99: ghouls just want to have fun

Yesterday my best friend and I marked off the third on the list of the Magnificent Seven cemeteries of London with a trip to Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park. I’m rather ashamed that, despite living or working in the borough for 22 of the 25 years I’ve been in London, this is the first time I’ve visited what turned out to be a really pretty and peaceful spot smack in the middle of Mile End. We discovered a mutual love of graveyards back in Preston when we were at university together, so this is a thirty year old tradition. For once we weren’t exploring in pouring rain, which is usually the case on our expeditions!

Here it’s more about the nature than about the big names buried in the site, and there are no enormous monuments or mausoleums like those on our previous adventures at Highgate and Kensal Green. We were also not chased by strange men jumping out of a skip, or confronted by a pickled baby. We did have a very good mocha from a tiny coffee TukTuk called the Blue Daisy though. Many of the headstones are tiny, well below knee height, and all the stones are higgledy-piggledy and crammed together as a lot of the park was cleared by the GLC in 1967 after it was closed in 1966.

There are local ‘names’ buried there – the wild animal importer Charles Jamrach, for example, whose story I told for years in my London immigration sessions at Museum of London Docklands. Clara Grant, the social reformer and ‘Bundle Lady of Bow’ is there, also remembered in the name of a local primary school. She believed that children could not learn effectively if they were cold, hungry and unhappy – it’s a sad fact that more than a century after she started the ‘farthing bundle’ scheme there are still huge numbers of children in poverty in Tower Hamlets. There’s the grave of Alfred Linnel, who was trampled by a police horse in Trafalgar Square when he attended a protest against the Bloody Sunday violence the week before. You can also see the Blitz Memorial, built of the bricks of damaged houses from Poplar and commemorating those who died in the Blitz. There are public graves, such as that of 27 of the people who died in the Princess Alice disaster in 1878.

The site was declared a local nature reserve in 2000, and even in this urban area with the District Line rattling past we heard the drumming of a woodpecker and the shrieks of the now-ubiquitous parakeets. The ground was covered in snowdrops, winter aconite and crocuses and there were plenty of magpies, squirrels and this rather Goth pigeon lurking about. He was patient enough to let us take a photo before flying off.

After a good wander around the paths and desire lines we decided we’d walk through to Spitalfields for lunch – a good two mile wander along some of the side streets and then along the Mile End and Whitechapel Roads where you can still see some gorgeous houses among the Pizza-Go-Gos and fried chicken joints. Whitechapel and Spitalfields markets were buzzing, unlike Oxford Street where I’d been working on Friday. You forget what a stranglehold the Arcadia Group had on the British high street until you see the empty shop fronts of House of Fraser, Debenhams, Top Shop and so on. (Soho, where I had a meeting in the afternoon, was reassuringly busy and grubby still, complete with businessmen taking three or four attempts to go through the ‘private dancing downstairs’ door and ‘rooms by the hour’).

I really fancied noodles so we went to Xi’an Biang Biang Noodles on Commercial Street, where we both had the hand-pulled BiangBiang noodles with beef in special sauce. Gloriously splashy and messy and well-earned after our long walk. All in all a good day out, and our next one will be Brompton Cemetery in April.

This week it’s half term and I have an exciting co-creation project lined up with Spotlight and the mixed-media and materials designer Scott Ramsay Kyle, which will be full on but fun. See you on Sunday!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

The Locked Room – Elly Griffiths

The Best Thing You Can Steal – Simon R Green

Ninth Doctor Novels (vol 2) (Audible)

Ink and Sigil – Kevin Hearne

Running Tracks – Rob Deering

81: it’s showtime!

It’s been mentioned before that I’m a bit of a butterfly when it comes to making and crafting: I usually have several projects on the go that can be picked up and put down, taken on tubes, worked on as a way to help me focus in meetings or at D&D games, focused on while the TV happens in the background, that sort of things. These are alongside the ones that need more attention – things with sewing machines or full coverage cross stitches, for example.

So, imagine my delight yesterday when my crafty buddy H and I visited the Autumn Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace – the first live craft event we’ve been to since the Waltham Abbey Wool Show in January 2020, before all those lockdowns. I’ve always liked the autumn one better than the spring one (at Olympia) for the exhibitions of quilts and students’ work. The venue is also pretty amazing, with glorious views over London. ‘Ally Pally’, as it’s known, is one of those Victorian ‘people’s palaces’ which have so much history attached to them: the BBC broadcast from there, it was used as an internment camp during the First World War, there’s an ice rink and a beautiful park.

We started with a plan to work our way around the outside stalls, which took us through (among other things) the Embroiderers’ Guild Members’ Challenge exhibition ‘Exquisite Containers‘. We spent a long time talking to the Guild member watching over the exhibition, admiring her mother’s stunning or nue book covers: after working for many years and bringing up her family, she vowed after retirement that she’d dedicate her time to her craft and did just that for the next 25 years or so. We talked about the loss of creativity in the school curriculum – she had written a stern letter to Gavin Williamson lambasting him about the destruction of the creative subjects.

‘I do believe we are muted’ – Philippa Moggridge

*Free Range Egg Custard Tart* – Maria Thomas

H is a DT teacher which gives us an excellent excuse to talk to people about techniques, and I was keeping my eyes open for makers who were working with up/recycled materials. Maria Thomas’s work ‘Relative’ explored her place in the world as a mother, daughter, aunt, niece etc through mixed media pieces like the Free Range Egg Custard Tart jacket pictured here. These pieces were inspired by the housecoats her mother put on after work to do housework and cooking, to protect her ‘good’ clothes. I loved the way books, vintage packaging and text were blended into the patchwork and quilting. I’d really like to work with her.

Onome Otite‘s textile collages filled us with joy – so much colour and movement in her pieces inspired by Cirque du Soleil, using bright ankara and batik fabrics. There were several stalls selling African wax print fabrics, and when I find the right pattern I have all their cards. Lovely bright reds and yellows called to me, but I resisted.

After the exhibitions we hit the stalls – usually H is a good influence on me, taking lots of pictures of projects we’d like to do rather than buying the kits. Yesterday we were terrible influences on each other, though at least her ‘this will be a Christmas present!’ buying was a good excuse. There are so many lovely kits and fabrics to buy, and you can squish and squash them all you like, and have chats with the stallholders. We got hopelessly overexcited when we saw Matt, Peter, Mark and Raf from the Sewing Bee, especially when Matt and Peter stopped for a photo op with us. I came home with an English Paper Piecing jewellery set, some Foundation Piecing patterns, space invaders jersey fabric (new pants coming up!), some sewing patterns from an indie maker, a lot of business cards, haberdashery bits and bobs and gadgets, a sari silk skirt in my favourite reds, and a Christmas decoration kit which I can only put down to end of day panic buying. We had a go at marbling fabric, admired woodblock printing and mini screen print kits, got carried away by puffins, hares and highland cows, lusted after high-tech sewing machines and storage furniture. I left with a lot of ideas for things I really want to make. Now to find the time….preferably before the next show!

It won’t be this week, for sure: this week I am trialling my new school session in Thing 3’s primary school, and updating a talk about play for a local FE college. My hallway is full of boxes of strange resources like model chickens and miniature blue blocks (as seen in this week’s cover photo), scraps of fabric and laminate insulation. I’m also working on the next birthday present, and playing around with a small crochet bag design.

I’d better go off and do something useful….

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Tales from Moominvalley/Finn Family Moomintroll/Comet in Moominland – Tove Jansson (Audible)

Trader/Someplace to Be Flying/Dreams Underfoot – Charles de Lint

80: umbrellas and Marjorie Proops

There has been a standing joke among the learning team that every time I go out with the play kit I bring the rain. This week I have been out all week in schools and for four out of five days the rain was torrential at times, and on the one day it wasn’t I brought a plague of wasps instead. There’s definitely a pattern forming, and at this rate no one will sign up to work with me next summer! Still, we had a good week and met a whole lot of children at two primary schools in Tower Hamlets, as well as working with games designer Rex Crowle (Little Big Planet/Knights and Bikes) and a Tower Hamlets secondary school to deliver a webinar as part of the V&A’s Upstart Careers Festival. On Friday night – not surprisingly – I was unconscious on the sofa at 7.30pm.

With further rain forecast, my best friend A and I had planned one of our ‘culture and cocktails’ days out – this time to the second of the Magnificent Seven cemeteries. This week marked 30 years since we met on our first day at university in Preston: it still feels like yesterday since we arrived with our parents and our worldly possessions with no idea of where we’d be staying (Lancashire Polytechnic, as it was at the time, wasn’t that organised – a large number of students used to be bussed in from Southport’s Pontins holiday camp until accommodation was found). My first sighting of A was of her throwing a strop in the car park, and then we found ourselves in opposite rooms in the same flat. We’ve grown older (if not up), produced six kids between us, become mad cat ladies, ranted a LOT and supported each other through all sorts of good and bad things. Every so often we manage a day out – not as often as we’d like – and we do love a cemetery.

We visited Highgates East and West back in May, and so this time we went anticlockwise round to Kensal Green. This is the last resting place of people like Brunels (Isambard and Marc), Charles Babbage, Steve Took, the odd royal, a whole lot of political types and thousands of people like you and me. Some rejoiced in the most glorious names: Eudoxia Penemenos, for example, and Andalusia Grant, who we were pleased to find had lived up to her name with an interesting life. The cemetery is also a good illustration of the area’s multicultural make up: Irish, African-Caribbean, Vietnamese, Cypriot, Italian, Greek names and more, and even a stone entirely in Welsh. I was very taken with the stone of David Montgomery Pelham, ‘impresario’, whose epitaph read ‘I would not have missed it for anything’.

The tomb of Andrew Ducrow, equestrian and circus owner, caught our imagination with its sphinxes, bee skep and magnificent hat.

A tradition of our days out is that one of us will be approached by some strange person, and hanging about in graveyards only increases the chances of that. This time it was an elderly gent who’d been leaning into a skip, only to lurch towards us when we approached and start going on about umbrellas and Marjorie Proops (I have just checked and she’s buried elsewhere!) – and then he kept running after us! We thwarted him by striking out cross country, and spent some time wondering whether he was the resident ghost. Highgate has its vampire, perhaps Kensal Green has the old man who got wet and died of a chill, and is doomed to wander the paths for eternity in search of an umbrella….

The cocktails part happened at Parlour, on Regent Street (not that one). We had their weekly seasonal lunch which at £19 for three courses was very good. I had the smoked mackerel, chicory and apple salad to start followed by fillet of sea bream with peppers and almonds, while A had baked goats cheese followed by slow cooked Goosnargh duck with beetroot and blackberries. We both finished up with the artic roll, in coffee dolce and chocolate peanut butter flavour. I had the Kensal Green Tea and A had a Hot ‘Queen’s Park’ Mama and a Lady Cosmo. I think we’ll be back: so friendly and the food was great.

This morning I have been swimming: the water temperature was down to 14.6 and we expect to start the winter swimming season next weekend. I’ve dug out my woolly hat and onesie already!

That’s all, folks – see you here for week 81!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Lords and Ladies – Terry Pratchett

Gobbelino London and a Melee of Mages – Kim M. Watt

Inspector Hobbes and the Common People – Wilkie Martin

Carpe Jugulum – Terry Pratchett (Audible)

79: meerkats and wildcats and parrots, oh my!

Yesterday we managed a family day out to Capel Manor Gardens – not far away geographically but work has got in the way all summer. It took a while to get out of the house while different children threw almighty strops about being asked to go out/get dressed/brush hair/etc but eventually we made it. £20 for a family ticket, with two adults and up to three children (under 16) was quite reasonable, and Things 2 and 3 took a stamp trail each.

We started with the animal collection, which is quite small: meerkats, an invisible porcupine, rabbits, pygmy goats, fluffy rabbits, parrots and a few other crowd-pleasers. Careful peeking through small gaps by my beloved located the Scottish wildcat. A wander through the Which? garden area where they are testing different plants and flowers was interesting, and then the kids wanted to head for the very well signposted ‘Secret Faerie Garden’.

The Horde discovered an absolutely enormous fallen tree to climb, despite Thing 1 having her arm in a sling, as well as a fairy door, statuary and a ‘ruin’ which came from one of the Chelsea Flower Shows. The kids tackled the Holly Maze and the sensory garden, we wandered through the cactus garden and the succulent greenhouse, and then headed to the cafe for lunch.

Lunch had a limited menu – chicken curry and rice, chickpea falafel and rice, chicken nuggets and chips, jackets, sausage rolls, pizza – but it was quite reasonably priced for a good sized portion. We decided to make the assumption that it was the counter person’s first day, as service was a little strange and very slow. It was tasty if not very hot, and at £34 for five main meals and five drinks, it was good value. There are also lots of picnic areas around the site, so you could take your own lunch if you wanted, or the cafe also sells sandwiches and snacks.

After lunch we wandered round the demonstration gardens, mainly ex-Chelsea Flower Show designs – I loved the one filled with pumpkins and nasturtiums (so did the honey bees), and the slate garden. The kids found all the stamps, and got a medal in return, and we escaped via the gift shop. General verdict was that it was a nice day out – I’d like to have seen inside the manor, and some of the gardens need some maintenance to bring them back up to show standard, but if you’re looking for some good ideas for your garden then it’s a great place to visit.

I’ve only been on the tube one day this week, but managed to finish the dragon’s egg dice bag after several attempts to get it the right way up! The pattern is the free Dragon’s Egg lined dice bag by 12SquaredCreations, and is easy to make up as long as you pay attention to the pictures!

I also finished the succulent terrarium cross stitch, which will be a gift.

And right now my stomach is telling me it’s lunch time, so I’ll be off! See you next week,

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading

Equal Rites/Witches Abroad/Maskerade – Terry Pratchett

Wyrd Sisters – Terry Pratchett (Audible)

64: short and sweet

64: Short and sweet

A very quick post this week as a) I forgot it was Sunday and b) it’s hot and I’m in the garden with the family using the wonders of mobile technology! The summer seems to have finally arrived without even a sheepish look to excuse its lateness, the pool is up and the place is filled with the timeshare teenagers, the horde and the grandchild as well as the usual added extras.

Yesterday was another hot one and we dragged the kids plus one up to Audley End. Thing 1 was going to a barbecue with her boyfriend (if you want to see the absolute definition of embarrassment, look for a teenager whose parents might bump into the boyfriend’s parents…) near Saffron Walden so it was a good excuse to revisit the gorgeous gardens.

The house is partially closed for Covid reasons, of course, but we could see the main rooms. I’d love a private library and one that the rest of the family could use! You’d never see me in public again.

The formal gardens were alive with bees on some sort of minty stuff (that’s the technical name) and we watched a pair of crows chasing off a red kite in the field behind.

The organic kitchen garden, on the other hand, was being brought to life by a historical interpreter in role as Mr Vert the gardener, who chatted to the kids about the difficulty of keeping apart the housemaids and the garden apprentices. Mr Vert is known to me more often as my friend Chris, a hugely talented interpreter who has delivered Vikings, Victorians and engineers for me in the past as well as many others for Historic Royal Palaces pre-pandemic. We met him in the cut flower garden, surrounded by irises and peonies, before indulging in an ice cream.

Audley End is run by English Heritage and is well worth a visit, if you haven’t been. We have visited before but discovered new areas this time like the lily pond and rockery, where we saw the swan and cygnet above.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Not much cross stitching has occurred but I did start on a gift for an impending big sister – by LauLovesCrochet who designed the cow and calf I made a few weeks ago. This time it’s a ladybird with an aphid friend, who will have a leaf sleeping bag.