I don’t know who’s in charge of weather at the moment but I’d like a word, please.
As an eternal weather optimist – despite, or perhaps because of my Dad at the start of every August holiday day in a caravan in Ceredigion informing us that ‘this isn’t rain, it’s sea spray!’ – I am frequently and catastrophically underprepared for May. Especially this week, when each day has opened onto glorious – if chilly – sunshine and by lunchtime has descended into chaos via hail, rain and high winds. There was a hard frost on Tuesday morning. My colleague was wrapped up in the only winter woolly she hadn’t put into storage in a fit of optimism the previous week. I was back in double layered tops to work on site and my poor Community Gardener was alternately drowning or freezing.
Luckily I haven’t had to go outside much, but on Wednesday afternoon I did have to leave the building and head to the Wellcome Collection with some of our new welcome team on a field trip. It hailed and rained on us on the way there and then we left in glorious sunshine.
The idea was that they’d do some research into how other venues welcomed visitors, whether they were accessible, how easy it was to find their way around and so on. We looked at the Coming of Age exhibition, which included a video clip of Harry Enfield’s Kevin the Teenager and a copy of Game of Life. I’m always slightly disturbed to see parts of my life on display in a gallery…
It was nice to spend some time getting to know the new welcomers before we open – once we open it’ll be harder to have these moments as we’ll all be a lot busier! It feels pretty hectic at the moment, watching all the objects and art go into the galleries and trying to unpack the Creative Studio. Still – we open on 5 June (tickets are available) and my adult workshop programme goes live on Monday including opportunities to try Urban Sketching, comic creation, urban garden design, Botanical Illustration and Printing Your Festive Cards. Test events are underway and feedback is great – it’s all happening!
This, of course, also means press activity and we welcomed a team from the One Show on Monday. I was in jeans and a t-shirt with mad hair and not enough make up, having been under the impression that I wouldn’t be involved…and then people pointed cameras at me while I was introducing the space and an activity. Oh dear. We had a class of Year 2s from a local primary school in and they were so excited by the Quentin Blake Gallery – seeing actual small people in a space was pretty exciting for us too, though, and I can’t wait for them to see the rest of the building.
Things making me happy this week
- Dinner at the Corsinio Lounge in Caerphilly with Jen on Friday – a good catch-up on politics, people and other important stuff.
- A banana Biscoff chorus bun. Bliss.
- Toby Carvery, people watching over a roast
- Apple TV’s update of Time Bandits with Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement. Great fun.
- The Times’ Picle and Quizle puzzles
- An evening at the Dead Canary for cousin Sal’s diamond birthday on Saturday – seeing cousins and Jen again
- A walk with Thing 2 on Sunday down the rhododendron path to Epping, where we ran into Sue and had a cup of tea and a chat
That’s it from me this week – hopefully next week will include an evening at the Postal Museum (tube strikes permitting) seeing the Jolly Postman exhibition with Rhiannon.
Same time next Sunday….
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading
We’ll Prescribe You a Cat – Syou Ishida
Before the Coffee Gets Cold – Toshikazu Kawaguchi
The Chibineko Kitchen – Yuta Takahashi
House of Flame and Shadow/A Court of Thorns and Roses – Sarah J. Maas (Audible)
What Kirsty did next 