Month: Apr 2026

319: is it safe to come out yet?

This blog post finds me lurking in my lair, dear readers, while untold numbers of small children and twenty/thirty somethings rampage about the garden in the name of GT2’s birthday. There are Fruit Shoots in industrial quantities, brightly coloured icing, one of the twins already has a split lip and there has been a minor meltdown over a small and innocuous beetle on the trampoline. Thing 2 has discovered my hiding place and is querying what I am doing up here….send help, or at least quantities of rum. I have written before about my feelings on children’s birthday parties but apparently when you live in the venue it’s not OK to drop and run. Motherland was entirely too accurate at times, I can tell you. Thing 2 has made the most amazing cake, so I’ll show that off next week – Spiderman and Bluey and other things three year olds like.

It’s been a funny old week all round, to be honest, with things not going terribly wrong but also not going terribly right either. There’s been two days of tube strikes – but not nice polite tube strikes from midnight to midnight, oh no, but midday to midday ones which meant I could get to work or from work on any given day but not (crucially) both on the same day. I support people’s right to strike of course, and more than half of services were running in the end, but it wasn’t guaranteed that the ones you needed would be online.

So I have been at home since Monday and have been really missing my commute – I know, weird but as I noted in lockdown before being happily furloughed, that hour long slice of day between work and home allows my brain to process the difference between work me and home me. So, in desperation, I have been for a long walk every evening after work to clear my head. Thing 2 joined me on Tuesday as we hadn’t been out on Sunday (I went for a glorious lake swim with Rachel instead, and tomorrow I am going with Jill) but on other afternoons I have been out by myself.

I have used the time for the occasional non-work phone call while I’ve been walking, and on Friday it was so sunny and nice that I walked to Toot Hill and had half a cider (knowing I had to walk home and being rubbish at drinking these days) in the courtyard at The Green Man while making friends with some cute dogs and relaxing. It felt like a real treat.

The rest of the week has been conspiring to irritate. On Monday I managed to see a doctor – I had an actual list of things to speak to him about and the 30 minute wait to see him after my appointment time only honed my determination. The ongoing wait to see the rheumatologist consultant again (I now have an appointment over the border in Hertfordshire at the end of May, and I’ll work out how the heck I’ll get there nearer the time), the latest unwanted menopausal symptoms (I had to suggest a solution to him after doing some reading, as he’d have been OK with things carrying on but he’s not living with it. ‘Oh yes, that might be an option’ he said) and the possibility of getting my med review out of the way. It was a helpful visit but then I was that person who left the pharmacy with a large bag full of drugs. Let’s see if things improve, shall we?

Alongside that, my beloved GHD hair straighteners had decided to give up the ghost on Monday morning, with a pretty shower of sparks, an odd crackling noise and strange smell. And I was only halfway through my hair.

On Tuesday night I found the idiot cat calibrating in the middle of the airbed I am currently sleeping on and shortly after I tucked myself up I discovered I was slowly deflating and decamped to the sofa. Fixed the suspiciously claw-shaped puncture on Wednesday but failed to spot the second one, so after another night on the sofa after that sense of deflation, I finally got it sorted with the aid of some sticky fix-everything stuff. Cross fingers it seems OK now, but I now have an emergency airbed just in case.

At work we were supposed to be moving our kit from the offsite office to the Creative Studio but since we had no guarantee we could all get that’s now been postponed to this week when it’ll be done in a patchwork when people are in. I’m only in till Thursday lunchtime before heading to Wales for the long weekend again, but V in my team is queen of the resources so she’ll get it sorted. Let’s hope it all runs smoothly!

And now I had better head down and join the party for a bit….you can thank the newly three year old for the early blog this week!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Fire and Bones – Kathy Reichs

318: here come the girls

Friday night was girls’ night over at Miriam’s house, which is something we don’t do often enough for a variety of reasons – children, life, work, the ton of stuff that just sort of happens when you’re a grown up person with responsibilities. Dinner getting out of hand, the fact that you’re in your pyjamas and your bra is off and you really don’t want to put it back on again, you’re tired after a week at work and you don’t have the headspace to people any more that day. This one has been in the offing for a while, and Jill forgot that she was at Cub camp all weekend, a couple of others were doing family things and so on. See what I mean?

Anyway, six of us made it, plus M’s two daughters, and the plan was simple: pizzas, prosecco and inappropriate board games. Board games are always involved somewhere in the planning if not in the actual execution… S brought an excellent chocolate cake, there were savoury snacks and dips, and a variety of drinks. Conversation ranged from Mr Handsome the geography teacher; a person most of us knew separately for an interesting range of reasons; weird celebrity crushes; why eyelash curlers are a bad idea after the age of 50; kids; the menopause (the 26 year old has all this to look forward to… sorry Edith) and all its associated joys; pole dancing and more. All this before 11pm! M’s husband is an honorary woman and takes everything in his stride, bless him, but their lodger made a hasty escape when they came back at 10.

It was exactly what I needed, as it turned out – as I have mentioned a few times, life is challenging at the moment for many reasons and I left feeling a whole lot better about everything.

I’ve been very lucky with my girlfriends over the years – the family of choice when you become an adult and have to manage a lot of the time without the blood ones (who are always there when you need them but some of them sometimes need a bit more notice due to living plane rides away).

I had a hard core of friends at school, most of whom I am still in touch with although we’re quite scattered these days. On my first day in Preston I met Amanda and we’ve been friends ever since – early morning coffees whenever we can, the odd dinner and evening out, and a lot of cemeteries, museums, exhibitions and life moments have been explored together.

In Bethnal Green there was Kersti and Nicky, who I was able to catch up with over the last couple of weeks in London. When the relationship that brought me to Epping went down in flames, I was adopted by an amazing bunch of women (the Pink Ladies, but not the racist ones – just because of the sheer quantity of pink wine we were able to down in those days. Yes, even me, though I am a cheap date these days.) Spa weekends, nights when the staff at the Peking Garden (RIP) gathered round the table dropping hints that we should all go home – we refined our menu to the hors d’oeuvres, duck and pudding as we never managed to eat all the main courses, Christmas visits to the theatre. Without them I would not have made it through 2003.

When I moved to North Weald, the kids had made friends with the twins two doors away and as it turned out the mum and I had a mutual friend. I got roped into the local mums’s group raising money for a new play-park round the corner. We used to hold meetings (with an agenda!) in the pub and quite often we’d even manage to make decisions. We organised events in village halls and on the Common – Easter egg hunts, Halloween and Christmas parties where Jill got to indulge her am-dram panto ambitions, and memorably a carols and mince pies evening in a marquee pitched in what was essentially a swamp in the pouring rain. The play-park is well loved and as a result I have a gang of friends with whom I hurl myself in freezing water, fail to play games, go for lots of walks with dogs and each other, have annual traditions and between us we have a bunch of kids who we’ve watched grow up into excellent young adults.

I’m also very lucky to be part of a hard core gang of girl cousins, to have gig buddies like Jen (who I get to see unexpectedly next month!) and museum friends too like Cath and Rhiannon. All bases are covered..

I wouldn’t be without a single one of them – there’s nothing like a girlfriend for cheering you up when you’re down, for promising to provide an alibi and a spade if it all gets too much, for cracking open the prosecco/cider/Baileys at the slightest excuse, and for generally being the folded beer mats under the table leg of life. I love them all.

Things making me happy this week

  • A helpful chat on Thursday afternoon which went a long way to sorting out my brain
  • Baby Cow season!
  • Coffee last Sunday with Miriam and Edith
  • Seeing Nicky and Alan again before they headed back to NZ (don’t leave it 20 years again!)
  • A walk in the sunshine on Saturday morning, following squirrels through the forest and making friends with lots of bouncy dogs as I had a coffee at Julie’s Cafe in Stonards.
  • The very beautiful rainbow on Monday even if it meant I had to shelter in a stable for half an hour to get out of the torrential downpour
  • Unexpected time with the twins on Saturday, and they have developed excellent baby giggles
  • Simple sewing projects in the shape of some strappy dresses that came together very quickly
  • Working to the sound of 6 Music on Friday
  • Sharing playlists on Spotify

That’s it from me – looking forward to a swim in the morning with Rachel and to the tumble dryer repairer actually turning up….

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Common Murder Val McDermid
The Bone Hacker Kathy Reichs

317: the gift that keeps on giving…

It is a truth universally acknowledged and so on that if  a group of middle aged women get together these days they’ll inevitably start talking about menopause. I mean, forget annual magazine or cheese subscriptions or whatever, menopause really is the gift that keeps on giving.

This week’s tick on the menopause bingo card was a bout of vertigo – I’d had a few twinges last weekend but only when bending down, but it landed fully on Wednesday and I couldn’t even sit up without feeling dizzy and sick, so I had to take a day off work. It is apparently all to do with oestrogen receptors in the inner ear. Why does one even need oestrogen receptors in the inner ear? It’s not like we have to listen to the damn stuff. Answers on an HRT patch to the usual address, please.

Luckily I was recovered by Thursday as I had a dinner date planned with old friends – Kersti (old school friend and ex-flatmate in our early days in London) and Nicky, over from New Zealand for the first time in years. Nicky had her two daughters with her so we had to mostly behave, but it was so good to see them both and briefly Nicky’s husband too. We started with a drink in a pub in Farringdon and then headed for the Market Place Food Hall in St Paul’s as none of us could decide what we wanted to eat. Kersti and I ended up at the Argentinian Grill while the others ate Nepalese dumplings.

Saturday was also a busy one: Thing 2 and I went to the cinema to see Project Hail Mary, starring Ryan Gosling, Ryan Gosling’s cardigan and a (not The) rock. Based on a novel by Andy Weir, who also wrote The Martian, it was fairly long at about two and a half hours but was completely engrossing. It’s a buddy movie in space. We laughed. We cried. We were utterly invested for the whole thing and my copy of the book should arrive tomorrow.

The jumper, starring Ryan Gosling. Amazon MGM photo.

Ryan Gosling sort of passed me by until La La Land and Barbie but he’s wonderful in this. Go and see it. Take tissues.

A spur of the moment decision saw me out in the evening as well, at The Eric Morecambe Centre in Harpenden with Miriam and family watching a comedian called John Robertson and his The Dark Room show. The world’s only live action text-based video game experience, apparently, it’s described as ” improv comedy + retro gaming
fused into a deranged heavy metal game show” and I can’t think of a better description. I’d never heard of him before, but since this is a year of trying new things I decided to join the outing and had an excellent time. It’s hard to explain without ruining it, but it was very well done and perfectly timed. He did photos at the interval, took questions at the end and called everyone Darren. Also recommended!

Today is a walk with Thing 2, coffee with Miriam and Edith and then some interminable ironing…same time next week!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Report for Murder/Silent Bones/Common Murder – Val McDermid

316: break from the old routine

This week I am coming at you live from sunny Wales, where I’ve escaped for a bit of a break from the old routine. It’s been a fairly hectic couple of months and with opening looming excitedly on the horizon I can’t imagine it’s going to get any less so. The weather for the first day was a bit stormy so there was a lot of TV watched, including two good films (A Complete Unknown and Deliver Me From Nowhere). Both Timothy Chalamet as Bob Dylan and Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen were excellent, even keeping me awake past 10.30pm which is a miracle. A couple of glasses of wine, good company and good music made for a relaxing start to the long weekend.

Even if it was only a three and a half day week for me it felt busy, with every day in the office for various meetings. I am so over internal meetings on Teams that I’d rather brave the commute and do them in person. This meant, too, that I got to see the site twice this week – the changes over even a week are so fast, with railings in place and things coming together. The novelty of being able to see people’s faces on what’s essentially a high tech phone call has very much worn off.

On Wednesday I actually got to remind myself why I got into this career, which was to get people all excited about visiting not just us but all the other spaces where they can see art and culture and history and stuff. I also like hearing their ideas as they look at the world in a very different way to me. It’s been a while since I’ve delivered a talk of any kind, and I do love it.

The session in question was an online chat with the fine art, graphic design and photography students from Medway School of Art and came about thanks to a chat with lovely Babs at the World Skills UK Finals last year. Serendipity is a wonderful thing! I heard some of the students’ ideas about what matters to them and how they’ll communicate that through their various art forms, and told them in turn all about the Centre. I can’t wait to get them all on site.

We also met the next tranche of our volunteers at a session on Wednesday afternoon: illustration and animation students, people who were volunteers in our old home in Granary Square, people who loved Quentin Blake’s illustration growing up, people who want to get their hands dirty in our new gardens. There’s so many poeple who want to get involved, and it’s really heartening at times of stress to meet them.

Things making me happy this week

  • The ‘young people’ in the office telling me my outfit on Thursday ‘slayed’ and I was dressed very Gen Z. Basically I was wearing what I’d worn in the 90s as a Gen Xer. Jeans, slip dress, baseball boots and top. There’s nothing new under the sun… But I’ll take it from the cool kids I work with!
  • Coach drivers who tell you to look at the pretty sheep when you’re stuck in traffic.
  • Buying Easter eggs for my team as they’re amazing.
  • Hanging out with cuddly dogs.
  • A random evening in the pub with Jill and Miriam midweek – prosecco and a lot of giggling like idiots.
  • National Express being much classier than the Megabus. No one was throwing up, for a start.
  • Long walk with Thing 2 through Tawney Common last Sunday. Sometimes we chat, sometimes we have our earbuds in and just walk but whatever – it’s lovely that she wants to spend time doing things with her mum!

This week I’m looking forward to another four day week, with a dinner date with Kersti (one of my oldest friends) and Nicky (back from NZ for holiday – it’s been wayyyy too long!)

Same time next week, and may the Easter lagomorph bring you all the Mini Eggs your heart desires.

Kirsty

What I’ve been reading:

Light Perpetual – Francis Spufford
Restless in the Grave/Bad Blood/Less Than a Treason/No Fixed Line/Not The Ones Dead – Dana Stabenow
Silent Bones – Val McDermid