By day, I'm the Head of Learning and Participation at a small illustration charity, and the happiest commuter on the Central Line with crochet hook and Audible subscription.
After hours, mother of three kids, staff to three cats, slave to the smoke alarm. Hoarder of yarn and fabric, maker of stuff, obsessive reader. Walker with ambitions.
Well, this week has been a refreshing blast of actual winter cold between Storm Henk disappearing and Storm Isha landing. Short of snow, gorgeous cold sunshine is my favourite sort of wintry weather, with frosty mornings and ice on puddles to crack. We drove back across from Brittany to Calais on Monday, with Tan delivering a running temperature commentary as we went - zero degrees was the high point. As I’m doing both highs and lows on the temperature stitch this year I should be able to show contrasts in a way that I haven’t before. 
The needle minder felt appropriate for this pattern!
This year’s tracker is the ‘Goth Stitch-a-Long Temperature Cabinet‘, by GrandmaBeWildin. As you can probably guess from the title, it’s a little less of a colour explosion than the last couple of years though for consistency I am going to use the same thread range for the temperatures. I’ve chose a printed aida fabric again, this time a parchmenty colour which reminds me of old library books. The cabinet is underway (only 4500 black stitches to go!) so hopefully by the end of the month I’ll be ready to start tracking. This year it’s a ‘book’ for every day in the high temperature, with a band that shows the low.
Of course this lovely cold snap also meant that Redricks Lake was frozen, with ice a good three inches thick. Yesterday’s dippers had fun with mallets breaking enough of a hole for people to dip, and despite the rise in temperatures today we still got to dip with the ‘bergs. It was our coldest dip yet at just one degree, so we were in for about three minutes before running for our robes and a hot chocolate!
Note the northern tans….
Other things making me happy this week
Tea and cake with my gang of ladies, with the best china. Plans were laid for an alternative village WI which doesn’t meet on a weekday afternoon and which has interesting speakers.
The Brothers Sun on Netflix – Michelle Yeoh on top form
Restocking my supply of Surf-fizz at Carrefour
Lots of reading. Lots.
Breakfast meeting at Bench to start planning National Illustration Day 2024
Getting on top of the paperwork!
Meeting the Education Committee at Copped Hall Trust to talk about their schools programme
And now it’s time for a quick nap before the Things start demanding feeding…
Same time next week?
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading
The Prayer of the Night Shepherd/The Smile of a Ghost/The Remains of an Altar/The Fabric ofSin – Phil Rickman
Here we are at post number 200, which is quite a lot and probably I should look back at the last 200 weeks and be all marvelly at what I’ve achieved. 200 posts is what I have achieved, despite Covid, labyrinthitis, new jobs, children, and general life happening all at the same time. Thanks to all of you who have been with me since the beginning (hello Mum, hello Dad, hello Fi), and to everyone else who’s dipped into my ramblings, roamings and adventures with the sewing machine.
Anyway, this week I am coming at you from a cold but sunny Brittany, where London sister and brother-in-law and I rocked up on Friday evening to surprise my mum for her significant birthday. I can’t tell you how old she is as she may make me sleep in the garden. Dad had managed to keep the secret, even sneakily making up the beds, hiding the extra baguettes in his office and putting the fizz on ice without Mum noticing.
A snowy coffeeWinter fun in Le Shuttle terminal
Having left Ealing at 6am for a morning Eurotunnel crossing, we made good time across a snowy Normandy and a not-snowy Brittany – spotting the dozens of birds of prey, deer and trees full of mistletoe (at least while I wasn’t snoozing) and only running into a bit of traffic on the Rennes rocade where a combination of roadworks and rush hour conspired against us. At 7.10 Tan dropped me off at the bottom of the drive so Mum wouldn’t hear the car, and clutching the magazine featuring Irish sister Steph* I knocked on the door. Dad had apparently delayed their dinner as long as possible, so when the door went he said he hadn’t finished and made mum get up. She opened the door and stood and looked at me for about 30 seconds in total silence while her brain processed the fact that the daughter who was supposed to be in Essex was on her doorstep. And then I told her I’d hitched a lift with Tan and Darren…there were tears and hugs and much joy, as well as cursing Dad for being a sneaky so-and-so**.
On Friday Tan, Darren and I went for a walk along the Blavet to see if we could spot a coypu in the lagoon. We didn’t spot a coypu but we were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of a kingfisher, a heron, a kestrel, any number of ducks, a buzzard and a cormorant in its favourite tree. It’s a canalised river which flows through to Lorient, and the towpath is popular for walking and running. Last winter we did a 10 miler along there with a total ascent of about 3 metres, which tells you how flat it is!
One of the great mysteries of French life is when the polite passing greeting changes from ‘bonjour‘ to ‘bonsoir‘ – if you open with bonsoir, you can guarantee that they’ll come back at you with bonjour, so mostly we’ve given up and just start there. Yesterday’s walk was no different. On the outward stretch we bonjoured away merrily until we’d almost reached our turnaround point. Tan bonjoured a French gentleman who responded with ‘Non! Bonsoir! Nuit est arrive!‘. When we met him again close to his turnround point in Pont-Augan, I bonsoired him….to which is his response was ‘trop bonsoir!’. Er, what…. had we bonsoired him too many times? Was it too evening, in which case was there a third option of ‘bonne nuit‘? Duolingo – or, indeed, Mr Morgan French (to distinguish him from any other Mr Morgans at the school)- never covered this clearly tricky aspect of the language. Is it some secret French thing designed to catch out the tourists? Answers on a carte postale to the usual address, s’il vous plait.
We are here till Monday, when we’ll make the marathon trek back across to Calais. By then I confidently expect to be approximately 75% baguette.
*Women’s Weekly, since you ask, in a feature all about her live interpretation business, Time Steps. Steph had promised to send her a copy….
**censored, for the delicate ears of my readership
Other things making me happy this week
A great meeting with Little Angel Theatre about where we could work together
Kicking off a new project with our illustrator Alaa Alsaraji and Holborn Community Association’s Digital Arts Club
A swim with Sue and Rachel – the temperatures are heading downwards to extreme sports levels again!
Getting organised for this year’s temperature tracker and starting a new Hydrangea blanket as well as mounting last year’s.
I picked up book called Map Addict in a charity shop a few weeks ago, by a chap called Mike Parker who apparently does all sorts of stuff on radio and telly about maps. I hadn’t heard of him, as he’s not doing it on Absolute Classic Rock, and I can’t bring myself to commit to Radio 4 quite yet. He may not still be doing it, I don’t know – I checked with my beloved who listens to R4 in his van, but he hadn’t heard of him either. Anyway, this book is described as ‘a tale of obsession, fudge and the Ordnance Survey’ and while I haven’t come across the fudge yet I am enjoying the story of the Ordnance Survey, and associated things like the politics around the prime meridian, the A-Z and the tube map.
Perhaps surprisingly for someone with no sense of direction, I love a map. I am building up my own little collection of OS maps, although sister Tan will tell you that me possessing a map is not the same as me being able to locate myself or, indeed, anything else. She has an excellent sense of direction, whereas I can’t find myself on a circular route unless we start at the beginning. Heck, who am I kidding? I can’t find myself in a large Sainsburys. I have found the OS map app very handy in the last year or so, as it has a little arrow that shows me where I am and which direction to go next. I love walking around my local area (aka ‘the flyblown wasteland’ as Tan refers to Essex) and take mental notes of footpath signs to explore when I’m rambling. If I can locate those on my paper maps when I get home I can plot out a rough route, and just hope I can follow it…
Google Maps is more of a challenge, however. On the rare (usually only once per driver) occasions I was handed a map and asked to navigate in those exciting pre-SatNav days, I discovered that the only way I can make sense of them is to hold them in the direction of travel. If you try this with Google Maps the phone autorotates and so it can take me three or four attempts to make the little blue arrow go down the right road. As for TfL directions which say things like ‘continue down Acacia Avenue for 500m’, well – this is fine when you’ve just got off a bus, but less so when you’ve exited a tube station from several levels underground and have no idea which way that is. External meetings in my new role were an adventure for the first couple of months as it was always hit or miss whether I could navigate back – my mental map of Farringdon is a bit better now, fortunately! I had the same problem when I started at Docklands, as Canary Wharf was very disorienting and the museum wasn’t very well known. After a few months I start building up my mental map, and I try and take different routes around the area to embed it.
As a form of illustration and source of information, though, maps fascinate me. When my Dad would occasionally have an interview in other parts of the UK – like England! – I loved to look up places around it and find funny village names on the map (Piddletrenthide, anyone?). I like the OS maps for finding little curiosities like archaeological sites – even if there’s nothing to see there now, I like knowing that something was there once. The London Underground map is a work of art, and colleagues have been known to use me as a travel planner (although not for walking routes), and I can spend hours falling down the rabbithole of sites like Bombsight (sadly not working at the moment), Layers of London and the Booth Maps, making links between modern and old London.. Maps in fantasy novels enchant me, and I’ll be making a trip with my team to the British Library’s current exhibition Fantasy: Realms of Imagination later this month.
Anyway, Mike Parker’s book is great – if you, like me, enjoy finding out how places like Greenwich became the centre of navigation (to annoy the French, apparently), and whose brilliant idea it was to triangulate the whole of the UK and what happens when bits fall into the sea, then I recommend this book as an entertaining and informative read. I’ve just ordered his book on the history of public footpaths, too, and added a few more to the wishlist.
Other things making me happy this week:
New Year’s Eve with friends
New Year’s Day swim with several of the same friends
A mooch round the market with Miriam (and a new jumper)
Traditionally this should be a round-up of all the things I have achieved since making my new year’s resolutions last year, but since I didn’t make any (see here) you get a round up of the last week instead.
In between things like Christmas and visiting the Timeshare Teenagers and being made to go to Westfield by Thing 2, I have managed to steal some time with the sewing machine making use of the great piles of fabric lurking in my house. One of the contracts that my Beloved’s firm manages is a clothing manufacturer who have a range of brands, and once they discovered that I make ‘stuff’, they send their samples and end of rolls home with him rather than to landfill. Some of it (anything with animal print, for example) gets passed on to a lady down the road who also makes stuff, and what she can’t use gets passed on to the secondary school that her grandson and the Things attend. I’ve been using some of the larger pieces to experiment with some new patterns this week.
The first piece was the Stitchless TV Sculptural Bucket Coat – I think I saw it in an Instagram post and loved the shape of it so thought I’d give it a go. This was the first time I have used a video tutorial to make something from a pattern, and it doesn’t really work for my learning style. I prefer a written pattern with diagrams that I can skim through before I start, and while I could watch the video through in the same way, I don’t want to sit through a half hour video before I start sewing. My first choice of fabric was a medium weight quilted stretch but whichever way I laid out the pieces there wasn’t quite enough and I didn’t have anything of a similar weight to colour-block with. However, while finding this out I discovered a digital print stretchy crepey something-or-other from the same source. There wasn’t quite enough of that one either but in another box I found a scrap of purple scuba which was just enough for the sleeves and the collar. I didn’t find my interfacing, however, which would have been useful.
The collar had to be pieced and is a total dog’s dinner as I didn’t follow the instructions properly (the video tutorial was not helpful here, it needs to be better ordered – or I need to watch it through first), and I sort of made up the finishing as it was all going on too long. I love the shape and the giant pockets that are formed by the seams, and if anyone ever asks me to a wedding I could see me making another. I really would rather have written instructions though and probably won’t make anything else from this company.
Next up was a couple of tops using my favourite Centerfield Raglan Tee by Greenstyle Patterns – the last set of these I made are looking a bit battered now as they’re my go-to for working at home and weekends. I used a plain black jersey for the sleeves and neckband, and for the front and back panels I chose a space invaders print that I picked up at the Knitting and Stitching show last spring, and a galaxy print that was going to be knickers but it was just too nice to hide (and once you’re over a certain age people get worried when you show them your new pants). These come together so quickly, especially with an overlocker and when you can’t be bothered to hem them. I hate hemming stretch fabric so I just overlocked the edges in black and called it a design feature.
I did find an alternative project for the quilted stretch fabric – Little Ragamuffin Patterns’ Doubledown Day Dress, which I’ve made before using a Moomin print, the assassin hood and thumbhole cuffs option. This time I went for sleeveless, as I only had enough fabric for one sleeve, and in the longest length. Again, this comes together really quickly with an overlocker. The fabric is a pain to cut but sews up quite well. I plan to wear it layered over a long sleeve tee. The neck still needs finishing and I may bind the armholes and hem as well, but it’s swishy and squishy and will be good for cold days.
After finishing the Hydrangea blanket last week I decided to make a scarf using the leftover yarns – following the same colour pattern but using the C2C method. Usually this makes a square but it can be turned into a rectangle with a little tweaking, and who doesn’t need another scarf at this time of year? It’s wide enough to double as a wrap in chilly meetings, too.
I have one more pattern cut out and ready to sew – in a lightweight merino blend fabric, also from the clothing manufacturer. The pattern is The Maker’s Atelier Unlined Raw Edged Coat which was an advent giveaway from The Fold Line. I like things that don’t require hemming! This will be more of a ‘shacket’ than a coat as the fabric isn’t windproof. So that’ll be my job for today….
Other things making me happy this week
A chilly swim with Sue and Jill yesterday, followed by a bacon roll and hot chocolate
Carols on the Green in Epping on Christmas Eve
Walk and coffee with Jill and Miriam
A lovely Christmas Day with my little family and some excellent presents
An equally lovely Boxing Day with the Timeshare Teenagers, and Grandthings 1 and 2
Turkey soup, once the ostrich had been dismembered
And now I have some sewing to do and breakfast to eat, so I will see you next week!
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
The Man in the Moss/Curfew(Crybbe)/Candlenight – Phil Rickman
The build up to Christmas this year has been thoroughly miserable, weatherwise, and lemon juice is being rubbed into the papercut by my Facebook memories showing me snow photos from recent years. The torrential rain is bringing back memories of childhood Christmasses in Wales when the festive season was marked by the man from the council turning up with the gift of sandbags in case of flooding from the brooks that bounded our road. There were a few pub evenings when someone would come in and tell us we’d better get home before the road went under!
We’ve recently moved offices in our building from a ground floor that felt like a basement, tucked away at the back of the building, to the attic space with skylights. The rain, thunder and howling gales we’ve experienced this week have been hammering on these little windows and reminding me once more of my Welsh childhood…this time, though, summer holidays in caravans when you’re only separated from the weather (or tapdancing gulls) by a thin metal skin. Those days meant a trip to a town rather than the beach, and I was 40 by the time I discovered Fishguard didn’t exist in a permanent monsoon microclimate. Other rainy day destinations included Devil’s Bridge, Aberystwyth, or the Centre for Alternative Technology in Machynlleth where the coffee was made of dandelions or something – my dad was horrified.
Rain = learning, by this logic, so the new office makes me quite happy even though it’s a very long way up. The stairs are quite open, too (all 73 of them) and it took me a week to get past the cognitive dissonance caused by the very steep drop to the left of the door which told my mind was going to fall. It’s perfectly safe, but my heart skipped a beat every time I opened the door as I’m not very good with heights. The new office is cosier, and we share it with a small theatre company who have their own Welsh person.
I am now off until the New Year and have plans – such plans! – involving various craft kits, some fabulous fabric and a whole lot of naps.
A good wander through the fields with Sue and the Bella-dog
Coffees with Heather and Miriam
A girly night in with Amanda, watching a Doctor Who Christmas special and then Weekend at Bernie’s
Finishing the crochet blanket I started two years ago (at least!) – see above!
Making more toadstools (all of which have gone to new homes) and giving in to the urge to add a door and window to one
The thing making me sad this week
Thirty-something years ago, in a pub called the Nag’s Head in Monmouth, an ex-boyfriend of mine introduced me to a bloke called Nigel. A few years older than me, he’d been in sixth form when I started at the local comp, so I’d seen him around but never spoken to him. We bonded over music (especially Mr Springsteen and a range of classic rock), books (shout out to Terry Pratchett) and shared a dry (at times I’d go so far as to say arid… desiccated, even) sense of humour alongside a horror of misplaced apostrophes. If I’d had a big brother, I would have liked him to be like Nigel, up to and including the ability to take me down several pegs when I’m taking myself too seriously. I know not everyone appreciated that about him, particularly his habit of saying the things that needed to be said on Monmouth’s local Facebook pages and his total inability to suffer fools gladly. He loved diving, and was delighted with the crocheted nudibranches I sent him instead of a Christmas card. He appreciated good cheese, good rum and bad puns.
Last year he did a round with cancer and we thought he’d kicked its arse. We’d planned an evening out in ‘that there London’ in October for his birthday this year but he’d been in hospital and was on antibiotics for an infection. It turned out that the bastard cancer had made an aggressive comeback. Two weeks ago he told me his prognosis wasn’t great, and – typically – that he wasn’t going to be starting any long box sets on TV. I offered any assistance that he and Caroline needed, although I drew the line at crocheting a giant life-sized Nigel as that was just weird. He laughed.
Caroline phoned me this week to say he was receiving end of life care, as he’d gone downhill very quickly. I woke up to a message from her on Saturday morning to say he had gone. It hit me in the evening when I saw a cartoon about fancy Christmas cheese that on any other day I would have sent straight to him. I will miss him terribly. 
All I can say is that wherever he’s ended up, they’d better make damn sure the apostrophes are in the right place and to put him in charge of the music, otherwise they’ll never hear the end of it.
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
The Drowning Pool – Syd Moore
Hogfather – Terry Pratchett (Audible)
Lost Christmas – David Logan (Audible)
Sharon, Tracy and the Rest – Keith Waterhouse
The Dark is Rising – Susan Cooper (BBC World Service adaptation)
My writing today is accompanied by the sounds of gunfire and torpedo explosions, as despite it being only nine days till Christmas my beloved still insists on watching normal films and Vikings for the umpteenth time – this evening’s choice being U-571, featuring Matthew McConaughey (yay!) and a submarine (meh). I know he has seen this before, as I have seen it before and this is not a film I would ever have watched by choice, despite the presence of the delicious Mr McC. He claimed when I pointed this out that he has definitely never seen it before and that I must be thinking of another film. He has form in this area: I call it his Father Dougal brain, after an episode of Father Ted where Ted is attempting to remind Dougal of a day in the local town where they witnessed a car chase, a bank robbery and other such exciting things. Dougal has no memory of the day until Ted says, ‘You were wearing your red jumper!’
With 22 minutes to go, 90 minutes into the film, my Beloved has just said, “is this the one where they drop a torpedo on someone’s legs?” as recollection dawns. Yes dear, you were wearing your red jumper.
While he claims not to recall the many films he has watched, and therefore can watch them again a seemingly infinite number of times, he has decided he has seen The Muppets’ Christmas Carol too many times. Ditto Elf, Scrooged and other such classic Yuletide films, although not Home Alone, which gets right on my nerves and I suspect they actually left Kevin behind on purpose as he’s so bloody annoying.
The number of times you have watched them is not the point of Christmas movies, I feel: they are part of the festive tradition, the background to the season, and make you feel all Christmassy and warm and fuzzy: a classic being It’s a Wonderful Life. Bankruptcy? Throwing yourself into a freezing torrent? Being terminally frustrated by the unfairness of your life? No one understanding you? Evil big business type person? Truly, it has it all.
And Miracle on 34th Street? Sectioning Kris Kringle? Rampant commercialism? Sceptical small child? Bitter divorcee mother? Court case threatening the very existence of Christmas? Again, it has it all. The 1947 version is obviously the best, but the Dickie Attenborough version will do in a pinch.
Better people than I have probably written reams on the morals behind these stories, using words like redemption, faith and suchlike, but for me they’re an integral part of the time of year. In a similar vein is Lost Christmas, which was a BBC production in 2011 based on David Logan’s book. Starring Suzy Eddie Izzard, this was a gorgeous magical fairy tale that’s hardly ever repeated and isn’t available through the usual streaming services or on DVD. The audiobook is next up on my list, once Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather is wrapped up.
Similarly, Christmas music is part of December*: I love Noddy shouting ‘It’s CHRISTMAAAASSSS’ and Jona Lewie stopping the cavalry, Steeleye Span burbling along in Latin and Mike Oldfield’s In Dulce Jubilo can make me feel Christmassy in July. The Darkness and their glam bells, Annie Lennox and Al Green putting a little love into our hearts, The Dropkick Murphys ode to family get-togethers, Bruce checking that the E-Street Band are on the nice list, Darlene Love begging her baby to come home for Christmas, Greg Lake’s miserable classic, Chris de Burgh getting all spacey, Elton stepping into Christmas, Joni wishing for a river to skate away on, Earth Kitt imploring Santa for diamonds, and Bing and David getting all twee. I love them all**. A friend sent me some digital equivalents of Christmas mixtapes a few years ago and they’re now required listening after December 1st, and I can even tolerate East 17 and Coldplay once or twice.
*not John Lennon or Paul McCartney’s offerings though. Or Cliff Richard. Drivel.
**Justin Bieber and Mariah Carey are deleted on sight. Dreadful.
Other things making me happy this week
A morning at an Islington primary school with Grace Holliday, one of our illustrator-educators, with a ‘Meet the Illustrator’ session rearranged from National Illustration week.
What this all translates to is that I’ve passed from resignation to acceptance and into anticipation… I should probably do some shopping, and remember to get the turkey out to defrost on Thursday. The cake and I have finished the rum, so the marzipan can go on mid week ready for icing. It’s nearly CHRISSSSTMMMAAAASSSSS!
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading
Jeeves and the Yuletide Spirit – P.G.Wodehouse
Misplaced Magic – Jessica Dodge
Mrs Pooter’s Diary/Sharon, Tracy and the Rest – Keith Waterhouse
Well, that’s it. I am now resigned to the fact that it’s December and Christmas is inevitable. The work Christmas lunch is done (at The Wilmington, and very good it was too) along with the office Secret Santa, my Christmas cake is finally made and drinking all the rum, and I have even managed to do some shopping. The turkey is in the freezer, which is a relief on several levels – not least the one where it fits in the drawer – along with literally dozens of chipolatas for pigs in blankets, no less than seven boxes of stuffing for some reason, and the tin of Quality Street is stashed with strict injunctions against even looking at it before the big day.
Having missed stir-up Sunday and the chance to use my usual Mary Berry recipe, this year I’ve tried a no-soak recipe from Good Housekeeping and will just have to drink any rum that hasn’t got time to go in the cake. Oh dear, how sad. Ah well, etc etc. Pass the Coca-cola.
The theme for Secret Santa this year was decorations, and it was so lovely to be given something handmade in the shape of the adorable Moomintroll and Moominmamma you see below. One of the downsides of being a ‘maker’ yourself (“you mean, apart from all the paraphernalia required, the need for two sheds and the fact that the dining table is constantly under a pile of fabric?” – My Beloved) is that people often don’t feel they can give you something they have made so opening the package with these Moomins was such a treat. I can’t wait to put them on the tree later today, hung well out of the reach of the furry predators.
The downside of the week has been watching various members of the team topple like germ-laden dominoes as Covid and other seasonal plagues make their presence felt once again, like the Ghosts of Christmasses Past*. Please Santa, if I’m due for round 4 of the Covid-gift-that-keeps-on-giving, could it wait till the end of the week and be over by Christmas please – or at least until I’ve got the last of the school sessions out of the way! Also, this time round I could do without the associated ear problems that have topped and tailed the last rounds.
*Yes, I’m listening to A Christmas Carol again. Read by Hugh Grant, this was a freebie from Audible a couple of years ago, My Beloved is off at Copped Hall walled garden for his weekly stint as a volunteer today, so I shall also be watching the Muppet version while the tree goes up – he doesn’t love it like I do. Scrooged is also on the watchlist.
Other things making me happy this week
Crocheting things that have nothing to do with Christmas
Having a weekend with time to do things
Working with lovely people
A peaceful mooch round the charity shops of Epping
Pretty Christmas lights
I must now go and do useful things with my day – especially some baking as Thing 2 has been demanding banana bread for several days, going so far as to check the cupboards for missing ingredients and writing them on the shopping list. Let no one say I can’t take a hint! There’s also Christmas Welshcakes on the cards, as I haven’t made any for ages.
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
Bimbo/Mrs Pooter’s Diary/The Collected Letters of a Nobody – Keith Waterhouse
This week I have been having great difficulty convincing my brain to stop being in full-on mode after two madly busy weeks with work. While this has been good in some ways, as Monday and Tuesday were very productive – mopping up a lot of things lurking on my to-do list, for example – its also had its downsides.
Tuesday was a case in point. When – as I expected – my alarm went off, I hopped out of bed, into the shower and was dressed before looking at a clock and discovering that it was only 5am rather than 6, and it was too early to go to work as we can’t get into our building till much later. At 6am my alarm actually went off, waking Thing 3 – as I found out when I was puzzling over it in the evening to my beloved. It turns out I’d dreamed my alarm, whispered at Alexa to shut up despite not actually being on, and got up.
It wasn’t until I got into pyjamas in the evening that I discovered I’d been wearing my bra inside out all day. The week did not improve.
Luckily, I had booked Thursday and Friday off as an ersatz weekend, as Saturday and Sunday (today!) are full of Christmas markets. Epping was yesterday: cold and sunny but not windy, which meant lots of people about and that the lack of sides on my gazebo wasn’t too noticeable. Thing 2 spent a couple of hours with me before heading off to meet the boyfriend – she was very useful when setting up! The tiny Christmas mice and mince pies were the best sellers, and it was nice to see familiar faces from previous years. I’ve done this event most years since 2009, when two friends and I shared our first stall. Today I am off to a school in north west London lugging an enormous suitcase of stuff – another repeat visit, which I am looking forward to.
And so I must go and get ready for the day! Short but sweet once again – at some point normal service will resume. I hope.
Other things making me happy this week
Coffee and a debrief with Amanda on Monday
Showing Paul Talling of Derelict London round our future site on Tuesday
A new haircut – I don’t think I like the grey coming through. I’m still not ready.
Seeing all the amazing illustrations coming in from schools after National Illustration Day
A week spent whirling from place to place, so this week you get some nice pictures and not many words.
Lena’s wallpaper going up
Monday was spent mostly at Angel Central, where we’d been lent an empty shop for the week and had lots to do. Here’s our Artistic Director Olivia putting up vinyl wallpaper designed especially for National Illustration Day by Lena Yokoyama. This was a proper team activity, with various members of the team footing ladders, plastering ourselves against walls while trying to hold up rolls of vinyl, and trying to match up the overlap. Next year we’ll get the printers to install it.
Eton’s tasteful Christmas lights
My annual stint as an external adviser at Eton College Collections– a meeting followed by a nice dinner. Celeriac soup, something chickeny, poached pears with hazelnut meringue and a sour cherry sauce. I sat between the charming Vice-Provost and the curator of antiquities and was highly entertained. I stayed at London sister’s overnight and was shouted at by owls, who nest in the tree outside her flat.
Wonderful Olivia Armstrong wearing the coat of many pockets
Finally the new schools session inspired by Quentin Blake’s book Angelica Sprocket’s Pockets was launched, starring Olivia Armstrong as the storyteller who forgot her coat and had to borrow Angelica’s. Featuring stories of the New River and local history, it went down a storm with the schools.
In the evening my Beloved was watching a Liam Neeson film when I fell asleep on the sofa and he was still watching it when I woke up three hours later. According to him it was a completely different film, but it looked remarkably similar to me.
Angel Central with Lena Yokoyama’s amazing window displays
More of Lena’s work, this time boards for window displays for the BIG DAY on Friday. You can just see the Mayor of Islington through the door. We invited lots of people through the door to help us celebrate. We asked schools to share what they made, and on social media we asked people to share the illustrations that were important to them. At one point we were trending 6th on X/Twitter and had almost 800 uses of the #nationalillustrationday hashtag on Instagram. We made the Radio 4 Today show, who had a live illustrator and interviewed Lauren Child. Illustrations made in the shop were scanned and added to our online gallery.
My contribution to our Angel Central gallery
Here’s my contribution to the online gallery – a self-portrait! Saturday saw more than 300 people come through the doors, including a visit from Amanda and an old college housemate. Hopefully Sunday will be just as busy.
Algorithms. eh? What’s that all about? I’m hoping someone out there knows the answer to this as I have to say they are leaving me somewhat perturbed.
Take Facebook ads, for example. You know, the things which – some days – are every other post on your feed and leave you wondering why you’re being targeted for all sorts of strange things that have no relevance to any of your interests or are so wildly off course that you’re tempted to actually click on them. Every so often I’ll be bombarded with promotions for self-published rubbish by ‘A N Other – Author’, or for sites posting celebrity rubbish or obvious clickbait. I go through the motions: hide ad, tell us why you hid this ad (usually I choose the ‘not relevant to me’ option as there isn’t an ‘it’s utter balls’ selection), hide all ads from this advertiser. Inevitably this makes no difference, and the same ad will reappear. So I click on the ‘why am I seeing this ad?’ option and it says ‘because you’re over 40’ or ‘because you interacted with content about history’. Well yes, I did interact with content about history – I like history – but the content you are attempting to show me is about Kardashians, or about people I don’t know who went to the doctor and found out something, or about this one trick that will help me keep my house permanently tidy/lose half my bodyweight/some other frankly unlikely outcome. Then it will give me the option to undo the ‘hide all content from this advertiser’ that I chose last time, in case I’ve suddenly seen the light: my god YES I AM over 40 and and I DO like history, why would I not want to see all this other stuff??? DROWN ME IN THOSE KARDASHIAN SHENANIGANS! I AM READY! *
Recently, however, I have am wondering whether the algorithm is trying to tell me something. As you may recall, I turned 50** earlier this year and I may have mentioned – once or twice – the joys of menopause and getting older. So, naturally, I have seen a fair number of ads for ‘the one menopause treatment you can’t live without’ and so on. This is fine and shows that sometimes the ads are at least vaguely relevant (I still hide them though, it’s the principle of the thing) but now I am starting to get a bit concerned. I have gone straight from ads for menopause solutions and to ads for funeral plans and the local burial ground, without passing through Saga holidays and the other fun things us quinquagenarians are supposed to be looking forward to now the kids are old enough to cook their own fish fingers and stuff. Should I be worried?
*I will never be ready. I cancelled my Grazia subscription when it became obsessed with Kardashians and Middletons.
**This whole 50 thing is a bit of a swizz, it seems – this year the government have moved the flu jab goalpost so I still have to pay. This seems unfair. Chiz chiz, as Molesworth would say.
Other things making me happy this week
Falling in love with London all over again. In an attempt to thwart the Central Line and achieve coffee with with Amanda I got an early train. Walking from Chancery Lane to Farringdon through the little Hatton Garden lanes, complete with sparkly Christmas lights and interesting old buildings before the sun was properly up (and before all the people arrived), reminded me how magical the city is. And we managed coffee.
Glow in the Angel yesterday – popping up at Islington Green with a star lantern activity designed by Jhinuk Sarkar and meeting lots of our future audience, followed by a drink with Amanda and Karen. There was a polar bear, a celebrity cat and lots of happy people.
Esme Young’s autobiography on Audible
The sweet elderly lady in Pret with her daughter and granddaughter yesterday – shed been watching me crochet little granny squares and when I turned one into a bauble she got very excited.
Celebrating neighbour Sue’s birthday with tea, cake, chatter and the Barbie movie
More crochet Christmas decorations – note to self, don’t leave the baubles out overnight as the cat steals them
Finishing the ‘Coat of Many Pockets’ for the new storytelling session inspired by Quentin Blake’s Angelica Sprocket’s Pockets – I can’t wait to see the sessions this week!
And now it’s time to get ready for a swim – later there will be a nap, as my Beloved’s (clearly haunted) toothbrush decided to turn itself on at 4.30am and would not turn off. I have been awake since.
Same time next week!
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
Walk the Lines – Mark Mason
The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov
Reaper Man – Terry Pratchett (Audible)
The Thursday Murder Club – Richard Osman (Audible)
What Kirsty did next 