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, where did it go? This week has been very rainy – indeed, torrential at times – and there’s been a definite chill in the air in the mornings and evenings. I was even forced to wear socks while working at home on Friday which seems a step too far after last week’s warm sunshine. I’ve swapped the cats so Ted and Bailey are the upstairs ones this week, as they’re pretty much guaranteed to lie on me at night and keep my feet warm. The downside of this is opening my eyes of a morning to find the pair of them glaring at me, especially if I’ve had the temerity to sleep in past 5.30am and their breakfast is late. Teddy, in particular, likes to tap-dance on my ribs to encourage me to wake up.
In the usual manner of things, of course, I can’t find the jacket that’s been hanging around all summer, and it’s still not quite cool enough for a coat. It’s also dark when I get to the bus stop in the mornings. It does mean we can look forward to crispy autumn and winter swims soon, and Thing 2 and I had fun popping conkers on the way home this afternoon. She brought me a pocketful of conkers from a walk the other day, knowing how much I love their shiny, silky shells.
I love autumn, it may be my favourite time of year, with the forest showing off its best colours – even London’s street trees get their chance to shed crunchy plane leaves all over the place, at least until the street sweepers turn up. There’s tiny pumpkins in the garden and squirrels are parkouring around the place collecting acorns and burying them so they’ll pop up as little oak saplings all over the garden next year. We* have transplanted enough of these into pots to make a small portable forest.
Christmas crafting – making gingerbread men and yet more tiny mice
Afternoon at Jill’s for her annual Macmillan tea party. I left before the gin was cracked open…
Colleagues who recommend good books, and library ordering systems
Another cross stitch finish and a StayPuft Marshmallow Man
My job – working in an organisation genuinely committed to EDI and understanding barriers to access both internally and externally. Kindness and respect go a very long way.
Today I am off for a morning swim, and then Thing 2 and I are off to the cinema to see Beetlejuice Beetlejuice – I was in charge of tickets and she’s on snacks, and then we’re going to go and see TT1 and the family. And then she’s in charge of dinner, hurray!
This week is new washing machine week, as Repairman 2 wrote it off. Currently when it goes into spin it sounds like its filled with cats and rocks, neither of which should be included in laundry.
Same time next week, then?
What I’ve been reading:
Murder at the Monastery – Rev. Richard Coles
The Island God – Sarah Painter
We Are All Made Of Glue – Marina Lewycka
Tricky Twenty-Two – Janet Evanovich (Audible – and a lot of live Eddie Izzard)
It’s Saturday evening and I am typing this in an advanced state of ‘is it nap time yet?’ after a day at the British Library’s ‘Marvellous Me!’ Family Day. This was the last of our pop-up appearances for the summer and I was joined by illustrator Beth Suzanna and Marina from our Artistic and Creative team. We were making paper portraits using collage in Beth’s signature style which is full of bold colour and opportunities for families to add as much detail as they liked. We had a great day, meeting more than 100 people and seeing some amazing creations – one of the families from our summer play project came to see us, too.
The BL runs three family days a year, and this one is in partnership with the British Museum and the Frank Barnes School for the Deaf – an opportunity for D/deaf and hearing families to learn together. There were interpreters on hand, performances by a signing choir, BSL storytelling and sensory spaces and the whole day felt inclusive and welcoming. I had a wonderful conversation with the mobile evaluator team and will definitely be stealing their ideas – and inviting them to be part of our access panel. We spoke about the need for 360 degree reflection at the end of projects, and the importance of understanding why things go wrong sometimes.
I say this every time, but…. yes, I am absolutely shattered, but I’ve met 100 people of all ages, from babies up to grandparents, and every single one of them reminded me why we do what we do (and why we bloody love it),
In other work news, we had a fundraising event at our new site – the last one before we start the build, which is PRETTY FLIPPING EXCITING – and despite promising myself I would not be completely overexcited at meeting illustrators I failed. It was all fine until Nick Butterworth, creator of Percy the Park Keeper and Tiger and Jasper’s Beanstalk turned up and Tom Gauld, whose cartoons for Guardian Books speak to me very loudly.
There were delicious macarons, and Quentin Blake sent us a special message via monster.
On the less happy side, we also said goodbye that evening to our lovely Head of Comms and Content who is off on a seaside adventure – but I did get to hand over her leaving gift. I will miss her very much!
Coffee with my LEN (Lovely Ex-Neighbour) Emma after WAY too long. Our midkids (aka Bonnie and Clyde) have been besties basically since birth, and we used to open the gate between our gardens and drink wine while they rampaged.
A Sunday morning swim
Finding a lot of Eddie Izzard included in my Audible subscription and laughing out loud on the tube
The cat being signed off as healthy by the vet. We knew she was better when she savaged a small visiting child but it’s nice to have the official word
Right! My family require feeding… have a good week!
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
The Distant Echo -Val McDermid
That Mitchell and Webb Sound (and various Suzy Eddie Izzard shows) (Audible)
This week has seen the return of the crafty mojo after my worst craft stall ever at Copped Hall on bank holiday weekend – I sold two pairs of earrings all day, which tends to make you wonder why you’re bothering. Even the two tiny dachshund puppies I made friends with didn’t quite make up for it…it’s surprising how much impact one off day can have!
I pulled myself together enough to put in my application for a stall at Epping Christmas Market and went back to crocheting chilli peppers on the tube in the hope that the next stall will be more successful. An Italian lady who bought a pair of chilli pepper earrings told me that in Italy chilli peppers are hung up to ward off stop people gossiping about you and to bring good luck, and who doesn’t need that? Perhaps I should start hanging them over the stall.
This year’s decorations will probably not include pigs in blankets unless people ask me really nicely, but there may well be cats as Thing 2 has decided that’s what’s missing from my stall after scrutinising everyone else at the event. There will also be mince pies and mice, and probably penguins. Let’s see where they get me….
I’ve also been making a couple of cross stitch gifts but can’t share them till they’ve been handed over, so you’ll just have to wait.
Tiny twins in Sprite hats. Aren’t they adorable? Just don’t ask me which is which
And tiny baby hats in multiples of two using yarn from the stash, for Arlo and Bohdi, who I finally got to cuddle last Sunday after taking Thing 2 to the cinema to see Despicable Me 4 (we loved it). They are so, so small and so laidback, which I’m quite sure won’t last once they find their voices. We were entranced by the way they mirror each other’s movements. Thing 3 was terrified when we first handed him a baby but got quite relaxed after a while, while proud Grandad was his usual baby expert self. We know he’s proud as he accosted all the neighbours when TT1 popped round last Saturday with the words ‘Grandchildren! Look!’ which is positively effusive for him.
During the evening crafting sessions I’ve been binging the excellent Slow Horses, starring Gary Oldman and the ridiculously elegant Kristin Scott Thomas. I’ve so loved the books and was assured that the series was just as good, and – for once – it is. Hopefully Apple TV’s adaptation of Carl Hiaasen’s Bad Monkey will be just as good – the soundtrack of Tom Petty covers is a good start, as is the casting of Vince Vaughn. We’ve also been watching Brassic, a Sky programme which is very ‘it’s him! from that!’ and extremely funny with it. The hims and thats in this case are Joseph Gilgun from Preacher, and Ryan Sampson from Plebs, both of which we enjoyed.
Other things making me happy this week:
Fountain pens. I have the urge to write letters to people just to write with one. I feel I should be that person, and live with the misguided hope that perhaps a beautiful pen with real ink would miraculously render my atrocious handwriting legible.
Six month health checks for Teddy and Bailey, who do not need to be wrangled into the cat basket at serious risk to my wellbeing, and who are both very doing very well. Lulu, on the other hand, requires a pincer movement, two people and ideally steel gauntlets, full armour and a welding mask. Even then you should have the first aid kit handy.
Washing machine insurance. Mine apparently requires a new drum, a new PCB (whatever one of those is), a new seal and a new front.
Early morning coffee with Amanda.
Impending autumn, with chillier mornings and not melting on the tube.
Visiting the new Islington Museum ‘People of Islington’ exhibition, celebrating local artists and makers. They have a section of elm pipe from the New River which I’m quite jealous of. I wonder if they’d miss it?
The rather elegant cat below, who I met on my way home from Islington Museum. He was waiting impatiently for someone to come home and let him in.
And that’s it from me for the week – next weekend you can find me at the British Library’s ‘Marvellous Me‘ Family Day with illustrator Beth Suzanna making paper portraits. This is the last of our pop-ups for the summer and we’ll be alongside a whole lot of other excellent organisations so do come on down.
Same time next week then!
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
The Skeleton Road/Out of Bounds/Broken Ground – Val McDermid
Some weeks it feels like the weekend is a long time coming. Other weeks you text your friend and say ‘still on for tomorrow?’, they come back with the title of this post and you realise it’s only Thursday and there’s still a day to go.
Not that it’s been a bad week – just long and quite productive, from chatting to the lovely Islington crowds at Angel Canal Festival on Sunday to writing a journal post about our play adventures over the summer, via a thought-provoking evaluation kick-off session, lots of spreadsheets and report writing, and the odd meeting or two.
Things Two and Three went back to school this week, and Thing 1 came back from a long weekend in Brighton and enrolled in year two of her T-level course. I am so over school now, and no longer feel the need to ensure they have new pencil cases and so on. Not because I’m a terrible parent but because they either lose them or don’t use them, preferring instead to use their blazer pockets, a random paper bag or something equally irritating at laundry time.
I, on the other hand, know the value (and joy! so much joy) of a new pencil case. I have many, including my sixth form pencil tin which has ‘Beware of the Spiders!’ on it. Today my pencil cases are scattered across project bags filled with notions and crochet hooks, or even occasionally with pencils. Every ‘Back to School’ display in WHSmiths or The Works or Hobbycraft is a temptation.
There is something magical and filled with potential about stationery: new notebooks, sharpened pencils, a rainbow of coloured pens. My favourite notebooks these days are the freebies from events and conferences with their smooth covers and elastic pen holders. For well-organised to-do lists you can’t beat a classic A4 refill pad separated into sections. And dotted and squared pages make me feel cool and creative. The V&A shop does a nice A5 hardback notebook with different sections, which feels solid and professional and classy. All my notebooks bristle with sticky markers within days, which give the illusion of organisation…
Of course, there’s also the fear of a blank page and of making a mistake on that beautiful clean page and therefore RUINING the whole book, but there we are. Perhaps this will be the notebook where you write your best essay or poem or story, or that is the pencil with which you will draw your best ever picture, or create the most magical doodle. You make a silent promise to the notebook or the new fountain pen (I love a fountain pen. I need a new one, I think) to always use your best handwriting and definitely never to tear scraps off the last page for shopping lists or bookmarks. The promise lasts at least until I make my first mistake, but it’s good while it lasts.
Things making me happy this week
Finishing the kantha-inspired bag
MANY baby cuddles on Saturday, starting with Twin 2 and moving on to The Oat (TM) over iced coffees at Gail’s…looking forward to snuggling Twin 1 tomorrow
Starting a new cross stitch small project
The Airborne Toxic Event’s new album
Fab lollies and avocados, but not at the same time
Finally starting to watch Slow Horses, which is so far living up to to the books and is filmed just round the corner from my office
Lulu Moggy coming through her bladder stone operation. She’s now feeling much better and is back to savaging small children
Today I am taking Thing 2 to the cinema for a mum and daughter day out – she offered to watch the new Beetlejuice film but I know she secretly wanted to see Despicable Me 4,m so that’s what we’re doing. There will be popcorn.
How has it come to the end of August already? My sister is posting back to school photos of my small nephew as he heads off to his final year of primary school, Things 2 and 3 are informing me that they require bags and shoes and stuff, and I am hoping for an onslaught of schools bookings as we launch our first teacher newsletter featuring our shiny new sessions. If you happen to *be* a teacher, you can find them here.
It was also a short week, kicking off with the bank holiday. My Beloved has been gently nagging me about a HUGE and enthusiastic bramble which has been making inroads into my little patch of garden. I had noticed it, particularly as it was sending runners across the deck outside my shed in a very Sleeping Beauty’s castle fashion, but I was pretending it wasn’t there in hopes that the Blackberry Fairy would take it away. The bramble was also near the mysterious ‘ole that something has been excavating in the corner, so I grabbed a spade to put some of the earth back in the ‘ole to discourage whatever it is, some secateurs and gloves, and the green bin to put all the bits in.
The bramble was tough and invasive, and had sent very long runners out in a tentacular sort of way across quite a large chunk of my corner. Some of them were trying to take root themselves, striking out and forming their own independent thorny republics. It was a rather lengthier task than I expected, to say the least, and while I was doing it some bitey thing bit my leg twice, which made me quite thorny as well. I was talking to an NHS person a few weeks ago and she said that mosquitoes are very fond of O-positive blood – apparently we are universal donors for bitey bugs as well as people. This explains a lot. The bites were exceedingly itchy and swelled up to enormous proportions. This is why I do not do gardening.
The ‘ole, with a cameo from the bramble. Spot the bees.
The ‘ole was next. It appeared one day, and is too big for a rabbit or a rat, so we are wondering if a foxy is trying to take up residence. If so, he’d missed his chance and the ‘ole was surrounded by furry red-tailed bumble bees being very industrious. They are welcome to nest, but I did put quite a lot of earth back where it was supposed to be which they weren’t too happy about. Bees, eh?
Other things making me happy this week (mostly by not biting me)
Deciding what this year’s crochet Christmas decorations will be, starting with some very cute chilli peppers. Later versions did, of course, have eyes.
Taking Ian and Stacy from the V&A Academy around our new site and picking their vast brains about creative courses online and in real life
Gorgeous swim with Jill on Saturday morning
A mooch around the charity shops of Epping, scoring a couple of Marina Lewycka novels as I’m really enjoying the one I got from the library
The final day of our play project with families from The Parent House – joyous, chaotic, colourful, and a great way to introduce our local community to the site and find out what they want from us. The sun shone, Valentina is the undisputed Queen of the Snack, Thing 2 came along again, and we had an amazing day. The site has never been so colourful!
And last but not least, the arrival of A & B, aka Grandthings 3 & 4, thanks to TT1 Amy and her partner Callum. Can’t wait to meet them!
Last Sunday was sunny and warm and as my living room was full of teenagers and I was feeling crafty, I retreated to the garden shelter with my coffee, fabric hexies, paper templates, a glue stick, a book and an excellent playlist on Spotify. I had a lovely morning sticking things to other things and making pretty patterns until I ran out of glue and had to wait for the Amazon man to arrive.
In the meantime, I delved into the shed and found a fat quarter bundle of Makower quilting cottons in red, cream and gold and with the aid of my trusty rotary cutter cut out some diamonds using these Clover templates, with the germ of an idea for some star decorations in my head. Thing 2 joined me after her friends had gone home, bringing her book, and kept me company in the sun. She also had a go at making some hexie flowers using some orphan hexies that weren’t quite what I wanted for my project. (You can see her project if you click through on the Instagram post below), and walked both the cats on their harnesses. It was a really lovely afternoon, peaceful and creative and exactly what you want summer Sundays to be like.
My hexies are destined to become the sleeves of a Liliana jacket, and the rest will be made of a wine-red twill cotton. I decided a whole patchwork jacket would be a bit much but if I do the sleeves in hexies and add patch pockets (of course) it should work well. I’m considering adding cuffs in the twill fabric as well, to tie it back together. You can see the rough sleeve layout below, with a fade from navy through purple into red. If it works it’ll be great, if not I’ll look like some mad hippy…let’s see what happens! I need to decide what to line the sleeves with – twill might be too heavy, but I may have some lining fabric in the right colour in the shed.
An inspirational conversation with some MA students I met at the RCA in July. I’d offered to have a coffee and a chat with them, as they’re interested in participatory arts practice, and the 45 minutes I’d scheduled turned into 90.
Day 2 of the play co-design project – this week we went to Holland Park and had a great time in the adventure playground. This week’s illustrator was Joey Yu, and we had some new families and repeat families. We are very much looking forward to the final session this week! Thing 2 joined me for the day as well.
An evening swim with two new converts on Thursday evening. Many ducks and much putting the world to rights.
Thing 1 started her first job at the local pub. I am hoping for some transferable cooking skills.
Making the Named patterns Kielo dress in a paprika coloured jersey fabric which is way outside my usual wardrobe colours. I look like a carrot.
I finally remembered to take a photo of my current portable project. I had a long conversation with a nice old lady on the tube who was very interested in what I was up to. I love the colours in this one!
Today I’ll be hanging out in my little gazebo at the Copped Hall Open Day, touting my wares and carrying on putting those hexies together. Hopefully people will buy stuff, but if not I’ll have had a nice afternoon in the sun!
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading
The Darkest Domain – Val McDermid
Honeycomb – Joanne M. Harris (Audible)
The Covent Garden Ladies – Hallie Rubenhold
Stray Cat Blues – Ben Aaronovitch etc
1983 – Tom Cox
Tackle! – Jilly Cooper. I keep reading these in case she’s regained her touch. She hasn’t. Please stop, Jilly. For all our sakes.
Friday was the first day of our new community co-design project. You remember, the one that was giving me sleepless nights last week in case no one turned up or it rained all day or it was a total disaster, that sort of thing. I have form for this sort of thing – on one school trip all those years ago I managed to lose two children and a parent helper – so it’s not unreasonable to worry!
Luckily it all seemed to go very well – 18 people came along and we took 18 very similar people back to Islington so I am counting it as a win. The Panda coach turned up on time – one of the children was very excited, as they had apparently ALWAYS WANTED to go on a panda bus. I didn’t know Panda Buses were a thing, but there we are. A bonus point to me… Another child had never been on a coach before so the adventure started early for her! No one was sick and we had exactly the right amount of snacks for the day. Pom-bears were the most popular – Valentina, my colleague, hadn’t heard of them before, although my director says they go very well with red wine. We’re a cultured bunch, us.
The visit this week was to Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, where they have a children’s garden which explores in a very playful way all the things plants need to grow – sun, water, earth and air – in four zones. The idea of the project is to take local families to different playful green spaces (next week is Holland Park Adventure Playground) and then in the final week we’ll work with a play artist to construct models of play opportunities which will be shared with the architects and landscape designers to inspire our own new gardens. Each day is being live illustrated by illustrators, so we can see what families engage with most, and what captures their imagination. We also gave all the participants their own sketchbooks to record whatever they wanted, and one to a small girl who was fascinated by illustrator Grace Holliday’s sketching and was peering over her shoulder. We told her dad all about the Centre – no engagement is ever wasted!
Valentina and Grace met us at the entrance to the Gardens, having left me in charge of the bus journey, and we headed off to the Children’s Garden and Earth area where we found huge sandpits, slides like earthworms and wooden playhouses as well as logs and ropes to help people up a large mound. The younger children enjoyed the sand while the older ones (the group ranged from 5 – 16) enjoyed the sunshine. The second space was Water, where there were pumps and rivulets, with a paddling zone complete with stepping stones. Climbing structures were, again, more popular with all but the youngest children. The round structures you can see in the images above were in the Sun area next to Water, along with some huge eucalyptus trees and some very cheeky baby jackdaws. I loved the use of coloured perspex in the tunnel. Few people seemed to use this area, perhaps because it wasn’t obviously ‘playful’.
We liked the ‘rules of enjoyment’ scattered through the gardens as well as at the entrances – ‘Our trees are for hugging not climbing’; ‘Our plants are for smelling not picking or eating’ and others – offering alternatives to engagement rather than ‘don’ts’. There are clear paths to each area as well as stepping stone paths through flower beds to encourage exploration. They close the space for quiet sessions but the space overall didn’t feel as if it had been designed with accessibility in mind – there weren’t obvious alternatives to climbing frames or the paddling area for wheelchair users, for example, and I couldn’t find any information on the accessibility map on the website (which is also hard to read). I would have liked to have seen this information in a variety of easy to find formats on the website, particularly as we had at least two children with Austistic Spectrum diagnoses on the visit. Kew has a great facilitated community and access programme but for independent visits the information isn’t obviously available. I am happy to be corrected on this, of course, but this is the sort of information we know our visitors need to have.
We went to the Family Kitchen for lunch, where we provided children’s lunch boxes and pizzas for the grown ups. The toilets are sensibly located there too, and a playful handwashing station. Kew have also put a shop in there and an extremely expensive Hackney Gelato ice cream parlour, which I am quite sure a lot of parents could have done without, especially as entry to Kew isn’t cheap.
After lunch we went to the Air space, which was the most popular with our families – little trampolines sunk into the floor, rope swings, colourful windmills and a giant hammock, and lots of things (pollen, apparently) to jump from and on and over. Again, things to climb on were most popular – the Oak Circle, a huge oak tree ringed by a high level walkway, attracted all the children, while a bench ringing the tree provided some much needed seating and shade for us! Grace Holliday, our illustrator, captured so much movement and joy in this zone.
The usual herding of kittens through a final visit to the loos and retrieving them from the shop ensued, and then it was back on the bus to Islington through a lot of traffic which seemed to be Taylor Swift’s fault, at least according to the coach driver who had to battle back round to Harrow afterwards. I’m looking forward to the next adventure, and hopefully the families are too!
In other news…
Poor Lulu cat had to have a sleepover at the Royal Veterinary College this week, which meant a long car journey each way. She was at pains to tell us how unhappy she was about this, especially when speed bumps and potholes made their presence felt. We finally have a diagnosis though – she has not one but six bladder stones and an operation is needed to get rid of them as they aren’t the sort which can be zapped or dissolved. Thank heavens for insurance, which covered the ÂŁ1548 cost of her stay. She now has bald patches on her legs, chest and belly and took a good 48 hours to forgive me.
Thing 3 had his ingrown toenail operated on (and they did his other foot just in case). He was very brave and looked like a duck when he came home. No photos of this, though.
Things making me happy this week (aka ‘The Happy List’)
Thing 1 got an A in her first T-level exams – we are incredibly proud of her and her hard work after a rough year last year.
Thing 2 finally gave in and made me a lemon drizzle cake. It was excellent.
I put my quilt top together and stuck a lot of paper hexagons onto fabric hexagons, for which I have a cunning plan.
Making the Sew House Seven Wildwood dress. No photos, it needs to be on to look its best. I managed to get the skirt front backwards so it wraps the wrong way. Who knows how I did it, but there we are. It’s green.
Seeing the London Museum’s new logo make it into Private Eye‘s ‘Pseud’s Corner’ not once but twice….in the same issue. I love the Museum, having worked there for 12 years, but loathe the pigeon and ‘splat’
Three days off – some sewing, some sleeping, some KFC with Thing 1, some reading
The finale of The Umbrella Academy – such a good series, and great use of Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman. It made me want to rewatch DC Titans though.
And that’s it from me for the week – I must go and throw pizzas at teenagers in the hope of pacifying them. Thing 2 has three friends over for a sleepover – ‘sleep’ being a very relative term.
I like sleep. I’m a big fan of it, quite frankly, and am willing to embrace it at the drop of an eyelid. Lockdown was brilliant, as I was on furlough, it was really hot and I could have siestas in my hammock whenever I wanted. Weekends almost always include a good nap or two. At night I like to read a bit (until the book falls out of my hands, usually) and then snuggle down with whichever cat happens to be on hot water bottle duty until the alarm goes off.
The hot water bottle on International Cat Day this week
One of the most annoying bits about menopause – which was saying something, given the rest of the symptoms – was the constant waking up at stupid o’clock and not being able to go back to sleep, but the patches seem to have sorted that out. Sleeping with earplugs has also helped enormously. My Beloved claims that earplugs aren’t helping him as he can still hear me snoring, but he can always get his own.
However, so far no one has made a patch that reduces wakefulness due to stress (the first of our National Lottery Heritage Fund community co-design projects starts this week, and what if no one turns up? I haven’t booked the transport yet! Is the bus big enough? What if it’s a total disaster? What if no one comes to the last day which is the really important one? What have I forgotten? What if too many turn up for the bus who didn’t RSVP? Argh! ).
There isn’t a patch to deal with having an 18 year old daughter on the loose in London with her friends, either. Thing 1 has embraced raving and has been off to South London (of all places!) a few times since her birthday. I am not sure why I am more concerned with her going to Vauxhall or Lambeth than when she goes to Camden, but there we are. We give her the lecture every week: no sex, no drugs, no sausage rolls (on the basis that rock’n’roll is in short supply at raves, but there might well be a hot dog seller or a 24 hour Greggs to hand). She’s quite sensible, we think, and we know she’s got a getting home plan and she’s with her friend from the village, but STILL. It’s my job.
At this point my mother is cackling away in her little village in Gaul and muttering about karma. I see you, mother. Don’t deny it.
A couple of evening walks with Thing 2 through the fields and woods between our village and the next. There were deer, we startled a badger on his dusk patrol up near the fishing lake, gorgeous waterlilies.
I say walk – my Achilles has been playing up so more of a hobble. Still, I made it to week 5 on the C25k before it went. However, this evening it went ‘pop’ which Google assures me is not a good sign.
A day at the Peel/Three Corners Street Party – bubbles, dogs to make friends with (including a puppy who’d never seen bubbles before and kept trying to catch them), a DJ playing excellent tunes, lots of people interested in our project.
Saturday with my gazebo, touting my wares at a local church fundraiser. Sold a few bits and bobs, talked to lots of nice people and cut out a lot of paper hexagons for an English Paper Piecing project while sitting in a pretty graveyard. I love a graveyard, as you know.
Hydrangeas flowering nicely thanks to no intervention from me
The prospect of a few days off and a new dress pattern.
Apple cakes using my mum’s recipe, making use of the windfalls in the garden.
Early doors walk with Jill on Friday, putting the world to rights and plotting dastardly deeds.
Progress on the kantha-inspired bag which I keep forgetting to take photos of.
And that’s it from me – next week I’ll try and remember to take photos, as I’m off with a load of families to Kew Gardens. If they turn up. And if the bus is big enough.
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
Still Life – Val McDermid
Joe Country/Down Cemetery Road – Mick Herron
The Diary of a Secret Tory MP – The Secret Tory MP
It’s Saturday evening and I am surrounded by small children jumping on and off the sofa and my stool as we run through my repertoire of counting songs, from monkeys jumping on the bed to frogs sitting on a log. We’ve exhausted Alexa’s store of jokes (turns out she doesn’t know any jokes about Transformers, much to Grandthing 1’s disgust) and all her fart noises. She’s now ‘having a rest’ (aka ‘Granny turned off the microphone’) and the kids are being kittens. The garden’s full of the Things and the Timeshare Teenagers – or Timeshare Twentysomethings now – and their partners, and various of their friends have been drifting in and out over the day as we do ‘open door’ parenting. If they know there’s a welcome for them and all their friends in easy times, they know the door will always be open when things get tough.
Our little blended family is expanding at the moment, and it brings me much joy: TT1’s partner has a little girl the same age as GT1 (they’re the ones being cats) and the pair of them are very much looking forward to being big brother and sister to the twins when they arrive in a few weeks’ time. This little girl loves Lilo and Stitch, collects snails and has an endless imagination. She’s a water baby and spent all afternoon in the pool splashing about. Turns out Grannies always have enough love to go around, although I think we’re going to need a minibus for the next family day out.
Airconditioning on the Elizabeth Line. Especially when the Central Line is up to its old tricks again
Running – I’m up to week five on the couch to 5k plan and while the 8 minute blocks came as a shock to the system today I still enjoyed it!
A day at the Royal College of Art with a colleague talking to the MA Visual Communications students -one of them told me that my talk had helped him decide what he wanted to do next. It’s nice to be a good influence instead of a terrible warning sometimes.
Also, they have a nice fernery in the middle of the college, with huge tree ferns, and the roof terrace has a view of the Albert Hall
Some gorgeous and much needed evening swims with Sue and a lot of ducks
Slow stitching on a felt hoop – a Corinne Lapierre kit of toadstools and ferns – at home, and on the sari silk patchwork bag on the tube.
The film of Paul Gallico’s book Flowers for Mrs Harris – they didn’t ruin it, hurray!
Sourdough crumpets – thanks to London sister Tan for the recipe, which is a winner
Now I’d better go and sort out tomorrow’s batch of bread….
Same time next week then,
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
The Stones of Green Knowe – Lucy M.Boston
London Rules/Nobody Walks/Down Cemetery Road/Joe Country – Mick Herron
This week’s tube journeys have been accompanied by Joanne Harris’s latest novel, The Moonlight Market, which is being marketed as ‘Neverwhere meets Stardust‘ (the marketing team at her publishers are probably cursing themselves). I love both those books, and also am a huge fan of everything else by Joanne Harris, so that I was going to read this was a given.
But…it’s also set in London. London Below, London Before, London today – the London we see in front of us, the London that might be waiting for us down one of those intriguing little alleyways that the older parts of the City (and the city, I suppose) do so well, the London that might be there if you catch it in the corner of your eye. Clerkenwell and Farringdon have many of these, and I am easily distracted by the thought of magic and adventure.* I blame growing up with books where statues came to life in gardens; where forests grow in naughty children’s bedrooms and you can sail away to the land where the wild things are; where there was a permanently frosted world through the back of a wardrobe; and a house full of Civil War ghost children, ebony mice that come to life and lost jewels.
You might say London has enough stories to be going on with, without making up more, but one of the best things about a city with more than 2000 years of stories and people is that there will always be room for more. London, as Peter Ackroyd and Edward Rutherfurd have proved, is enough of a story in itself.
However, people do keep writing these stories, for which I am profoundly grateful. The Moonlight Market is a story about a London man who works in a camera shop on Caledonian Road (‘the Cally’, as it’s known locally) who falls suddenly, unexpectedly in love with a woman who is (of course) more than she seems. A photographer himself, he discovers that his negatives show things that can’t be seen in daylight, and his search for these places and people lead him to the Moonlight Market on a London Bridge that only exists on moonlit nights. Threaded through this is a fairytale about the doomed affair between the Moth King and the Butterfly Queen, and the resulting war between the Silken Folk of the day and night courts. Like her Chocolat series, magic exists and co-exists with the mundane world, and sometimes crosses over – all the best urban fantasy is filled with possibility, of course, and Harris’s books are filled with it.
If you love urban fantasy and London, here’s a few more worlds you can explore:
Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series
Mike Carey’s Felix Castor novels
Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere (I am extremely disappointed in recent revelations about him, but I still love this book)
Benedict Jacka’s Alex Verus series
Paul Cornell’s Shadow Police series
Christopher Fowler’s Bryant and May series
Sarah Painter’s Crow Investigations
Neil Blackmore’s Soho Blue (not magical, but worlds colliding and some of the most evocative writing about post-war London I’ve ever come across)
A good writer makes the setting as much a part of the story as the characters and the action. I first understood this when I did a module at uni called ‘The City in the American Mind’, which introduced me to Sara Paretsky’s Chicago through the eyes of V.I. Warshawski. I’d probably be terribly disappointed if I visited – in my head Vic’s office is in a classic noir setting in ‘the Loop’ , there’s vast tracts of post-industrial wasteland, and there’s a Great Lake smack in the middle. Similarly, Dave Robicheaux’s swampy, louche and lush Louisiana (James Lee Burke is the author here) would not live up to my visions, and if I go to San Francisco I want it to be in Armistead Maupin’s 1970s rather than today. Clearly I need a time-travelling Doctor….but again, that’s another story.
*This probably explains why I get lost a lot on the way back from meetings….if I walk down there, surely it will lead to there (it often doesn’t, but what possibility of magic and adventure would there be if I just walked straight down St John Street to the office?
Coffee with Brian on his last day ever at Museum of London. Hashtag end of an era or something.
Trip with some of the team to the Tower Bridge Experience. Team now convinced I know people EVERYWHERE as one of the bridge hosts is a double-ex colleague from both MoL Docklands and V&A.
Finishing week four of C25K without injury. Crossing fingers, touching wood etc, and sticking everything together with RockTape.
Finishing a sashiko-stitched cat bag
Being able to sit in the garden and work surrounded by plants and sunshine. My Beloved’s new garden shelter is coming on well.
Taking the lovely Matt Shaw round the site in preparation for a new project, watched by this pretty fox.
The Museum of London’s new logo. Sorry, London Museum. I can see what you were thinking but sparkly guano and a discombobulated flying rat aren’t doing it for me.
Still, I spotted the model when I was out with the team at Tower Bridge:
What do they want, glitter on it?
Today I am off for a swim with Isla, and I might even make something. You never know….
Kirsty x
Cover image: Network Rail
What I’ve been reading:
The Life of a Scilly Sergeant – Colin Taylor
The Secret Hours – Mick Herron
The Children of Green Knowe/The River at Green Knowe/The Chimneys of Green Knowe/An Enemy at Green Knowe – Lucy M. Boston
What Kirsty did next 