Yesterday I got to spend the day doing one of my very favourite things: talking to random people about history, and London’s history in particular. Even more particularly, New River Head which will be transformed into Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration over the next couple of years.
The occasion was Open House Festival 2023 – a two week celebration organised by Open City when buildings, homes and spaces usually kept behind closed doors are open to the public.
New River Head has been out of use for 70 years, after the New River’s terminus became the reservoirs at Stoke Newington instead of the Islington site and the engines were removed. There’s a lot of interest in our half acre of patchy concrete, cobbles and industrial buildings tucked away behind bits of Thames Water infrastructure, from local residents, illustrators, architects and engineers, historians both amateur and professional, and ex-Thames Water employees. It’s a derelict site in the middle of a conservation area, mostly built by the New River Company itself, and several attempts to redevelop the space have been resisted.
My job today was mostly floating about the place, delivering the odd tour and ad-hoc potted histories of the site which changed depending where I was standing. Having fallen down the Google rabbit hole when reading about the site, and from reading Nick Higham’s excellent The Mercenary River, there’s a lot of trivia bouncing about in this head of mine. There’s an IPA called Five-Inch Drop, made by the New River Brewery and named after the gentle gradient bringing the New River from Hertfordshire to London along the 100-foot contour. The river still provides 10% of London’s drinking water via the Ring Main. Water from the New River was used to fill the tank at Sadlers Wells for the re-enactment of sea battles (and the punters would jump in at the end). A cheeky fox likes to lie in the sun under the buddleia.
The area around the site has its moments too: Myddelton Passage, named after founder of the New River CompanyHugh Myddelton, is known for a whole range of anti-social behaviour across time. These days it’s a quiet corner for local youths to conduct some illicit activities, to the horror of the residents, but even way-back-when muggers would lurk in this quiet alley. This meant Victorian policemen on the beat also had to lurk in the area, and a number of them indulged in some ASB of their own in the form of graffiti. A section of the wall is carved with the initials of policemen of Finsbury’s G Division: you can read more about this here. Talk about setting a bad example!
Other things making me happy this week:
Thing 1 starting her new college course
Rewatching the brilliant Sex Education in preparation for the new series
Hiding out from the pouring rain under a gazebo with lots of interesting people
Still crocheting mandalas
Cinnamon buns made by Thing 2
Discovering that our daft pigeons have built a Nerf bullet into their nest
Looking down instead of up when walking in London
This week will be focused on National Illustration Day – watch this space!
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
The Story Collector – Evie Gaughan
The Keeper of Stories – Sally Page
The Lost Notebook – Louise Douglas
French Braid/Celestial Navigation – Anne Tyler
The Wanted – Robert Crais
An Utterly Impartial History of Britain– John O’Farrell
After a summer of reasonable temperatures, it’s typical that as soon as the new school starts we have a heatwave with the thermometers hitting high twenties by the end of the week. Central London has felt like a sauna, especially when stepping out of the airconditioned offices and training room* where I have been lurking.
Over the last couple of years I’ve seen a few news articles talking about the impact of green spaces on city temperatures, most recently this one based on research published by Friends of the Earth. Apparently green spaces like the parks, with all their trees and grass and things, have a cooling effect of up to four degrees on their local areas with the posh bits (around Hyde Park, Hampstead Heath etc) benefitting most while areas like Islington (with the lowest amount of green space per head of population), Tower Hamlets and the City of London are the hottest. This year is the first time I have worked in the City itself and the difference is noticeable – there was very little difference this week between surface temperature and the Central Line, for example, which is usually my reference point as in heat waves the Central Line is its own little circle of hell. Even in Bethnal Green – where the museum was close to Victoria Park, Museum Gardens, and Barmy Park (officially Bethnal Green Gardens, but the memory of the old asylum lives on) – the air was noticeably cooler. Leaving London by road, even in the cooler months, shows a two degree drop as you hit Woodford and the real start of Epping Forest.
18% of London is green space – more than the area of the roads and railways combined – and London was officially declared the world’s first National Park City in 2019. The ambition is to make more than 50% of Greater London green through green roofs, more trees, greening buildings and so on. However – with my cynical head on – I wonder how many of these projects will result in genuine greenery at ground level where people can go and sit under trees in green spaces, especially given the premium placed on land in London. (For what our contribution to Islington’s greenery will be, see here.)
For more excellently nerdy maps, visit Mapping London – here’s one from a 2018 heatwave to start you off, and a Cool Spaces map too.
*What was I doing in a training room? Qualifying as a Mental Health First Aider (I hope – there was an exam and everything!). I did this St John Ambulance course which was quite intense, but really interesting and gave the cohort a chance to discuss lived experience. I still hate role plays though.
I have had much more of a grip on reality this week – whole sentences have tripped off my tongue, tasks have been completed, and the world is a less fuzzy place entirely.
This is just as well, as there have definitely been days this week when I’ve had to use all (both?) my brain cells to thwart the machinations of Transport for London.
On Wednesday I had an appointment to meet Enfield Museum Services team. Enfield is one of the boroughs on the New River between our site at New River Head and the source springs at Great Amwell in Hertfordshire. In 2013 they held an exhibition celebrating the 400th anniversary of the river and they’d kindly offered to show me some of their objects relating to the river.
The closest station to their object store is Brimsdown on the Hertford East line – geographically a 25 minute drive from here, but as a public transport user it appears to located somewhere north of Alpha Centauri on the astral equivalent of an unclassified road. Options provided by the TfL journey planner included two buses and a 60 minute walk from the next town; a bus, a tube, two overground trains and a National Rail train; three buses and a twenty minute walk; two buses, a short unicycle ride and an extra-dimensional portal; but not – whatever tweaks I made to the planner options – the very simple route I eventually took which was the bus to Epping, the tube and a single change for Brimsdown. I got buses back – all three of them – which was simple but still took the best part of two hours to go 12 miles.
There is currently no joined-up public transport equivalent of the M25, or even the North and South Circulars. There are plans for a series of ‘Superloop’ buses which basically follow the circular roads, but these won’t solve the problem of the lack of connection in places like Essex, where to cross the borough by public transport inevitably involves either travelling into Central London and out again, a multitude of expensive buses with limited timetables (Chelmsford only exists once a week on Tuesdays, apparently) – or driving, as although the ULEZ extends out almost this far, the London transport network with its cheaper fares doesn’t.
Thursday morning also demonstrated how disconnected the public transport system is at this end of the world. Epping, my closest tube station, is the end of the Central Line and is essentially a dormitory town for London. The station car park holds the dubious honour of being the largest on the TfL network, and so many people drive in from all over north Essex to access the tube as it’s cheaper to park and ride than it is to pay £25 a day peak-time return from Harlow, our closest national rail station. The car park’s 538 spaces are full by 7am Monday – Friday. It doesn’t help that since the line beyond Epping was closed in the early ’90s there has been extensive residential development in both North Weald and Ongar, which used to be served, and a steady erosion of an already erratic bus service.
‘Peak time’ service between Epping and Loughton has been steadily reduced: pre-covid we were told there would be ‘temporarily’ reduced service while they replaced tracks. We regularly have 20 minute waits for trains to Epping at peak times – stealth obsolescence, according to a friend, who is TfL-adjacent. If enough people are driven back to the roads by poor train service, they’ll have an excuse to close the line due to lack of use. At one point we were given hope by one of the proposals for Crossrail 2, which would have seen this branch picked up by that service and linked to Harlow and Stansted, but our optimism was misplaced. Crossrail 2 was paused in 2020 and the route will eventually link up already existing stations over the border in Hertfordshire, leaving us still disconnected.
A casualty on the tracks shortly after 7am on Thursday meant the line was suspended from Liverpool Street to all eastbound destinations, and unlike further into London there are no alternative lines. If you’re in London and heading east at the end of the day your heart sinks if the line goes down anywhere east of Stratford: the Elizabeth Line has made it marginally easier but there’s still an hour’s bus ride to reconnect with the Central Line (which you hope has been restored by then) and two more buses home if not. This was the route I used on Thursday morning: bus from Epping to Loughton, another to Ilford and then the Lizzie Line – 2 hours and 45 minutes in total. This was only because the 167 arrived first – otherwise I’d have gone via Chingford or Walthamstow. Equally long times for a 25 mile journey into the City. If the government at various levels want us to use public transport and get cars off the roads, there needs to be a joined up piece of thinking that genuinely works for underserved areas which connects up the different services – and we aren’t even particularly rural.
Luckily my day improved immensely: my first meeting was about the new heritage/STEM session that I’ve asked the wonderful Chris Bailey to develop. I first met Chris when he stepped in to cover a Victorian sailor session at Museum of London Docklands and we hit it off over a wide-ranging conversation covering ladies of negotiable affection, Doctor Who, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, how to demonstrate gravity and the dome of St Paul’s with a trampoline, and the wonders of STEM in museums. This week’s conversation covered gravity with the help of a tumble-dryer hose, Samuel Johnson and the variety of beards required for historic interpretation.
In the afternoon I joined Isabel Benavides at Finsbury Library for a family illustration session as part of the Summer Reading Challenge. Issy has just launched her first picture book, Yogi Duck and the Little Chick, inspired by RSPB Newport Wetlands and utterly charming. It’s the end of the summer holidays and parents are in survival mode, plus the weather was very changeable, so the session was quiet. The people who did attend stayed for almost the whole two hours, and we had some wonderfully fantastical conversations about our crafty creatures in yoga poses.
Either a duck in half-moon pose or me hurling myself into the lake.
Other things making me happy this week:
a site visit with illustrator Toya Walker to develop a spotter sheet for families at our Open House event and beyond.
Mooch round the market followed by coffee with Miriam.
This week I am off work and intend to do some serious pottering, with a side of mooching and and some siestas. Tomorrow is the Copped Hall August Open Day and we’re dragging all the Things this year. There are also school shoes on the horizon but I am trying hard to remain in denial about that.
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading
Asterix omnibuses volumes 3&4 – Goscinny & Uderzo
Open Sesame – Tom Holt
Miss Benson’s Beetle – Rachel Joyce
Unseen Academicals/Pyramids – Terry Pratchett (Audible)
Rivers of London graphic novels – Ben Aaronovitch etc
Miss Percy’s Guide to the Care and Feeding of British Dragons/Miss Percy’s Travel Guide to Welsh Moors and Feral Dragons – Quenby Olson
This week has passed by in a haze of nothing very much at all: so much so, in fact, that I have no idea what, if anything, I have achieved. It’s been a bit of a brain-fog week, where sentences have wandered off after getting lost in the middle of a conversation and things have been left half done, like making cups of tea or sorting the laundry. My butterfly brain is in full flight – the joys of menopause, eh?
I do know I went to a lovely workshop with Toya Walker at the Museum of the Order of St John where lots of families came and explored their garden of medicinal plants before learning about botanical illustration. I also had a great chat with Andrew from the Museum of Walking about one of their new projects. There’s been a lot of crocheting of tiny mice on the tube and the odd cactus, and yesterday was a jewellery making day.
This weekend I have been pet-sitting for a neighbour, and basking in the reflected glory of Bella who bears more than a passing resemblance to a TV character called Waffledog. We’ve been for some long walks around the Common and chilled out binging Chuck on Amazon Prime in between. I love Bella, as she’s always pleased to see me. Her one fault is raging jealousy of the car she lives with, so when Ziggy decided to come home at 3am after hanging out in my garden with the wildlife last night I was rudely awoken which I could have done without.
At some point I’m going to have to bring my brain around to the idea of school uniform and (oh god) shoes for Things 2 and 3, but that can wait till the week after next when I’m off.
I can’t say I’m overly impressed with the weather this week, to be quite honest with you all. It’s August and I have had to wear actual socks and actual shoes and think about whether to take an umbrella. And then it gets hot but it’s cold in the morning so I have to think about layers. It’s like being on holiday in Wales and having to be prepared for all eventualities, up to and including hurricanes, tornadoes and the Central Line.
July was cool, as can be seen in the temperature supernova update – last year was all hot reds and oranges; this year cool greens and yellows dominate. September will probably be tropical. Huh.
There have been many good things about the week, however:
Getting to go to a workshop at All Change Arts with Alaa Alsaraji, one of our Community Illustrators, and poet Rakaya Fetuga
A creative meeting with storyteller Olivia Armstrong about a Quentin Blake inspired session
A new haircut
Barbie. I loved it. I really loved it. I may never listen to Matchbox Twenty in the same way again.
Getting round to making this pair of extremely dramatic self-drafted trousers from a tutorial by Tendai Murairwa in Simply Sewing magazine in a gorgeous teal and purple wax print fabric. I even made a toile for these to test the fit.
Jukebox hero
Robbie Robertson, ex-member of The Band, Dylan stalwart and solo musician died this week aged 80. I’m not going to pretend I’m a massive fan, but rather I’m someone who sings along when his songs come on the radio – apart from his first, eponymous, solo album which I love. Featuring collaborations with U2 and Peter Gabriel, among others, it yielded his biggest hit (this week’s title) and also the gorgeous Broken Arrow which Rod Stewart had more success with.
Somewhere Down The Crazy River was a fixture on the jukebox in a village pub I used to spend a lot of time in, usually selected by one particular person. A few times in your life, if you’re lucky, you meet someone who fills a space in your soul that you don’t even know exists. They are the folded beermat underneath your wobbly table leg (and there have been times when my tables were very wobbly, believe me); someone who gets you on your level. I’ve had several of these people in my life and I thank my stars every day for them. I lost touch with this one for 13 years but reached out (with a Blues Brothers birthday card) on his 40th and we remained in contact for the last couple of years of his life. I’d bought and written a card for him every year but never sent them until this one, and I will forever be glad I did. I still raise a glass every year on his birthday – yesterday would have been his 51st. Hopefully he spent it duetting with Robbie Robertson over a lager with a lot of lime.
Same time next week!
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading
The Echo of Old Books/The Last of the Moon Girls – Barbara Davis
Amongst Our Weapons/October Man – Ben Aaronovitch (Audible)
Paint Your Dragon – Tom Holt
The Mercenary River – Nick Higham (I keep dropping in and out of this one)
Yesterday was my Beloved’s birthday and so despite the rain we all trooped off to Toot Hill Show – once he had dragged the Things out of bed at noon, anyway. Toot Hill is a small village over the next hill, and they have a proper village show (this year is the 70th anniversary, in fact) complete with local handicrafts, home grown fruit and veg and flower displays like ‘three dahlias in a vase’. My friend Jill’s Victoria Sponge was highly commended – she’s been threatening to enter for several years now and there may have been a riot if she hadn’t got some kind of mention. I’d thought about entering the handicrafts section but forgot. I’ll remember next year. Probably.
I was very taken with the alpacas, but apparently they weren’t for sale. They make the weirdest noises – quite like a whinging teenager, come to think of it, but quieter. There were the usual motley crew of rescue ferrets and a fun dog show; a sheepdog demonstration and allegedly BMX riders but we missed them. In previous years there have been Indian Runner ducks being herded by the sheepdog, and the local hawk and owl sanctuary display, but Storm Antoni was making its presence felt.
My Beloved brought home enormous quantities of interesting cheese, and I did not bring home an alpaca. Not even the little one.
The rest of the day was spent taping and cutting pattern pieces out ready to add to fabric. I’m going through a dramatic trouser phase at the moment and at some point my beloved paper bag waist black ones from H&M are going to give up the ghost. Possibly I need to learn how to do that thing where you make a pattern from your existing clothes, but there just don’t seem to be enough hours in the day. I am off to see the Barbie film this morning and hope to get some sewing in this afternoon.
Other things making me happy this week
A trip up to see the future home of the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration – honey bees and butterflies galore thanks to the buddleia which abounds on site
A picnic lunch with Amanda – no cocktails or cemeteries but a ridiculously small dog to watch
A somewhat misleading title but does lead nicely into one of my work visits this week, which saw me heading to north London for a visit to the Emirates Stadium. It’s not often a single meeting puts me within a hop and skip of the 10,000 daily steps target but this one did, with a whistle-stop tour taking in the changing rooms, the press conference room, the post-match interview bit (which looks a lot more glam on the telly, I can tell you – in reality it’s a corner under a concrete stairwell), the stands and various corporate spaces, as well as the pitch and the Hub.
Not shown: any football players changing
The Hub was what I was there to see, really: having spent 17 out of my 21 years in museums knocking about Tower Hamlets, I’m now being let loose on Islington as we’re embedding ourselves in the borough while we develop the new Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration at the old New River Head site. Islington isn’t somewhere I know very well, other than sneaky visits to drool over yarn I can’t afford at Loop and hanging out at the Crafts Council occasionally. Islington, in my head, is a literary thing: Douglas Adams and Nick Hornby, Charles and Carrie Pooter in middle-class Victorian Holloway. As it turns out, it is quite literary, but also full of actual people as well. Who knew! So I am on a bit of a mission to talk to a lot of them in the hope that we can work together.
As well as the Hub, I found myself at the Museum of the Order of St John this week, where I was enveloped in an enormous hug by lovely Maggie, an ex-colleague from Museum of Childhood. Coming as a nice surprise to someone instead of a terrible shock is a good thing! If you haven’t been to this little gem of a museum, it’s worth a visit: full of interesting medieval things and housed in a fascinating building, and they have a lovely family programme. Time it right and on the same day you could do The Charterhouse and wander through to St Bartholomew the Great, tucked away behind slabs of modern brick and concrete, and the Postman’s Park.
A conversation with illustrator/author and fellow South Walian Isabel Benavides who launches her first picture book in August and who is coming to do a family workshop for me at Finsbury Library
A 90-page conservation plan for the site which was full of fascinating information.
An early morning walk with Thing 3
Far too much crochet and my new Banks jumpsuit covered in otters. I sewed it on my Aunty Jo’s old Singer Samba sewing machine, freshly serviced and a dream to use.
Not jumpingRear viewCovered button with otterShy cactusChrismouseCatcus
Things making me sad this week:
The death of Sinead O’Connor, who I loved as a teenager. The Lion and the Cobra is a hugely powerful album. Hopefully, whatever the cause of death turns out to be, she’s found some peace now.
Same time next week!
Kirsty x
Cover image: “The Laurels”, “a nice six-roomed residence, not counting basement” – Drawing of “The Laurels”, the fictional home of the Pooter family. First published in The Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith. London, J.W. Arrowsmith 1892.
What I’ve been reading:
Heir of Uncertain Magic – Charlie N. Holmbury. Also started The Will and the Wilds but it was bloody awful so I stopped. Life is too short to read books you’re not enjoying.
Museum of Magic – Beth Revis
Odds and Gods – Tom Holt
Broken Homes/Foxglove Summer/The Furthest Station/The Hanging Tree – Ben Aaronovitch (Audible)
…both of which knock me for six these days which at least means I have slept well!
On Monday I was fifty, and while for the past few years my birthday has been celebrated in the garden with barbecues and coffee tequila, this year I’ve been training hard for the Race to the Stones so I didn’t plan anything. My lovely neighbour Sue had invited me round for a hot tub in the evening, which turned out to be a surprise mini-gathering with cake and fizz and presents, which was most unexpected and very lovely!
The cake did actually catch fire, thanks to Jill’s sparklers and decorations – not down to the number of candles: all we in the garden heard was “happy birthday to AAAARGGH!”.
Presents included a selection of plasters and a voucher for our local salon so I can book myself a post-Race pedicure or massage – bless them!
The second prosecco event was the private view of Young V&A on Wednesday evening, at which I was so excited I didn’t take any photos.
Even knowing what to expect (having worked on it for five years!) I still had a wow moment when I walked in and saw it full of colour and people. Last time I was on site, about two months ago, it was in full chaos with cases and objects being installed, and it seemed very unlikely that they’d ever be ready to open on time.
The mission – thanks to a throwaway comment by a snarky pre-teen – was to create the most joyful museum in the world. There were definitely moments during the five years that joy was in very short supply, but the end result is wondrous. At the event I attended there were adults and children interacting in the all the ways we’d hoped and my new colleague Cassie who joined me at the event was enchanted too. The museum is bright and full of colour, yet definitely not a play area. Opening up the roof lights has changed the atmosphere in what is essentially a Victorian greenhouse. The huge gallery titles bring colour and playfulness to the central space – not to mention the flying Microlino car – and there are still enough ‘I had one of those!’ moments to draw in the adults. Clever moments like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ house being added to the dolls houses make you smile, as do the poems commissioned from people like Michael Rosen and Valerie Bloom to illustrate the letters in the ‘Apple is for A’ section.
The Design gallery – the one I worked on and which at times felt like an afterthought – does exactly what we wanted it to do: brings the stories of the design case studies to life, and highlights the work of young people. Works by teens are hung next to work by Issey Miyake and Bethany Williams, and I was sneakily thrilled to see the border panel I made as part of the quilt. The open studio was filled with people, the ‘boob carpet’ is in place (go and see what I mean) and the Shed walls were filled with amazing pieces by the resident Clara Chu.
The overall shine was tarnished for me by the discovery later in the week that for some reason the V&A’s director, Tristram Hunt, had ordered the removal of two posters from the ‘Design gives people a voice’ display and some books from the shop. The space limitations in that area of the gallery meant that every single object had to work hard to get its message across, was included after much debate and the gallery had been through multiple presentations to the directors and various trustees before this point. Our ethos throughout the project had been to reflect our audience in what we showed and to be genuinely inclusive. To have a Stonewall poster removed and the books from the shop – on the anniversary of Pride in London – denies and devalues the work we did towards this. Kristian Volsing, who was lead curator on this gallery, wrote a brilliant blog post this time last year about the pieces. Please read it and understand what our mission was.
I’d be interested to know what prompted the decision to censor objects in the gallery and in the shop mere days before opening and what apologies will be made to the communities being hidden by the V&A. I hope Hunt is challenged and the objects are reinstated. So far he has refused to retract the decision despite representations from the LGBT staff forum and the union.
As for the Piriton…bloody mosquitoes.
Next week’s blog may be late as I have to go for a walk…
What is it about Clerkenwell and Farringdon? This week I have managed to get completely lost (twice) in the maze of streets surrounding them while trying to find my way back to the office. I think perhaps I get distracted by interesting alleyways and cut-throughs and – once – by a very beautifully executed sculpture of David Beckham’s naked torso, complete with tattoos. I had to go back and look twice, in fact, as it was so well done. Anyway. Where was I?
Oh yes, I didn’t know where I was, and that was my point. The first occasion was on Tuesday morning after having coffee with Amanda, who pointed in the general direction of Farringdon and I still managed to get lost. Eventually I found my way back with the aid of Google Maps, which is FINE if you can make it stay in the direction of travel. If not then you have to walk thisaway and thataway until you work out which way is the right one, and then reverse it in your head.
I got lost again on Friday afternoon after a visit to the Zaha Hadid Foundation and the ten minute walk back to the office on St John Street took half an hour. I didn’t realise how lost I was until I found the Mount Pleasant sorting office – I love that building but it was a long way down Farringdon Road from where I needed to be. It is a bit of a maze of narrow lanes and rookeries round there, and tucked away in all of them are lovely old Georgian squares, Victorian houses and funny little nooks.
I did, however, manage to walk successfully from the office to Bethnal Green and was only a bit distracted by Lady Dinah’s Cat Emporium with its window full of furry friends.
This week we also had an ‘all-in’ day at work, when everyone comes on site. In the afternoon we had a workshop on class and class dynamics, run by Tonic Theatre, which was fascinating and uncomfortable in equal measures. From the reaction of our non-UK team members, the British concept of class is more than a bit weird. One exercise was around stereotyping: we were asked to give a working class/upper class sport, saying, food, art form, clothing and name. Another was to think about our own contexts in terms of education, economics, cultural capital and more – and about how that’s changed over generations. Turns out there’s a lot more to it that knowing which knife to use and not calling napkins serviettes or whatever.
Possibly one of my favourite aspects of the new job is being able to do a deep dive back into London history – especially the New River, which is neither new nor a river. The trouble as always is knowing when to surface…
Other things making me happy this week:
Long walks in the sunshine: this weekend I’ve covered 40k over two walks. The first was the Moreton and the Matchings walk I did in the rain on the coronation weekend, the second was a slow loop around Tawney Common.
On a related note, farmers who cut the public footpaths back in have made it to the list. You know who you are (well, I don’t). If you could see your way clear to hacking back the nettles too, that would be great. Nettles are not on the list.
Overhearing one of the trustees talking to ACTUAL QUENTIN BLAKE about ME.
Crochet octopi and a Totoro cross-stitch update
Ox-eye daisy seasonThe church and wedding feast house in the sunshineFlag irisThis one has gone to live with some kittensGiant octons at Clerkenwelll Design FestivalTotoro
Now I’m off for a shower and a nap…
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
A Dying Light in Corduba/Three Hands in the Fountain – Lindsey Davis
Back last November I opened the front door to a very distressed Thing 1, who – on her way back from walking her friend to their job in the pub round the corner – had been accosted by an adult who had tried to kiss her. Thing 1 is 16, she’s polite and friendly, and she answers when she’s spoken to which is how she’s been brought up. We live in a village, we see the same people on a regular basis and so you say hello, because that’s what you do in a small community. For the last couple of years this adult has been making comments which erred towards the inappropriate, but could be brushed off as just overly friendly.
Comments on appearance, on how she was growing up, asking if she was still at school. The sort of thing you’d laugh off as being a bit creepy, followed by ‘say hi to your mum and dad’. Innocuous. Then she turned 16, started at college, and the tone changed.
‘Have you got a boyfriend? I bet you’ve got lots of secret admirers. I know you’ve got at least one, you’re growing up nicely’. The sort of thing you need to keep an eye on, as it’s too creepy. She would come home and tell us when he’d spoken to her, so we knew what was going on but thought he was just sleazy as she’d laugh it off.
On this day in November she wasn’t very well, so wasn’t as alert as usual, and she was trying to get home. We spent the following day at the emergency GP, in fact, with severe tonsillitis. On this occasion he started with ‘was that your boyfriend? Have you got a boyfriend?’ and then he put his hands on her shoulders and went in to try and kiss her. She reacted by stepping back and came home in a state.
This is a married man, at least in his 30s. who clearly knows what he is doing is wrong – asking her if she’s 16 yet, for example, is a clear indicator that he is aware of the legality of the situation. He is a local business owner, who has been heard encouraging teenage boys to bring their girlfriends in as ‘he likes them young’.
After speaking to a friend in the police we reported the incident and luckily they took it seriously, sending someone to interview Thing 1 and I, taking video evidence from her – and doing everything they could to make it an easy experience for her – and eventually arresting him. He of course denies knowing her (and someone else who made a complaint against him) and is out on bail, and this week – as he’s denied it – she had to go and do an identity parade which is fortunately all digital these days. It wasn’t easy: she texted me after I checked in on how it had gone, and said,
‘Yeah it was fine it was weird though all the pictures were fine but as soon as I saw his it felt like his eyes were looking right at me it was so uncomfy.’
She’s been so brave, and I am so proud of her: she is clear that she doesn’t want this to happen to someone else, who may not be as speedy or as supported as she is. She has to walk past his business twice a day, three days a week to catch the bus to college, and his bail conditions state that he is not allowed to speak to her or approach her – as he hasn’t, I assume that he does actually know who she is, despite the denials. The police have been great, keeping us updated with any developments and taking her seriously.
I’m not under any illusions that anything will actually happen to this man as a result of my little girl being brave enough to step up and make her statement: much as I’d like to see him named and shamed and drummed out of the village, I’m quite realistic. I would like the parents of other teen girls in the village to warn their daughters away, or at least to make sure their daughters know that this behaviour is sexual harassment and they don’t have to put up with it. It’s not ‘cultural’, it’s not ‘being friendly’, it’s harassment and we now know that it won’t stop there.
What I’d like even more is to know that I won’t have to write yet another blog post next year calling out sexual assault, or harassment, or even inappropriate behaviour. I think we’ve all had enough.
Things making me less furious this week:
The safe arrival of my very gorgeous new grandson this week, two weeks early, courtesy of Timeshare Teenager 2 (she’s 25, but they’ll always be the TTs). I think Grandson 1 was hoping for a baby robot for a cousin but he’ll have to put up with a regular human baby.
A good 13.5k ramble in the sunshine this morning following a footpath I’ve been eyeing up for a while, seeing my first swifts of the years and a whole family of hares.
A day off midweek, with a lovely walk round Harlow Town Park with Sue and the Bella-Dog finished off with tea and an Eccles cake
The Gaslight Anthem’s new single with an album to follow
A catch-up with an ex-colleague about attracting secondary school teachers to the museums
BluebellsA meander!Glorious blossom in Harlow Town Park
Tomorrow I have a swim and a visit to the new arrival planned, a Long Walk on Monday with London sister, and then will be spending some time this week planning another Long Walk away from all media next Saturday.
Happy Long Weekend!
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
Desperate Undertaking/Fatal Legacy/The Silver Pigs – Lindsey Davis
What Kirsty did next 