Month: Jul 2025

280: the joy of text

I’ve just wandered over here from LinkedIn — as you do — where I have been reading a post about using em dashes — or not — in writing. Apparently they are an indicator that AI has written whatever it is you’re reading. This is most definitely not the case here, I assure you.

I am a big fan of an em dash. Emily Dickinson was a big fan of the em dash. My ex-line manager at London Museum was a big remover of my em dashes, bless his little cotton socks, although I could forgive him for that. (It was harder to forgive the director who used to uncapitalise ‘Second World War’ every time he saw it in my brochure text, despite the fact that it’s a specific historical event. He annoyed me.)

‘I’m nobody! Who are you?’ Emily Dickinson, em dash lover

In this blog I have usually used the en dash (-) instead of — purely because I write on a laptop and it doesn’t have a number pad which is what you need to insert the — symbol. To get your em dash on a laptop requires pressing the windows and full stop keys to bring up the emoji menu, and there’s a ‘special characters’ menu there. I may be a lover of the — but I’m also lazy, so please forgive my grammatical quirks.

Punctuation — as well as the words I wrap it around — may be one of my favourite things. When I write talks and sessions, especially if other people will be delivering them, using dashes (and parentheses) and the odd semi-colon make my writing more human, not less; giving life to words which are going to be spoken aloud. Can you imagine how dreary things would be if everything was short sentences and full stops, with no emphasis or asides?

At the other punctuational extreme is one of my all-time favourite poets, the wonderful e e cummings, more of whose work can be found here. A literary sort once said that his poetry transformed the word to transform the world. A lot of his poems use broken, scattered or run-on lines to create emphasis, such as the one above which featured in a school poetry anthology. He played with typography, space and shape to provide tone and punctuation, and — to paraphrase his response to a critic on one of his plays — wanted to know why people couldn’t just relax and see what happened rather than demanding to know what things mean all the time. My thoughts exactly.

When I left university in 1994, after 17 years of schooling of one kind or another, I decided that I was only going to read things I wanted to; I’d been asked to analyse dozens of texts and poems over the years which stripped all the joy out of the language and the stories. What I want to read may on occasion be considered as ‘literature’ (in at least the GCSE syllabus sense) but the point is that I’m reading it for the sheer joy of it. It took me another 20-odd years to be able to not finish a book I’d started if I wasn’t enjoying it but that’s a different matter. I am not picky about genre and a good trip to the library or the local Oxfam Books & Music takes in a wander around all the shelves and an eclectic haul.

This decision to read books based on interest has led me back to books like Graham Swift’s Waterland, which as a 17-year old A-level student I thoroughly disliked but as an adult I loved: I went back to it after visiting the Fens, where it’s set, and understood it far more. I was lucky enough not to have been made to read some of the classic GCSE and A-level texts – Gatsby, Mockingbird, Catcher – so came to them independently in the school library and loved them for themselves. I have a colleague who’s also an eclectic reader and we recommend books to each other – Cahokia Jazz, by Francis Spufford, was a recommendation from him and it’s one of the best books I’ve read in years. I tried another of Spufford’s books and couldn’t get into it at all, so I took it back to the library unfinished.

2026 has been named the National Year of Reading and the idea is to encourage a love of reading for pleasure. I think this is a great idea. However, I can’t help thinking that we — this is the policy-making, government-level, educational we, not a personal we — have spent the last 12 or so years building a generation which doesn’t love reading for a very good reason.

I have a cunning plan, though. Let’s refresh the National Curriculum and allow teachers to stop stripping texts back to their component parts from a very early age in school. Stop insisting on seeing sentences as no more than examples of spelling, punctuation and grammar and then children might start to love reading for its own sake. Teachers might also be happier.

Let’s put storytelling back into teacher training courses and make it a compulsory part of the school day. Let’s dedicate some time in colleges and on SCITT schemes to sessions with professional storytellers like Olivia Armstrong and show teachers how to bring a story to life with your voice. Help them share the joy of the language and the rhymes and the jokes; the sad bits and the happy bits and the sheer pleasure of being transported to a different world for half an hour at the end of the school day. Give teachers the confidence to do the accents and the voices and to pull the faces, and leave the children wanting more – perhaps to pick up the book themselves and have a go without seeing every sentence as a challenge or a task to be completed. If a teacher isn’t confident, there’s audio books galore out there read by people who are paid to do the voices. David Tennant read a CD of all the Hairy McLairy books and it’s wonderful. Hugh Grant reading Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. And Michael Sheen reading – well, anything, up to and including a shopping list, but start with Philip Pullman’s The Book of Dust.

I wrote last month about Frank Cottrell-Boyce’s campaign as Children’s Laureate to make hearing stories part of every child’s life, and this leads on from that: give them joy not grammar. Teach them to love words, and their vocabulary will expand as a result. They’ll see punctuation as they read and will learn to use it as they go, and I guarantee you they won’t even realise they’re learning it. Tell them about libraries, where they let you take books away to read and have thousands of different ones, and they’ll never be short of entertainment. Even better, tell them about librarians, as the good ones will be able to suggest books and the really good ones will know what to read when they’ve finished that one. They’ll be unstoppable.

Things making me happy this week

  • A good ramble through the fields on Saturday morning, except for the bit where I got lost and my legs got shredded by fierce brambles.
  • This rainbow bunny – it’s the Toft Emma pattern again from Ed’s Menagerie.
  • Untamed – a new Netflix series with Eric Bana, Sam Neill and excellent scenery.
  • New haircut
  • End of term for Thing 3, so I don’t have to make sure he’s out of bed for a few weeks before I leave for work
  • A crocheted meerkat from a pattern by Planet June

That’s it from me. If no one minds, I’ll be reading my book.

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Blood Debt/Summon the Keeper/The Second Summoning – Tanya Huff

Between the Stops – Sandi Toksvig

Shadowlands – Matthew Green

Edgelands – Paul Farley & Michael Symmons Roberts

279: not in my name

It’s been a fair while since I’ve been quite so consumed with rage as I have this week, so you lucky readers get to read my rant about what’s been going on in our local town. If you’re a right-leaning, Reform-voting person who uses the actions of one person to launch a sanctimonious ‘we’re-not-racist-we-just-want-to-protect-our-children’ protest then you may wish to go and read something else. Perhaps the Daily Mail or the Express. The Torygraph probably has too many long words, though I concede that they do have a good crossword. Anyway.

I have written before about the experiences I have had with refugees and asylum seekers through my previous job and at my local primary school. I met many children from Somalia and Angola when I was first teaching in London: a significant number of whom had no idea (as four and five year olds) whether their parents were dead or alive as their parents had sent them away with an aunt or a friend to give them a chance to grow up. I’ve met more people recently through a work project.

Without exception every single one of them has been friendly, open, grateful to have reached somewhere they might feel safe and where they are ekeing out survival. One thing that’s been made clear to me through many conversations is that leaving their homes and putting their own and their families lives in mortal danger was not a choice they made lightly. Can you imagine being in a position where your only choices were certain or uncertain death and what it must cost you to make that choice?

In our Essex village there is a contingency hotel where families seeking asylum have been housed for several years now. Prior to that it was being used by Redbridge Council as emergency housing. It’s an old Travelodge and even when it was being used as a ‘proper’ hotel it was getting one-star reviews. Five star it aint. An asylum seeker set fire to it a few months ago. There was a crowdfunder started by a local secondary school to help the children housed at the hotel find accommodation close to the school so their GCSEs weren’t disrupted, and it was very well-supported. The accused arsonist tried, a week or so later, to set a similar fire in the Bell Hotel, Epping (this one has 2.7 stars) and he was arrested.

The Bell Hotel, Epping, has been used to house single male asylum seekers for about the same amount of time and under the same conditions. One of these asylum seekers – just one, although that’s more than enough – tried to kiss a teenage girl in Epping, and attempted to do the same to a woman. He’s been arrested and remanded in custody. This is right, as no one has the right to assault girls or women or men or boys or anyone else. It’s also probably saved him from serious injury at the hands of the locals, who have used this occurrence as an excuse for two violent protests and some vandalism and abuse in the ten days since, under the banner of ‘Epping has had enough’, with another one planned for today. The actions of one man are being used as an excuse to target and uproot the lives of hundreds of other people at these two hotels.

Well, I’d had enough when my teenage daughter was assaulted by the owner of a local business a couple of years ago and no one* felt the need to riot and protect the women and children of North Weald….but then the only border he’d crossed in the past few years was the one between Hertfordshire and Essex. Perhaps that made a difference?

Last Sunday there was a ‘peaceful protest’ at the hotel in Epping, which caused all sorts of traffic issues. Peaceful, that is, being a relative term: I’m sure the two hotel security guards who were beaten up and left with severe injuries when they got off the bus to start their shift might disagree. On Thursday there was another protest which most certainly wasn’t peaceful. Here’s the callout which went on Facebook:

The ‘leftys’ and ‘antifa’ they mention were a contingent from Hope Not Hate – not well-known for inflicting ‘violence and anger’ as far as I am aware unless smiting the enemy with well-reasoned research-backed arguments and workshops counts. And of course the far right element turned up, including known members of Far Right groups travelling from wider Essex and East London, and the ‘peaceful protest’ degenerated. Eight police officers were injured. These ‘peaceful protesters’ in balaclavas were attacking police vans and throwing things. They were using fireworks. Presumably these balaclava-sporting thugs are the same people who object to women wearing hijab. It strikes me that if you’re going to attend a protest for peaceful reasons, you probably ought to be brave enough to show your face and not be carrying, say, a blunt instrument and a smoke bomb or two.

The head of the local council has organised a petition to get the hotels shut down. Local councillors – including the execrable one from Ongar who was ejected from the Tories, became independent and is now in Reform – hand delivered a letter to the Home Secretary saying much the same. The local MPs are burbling away on the subject – Tory, of course, since a monkey in a blue suit could stand for parliament round here and get elected. The only time I have ever queued at the polling station was for the Brexit referendum, and look what happened there.

Apparently it’s all Keir Starmer’s fault, even though the Home Office have been using the hotels for the same purpose for more than five years. Social media is full of people complaining that these asylum seekers are supposed to seek asylum in the first safe country they arrive at (this is not the case – neither the 1951 Refugee Convention or international law require a person to claim asylum in the first safe country they reach, although the UK government would prefer it if they did); that they’re living in five star hotels (patently not the case) at the expense of local people who can’t get housing; and so on and so forth.

Social media is also full of people choosing to post anonymously. People going on about women and children not feeling safe on the streets of Epping. People claiming that all the violence was the police’s fault for not sending the ‘leftys and antifa’ back on the train and, in one case, giving them a lift to the hotels in their van. People accusing the police of ‘treason’ for throwing ‘the flag of Britain’ in a hedge. It was the St George’s flag so presumably the poster failed geography at school and also hasn’t been informed that old Georgie-boy was a resident of the Middle East and never set foot in England. Accusing the police of a hit and run, as they allegedly drove into a protestor who was sitting in the road.

Well, the only time I haven’t felt safe on the streets of Epping was this week, quite honestly. I lived in Epping for 12 years and we’ve been in North Weald for another 12. I walk alone for literally miles and have never felt worried. On Sunday I had to wait for a connecting bus home and wasn’t happy about that as we’d just come past the Bell on the rail replacement bus and had seen the police presence. On Thursday we were held on the train at Theydon Bois while the police dealt with an incident on the station, and I was reassured to see the heavy police presence on the station. I was less reassured – quite pissed off, in fact – to see the fear on the faces of the family who got on the bus with me. There’s a look about the people coming to the hotels: nervous, worried that they’re getting on the wrong bus, small scared children hanging onto one parent or other, a buggy laden with bags of possessions. Their fear makes me angry.

I feel terribly sorry for the teenager and the woman who were assaulted in Epping, of course I do. I am angry, however, that their experience is being used as an excuse for racism and violence against an equally vulnerable section of society. The people of Epping, if they genuinely want to make the streets safe for women and children, should perhaps volunteer for a rape crisis charity, or for Shelter, or for an organisation that does some good instead of allowing themselves to be allied with thugs and scum.

*except me, obvs. And my friends.

Things that did make me happy this week (yes, there were some)

  • Crocheting Prince for one of my oldest friends
  • Crocheting a long-eared bunny
  • Going to the monthly Dog Swim at Redricks with Sue and the Bella-Dog. Quite honestly the most joyous event ever. All the humans in the water and the dogs occasionally fetching a ball to humour them
  • The blackbird in the garden who sings the first six notes of Elton John’s ‘Passenger’
  • Baby badgers bumbling in the bushes
  • Our second access panel meeting
  • A lovely evening at the Quentin Blake: Ninety Drawings exhibition. I got to chat to Axel Scheffler who is a delight.
  • Day two of WXSP – less hot!

This week Thing 3 breaks up for the summer holidays, which he is pleased about. So am I.

Same time next week, gang!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Rosemary and Rue – Seanan McGuire

Blood Debt – Tanya Huff

Stone and Sky – Ben Aaronovitch (and Amongst Our Weapons/Lies Sleeping/False Value/Rivers of London on Audible)

Between The Stops – Sandi Toksvig

278: girls’ night out

On Tuesday Things 1 and 2 got the train into London and we had a grown-up girls’ night out. It’s the first time we’ve done this, and we had a most excellent evening in Islington.

They chose Nando’s for dinner and afterwards we walked up to New River Head where I smushed history into their brains whether they wanted any or not. I showed them the historic graffiti in Myddelton Passage, and Clerkenwell Green, and nice houses in old streets, and then we went to the ballet.

Sadlers Wells had sent an email out with free tickets for Pete Townshend’s Quadrophenia, A Mod Ballet and two colleagues had given it rave reviews after seeing it the previous week. I’ve never been to a ballet before, and neither have the girls, so we weren’t sure what to expect. We were in the stalls, so we had a good view (give or take a few tall people) and the girls were absolutely rapt from the first moment. To be fair, so was I. It was magical.

The set was minimal and whizzed on and off the stage in a surprisingly elegant fashion. The costumes by Paul Smith were sharp and the music – by Townshend’s wife Rachel Fuller – echoed The Who’s originals. The set was enhanced by gorgeous, atmospheric projections – condensation on diner windows, the sea at Brighton, dramatic city scenes. It’s a long time since I’ve seen the film but the story of Jimmy came through strongly. We did the evening properly, with a programme and ice creams in the interval, and I think the girls enjoyed the whole experience.

Thing 2 turned to me at the interval and said, ‘Mum, this is SO GOOD!’ and Thing 1 told me she LOVED it. High praise indeed. The length of the voice messages T2 was leaving for her friends afterwards was a dead giveaway, too, and I think they’d like to go again. I know I do! It was SO GOOD and I LOVED not just the ballet but a night out with my beautiful girls.

It’s been a very educational week all round, really. I’ve had two days in schools testing the new STEM x local history session. Chris, Toni and SJ have done four days – with Chris in Victorian kit as ‘Charles’ and Toni and SJ in hard hat and hi vis as ‘Emma’, our modern day engineer. We’ve been in classrooms and playgrounds, worked with 240 kids and and generally had an excellent time. It’s been so much fun watching the sessions develop – adding in new interactive sections and tweaking others. It’s definitely better in a large area like a playground or hall, especially when the 30 small people are being used to demonstrate the workings of a pump with three umbrellas and a lot of masking tape. I interviewed some of the kids at the end of one session and the message was that they loved the activeness and all the props, wanted the rest of the school to join in, and requested that we brought a person from the future in as well so they could compare that too. I promised I’d see what I could do…

The format we’re using – someone appearing from the past to compare and contrast similar projects with a modern engineer – is one that Chris and I have used successfully in the past at Museum of London Docklands when our modern engineer encountered Isambard Kingdom Brunel. On that occasion we compared the Thames Tunnel and the Thames Tideway project, and used the children to model the Greathead Shield and how to dig into sand safely. One of our more challenging hosts spoke to me afterwards and said ‘well, I get that Brunel was an actor, but how did you get a real engineer to come and do this?’. I took that as a win, and one teacher said that it was the best session they’d ever been to.

This time round we’re including illustrations – and bringing them to life with the pump activity – such as ‘Monster Soup’, No Fishing and No Swimming signs (communication without language), and a portrait of Hugh Myddelton and his excellent beard. There’s also umbrellas, ping pong balls, lengths of piping, beads, buckets, pinwheels and high vis jackets. There’s the story of the king falling into the frozen New River, Charles Dickens complaining that he pays for a large cistern but never has enough water for a bath, and – Chris, we missed one! The complaints from the people in Pall Mall when they found live eels in their pipes! We’re testing with some older children next week – I wonder whether they’ll ask such good questions?

Other things making me happy this week

  • A crochet project I can’t show you yet as it’s a surprise
  • A much-needed evening swim with Sue – the water was 26.4 and balmy, the ducks were flipping up and down feeding in the weeds and the little shoals of fish were zooming about in the shallows
  • Ice lollies.
  • Cally Fest last Sunday – it rained and it shined, we saw almost 300 people and a lot of cute dogs. This weekend its Whitecross Street Party, and we have a great activity planned. I’ve given strict instructions to the team to slather on the Factor 50 as it’s going to be HOT.
  • An excellent conversation with the black cab driver today about the New River – he grew up on Amwell Street and now lives in Enfield and runs along the New River Path every day.
  • Whitecross Street Party!

This week we have the second of our community access panel meetings, and I’m really looking forward to next weekend… and a couple of days off after 12 straights days of work.

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Blood Lines/Blood Pact/Blood Debt – Tanya Huff

Amongst Our Weapons/False Value – Ben Aaronovitch (Audible)

The Wild Life – John Lewis-Stempel

277: just a little off the leg please

As my children never tire of reminding me, I am not blessed with height. At very nearly 5’4″ to their 5’7″ and above (and rising) I am resigned to this. I am, as I tell them often, of average height, so – in the old days (ie before children) I used to be pretty confident that I could buy a pair of trousers or a skirt from H&M or New Look etc and they would be the right length. (The Office of National Statistics informs me that I have, in fact, been above average height until 2022. Ha!)

Something over the last twenty years has changed, however, and I know it’s not me because last time I was at the hospital I got measured with my shoes off by someone who knows what they’re doing. Now, any pair of ‘regular’ length trousers I buy needs a minimum of 12cm removed from the leg length before they are wearable, and I wear my trousers floor length as it is. This is the case across all retailers. When you google ‘changes in women’s clothing sizes’ a lot of results come back about vanity sizing but this more usually applies to bust and waist measurements. Even the fashion for wearing wide legs (also a favourite style of mine) with heels or flatforms doesn’t account for regular length trousers now covering my feet and flappping about like an illustration from The Shrinking of Treehorn. A midi dress is now almost ankle length, midaxis are loooong and maxis are a staircase accident waiting to happen. If miniskirts are truly a sign of a booming economy, I dread to think what hemlines are indicating right now.

So, this week I decided I’d try a ‘short’ size (from Tu) in the hope that this might solve the problem. Readers, it did not. The ‘short length’ linen trousers covered half my feet and the ‘cropped’ jeans were resting just under my ankles. ‘Muu-uum, that’s the right length for jeans,’ said Thing 1 as I wailed about this, until I pointed out that these were supposed to finish well above the ankle, at which point she reminded me that I was short and offered to take the jeans off my hands for me (no).

How do below-average-height people deal with this nonsense? I’m pretty handy with a sewing machine so can take my own trousers up, but – as I am average height – I shouldn’t have to, as ‘regular’ should surely mean that they take the average as the norm. What’s going on with people’s legs in the fashion industry’s mind?? Answers on a postcard to the usual address, and I’ll try not to trip over my trousers when I go to collect the post.

Things making me happy this week

  • A gorgeous swim at Guidel-Plage followed by an excellent lunch with the family. Just look at the colour of that sky.
  • Watching the swifts zooming around the French neighbour’s house, stopping in to feed the babies and zooming off again. Excellent entertainment while sipping rose spritzers, nibbling brie and baguettes with ancienne crisps. Also zooming around were Asian Yellow-legged Hornets, so now we know how to report them in France but luckily not in French. My French continues badly.
  • A fun morning meeting VI formers at Stoke Newington School’s careers event. The students were confident, friendly individuals who were being allowed to express themselves. Late students in reception were met with sympathy because of the heat, no detentions were being handed out and kids were helpful and welcoming. Some academy trusts could learn from this (not the one my kids go to!)
  • There’s a decorative section of the New River in Clissold Park over the road from SNS, complete with noisy coot chicks shouting at their mama.
  • A completely amazing day of rehearsing the new schools session before launch on Monday across several Islington schools. Props include umbrellas, masking tape, a lot of buckets, beads, ping pong balls, drainpipes, hi viz and a hard hat. My role was to pretend to be a seven year old and throw daft answers at the team to see what they’d do. At least, that’s what I was doing.
  • One of the actresses said Chris and I make an excellent double act – but then our first conversation about a zillion years ago encompassed ladies of negotiable affection, Doctor Who, shipworms, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, how to demonstrate the physics of the St Paul’s dome with a small trampoline, and we’ve just gone on from there.

Today marks the start of a few weeks of non-stop work, kicking off with the Cally Festival in Islington where we’ll be talking about the Centre, getting people excited about the project and highlighting one of our fabulous community projects. Last year it thundered and lightninged at Cally and we all had to cram under the gazebo, so let’s hope this year is dry as we only have a market stall.

Same time next week!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Blood Trail/Blood Price/Blood Banked/Blood Shot/Blood Lines – Tanya Huff

Shadowlands – Matthew Green

Greetings from Bury Park – Sarfraz Manzoor (Audible)

The Wild Life – John Lewis-Stempel