298: good skills

Here I am, back from a week in Cardiff in which I spoke to about a zillion people, added ‘soothing stressed Romanians’ to my skillset along with troubleshooting live web feeds, managing operations for five competitions and generally being the little ray of sunshine that you all know and love.

Yes, it was the WorldSkills UK National Finals again – last year we were in the frozen North (well, Manchester in the snow), and this year it was my hometown. I was placed at University of South Wales (turns out the neighbours are prisoners, not student halls…) looking after 3D Game Art, Graphic Design, Digital Media Production, Accountancy Technicians and Web Development. It’s such a great way to get some perspective, and I also managed to meet a lot of Illustration, Graphic Design and Animation tutors, someone from OfQual (we need to talk, I said) and the head of Inspiring Excellence in Wales. I convinced the library to do a National Illustration Day display, and saw live Welsh music at the launch of the Ymgolli/Immersed 2026 Festival. Students are still wearing Stone Roses and Nirvana T-shirts – nothing changes!

WorldSkills is a brilliant scheme embedding technical and professional education into the skills economy. There’s UK finals, Euros and Internationals and taking part opens a lot of industry doors for young people, building confidence and benchmarking against the rest of the world. My Graphic Design team, for example, were working to a real-life brief set by a marketing agency. Competitors come from FE colleges, apprenticeships, the army and industry, and the two competition days are intense.

I love Cardiff – even after 28 years in London/Essex, Wales is my hearthome – and I especially loved the reactions of my colleagues to normal Welsh interactions. They were initially a bit perturbed that every time anyone came to register, it became a full-on chat. It’s what we do in Wales – we talk to people, we like to know what’s occurring. It’s a habit that’s served me well over the years.

I also loved….

Seeing the Medal Ceremony: my favourite 3D Digital Game Art geek won, I got to escort some overwhelmed winners, got a hug from my stressed Romanian, and met several very proud parents (‘We’ve been divorced 9 years and we’ve been holding hands the whole time!)
Catching up with some of the competitors, tutors and competition leads from last year – sad not to have Cyber Security again though!
Being told ‘Have a lush day, love!’ by someone exiting a lift.
Hearing Welsh and the Cardiff accent everywhere I went.
Dragons. Someone abandoned a flag at the end of the ceremony – I adopted it and brought it back to Essex with me.

Dinner and a good gossip with my friend Jen, who I don’t get to see nearly enough. Fat Hippo burger and a Cherry Negroni, in case you wondered.
Pho with Isla when we’d had enough of hotel food
Happy nighttime buskers under a clock on St Mary Street
The magical projections on Cardiff Central Station, animating Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales. I did let Jen off sitting through the whole thing with me

Lunchtime coffee with cousins
Wandering around Cardiff looking at lights and clocks
Late night putting the world to rights and singing along to classic rock when we decided to bomb back to London on Friday night

Cackling gangs of Welsh women out on a girls’ day – ‘we’ve only had one!’ – insisting on a selfie with a passing stag group.
A quiet hot chocolate in the sunshine, reading my book on Friday morning waiting for Miriam. Peace….
Taking my family out to dinner last night. I missed them, and I’m pretty sure at least some of them noticed I was gone.

That’s been my week! Looking forward to next year back in Cardiff again.

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading

The Fabric of Sin/To Dream of the Dead – Phil Rickman (Audible)

The Kingdom of the Blind- Louise Penny

297: is it time for the big coat?

Way back in the late 90s when I was a primary school teacher, we were talking one morning about how we celebrated Christmas/Eid (other celebrations are available, of course). There was a child in my class who I was pretty sure was a 70 year old man in a 5 year old’s body, and we sat bemused as he described Christmas where he and his cousin woke up and after they’d opened their stockings they went outside every year to play in the snow. He was adamant that this was what they did every year, because it snowed every year where they live (round the corner from the school, as it happened). Mind you, he was also firmly convinced that I lived in the school, and when I had my hair cut he asked which scissors I’d used.

Anyway. The point of that story was that it’s not even nearly Christmas but while we were waiting for a bus on Wednesday there was snow falling from the sky, but not enough to play in. Winter does seem to have landed though, with several hard frosts and serious contemplation of the Big Coat. Our new office turns out to be quite chilly, too – the downside of the lovely big windows – so the work blanket and wrist warmers are at the ready.

I do like winter, but not when it’s raining – wind and cold yes, wet and cold no. Cold and sunny is best, with clear skies in the morning when I go to work and the stars are still out. Good views of Mars at this time of year, which tells me it’s too damn early…

Apparently it’s going to be double figures and damp again this week, at least in Cardiff where I’m working on the World Skills UK Championships. Maybe not quite time for the Big Coat yet!

Other things making me happy this week

The British Library’s family festival on Saturday – creating imaginary worlds with families using Beth Suzanna’s gorgeous backdrop collages
Dark evenings walking back through Clerkenwell and the City. The route back to various stations passes through some very old bits of London.

Finishing all the Christmas puddings for Epping Xmas Market
Making plans to catch up with old friends next week
Not the Central

Now I’d better go and pack before Miriam comes to get me!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

The Legacy of Arniston House – T.L.Huchu

A Slowly Dying Cause – Elizabeth George

The Remains of an Altar/The Fabric of Sin – Phil Rickman (Audible)

The Retired Assassin’s Guide to Country Gardening – Naomi Kuttner

A Fellowship of Librarians and Dragons/A Fellowship of Bakers and Magic – J. Penner, These are described as ‘cozy fantasy’. I should know better.

296: empathy for the Breville

or, now I know how a panini feels (this was the original title, but you may have noticed that I can’t resist a bad pun)

Well, this week I had a new experience, albeit one I’ve been expecting since June 2023 when I turned 50. On Monday I had my first mammogram: usually you get the call when you turn 50 but it takes more than two years to get to the letter ‘S’ in the alphabet, apparently.

The weather was truly appalling on this most auspicious of days, and I was soaked through by the time I waded through the ~~lake~~ car park at St Margaret’s Hospital to the mobile screening unit. Inside it was quite cosy with the rain hammering down on the roof, bringing back memories of summer caravan holidays in Wales. All it required was a seagull tapdancing on the skylight and my dad insisting that the mist would burn off and the illusion would have been complete.

Dear readers, I am not normally given to stripping down to the waist in public carparks but needs must when the radiographer says so. It was at least warm in the unit, but far from being given ‘privacy to undress’ as described in the leaflet she was in the room the whole time. Still, as she was about to get familiar with my assets…

It was marginally less undignified than a smear test but I did feel as if there should have been an opportunity for some stretches first since contortionism isn’t to be attempted with no prior warm-up at my age. Grace is, of course, my middle name* so I handled the whole thing with my usual aplomb and didn’t creak once. Well, not much. And not audibly.

The very space age machine I was confronted with looked like nothing more than a high tech sandwich toaster, with a metal plate on the bottom and a perspex tray above. In NI, apparently, you must put your boob in the tray (and it did have a handy cut out on the top) but here in Essex they grasp your assets firmly, drape you artistically (er…) around the machine, mutter ‘pressure coming, hold your breath’ and use the bottom of the tray to squish you to the plate. Twice, from different angles. And then they do the other boob.

A top tip had been to make sure I ate beforehand, as unlike when you give blood no one gives you Tovali lemon squash and a Mint Club afterwards. This would have made the whole experience a lot more fun, and might have given the rain a chance to slack off before I left, too.

Still, in two weeks or so I should have the results and anything weird can be followed up on quickly. Like smear tests, these aren’t fun but they do have the potential to save your life so for the sake of five minutes out of your day go and get checked out when the call comes. You can buy yourself a whole pack of Mint Clubs afterwards as a reward.

*It actually is. Or one of them anyway.

Things making me happy this week

My line manager shared her pictures from an exhibition at The Whitworth in Manchester – The Beginnings of Knowledge by Santiago Yahuarcani, a Peruvian artist. I don’t often fall completely for art but his pink river dolphins and mermaids enchanted me so much I ordered a print. It makes me happy every time I look at it.
Lovely neighbour Sue helping me take lots of bags to the charity shop
Fox’s Party Ring biscuits, and Thing 2’s latest cookie experiments (brown butter, Gingerbread Oreos and Smarties)
Not the Central Line, whose definition of ‘good service’ included a 49 minute delay this week. Also not people who think Christmas trees and full outdoor light shows are acceptable on 11 November. They’re not. Stop it.
My new Schools and Families Producer starting. Now I just need to let go of some stuff.
An interesting masterclass on bringing creativity back into education, and the Curriculum Review recommending the abolition of the EBacc.
All my friends in Monmouth being safe and dry, despite Storm Claudia doing her worst on Friday night/Saturday morning

Now back to the Christmas crochet! This week I’m looking forward to a session with lovely Play Build Play exploring the potential of our playful furniture with local families,

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

The Echo of Crows – Phil Rickman

The Smile of a Ghost/The Remains of an Altar – Phil Rickman (Audible)

A Slowly Dying Cause – Elizabeth George, whose grasp of British idiom has not improved.

295: team efforts

On Monday we finally announced that the new Centre will be opening in May 2026 – thank you to all the people who shared the various articles with me via Facebook, Instagram and so on. Maybe in case I hadn’t noticed what we’d been working on for the past several years? It’s good to know that people are as excited as we are about the project.

What *I* am most excited about, however, is the fact that I finally have a learning team again – well, I will on Tuesday when the Schools and Families Producer joins us. For the last 18 months or so it’s just been me and half a Community Partnerships Producer (albeit a most excellent one).

We started recruiting for these roles in July, shortlisted in August and interviewed in September. We had an amazing response, with 90 or so applications for the Schools and Families role and 40 for the Community Partnerships jobshare.

Out of interest and because AI is a big topic of conversation at the moment, I ran our job descriptions through ChatGPT just to see what it would come up with. As it turned out, during shortlisting I saw what it came up with – word for word – multiple times in the sifting process. Some of the applicants had made the effort to personalise their applications but most hadn’t. Fortunately we had some outstanding applicants for both roles and the problem was narrowing them down to a manageable number of interviewees. Honestly – please don’t rely solely on AI. We can tell. We want to know about you and your experiences, not what ChatGPT has filtered out of your CV and my JD. I also asked ChatGPT to create a set of interview questions and avoided asking them…

I decided to do the first round of interviews via Teams, as they were only 45 minutes long. As it turned out the dates coincided with a week of tube strikes across the London Underground, so being online made it easier. I didn’t ask the applicants to do a presentation in the first round, but rather used the interview as an opportunity to find out more about them. We shared most of the questions in advance for both interviews, which has become good practice for recruitment in the last few years. Job interviews are quite stressful enough, and after all it’s extremely unlikely that in the actual role you’ll ever be asked to think on your feet in the same way again. We also start interviews online by saying that we know life happens around you – cats, kids, doorbells, tech issues and so on – and that we’re very relaxed. We’re a pragmatic organisation in general – possibly due to having a female leadership team who understands the emotional load rather than, say, a male-oriented leadership team whose wives (or nannies) understand the emotional load and how it impacts the day-to-day. It does make a huge difference.

Second interviews were in person and we asked the candidates to do a short presentation. One asked how long they were expected to spend prepping for it as it felt like free labour. I’ve spent days on these things before, as they are for a job I really want though we set a suggested time of a couple of hours. However, I do know of people who have created these presentations, not been given the job, and then found their ideas reproduced by the organisation’s shop, for example. Unethical or what? I like to use the presentations as an opportunity to gauge attention to detail, creative thinking and presentation skills as there’s an element of delivery and public interaction in these roles.

With the communities role the second interview was also so that the other half of the jobshare could meet them – they’d be working closely together after all. All the candidates were great but the successful one – in both interviews – gave me exactly the same warmth and generosity vibes as the other half does. They had their first day together this week and it made me very happy. The synchronised goodbye at the end of the day was highly entertaining, and I can’t wait to see what they come up with for communities as the programme develops.

The Schools and Families person starts this week – she was outstanding in both interviews, despite having Covid in the second one – and I think the programme will be in safe hands. Then I can concentrate on the creative programme and the strategic side of the job instead of being 3.5 people at once. Hurray! It’s so good to be part of building a team that’s going to bring the Centre to life at last.

Other things making me happy this week

Helping out at the local fireworks event run by the primary school and Scouts – working behind the bar again, with help from Thing 2. We ran out of hot chocolate…
Welshcakes – always a hit. Fairly sure there won’t be any left for the team.
My first winter swim (having failed to get in last week) at 9.1 degrees. Once I was in it was amazing. Just Jill and I, but lovely to see Nikki and Jenny for the first time in AGES.
Coffee with Amanda on Thursday, putting the world to rights
The return of the Christmas sandwich and festive hot chocolates
Lidl’s Toulouse sausages in a toad-in-the-hole.

That’s it from me – today holds Christmas crochet and laundry. Of course.

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

The Long Way Home/The Nature of the Beast/A Great Reckoning/Glass Houses – Louise Penny

Prayer of the Night Shepherd/The Smile of a Ghost – Phil Rickman (Audible)

293: this is not a quiet riot

This week my Beloved and I – along with a lot of other people – have been watching Riot Women on BBC iPlayer. Superficially, it’s sweary and funny and loud. We’d have loved it for the soundtrack which is punky and riotous and had us shazamming like mad at times. It’s enjoyable on that level but there’s so much more going on. I’ve recommended it to pretty much everyone I’ve spoken to this week, especially my middle aged women friends (and my hairdresser, my work colleagues, people on the bus…)

Created by Sally Wainwright (Happy Valley), the central premise is a group of middle aged Yorkshire women who get together to form a punk band for a local talent contest. So far, so cosy British comedy. You know the band is going to come together, you know there will be trials and tribulations along the way, and you know there will be a happy ending or at least a cliffhanger teaser for season 2. I won’t give away any spoilers here.

These women, including the always excellent Tamsin Grieg (Black Books, Friday Night Dinner), and Joanna Scanlan (No Offence, The Thick of It), are full-on menopausal. This is not a drama of stereotypical hot flashes and ‘ooh, it’s her time of life’ comments. It covers the depression, the rage, the way relationships change, the lack of tolerance for other people’s rubbish, the invisibility. Dr Louise Newsom of The Menopause Charity is credited as medical advisor.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2025/riot-women-trailer-sally-wainwright

Behind the punk band and the anger, there’s the women’s relationships with the people around them: Scanlan’s adopted son is pulling away but searching for his birth mother, and she no longer feels needed. She’s also coping with her mother, who has dementia, and battling with her sibling over the best care for her. Greig’s mother (Anne Reid on top form) is also declining, and as she’s recently retired from the police force she’s called on more and more to cope with her. She’s also still trying to support a young protegee in the force with misogynistic behaviour, and navigating single life. There’s domestic violence, frustration, sex, estranged children, extended families, childcare responsibilities and life juggling in a way that feels all too familiar. There’s sexist men who don’t deal well with rejection (Peter Davison, among others), and bosses turning a blind eye. HRT alone is not going to solve this lot.

In some ways the subject matter is close to that of the equally funny and angry We Are Lady Parts (Channel 4), and a battle of the bands between the two might cause some sort of TV explosion: expectations of how women ought to be behaving at certain points in their lives. Who puts these expectations on us: the young Muslim women should be getting married and finding a good job. The menopausal women should be content with being unpaid carers and shouldering the responsibilities the world is giving them. Being given a mouthpiece – or at least a microphone – is the release. Both bands have to deal with their families being embarrassed or outraged by their behaviour, as they’re sticking several fingers up at societal norms.

Both series are worth a watch – they are sweary though, so maybe not with the kids!

Things making me happy this week

Crocheting a tiny sprout. He’s called Barry, after Barry the Time Sprout who features in a lot of Robert Rankin’s extremely silly books. We first meet him in Armageddon: The Musical, where he’s lodged in Elvis Presley’s head. Of course.

The safe arrival of my colleague’s new baby and an excuse to make baby crochet things!

Christmas jumper crochet on the train. Next up, more of these and back to the piggies. I’ll be at Epping Christmas Market on 6th December, unless the weather misbehaves again.

Bill Nighy’s new podcast, Ill-Advised by Bill Nighy

The return of my fringe, which is like instant Botox without the needles.

What I’ve been reading:

The Cruellest Month/The Brutal Telling/Bury Your Dead – Louise Penny

The Cure of Souls/The Lamp of the Wicked – Phil Rickman (Audible)

The Life and Loves of a He-Devil – Graham Norton

290: sing it loud

This week a Facebook acquaintance who’s been attending protests in Westminster – great days out, apparently, these protests – shared videos of these ladies singing along to various songs while waving their flags about. One was a Chas ‘n’ Dave song – Chas ‘n’ Dave, who released a song criticising Brexit. That Chas ‘n’ Dave.

The other song they were shrieking along to was Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline. Yes, it’s become associated with English football in the past five years, but I’m pretty sure Diamond would object to it being used to protest against migrants and migration. Diamond, the grandson of Jewish migrants, who in 1980 wrote the song America about their journey escaping oppression in Eastern Europe and the welcome they hoped to receive in the States. Diamond, who got on the phones to gather support for Obama. That Neil Diamond. (I am looking forward to the biopic with Hugh Jackman).

I suppose any song can be a ‘protest song’ depending on who’s singing it, and when and why, but my feeling is that you should probably do a bit of research into its background first. We all spent a lot of time at school discos shouting ‘We Don’t Need No Education’ at our poor teachers, despite the double negative proving that we clearly did. None of us had seen the film at that point.

Musicians are, of course, entitled to object to this. Just ask that orange basketcase, who’s probably received enough cease-and-desist letters from musicians objecting to the way their music was being used to wallpaper his garish new ballroom. John Fogerty objected to the use of Fortunate Son – about people who avoided the draft thanks to rich and influential parents (bone spurs,anyone?). Neil Young’s Rockin’ In The Free World. REM, Rihanna, Tom Petty, Aerosmith, the Stones…the list goes on. Even Dee Snyder of Twisted Sister, who originally gave permission to use We’re Not Gonna Take It then withdrew it when he heard Trump’s policies.

Labi Siffre has spoken out this week about his beautiful anti-apartheid anthem Something Inside So Strong being used at a far right demo in London, issuing a cease-and-desist against Tommy Robinson. The irony of Robinson claiming to tell ‘his’ stories* through song and then choosing one written by a black, atheist, gay man was not lost except, perhaps, on Robinson’s (or Yaxley-Lennon, or whatever) supporters who messaged Siffre to thank him for the song. The importance of research can’t be underestimated, as I said…. (*he also claims to be a journalist)

My own acquaintance with protest songs stems from my parents’ record collection – political satire in the form of Pete Seeger’s Little Boxes, protest folk from Steeleye Span and Joan Baez. Later I graduated to Springsteen (another biopic to look forward to) and Billy Bragg, Bob Dylan and Creedence, U2, Little Steven, Peter Gabriel’s Biko.

In my first term at uni our tutor introduced us via his guitar and banjo to Woody Guthrie‘s Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos). Springsteen’s covers of Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land and his homage in the shape of The Ghost of Tom Joad still haunt my playlist. A friend played me Alice’s Restaurant Massacree by Arlo Guthrie – I wanted to call Thing 3 Woody but my Beloved objected, but his middle name is Arlo and his first name is Dylan (so there).

Uni also coincided with the release of Rage Against The Machine’s Killing in the Name, and an introduction to Dead Kennedys and punk. My self-initiated credit essay was on anti-war songs in the Vietnam era.

I suppose every generation has their own protest songs and singers, but it does seem somewhat reductive that the bugbears of the Guthries and the Seegers are coming back around and their music is becoming relevant again. Fighting fascists, racism, the poor and downtrodden, the treatment of migrants – Woody Guthrie even wrote a song about ‘Old Man Trump’, the OB’s father, and his actions as a crooked landlord.

I may have mentioned once or twice that TODAY I will be walking the Cardiff half-marathon for Choose Love, originally as I’ve worked with refugee and asylum-seeking families but now it’s mostly out of sheer anger at the way people are behaving in Epping. A lot of my training in the past few weeks has been soundtracked by this playlist, put together by Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine in response to the behaviour of ICE agents in the US. It’s good angry music. Morello’s alter ego The Nightwatchman is also a good source of protest songs.

In a world where comedians can get taken off air for making jokes about the President, where mis- and dis- information gets further than truth….we need protest songs and singers. We don’t, however, need this fascist groove thang.

More here and British ones here. Happy listening. What’s your favourite protest song?

Things I’m not protesting about this week

Autumn colours
Baby cuddles with gorgeous Indrani and a good catch-up with her mum Jhinuk
Making people happy by offering them jobs
When your direct report phones to say thank you for being supportive and kind
Finding new walks to the new office – my favourite is through Clerkenwell Green so far
Exciting kick off conversations about playful furniture with the wonderful Play Build Play team who ‘got’ exactly what was in my head when I wrote the brief
Family dinner out on Saturday night in Cardiff
Meeting the panellists from the Borough of Sanctuary grants team on Tuesday
Discovering a new crime series to read. Curses!
Thing 3 taking up baking, and Thing 2 making amaretti
A gorgeous mistbow over the village on Wednesday morning

Next week I’ll be at Copped Hall Family Apple Day touting my crocheted wares! Pop along if you’re in the area.

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

The October Man/Tales From The Folly/The Masquerades of Spring – Ben Aaronovitch (Audible)

The Grey Wolf – Louise Penny

The Legacy of Arniston House – T.L.Huchu

289: sorry, what?

I was going to write about protest songs this week but I haven’t had time to do the research into it that I wanted to. So I’ve saved it as a draft somewhere else instead and you’ll just have to wait.

Do you know, I’m not sure I managed to get the hang of last week and now here we are on Sunday again. A couple of four day weeks are all very well but at the moment there’s way too much work for those four days. My email inbox is in triple figures when my ideal number is ‘less than 20’. Double figures are but a pipe dream right now, and there have been days when I haven’t even managed to read them all and delete those which don’t require any action.

It’ll all be worth it though, when we welcome all the new team members we’re interviewing (22 interviews down, three to go), when we throw open the gates to a new venue fully committed to accessibility and inclusion, with new programmes for people of all ages and a fantastic set of exhibitions. Until then, I suspect there will be a lot of 4am wake ups. It’s dark at 4am, you know, and even the stupid birds aren’t awake at this time of year – which is an improvement on the peacocks all summer or the angry chickens in France. I think. At least earplugs muffle the birds. Is there a brainplug available? I couldn’t even go downstairs as my living room was full of people asleep on sofas and airbeds.

In a coaching session in July I had a great conversation with someone who helped me work out a plan for just these moments but it involves having five minutes to yourself to do the thing.

It helps (a bit) when you talk to people about what you’re doing and they’re excited, or you talk about access to an expert and you’re doing all the right things, or when people contact you because they want to work with you – or they say yes to your ideas. That was Friday’s meeting with a local SEND school which turns out to be about ten minutes from our site.

What doesn’t help is when public transport conspires against you to ensure that you can’t get anywhere on time: on Wednesday I planned my journey to arrive in Stratford with an hour in hand to get some quiet work done in a coffee shop somewhere. I arrived at Discover with a minute to spare: the bus to Epping was late and then got stuck in traffic, the train took well over an hour to do a journey of 22 minutes, and then they took the train out of service. The rest of the week was not an improvement. There seem to be speed restrictions in place between Epping and Woodford so everything is slow – but not slow enough to be able to claim the journeys back from TfL as that needs to be a delay of 15 minutes or more. Grr. Still, interminable train journeys at least meant I got to start (and finish) this little Autumn Fairy. She fits perfectly in this Bonne Maman jar which I’ve been saving for a moment just like this.

Things not causing me stress this week

The very beautiful Wye Valley, which I walked 15 miles around last Sunday over two walks. The first one was solo and the second was with my sisters and cousins. There’s a lot of uphill, you know. We walked across the Biblins Bridge, had an ice cream in the cafe, an excellent Sunday lunch at the Saracen’s Head and enjoyed the autumn.
By Tuesday I ached all over but I feel in good shape for the Cardiff Half Marathon next Sunday – there is still time to sponsor me as it’s an excellent cause which really annoys the local racists. It would be amazing to make it to £500.

Afternoon tea in aid of Macmillan at Jill’s house on Saturday
Seeing the live action How To Train Your Dragon with Thing 2 on Saturday. A worthy remake – I really enjoyed it.
The right person winning the Sewing Bee for a change (it took a while to catch up)
Conker season
Making a start on stock for the Christmas stalls
The Merlin app – identifying so many different birds. I am a convert from BirdNet now.

Next Sunday I’ll be live and lurching around Cardiff, hoping to come in around the three hour mark – pray for nice weather!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Stone and Sky/What Abigail Did That Summer/Winter’s Gifts – Ben Aaronovitch (Audible)

How Not To Be A Supermodel – Ruth Crilly

287: this little piggy

…went to market

Actually, it would be more accurate to say the little piggy will be going to market in a few weeks – I have two stalls lined up in October so I am getting myself organised with tiny things for my stall. These pumpkins and Christmas cactuses – both designed by me – will be there. The cacti are in vintage espresso mugs I found in a charity shop – they’re Whittard Christmas ones.

You have no idea how disturbing it is that espresso mugs from 2004 are considered vintage, by the way. I am also vintage, it turns out, being more than 20 but less than 100. (I checked to see if I was mid-century modern but it turns out I am too young for that.)

On 12 October I’ll be at the Copped Hall Family Apple Day, and on 18 October at the London Welsh Centre for their Welsh Autumn Market which is part of the Bloomsbury Festival. This is an excellent place if you haven’t been, and if you have a well-behaved dog (or family) you can bring them too. It doesn’t say whether the family needs to be well-behaved. The free tickets can be booked through the link above. Come along and say hello!

In the spirit of spookiness I have also been capturing ghosts ready for Halloween. My learning from this has been not to use white yarn on the tube as it just goes grey. This pickled ghost is called Clarence, after the would-be angel in It’s a Wonderful Life. I love the way they look as if they’re floating.

…stayed home

At least until Friday when the Tube strike was over, when I finally got to visit our new office. Big windows! Natural light! Level access! In the last few months our amazing office manager has co-ordinated approximately a million job interviews, found a new office nearer our site, packed up and moved our old office (we did help!), overhauled our IT systems and has done all of it with her usual calm and aplomb – and without us ever running out of milk and coffee. I don’t know how she does it. I also don’t know what we’d do without her.

I got a lift in with Jill as far as Walthamstow and bumped into an ex-colleague on Wood St station so had a lovely catch-up on the train followed by some crochet and audio book on the 38 bus from Hackney.

Strikes don’t seem to have as much impact* since we all learned to work at home and since the rise (or curse) of the Lime bikes and so on. I almost got run over by a teenager on a Lime bike yesterday – he was on the pavement and hadn’t paid for it so it was making the loud clicky noise that’s a dead giveaway. A colleague has ranked all rentable e-bike riders from worst to best by brand, and while Lime aren’t the worst they’re certainly the ones you see bearing down on you more often. They’re incredibly heavy so are dangerous to fall off, and they also charge by the minute so riders often run red lights or ignore crossings to avoid paying extra. I’d be willing to bet most of them couldn’t produce their Cycling Proficiency badge, too.

Anyway, the RMT were responsible for this week’s four day strike and it’s not about pay but about working hours and wellbeing. I approve, I think, especially as I’d already decided to hold my first round of interviews on Teams rather than in person which worked out nicely.

*At least once you get into Central London.

Things making me happy this week (not roast beef)

I am very relieved to see our local Co-op’s glow-up has been completed and we have the village shop back, albeit without the fresh bakery section which is disappointing. It does have a self-service till now which is a plus as it should reduce the queues which tend to build up in there.
Popping out for a drink with Miriam and Jill on Thursday evening to put the world to rights.
Being taken out for lunch by Thing 1 – also to the pub, but it was a very nice pizza.
Catching up with this year’s Sewing Bee and finding two new series of Brassic on Netflix. It’s sweary but it’s one of those wonderfully gentle British comedies. Joseph Gilgun is great in it.
The new Slough House thriller appearing on my Kindle – Clown Town, by Mick Herron. Such a good series.

Today I am off for a long walk – only three weeks to go till Cardiff Half. Next week I’ll be back adjacent to the Shire, in the Forest of Dean, with the horde of cousins celebrating another big birthday.

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

False Value/Amongst Our Weapons – Ben Aaronovitch (Audible)

Wild Hares and Hummmingbirds – Stephen Moss

The Snow Angel – Lulu Taylor

Clown Town – Mick Herron

283: Choose kindness. Choose love. Choose human.

I’m putting my hands up here and confessing to struggling a bit right now, so this week’s post might be a lot shorter than usual. Essex – well, the small bit of it I live in and travel through several times a week – is still being used as a excuse for a barrage of racist rhetoric and as a showcase for a vast collection of flags on lamp-posts and random bits of street furniture.

I wrote a lengthy post last Sunday on my Instagram feed, showing some of the flags – that have since been taken down but replaced within hours by people driving slogan-ridden Land Rovers and sporting balaclavas. They presumably claim to be proud Englishmen but aren’t proud enough to show their faces as they clamber up the CCTV poles, belisha beacons and lampposts of Epping and North Weald. It also had images of the steel fences on Bell Common that are used to make sure the protests don’t block the road and to keep the two factions apart. It’s telling that since these measures were put in place the more violent elements of the protests have faded: perhaps being in a contained area and unable to run at police or throw smoke bombs is less appealing when you’re more easily identifiable. Who knows?

The Insta post was written mostly in my head as I stomped through the Forest in a loop from Copped Hall. I couldn’t work out why I was so upset by the flags – I mean, I used to go out with a rabid Cockney who believed the Queen Mother should have been sainted and that St George was a born Englishman (and that the Anglo-Saxons came from Anglesey, but that’s another story). I’ve lived in England since 1997 and from 1991-1994 when I was at uni. My first date was in England – Coleford was the closest cinema to us. My kids are English, apparently. The flags themselves are not the problem.

It came to me in the end that it was because for the first time in the 28 years I’ve lived here I felt unwelcome. The people putting these flags up – and those saying how lovely they look, and why don’t they leave them up till VJ Day, and shouting down anyone who disagrees and abusing anyone who takes them down, and taking scissors out with them to cut down any counters to the flags – are actively using these flags to intimidate. They don’t even care whether they’ve hung them the right way up. And, as I said, they’re too cowardly to show their faces while they do it. There’s also the usual whinges that you’re not allowed to fly the flags in this country, lefties, woke, no one makes the Welsh take their flags down, two-tier policing, blah blah blah. When someone points out that they are perfectly entitled to fly whatever flags they like on their own property they point out that they’re taxpayers and they pay council tax so they pay for the lampposts…. well, I bet they can’t produce the paperwork to prove it. The vitriol and badly-spelled abuse is ongoing – reasoned arguments and statistics fall on deaf ears.

The council continues to double down on their claims that it’s the asylum seekers who are to blame for community unrest, and not the people descending on the town to spew hatred. They went to the High Court for an injunction this week claiming this – never mind that in the seven years the hotel has been in use only three arrests have been shouted about, yet 18 arrests have been made among the protestors since they started a month ago.

I can’t seem to shake my disappointment in my local town and in some people I know, and it’s affecting me quite badly. I need a break.

(And I’m even more glad I chose Choose Love as the charity I’m fundraising for this year – https://donate.chooselove.org/supporters/raising-money-for-choose-love/1472/)

Things that weren’t so bad this week

A gorgeous cooling-off evening swim on Tuesday with Jill, Sue and Rachel

My clever Thing 1 getting a distinction in her T-levels this week. We’re so very proud of her, as it hasn’t been an easy couple of years. Her tutors from college have been very supportive, too.

My new t-shirt

Making rainbow toadstool tops for this year’s fairy houses

Next week I will be coming to you live from the Eurotunnel!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Midnight & Blue – Ian Rankin

Talk to the Tail – Tom Cox

Foxglove Summer/The Furthest Station- Ben Aaronovitch (Audible)

The Vanderbeekers of 141st St – Karina Yan Glaser

The Saturday Night Sauvignon Sisterhood – Gill Sims

282: smug as a bug in a rug

Press your back button now if part of your summer holiday planning still involves the annual childcare juggle. I’m about to be unbearably smug.

My Horde are now 14, 16 and 19 and while the teenage years come with their own set of challenges (their hormones coming in while mine are going out, romance dramas, friend group angst, the constant growing out of shoes and trousers, to name but a few) those challenges no longer include having to trade off annual leave, swapping childcare with friends or considering packing them off to boarding school and leaving the country till they’re 18. I read all the Chalet School books, I know it’s all kaffe und kuchen every day and midnight feasts and adventures up mountains. They’d have been FINE. Probably.

While we’ve always been amazingly lucky with the various childminders and big sisters who have looked after them over the years, it’s still flipping excellent not to have to worry about it every year.

The flipside is never knowing quite how many teens will be scattered about the house and garden when I get in or who will be around for dinner. If they’re here they get fed and I assume that works when they’re at other people’s houses too. We’ve always operated open door parenting, on the principle that if we’re there for the fun stuff they’ll know the door will still be open for the harder stuff too.

Several nights a week there’s at least two teenagers asleep in the living room, one in the cabin and right now there’s nine people ranging from the ages of two to 27 racing around the garden with water pistols. I’m sitting surrounded by chaos and the remains of an impromptu barbecue and – honestly – I love it. Especially the bit where they just get on with it with no input from me.

It also means I can go and work in France for a week and then have a week of peace before school chaos starts again; go for a drink with colleagues or friends after work; or be at my desk by 8am.

This is not to say parenting teens is a breeze: emotional crises arise, there are still dramas and we’ve got T-level results this week and GCSE results next week but, on balance, I think we’re doing OK.

I expect one day they’ll all leave home and I won’t know what to do with myself but till then I’ll keep embracing the chaos.

Other things making me happy this week:

A lovely day off on Friday with Miriam, with breakfast at the Mayfield Bakery and a very relaxing massage.
Finding Breton cidre at St John after work on Thursday, and remembering how nice it is to do these things.
A peaceful day at Shelley Church fête crocheting toadstools and chatting to nice people. The meerkat went home as a raffle prize with a very excited teenager.
Painting wooden toadstools with Things 1 & 2 in the garden

Finishing a new pig in a blanket as a test for this year’s Christmas offerings

Same time next week then!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Still Water/Nightwalking/The Sheep’s Tale – John Lewis-Stempel

Talk to the Tail – Tom Cox

Whispers Underground/Broken Home/Foxglove Summer – Ben Aaronovitch (Audible]

Midnight and Blue – Ian Rankin