere moments later a man in a raincoat sidled up to me and started expounding on his idea that London Transport should build a multistorey car park with a new station underneath it so that the Epping Ongar Railway could have the the old station and run trains to Epping*, and the Central Line could run into the new station and there would still be places to park. Three times he told me this, despite my initial polite but noncommittal nods, the fact that my earbuds were still in and I was trying to emanate ‘GO AWAY’ vibes. And then he informed me that he was wearing a raincoat because even though it was sunny it was going to rain, whipped out his phone and proceeded to show me his radar map to prove it. At this point it must have sunk in that I really, really wasn’t interested and he wandered off. Harlow bus man said he thought I knew him and by the time he realised I didn’t and might need rescue it was too late.

Moments later, having failed to find anyone else to talk at, he circled back towards me and I went and hid behind someone else. I’m not even sorry.

Wednesday morning – again, earbuds in place and this time trying to do my Duolingo lessons – a woman on the bus stop in the village finished a phone call and decided that as I was the only other person on the stop that it would be fine to tell me all her woes (of which there were many, principally caused by her unhelpful brother and sister-in-law and possibly the people not fitting her new double glazing). I did not want to hear her woes. I have seen her around the village, usually accompanied by her woeful-looking husband, but have never spoken to her before and she isn’t even the type of person who says good morning to the other people on the bus stop on a normal day. This is a state of affairs I would have been happy to see continue. What if she now continues to speak to me whenever she sees me? Fortunately the bus was very busy when it arrived and she found another person to tell all her woes to.

The man who approached me as I was waiting for the #4 bus from Archway back to the office later that morning got short shrift from me, I can tell you.

*Actually this is not a bad plan. But still.

Things making me happy this week:

  • A new haircut
  • Studio Ghibli characters on signage at Whitechapel Station
  • A great afternoon with the London East Teacher Training Alliance cohort – always one of my favourite visits (been doing these for well over 10 years now!). This year I took along the wonderful story teller Olivia Armstrong and the Coat of Many Pockets, and we explored sequential illustration and sensory story telling inspired by Quentin Blake’s Angelica Sprocket’s Pockets. Warm, joyful, energising – ‘I didn’t look at the time once, I can’t believe it went so fast’.
  • Friends (always, but one pair went above and beyond last Sunday morning)
  • The library reservation service
  • Seeing not one but four Dakotas flying over the village, before a visit to Duxford next weekend and then a trip to Normandy for a parachute drop on the D-Day anniversary

This week marks the start of a summer of popping up at various festivals and street parties in Islington, armed with an illustrator and making our presence felt in the borough as we start the journey towards opening. So exciting!

See you next week,

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading

Stalking the Angel/Lullaby Town/Freefall/Sunset Express  – Robert Crais

Necropolis – Catharine Arnold

218: where have all the weirdos gone?

Yesterday Amanda and I ventured south of the river to tick off West Norwood Cemetery, the sixth of the Magnificent Seven Victorian graveyards – the original plan was Nunhead, but one of my colleagues tipped me off that it was their annual family open day and likely to be infested with Morris Dancers and small children rather than our usual cast of weirdos.

We met at London Bridge, where we both – separately – encountered a man wandering round with some rather grubby cards and a slightly desperate look on his face who was offering to do magic for people for some reason. South London hasn’t really featured on either of our radars, so it was new ground for us – we earmarked the RSPCA shop for a mooch after the cemetery, and we were quite surprised to find that the cemetery was very close to the station rather than a lengthy walk like the others.

West Norwood was the second of the seven to be built but is less higgledy-piggledy than Highgate and Kensal Green, with lots of mowed spaces and a newish rose garden for cremation burials where ashes can be scattered. There are wildlife areas – lots of wild flowers and birdlife, including cheeky robins and wagtails, noisy parakeets and magpies and the odd squirrel.

We are now getting to the age where mortality is making its presence felt and I think we’re quite pleased that there’s only one more to go on the list. We noticed a lot of child and baby burials from the 80s and 90s which made us sad. There are some great tombs, especially in the Greek quarter where there is a monumental chapel being restored with a Heritage Fund grant – a stonemason was at work, in fact, doing something with a chisel in the chapel. We didn’t find a single Martha on the stones – but there is always a Martha! – but did find lots of Elizas. We also found the wonderfully-named Carlton Parchment who, if I ever write a detective novel, will definitely be featured. Oswald Manoah Dennison is buried there, described on his gravestone as ‘The Columbus of Brixton and Empire Windrush pioneer’, which is a wonderful epitaph to be buried under. I love this poem by Dan Thompson I found about him and you can read an interview with him here.

Lunch was at Pintadera, a busy, friendly Italian cafe close to the station and an excellent suggestion by a friend who lives locally. Amanda had the mushroom and nduja pasta special, I had the ravioli with a beef and veal ragu which was delicious. We both had affogatos! Really reasonably priced, and highly recommended if you find yourself in the area.

The RSPCA shop trawl netted me a new pair of linen trousers and a skirt, a book and a pair of sunglasses for Thing 2. I do love a charity shop and this one was a really good one for clothes.

Other things making me happy this week

  • A girls’ night out to the cinema to see The Fall Guy, which just consolidated my love for Ryan Gosling (especially after watching La La Land earlier in the week)
  • Mental health awareness week – we went for a work picnic to get out of the office as the theme was movement. It was raining so instead of one of the local gardens we went to the Barbican, which was a great call by one of my colleagues. So good to step away from the desks and have a chat at the end of an exciting week.
  • And on the way back Esme Young from the Sewing Bee walked past us and I tried really hard not to embarrass myself.
  • Finishing Ashes to Ashes – the Daniel Mays character was completely bonkers, I still love the Gene Genie, but Alex was getting on my nerves.
  • Building an extremely long playlist based on blokes with guitars and angst. It’s great.
  • Coffee with Brian on Tuesday before work.
  • Finally being able to announce that our development is going ahead!
  • Running into ex-colleagues at the Museums and Heritage Show.

And that’s it from me for the week – this week it’s my Irish sister’s birthday (happy birthday!), and a session with my favourite teacher training alliance.

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Bubbles All The Way/Bubbles Reboots – Sarah Strohmeyer

The Monkey’s Raincoat – Robert Crais

The Lost Continent – Bill Bryson (Audible)

Pay Dirt – Sara Paretsky

Necropolis -Catharine Arnold

217: sequins and a shortage of shorts

Yesterday I found myself watching some of the Eurovision finals for the first time since I don’t know when. I am not sure what to think about it – some of the songs were truly dreadful (Norway), some were naff, and some of the staging caused my eyebrows to raise almost to my hairline (I’m looking at you, UK, and a bit of side-eye for Finland as well). Graham Norton is a worthy successor to Terry Wogan, complete with cheeky comments, and there were enough sequins to keep the entire cast of Priscilla Queen of the Desert in costume for some years. Why was the man from Croatia wearing his Granny’s tablecloth? Why was one of the Ukrainian ones dressed as a pimped Ghengis Khan? Just some of the many, many things that crossed my mind….

This pair would have blended right in at Eurovision

The comperes in Malmo didn’t half drag out the results though, which got quite annoying towards the end but did give cheeky Graham a chance to be entertaining. I do feel a bit sorry for poor Olly Alexander with his nul point from the audience, but it was pretty dreadful all round – sad, as I rather like some of his Years and Years stuff. The ‘political’ voting was interesting this year, and perhaps it was best that neutral Switzerland won in the end….

The entertainment the previous night was far more spectacular, and caused my social media to go quite mad the following day. I am, of course, talking about the Northern Lights making an appearance all over the UK thanks to a huge geomagnetic storm. We were lucky in that we had a very clear night as the persistent rain has finally taken a break, and after trying to spot them from the back garden where the lights kept coming on, Thing 2 and I went for a late night walk on the Common behind the house where we were away from the streetlights.

I’ve always wanted to see the Northern Lights, but had never expected to, so this was a magical moment. Although my phone camera picked up the colours better than the naked eye, the sky itself was glowing and constantly changing with cloudplay; the stars were out in force and we were awestruck by the show. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it. Both of us wished we were in West Wales watching over the sea, but Essex just had to do on this occasion. North Weald has a lot of sky, and we don’t get the glow from London so much, so we were lucky.

(At the risk of sounding entirely soppy, too, both my sisters were watching the same lights in west London and Northern Ireland at the same time, and that felt pretty special as well).

I did check for triffids in the garden the following morning…

Other things making me happy this week:

  • Many completed crochet cacti and some bags for the Copped Hall stall at the beginning of June
  • A visit from the local peacocks
  • Gorgeous sunny swim this morning – and a nice cup of hot chocolate and a bacon roll when we decided not to swim in the pouring rain last Monday
  • GrandThing 2’s first birthday party yesterday – a Peter Rabbit party in our back garden
  • Sunshine!
  • Not migraines, though. No.

And now I’m off to enjoy the sunshine with some crochet and a cup of coffee, and quite possibly a maple raisin muffin. See you all next week!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Bubbles A Broad/Bubbles Betrothed/Bubbles All the Way – Sarah Strohmeyer

Pay Dirt – Sara Paretsky

A Walk in the Woods/The Lost Continent – Bill Bryson (Audible)

Necropolis – Catharine Arnold

216: it’s 1973, almost dinner time…

…I’m ‘avin ‘oops.

This week, having worked our way through all 27 series of Silent Witness, we’ve been watching the brilliant Life on Mars which has just appeared on Netflix. For anyone who missed this gem the first time round, the premise was that Manchester copper Sam Tyler (John Simm) was hit by a car, went into a coma and woke up in 1973. He’s been ‘transferred’ from Hyde where policing is a little more progressive. He’s confronted with sexism, racism, Neanderthal attitudes, ‘old-school’ policing and a camel-coated, gun-toting DCI called Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister) who zooms around in a Cortina and shouts a lot (I love him. So. Much.). He spends two series attempting to reform the Gene Genie, hearing voices from various bits of electrical equipment linking him back to his comatose life in the 1990s. There’s a love interest, a truly excellent soundtrack, great clothes and good storylines. I really liked the ending though my Beloved always picks holes in these things, being very bad at suspending his disbelief.

Things 1 and 2 have dropped in and out of the series with us, especially Thing 2 who gets quite engaged with these things – she got very involved with Silent Witness too. About halfway through one episode she said ‘I wish I’d been there for all the feminism stuff, I think it would have been really exciting, really important.’ I’ve been thinking about that quite a lot – I probably should have questioned her a bit more about what she sees as having changed in the last 50 years but I was too busy thinking about how much she’s changed in the last year or so.

Thing 2 was desperately shy as a small person – I had to go to all birthday parties with her and she’d rarely leave my side. I called her my limpet as she’d cling on to me with her arms and legs at all times, which at least left me hands-free. Strange relatives in the house would have her posting notes under the door informing us that she wasn’t coming in the room as she was too shy. It usually took several hours for her to get round to talking to them. Combined with her legendary (inherited – karma strikes hard) stubbornness, this could make things like getting her into school quite difficult. Speech therapy was a trial as she refused to speak to the therapist for the first several weeks. She was seven before I could go to a school assembly without her clambering across every row of people to get to me rather than take part – when she finally managed it I was so proud I cried. She still hates answering questions in class and for her English speaking assessments we have to arrange for her to do her presentation to the teacher and some of her friends rather than the whole class. She hates speaking to waiters which drives her Aunty Tan mad.

What she does have, however, is a fierce sense of what’s right and wrong, and this is when she speaks out – she stands up for her sister when she’s in trouble, she speaks up for friends in school. On one memorable occasion last year our next door neighbours were having a barney outside – my Beloved phoned the police, Thing 1 was monitoring the situation and Thing 2 flung open the front door, puffed herself up to twice her size like an angry cat and stormed out of the house shouting ‘WHAT THE F**K, B…?’ He was so surprised he stopped what he was doing and legged it before the police arrived. His wife brought flowers to Thing 2 the following day which flustered her completely. She was worried that I’d tell her off for swearing – on this occasion I let her off! See? Fierce. Far from telling her off, I’d like to get it printed on a commemorative t-shirt or mug for her. She might not say much but when she does it makes a difference.

Gene Hunt makes his return this evening as we start Ashes to Ashes – similar premise, except our time traveller is a woman heading back to 1981. Fire up the Quattro!

Other things making me happy this week

  • Coffees with lovely people: a fellow crocheter who’s currently working at the Museum of the Order of St John, with Amanda, and with my team.
  • Lunch with Panagiota, the friend I made a few weeks ago – we managed to find a date at last!
  • The prospect of a long weekend with a couple of swims
  • Two encounters with the Bella-dog, who is unfailingly pleased to see me and lets me know with boisterous enthusiasm
  • A visit from Timeshare Teenager 1 and No 1 Grandson this afternoon
  • A gorgeous sunny walk through the lanes today after several days of torrential downpours this week
  • The return of Disco Jesus to the church just down from our site
Sunshine and flowers!

Enjoy your Bank Holiday Monday!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Mrs England/The Foundling– Stacey Halls

A Walk in the Woods – Bill Bryson (Audible)

Necropolis – Catharine Arnold

Bubbles Unbound/Bubbles in Trouble/Bubbles Ablaze –Sarah Strohmeyer

(Cover image: https://contra.com/p/U6k3LMvr-are-spaghetti-hoops-vegan)