271: same blog, different river

Well, my feet have just about stopped aching after last Sunday’s Goring Gap half-marathon walk along the Thames, although stairs were definitely not my favourite thing until at least Thursday. I came in 119th out of 124 (and last in my age group!) but since I knocked 22 minutes off my predicted time I am quite happy with that. I quite like a half marathon distance as if you start in the morning you can be done by lunchtime and the rest of the day’s your own. Tan finished in two and a quarter hours, and I was in at three hours and eight minutes. There was some unscientific jogging in the first 5k (because I felt like it!) but mostly it was fast walking.

The weather was perfect for a walk – sunny and warm but not too hot, and the route was mostly flat. The worst bit of climb was the railway bridge at Purley at 10k which went up from the Thames to quite far up a steep slope. The last couple of kilometres weren’t a lot of fun either, on a flint path with a long slow climb. Even the field full of alpacas couldn’t improve it. It was a well-organised event with good signage and friendly volunteers at the two feed stations, and I got to see lots of cygnets, goslings, red kites and friendly hounds.

The cheese and ham sandwich and bag of Frazzles produced by Tan when we got back to her flat was the tastiest food ever!

Later in the week I was back over in Ealing with the rest of the team to catch a bus to Brentford for a tour of the London Museum of Water and Steam. We started with a team picnic in Waterman’s Park, watched by a the usual London throng of optimistic pigeons and overlooking the river where a heron stalked the island shallows, geese shared my crisps and a coot bobbled up and down pecking at weed.

We were taken on a tour of the steam engines which were HUGE and which raised questions about how these would have been oriented in our own little engine house in Clerkenwell. These water pumping engines have several storeys of water below ground, and rise up three storeys too. One of the water tanks has a population of goldfish, and another has a wonderful crop of ferns.

We met the museum cat, Piper, who lives in the office during the day and roams the museum at night keeping the mice down. Mice are inevitable in buildings unpopulated at night – I have never worked in a museum without them – so a cat is an excellent idea. We haven’t quite persuaded our Director yet but we’re working on it….

I was extremely excited to see the tailfeathers of one of the standpipe tower’s peregrine falcons peeking over the edge. The ‘Splashzone’ watery play area is immediately below – naturally we tested it! – and apparently the peregrines have a habit of dropping parakeet heads off the tower into the play area which can be a bit disconcerting for young visitors. You can see me below making the archimedes screw move water up – taken by one of my colleagues.

The museum is fascinating, telling the story of steam and clean water in London, and the sheer monumental size of the engines is awe-inspiring. When they were installed they apparently brought the beams in and then engineered them downwards. They have to be perfectly straight otherwise the pistons will catch on the sides and wear down so the level of precision needed for these huge machines is startling. The engines weren’t ‘in steam’ sadly but they do have steam weekends monthly which I bet are great fun. If you visit between now and October you can also see the beautiful interventions by artist-in-residence Dr Jasmine Pradissitto in the ‘Tender Machines‘ displays.

Other things making me happy this week

On Tuesday I joined Such Stories (aka Laura and Jo) for a family workshop, where we saw some of last year’s play project participants and made some new friends.
Discovering Resident Alien on Netflix (an excellent turn by Alan Tudyk) – very funny indeed.
Seasons 4-6 of Northern Exposure all appearing on Amazon Prime
A surprise parcel at work which turned out to be a Quentin Blake original from Kids in Museums – QB had drawn the ‘Museum of his Dreams’, and they thought we might like it.
The new Joanne Harris novel (a new sequel to Chocolat) appearing on my Kindle.
John Lewis-Stempel’s gorgeous nature writing. I love his books about his Herefordshire home.
Finishing Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford. A recommendation from a colleague, this has turned out to be one of the best books I’ve read in years. One of those books that – when you finish it – leaves you sitting there thinking about it. The ones that leave you feeling like Holden Caulfield in the Salinger quote below.

At some point this weekend I’ll go for a walk – I spotted a new footpath when we went up to collect Thing 3, which I looked up on my map and worked out a route back through to Ongar. I need to keep up my speed for Cardiff in October. I’d like to break the three hour mark!

Same time next week, gang. I don’t think I’ve got any river-related activities planned but you never know…

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Vianne- Joanne Harris

Demon’s Bluff – Kim Harrison

21st Century Yokel – Tom Cox (Audible)

Cahokia Jazz – Francis Spufford

The Running Hare/The Wood – John Lewis-Stempel

270: how does your garden grow?

This week’s adventure was to Myddelton House and Gardens in Enfield, which was the home of – among others – a chap called E A Bowles. It’s now the HQ of the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority and has been recently restored with the help of those nice people at the National Lottery Heritage Fund. I was shown around by the head gardener and we made some early plans for linking up with other organisations along the route of the New River.

E A Bowles was, apparently, never supposed to have owned the house: in the way of younger brothers at the time, he was destined to have been a vicar but his older brother died early so he ended up inheriting instead. By all accounts he seems to have been one of more useful members of the gentry, setting up night classes for local youngsters and giving them practical skills, hosting village events on the lawns, acting as a lay preacher and forming a local cricket team. Many of the ‘Bowles Boys’ went on to great things.

He was happiest in his garden, however, and it still shows. A crocus expert whose illustrations are held by the Royal Horticultural Society, he filled the garden with plants he loved rather than decorative borders. The ‘Lunatic Asylum’ area contains oddities – he was the first to propagate twisted hazel in the UK – while the walls and trees are draped with glorious swags of purple wisteria.

The New River (that again, sorry) used to flow through the gardens but he wasn’t allowed to plant anything in it, so instead he bordered it with irises which reflected into the waters and dug a large pond where he could plant anything he liked. The river’s course was straightened in the 19th century and a lawn now reflects the old route. The water was so hard Bowles was surprised he couldn’t walk on it: the result of the chalk aquifer and streams that fed it.

A leak from the river fed the Rock Garden, his most loved area. I was told that he used to bury empty bottles upright in the leak (or possibly leat, I don’t know) to capture the water and use it to water the gardens so none was wasted. The route from the main road crosses the New River although the river path is closed for works, but I did get to stand and look into the surprisingly fast flowing waters.

Attached to the main house is a gorgeous conservatory-full of succulents, and there are further glasshouses in the kitchen garden with peaches and more succulents. We’re going back in half term, hopefully, for a longer explore. Scattered about the garden are stone pieces – the old Enfield Market Cross (I also saw the Eleanor Cross in Waltham Cross on the way home), parts of the old London Bridge, and two tall wire ostriches who replaced original stone ones which now live in the little Bowles Museum by the tea room.

With free entry from 10-5 every day (earlier in winter) this is well worth a visit, and you could also take in Forty Hall and farm which is virtually next door. There’s some lovely footpaths and parkland to explore, and a monthly farmers’ market. Gunpowder Mills isn’t too far in between Waltham Cross and Waltham Abbey, but if you’re jonesing for more gardens Capel Manor is also very close.

Other things making me happy this week:

Seeing my sea creatures in the British Library’s new Story Explorers family exhibition. Our director and I were invited, so we explored outer space and the jungle. Running into ex-Young V&A colleagues was a bonus, as was a quick catch-up with storyteller Emily Grazebrook who worked with families to co-design the exhibition. If you have small people, go and visit – it’s free but you will need to book
Forest ramble to loosen up my legs before today’s half marathon in the Goring Gap. Glad the weather has cooled a bit!
New haircut thanks to lovely Jasmine at Salon 35

Thing 2 being very calm about the first week of her GCSEs. There’s been a lot of baking in the afternoons though!
The first tiny alpine strawberries in the garden

Right, if anyone needs me I’ll be tackling my walking nemesis….

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

The Good, the Bad and the Furry/21st Century Yokel – Tom Cox (Audible)

The Running Hare – John Lewis-Stempel

The Darkest Evening – Ann Cleeves

Clete – James Lee Burke

Demon’s Bluff – Kim Harrison

Cahokia Jazz – Francis Spufford (Dad – you’ll enjoy this one!)

269: a trip back in time to 1693

I love secret bits of London and this week the work gang got to see the fabulous Oak Room at New River Head. Not the bit of New River Head that we’re turning into a brand new gallery and gardens, but the bit that’s currently a very grand set of flats on Rosebery Avenue. The header image this week is ‘London from Islington Hill, by Thomas Bowles, c. 1740. New River Head, centre-left, Upper Pond in foreground’. This is from British History Online.

The New River (its compulsory to say at this point that it’s not new and it’s not a river) was finished in 1613 and brought clean water from springs in Hertfordshire to Islington, and from there it was distributed to the City and later to further afield in London via elm pipes. The New River Company was one of the earliest – if not the earliest – joint stock companies, headed by a Welsh goldsmith/engineer/all-round clever chap called Hugh Myddelton. His brother became Lord Mayor of London (the Dick Whittington sort rather than the Sadiq Khan sort) on the very day that the New River was officially opened with lots of pomp and ceremony. There are several excellent books about it, including The Mercenary River by Nick Higham which is well worth a read. Even the King was a shareholder, putting up half the money to build the river in return for half the profits – which also worked to convince the local landowners to let HM dig a river across their lands. The river followed the 100ft contour, so gravity brought it down to London, with a five inch drop over every mile. You can find some pictures of the route here.

The river originally finished at the Round Pond, where the flats are now, and the Water House was where the offices were. The Oak Room was commissioned by the company engineer in 1693, and it was a mark of how important it was that the portrait of King William III that decorates the ceiling was done by the official court painter. The ceiling is covered in plasterwork showing some very fierce dolphins looking like Chinese dragons, swans and other waterbirds, scenes from along the New River, and is incredibly detailed. The dolphins reminded me of this figure we had in the ‘A Pirate’s Life for Me’ exhibition at Museum of Childhood.

It’s called the Oak Room, though, because of the oak carvings – probably done by Grinling Gibbons or at least his workshop. There’s an unusual unicorn in the coat of arms with a most excellently pointy horn, for example, and the carvings around the fireplace include a very cute crab, crayfish, fishing nets and other watery equipment, plants and various fish. Oak is apparently very hard to carve, and the intricate work here is quite stunning. We were lucky enough to be shown around by an expert on the history of the river, who also came to our offices to give us a talk a couple of weeks ago. In its original position in the Water House the room gave a view of St Paul’s Cathedral and the City, but has been turned around in its new home where it was installed in 1920. The head of the Metropolitan Water Board used it as a dining room, apparently, and had a special chair made from the boarding of the Round Pond when it was decommissioned. Now you can see our Engine House from it, complete with scaffolding where our construction team are busy bringing it back to life.

The block of flats itself is very grand, and the entrance includes the seals of all the water companies which were folded into the MWB in 1904. The seal of the New River Company has the hand of Providence over London and the motto ‘and I caused it to rain upon one city’, which made a change from everyone else’s gods and greenery. The ground floor has a huge open space where people used to come and pay their water bills – it looks more like a ballroom – and the carved MWB seal is still over the front door. Parts of the pond revetment can still be seen too.

Our next visit is to the London Museum of Water and Steam in a couple of weeks – can you detect a theme? I’m also going to visit Myddelton House and Gardens on the route of the New River. Lots of history incoming, London fans….

Other things making me happy this week

Dropping the first batch of sea creatures off at the British Library, including my very psychedelic crab. Needle felting all the faces was very therapeutic.
A long walk last Sunday rambling along the river Roding, seeing hares again and a whole lot of ducklings
All the Threads about President Barbie of the new country of Mattel. Apparently Crayola are drawing up the trade agreements. See also: Puppet Regime

Today is long walk day with only a week to go till the Goring Gap half marathon….must remember to hydrate and fuel properly to face my nemesis!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Harbour Street/The Moth Catcher/The Seagull – Ann Cleeves

Interesting Times – Terry Pratchett (Audible)

The Good, The Bad and The Furry – Tom Cox (Audible)

Demon’s Bluff – Kim Harrison

268: the Father Ted conundrum

I’ve had a couple of conversations this week at work about focusing so much on the small stuff that the far away stuff is getting away from us. The small stuff (well, a monumental horse, if you can consider that small) is what’s keeping me awake at night these days, and then while I’m worrying about the horse in the wee small hours I remember all the other stuff I have to do that isn’t getting done because of the horse and then rooooouuuunnnnnd we go again. The poor horses in the fields on my walking route are probably wondering why I am cursing them and glaring as I walk past. They haven’t done anything apart from look like horses, obviously, but I’m not being selective with my equine animosity right now.

Part of this is trying to be several people all at once. Thank heavens for the return of my Community Partnerships Producer who is looking rested after a few weeks in Italy with her family, or at least she did until she walked into my personal maelstrom. She works two days a week with us, so in a few weeks we’ll be looking for the other half of her role but right now I am that other half and summer is always an intense period for community work. We’re building our centre with a desire to be a place where the community feels at home, and unlike at Young V&A we don’t have a 150 year history in the borough so we need to set out our stall now, letting people know we’re coming and that we want this to be a place for them. This means popping up at the summer festivals and chatting to people. This is an excellent part of my job, but then I have to find other people to do it with me and for some reason not everyone wants to work weekends. The horse project is also a community thing, but it’s proving a little tricky to recruit participants.

I had a really invigorating meeting with one of the festival organisers from the council on Thursday – one of those amazing conversations where ideas bounce off each other and things come together. It spun on into the next meeting, with a small crossover where I introduced the illustrator to the producer and things blossomed. Thursday, in fact, was all about meetings. The Radical Rest session I listened to while I was working on things that couldn’t wait (Sorry Kate, I know I missed the point!) was, ironically, about burnout in the cultural sector and there have been moments in the last couple of weeks where I’ve been ticking off a lot of the symptoms.

Schools remain within my remit: this week a school approached me about a CPD, which they initially wanted in September but then moved to July. Because all our sessions are tailored to the needs of each school, I have to meet with the school to work out what they want, reach out to the fabulous freelance illustrators who actually deliver the sessions, and do the admin around it. Schools session bookings have been honed over the years – from working closely with the bookings teams at London Museum through many years, taking bookings myself rather than remaining at arm’s length so I understand what needs to happen. There’s still admin around this, of course: sending invoice requests and confirmations, making sure the illustrator is in place and has all the materials they need.

Developing and piloting new sessions is on the radar: a science x history x illustration session which we need to deliver to six schools in the next term. Working with the lead facilitator to identify dates, locating a second facilitator and getting their dates, reaching out to schools who you’d think would like free sessions on local history but who actually take emails, a phone call to make sure they’ve got the email, resending the email as they probably just deleted it the first time, and then checking back up later to organise a conversation where I tell the teachers all the things they’d know if they’d just read the damn email in the first place. Developing the resources that support the session; making sure the materials are ready, doing the schools bookings admin, reporting to the funders, attending the sessions, evaluating the sessions. We’ll be recruiting someone for this soon as well, and they’ll be working on family programmes for when we open.

With my Welcome and Participation Lead head on, I’ve been working on access. Organising the first meeting of the Access Panel – booking rooms; booking BSL interpreters and audio describers; reading, watching and listening to expressions of interest; meeting with the consultant. I’ve never been so interested in toilet door fittings and it’s now perfectly normal behaviour to ask friends to take photos of these if they go anywhere new. Sorry Amanda….you need to know it’s not just me though…

I’m thinking about tech and furniture for the learning spaces, about interactivity for the site as a whole, about outside furniture and play and illustration opportunities, about how people are welcomed, about creative programmes for when we open, about how we make links with teachers and other cultural organisations along the New River to support CPD for our key boroughs when we open, about how I can embed illustration in learning throughout the school system, about how we market our schools offer more locally, about how we how and when we bring on our volunteers, about how we diversify our front of house, who the young people will be for our final project in the autumn term. My head can’t contain all the things so despite my highly organised to-do list I feel like I am juggling five oranges and then someone throws me a chainsaw.

Also in my head I know this is a pinch point and things will even out again….but I’M A BIT STRESSED RIGHT NOW. I’m not very good at admitting when I’m at my wits end when I’m at work as I try to be quite positive – all the while knowing that toxic positivity is a bad thing, but also knowing that the experiences in my last job where any negativity got you burned have left me somewhat scarred. It’s a conundrum indeed.

Things making me happy this week

A gorgeous swim with Jill on Saturday morning.
A ramble through new footpaths on Sunday last week, via the fields to Epping Upland and back round to Epping – saw my first hares for a while which made me happy.
An early morning Tuesday ramble where I shared a field with a huge herd of deer
A chaotic afternoon for GT2’s 2nd birthday last Sunday.
Two thirds of the sea creatures done: still to go are three crabs, three turtles, one starfish and one jellyfish. These are going to live at the British Library which I am pretty flipping excited about, I can tell you. I feel more neon colours coming on, especially for the jellyfish.
Visiting the site for the first time in a couple of months – it’s all coming together!

Right, I’m off for a Sunday walk! Here’s to another bank holiday…

Kirsty

What I’ve been reading:

Demons of Good and Evil – Kim Harrison

Interesting Times – Terry Pratchett (Audible)

The Glass Room – Ann Cleeves