116: I’ve got one nerve left, and these are the things getting on it.

Hope you’ve all survived the Jubilee weekend without too many hangovers, overexposure to bunting and wavy people on balconies etc. I’m sure her Maj is a lovely lady and so on, but the novelty of jubilees wore off for me sometime in 2012 – the golden one – and it seems overkill now to be up to four. Leave the poor woman alone – let her stop in with series 4 of Stranger Things or a few episodes of Midsomer Murders on catch-up, maybe order in an Indian and have a nice quiet weekend with the corgis. I also feel strongly that the conspicuous expenditure on entertainment, people marching about, flyovers by the Red Arrows and suchlike is nothing short of crass at a time when food banks are being asked for items that can be eaten cold as people can’t afford to cook them, when inflation is predicted to go over 10% and when people on average incomes are terrified of the next hike in fuel prices that we know is coming. But hey, she does a lot for tourism or something, which apparently justifies this sort of thing. And I did like having an extra day off, so thanks for that at least.

Something else that has annoyed me this week is the outpouring of hate for Amber Heard. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a fan of hers and other than Aquaman I couldn’t name a single film she’s been in. Some of Johnny Depp’s films – Benny and Joon, for example – will always remain on my all-time favourites list. However, this whole fiasco should never have been live-streamed, should never have become a media circus, should never have been allowed to become entertainment in the most public of ways. There’s no way the jury could have avoided all media, no matter what they were told to do by the judge, and the Depp PR machine has steamrollered across Twitter and the rest, casting Heard as a figure of ridicule and hate. Well-timed public appearances this week by Depp, extremely public support from Paul McCartney and so on: Heard never stood a chance at coming out of this anything but badly. Neither of them were perfect, and what people seem to be ignoring is that he has been cleared of the charges of defamation and ‘won’ in that respect, but was not cleared of domestic violence. People also seem to forget that both of them are actors – and he is vastly more experienced than her- and that both are more than capable of playing the parts they want the public to see. It’s their job, after all.

But the thing that most annoyed me – I know, I know, all this rage can’t be good for me – was the absolute fiasco my friend E and I experienced trying to get to the Emirates stadium on Friday night to see the Killers. She uses a wheelchair, and public transport in London is not terribly accessible in many cases – especially in the case of the older lines and stations. So, wisely, she had pre-booked parking at the stadium. Arsenal’s disability liaison person had put her on the list, she had confirmation in email form, the postcode of where she needed to get to and a street address. When she had followed up with a phone call as no parking permit had arrived, she was told that she was definitely on the list but was advised to be there early as the roads would be closed. Doors for the event were at 6.30.

Bearing this in mind, we left Debden just after 3.30, which – for a 40-50 minute drive – should have left us with enough time to park, have a catch up, get something to eat and be in our seats with plenty of time.

We arrived within sight of the stadium at 4.30, and explained to the chap manning the road barriers that we had disabled parking booked at the stadium. He told us that the access was via Drayton Park, and how to get there, so off we went. The chap manning the access at Drayton Park – to whom we explained once again that we had disabled parking booked, and that his colleague had told us to come here – gave us a set of directions involved road closures, bags over signs, turned off cameras and so on, which would definitely get us to the stadium parking. So off we went.

Half an hour later, having seen pretty much every residential street in a half mile radius (including a one-way street we should not have gone down) we had established that there was no access to the stadium thanks to bollards, strategically placed planters, brick walls and so on. We went back to the Drayton Park man, compounded the traffic offences by pulling a U-turn across a box junction, and when we told him there was no access to the stadium following his instructions, he gave us another set of similar ones, assuring us once more that it was correct.

Readers, he lied.

Half an hour later, having seen all the same streets again, asked advice from some residents and a local park warden, seriously considered abandoning the car and walking, we decided to go back to the original man and demand assistance. It was either that or kidnap Mr Drayton Park man and insist he piloted us to the stadium.

Original man, to whom I was speaking very calmly and politely and definitely not shoving an email in his face while E and several other drivers added helpful details, got on the phone to Drayton Park man, gave him the licence plate number, said we had an email and told him we were coming back round and to let us through. So we went round and he let us through. E queried (tactfully, honestly) why he couldn’t have just let us through in the first place and he gave us some utter rubbish about it being to do with ‘the capacity of the car’. Five minutes later we were in the queue to access the underground parking, and discovering that all the other people with disabled parking booked had been given the same run-around. Ninety wasted minutes, when all he had needed to do was move a bollard.

A few weeks ago I heard a talk by the wonderful Miss Jacqui who spoke eloquently about the Social Model of Disability, which expresses that the problem of accessibility does not lie with the disabled person but with the way society is run and organised, and provides a way of explaining how society goes about disabling people with impairments. It was eye-opening then, and watching it in action on Friday – with the addition of incredibly unhelpful people manning actual physical barriers – was appalling.

However, once we got into the stadium the staff could not have been more helpful and a brilliant show by the Killers and Sam Fender in support more than made up for the hassle. Brandon Flowers looked ridiculously hot in his rather 70s, disco-style suit, the sound was great and confetti cannons and fireworks are always a hit. E would have preferred to have the Manic Street Preachers in support but you can’t have everything!

Things making me happy this week:

gorgeous swims surrounded by wildlife this week: coots and chicks, grebes, parakeets, heron, cormorants, and actually seeing a cuckoo for the first time
helping a colleague at an early years stay and play event
same-day delivery from Asda
the new Phil Rickman novel, set around Whitchurch and the Doward in placed I know
dinner out for a friend’s birthday
being proud of my eldest stepdaughter for bringing her local community together
blocking the shawl I made

See you next week!

Kirsty

What I’ve been reading:

The Pure in Heart/The Risk of Darkness – Susan Hill

The Fever of the World – Phil Rickman

The Man Who Died Twice – Richard Osman

115: lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

Ok, I might be exaggerating a bit here, but one of the wonders of living out here in sunny Essex is the variety of wildlife we get in the garden. The majority of it is welcome but some – like the odd rat – is less so. Living near farmland and with a watercourse near the house it’s inevitable, of course, but I still don’t want them snacking on the bird seed.

My favourites at this time of year are the blue tits who colonise the nest box and produce a brood of noisy chicks demanding feeding. The first sight of the babies as they peek out of the hole and glare at us is always an ‘aaahhh!’ moment, and one of the very bedraggled and exhausted parents paid us a visit one evening this week too. Rather foolishly, it had stopped for a rest on the fence outside the back door which surrounds the cats’ outdoor space – Lulu thought it was her birthday but Thing 2 came to the rescue. The bird was remarkably tame (or possibly just knackered) as we were able to get very close. It flew from Thing 2’s hand to my head before we were able to put it safely out of reach of the cat.

The local shrew population has less luck when it comes to Lulu. The occasional one ventures in to the cat space (probably after the strawberries) and doesn’t live to tell the tale, instead becoming a love gift for my (and her) beloved. She’s always most annoyed when we take them away from her. She did bring a mouse in just before Christmas which we didn’t realise until it peeked out from behind my sewing machines, leading to a frenzied twenty minutes with a wooden spoon, an empty cheese sauce pot and finally a rehoming in the compost bin.

Today I have been joined in the garden by a baby sparrow, and every year we have robins, blackbirds, dunnocks, goldcrests, woodpigeons and collared doves. There’s a raucous family of magpies too, whose antics make me laugh. They are scrappy and behave like human siblings, arguing amongst themselves and rough and tumbling in the garden. The poor mother (I assume!) takes refuge on our neighbour’s roof, and as soon as the juveniles spot her they all go and join her. On one occasion there was a panicked squawking as one landed on the telephone wire and ended up upside down without enough sense to let go….

Other garden birds are woodpeckers, the odd sparrow hawk, starlings (nesting in next door’s roof), red kites soaring overhead, moorhens in wet springs and for the first time this year parakeets have flashed past. For several years we had a very tame pheasant who our builders named Colin after one of their colleagues who also strutted about. This year Richmond the Rook is a regular, stalking about in his fluffy rook trousers and hanging about with a couple of jackdaws.

The less feathered friends turn up too: we’re privileged to have badgers visiting from the Common as well as foxes, rabbits and the occasional muntjac. We can usually track their progress by the nibbled plants, much to my Beloved’s disgust. A slow worm can often be found in the greenhouse enjoying the warmth, while toads lurk under stones and tarpaulins and newts haunt the flowerpots. Most years we have a bumble bee nest somewhere, as well as squirrels and tiny mice.

One of my friends described coming through the back gate once as like walking into Narnia – sometimes I think she’s not far wrong!

Other things this week have included cheering on the RideLondon cyclists as they zoomed through the village, binging Stranger Things seasons 1-3 in preparation for season 4, seeing this year’s museum fox cubs playing in the sunshine, Thing 3 going off on his first solo sleepover at London Aunty’s house (it’s fancy, apparently), much crocheting of a shawl which is taking forever, a glorious swim, a mooch about the market, an early walk, and making some tiny things.

This week it’s half term and there’s only three days in work thanks to some Queen or other having a jubilee. The village has broken out in bunting already. I have promised my beloved that I’ll sort out my shed next weekend….

See you next week!

Kirsty x

The Betrayal of Trust/The Various Haunts of Men – Susan Hill

Villager – Tom Cox

114: We’ve come to White City by mistake!

Or, Cemeteries and Cocktails part IV: Brompton Cemetery in the no-man’s-land of west-ish London.

Let’s get this clear right from the start, shall we? West-ish London has never been my stamping ground, other than having to go to work in South Kensington rather often at the moment, and as it turns out it’s equally unfamiliar to my partner in these adventures. Between us we are pretty good with east and north, but west and south are unknowns. Keep this in mind as we progress!

We met at St Pancras, which was heaving with Sunderland supporters who were on their way to Wembley for the Division One play off or something. There were lots of them, and even at 10am the station pubs were awash with red and white stripes as they all got into the spirit of things (except the poor man who’d brought his wife and son and who was being dragged off to Leicester Square. He was not being allowed to get into the spirit of things, judging by the look on his face.). Wycombe were the other team in the play-off and presumably they just had to get on the outer reaches of the tube – we didn’t see any, anyway! They lost, possibly as their fans weren’t in the spirit of things.

A and I successfully negotiated the Piccadilly line to Earl’s Court and to the cemetery, which was about 10 minutes walk past nice houses. We tried the North Lodge cafe first, with an almond milk hot chocolate for me and a flat white for her, and we shared an almond croissant. Cute dogs galore, and very clean toilets. I could have lived without the person in front of me in the queue ordering his ‘iced americano, yah, with just a dash of oat milk, yah’ and adding daft things to his drink every 30 seconds. So, I suspect, could the baristas.

The cemetery looked green and lovely, so we set off in search of Emmeline Pankhurst’s grave and whoever else was laying about in there. Unlike the previous three, Brompton is clearly used much more as a leisure space by the locals – lots of cyclists, runners and dog walkers were in evidence. It didn’t feel as friendly as the others, either, possibly because people weren’t all there to see the graves and so there were less hellos from fellow wanderers.

The cemetery leaflet very helpfully lists their ‘Top 25’ must-sees and there is a downloadable PDF with another 75, so every so often you find a small metal number in the path telling you where someone is. Other notables in Brompton include John Snow (the cholera one, not the newsreader or the Game of Thrones one. Duh!), Sir Henry Cole (without whom I would not have my current job or something), and James Bohee who was apparently the best banjoist in the world. We didn’t find all of them but we did meet a lot of extremely tame crows and squirrels, who were happy to share one of my emergency biscuits.

After 180 odd years there are a lot of graves in the cemetery – it’s still a working cemetery so there are recent burials as well as the older ones. These are very well tended, some with beautiful miniature gardens and one which is permanently decorated for Christmas. You’re no longer allowed to build giant mausoleums any more, sadly, or have the huge family plots. I have always quite fancied a mausoleum, to be honest, but since that doesn’t seem to be an option I’ll go completely the other way and have a woodland plot instead. One mausoleum we rather liked was that of Hannah Courtoy, who sounds like a woman I’d like to have met: she had three children with an older man and although they never married she – somewhat controversially – inherited his fortune which paid for her Egyptian-style tomb. It looked like a TARDIS, so we half expected a Doctor or 14 to appear.

We wandered past the catacombs (the plan is to go back in July for a tour) and the Brigade of Guards monument, and worshipped briefly at the paws of a supremely disinterested cat who was drowsing in a coat-lined hollow in the sunshine. Many of the older sections have been allowed to grow wild so are covered in grasses and spring flowers attracting bees and all sorts of wildlife.

What’s White City got to do with all this, I hear you ask?

Once we’d had a good explore and put the world to rights, we congratulated ourselves on not having been accosted by weirdos or chased by strange men in skips, and decided it was time to go and find some lunch – Nandos or a good burger, we thought. We left the cemetery and headed back to Earls Court – and somehow we missed. We took the next road down from the one we’d come in from, thinking that we’d find our way back, and next thing we know we have seen a lot of seedy hotels, some very expensive houses, and we’ve found ourselves at a huge Tesco on the A4 where a strange man was juggling clubs in the middle of the road.

With the aid of Google Maps we oriented ourselves, found a bus that was supposed to go to South Kensington and with a sigh of relief we sat down and anticipated a good lunch. It was with dawning horror that we slowly realised the bus was going to White City instead, despite what the bus timetable had said. There was our weirdo, too, in the shape of a little old lady who rang the bell for every stop but did not get off! Instead, she harangued the poor driver until he let her off somewhere between stops as she claimed he had not opened the doors where she wanted (he had) and she did not want to walk back.

It was with another sigh of relief that we spotted Westfield – not where we’d wanted to be but we were pretty sure we’d find some lunch there. We did, in the shape of GBK, and a well-earned burger and fries. We passed on the joy of going shopping, and headed home instead. Next up: a return to Brompton and then Nunhead. What excitement will a foray south of the river provide?

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Not Dark Yet/The Price of Love – Peter Robinson

113: magic carpet ride, anyone?

This week was my first day out with the Imagination Playground big blue blocks since last summer – as is now traditional whenever I’m down for delivery, it rained, but fortunately not enough to put the children off their play! This booking came as a result of one of my teacher training sessions, where I used the tabletop version of the blocks as part of a DT session.

The school, Children’s House, is one I have visited before briefly: it has a very beautiful but sadly at risk mural by the artist and writer Eve Garnett whose One End Street books I loved as a child. It’s an interesting place – designed by architect Charles Cowles-Voysey based on Maria Montessori’s vision of an ideal learning environment for young children, opened by the author H.G. Wells in 1923 and visited by Gandhi when he stayed at Kingsley Hall as a guest of Muriel Lester. It’s a nursery school, so filled with tiny, curious little under fives who love to play.

Planned as an opportunity for parents to join their children for a play session, we kicked off with a small group of adults and children but it quickly grew as more kids decided to join in. We had our blue blocks, swathes of fabric in different textures and colours, marker cones and plastic play balls, and piles of shiny crinkly emergency foil blankets, and laminate floor underlay cut into strips and shapes. Kids adore these last two things for some reason!

Way back in the mists of time I trained as an early years teacher so am a big supporter of open-ended play and loose parts as part of child development. The big blue blocks were designed by Cas Holman for just this purpose. We have the largest version – just over 100 pieces, from long ‘pool noodles’ to chunky rectangles which were bigger than the children. We have added various other bits (see above) to the kit to bring more colour and what we have ended up with is a bright, pop-up experience that works for all ages.

I had a great day, and so did the children and adults: the headteacher was unable to resist appearing in the sessions to get down on the floor and play, which is always a good sign, and we’re going to visit their federated school in a few weeks as well. The channels in some of the blocks inspire creations like marble runs which work with the plastic balls, and the size of these runs mean a group of children can all join in. Once one child starts, the others join in, adding to structures and building on ideas to make them bigger and better. The sheer size of some of the blocks means co-operation is necessary to manoeuvre them into position. With the aid of adults, dens were created using fabric and the playground structures, allowing all sorts of imaginative play.

With the younger groups (the three year olds) there was a high level of additional need in the form of hearing impairments so the bright colours and textures of the kit became sensory experiences. The wonderful thing about open-ended play is that it’s impossible to get it wrong and the possibilities are endless.

The older children – four year olds – brought their story telling powers out to play with them. We built the tallest tower in the world so we could reach the teachers’ biscuits, and we built a boat to go on the sea with. At one point I got taken on a magic carpet ride to the seaside where we had ice creams and went for a paddle before going on a rollercoaster and then flying back home. All around me I could hear other adults discussing what was happening around them and making plans to buy fabrics and other things to add to their own blocks. I was quite sad to leave at the end of the day!

This week I am working with Key Stage one and two children as well, which is a less open-ended but just as creative session. Let’s just hope (for my team’s sake!) that the rain holds off.

Hope your week was as much fun as mine!

Kirsty x

I also…

What I’ve been reading:

Abbatoir Blues/When the Music’s Over/Sleeping in the Ground – Peter Robinson

112: I’m sorry, I haven’t a clue

Menopause is a hot topic at the moment, it seems. Companies are providing training sessions on menopause awareness, and there’s lots of research going on: how it affects women’s working lives, for example, and it’s even covered in some companies’ diversity training. In the interests of equality the company I work for are offering a male menopause awareness (it’s called andropause, apparently) later in the year. Apparently there’s more to it than fast cars and Grecian 2000 – who knew??

There’s checklists of symptoms (the old hot flash isn’t the half of it), there are charities dedicated to it and it seems to be everywhere – we’ve come a long way from delicate references to ‘the change’ or ‘her time of life’. About time too, in my opinion: it’s meant that in my annual performance review this year I was able to say to my lovely line manager that I’m experiencing symptoms and at times this is affecting work, and to have this concern logged in my record. I have a doctor’s appointment booked with a female GP (though this is apparently no guarantee of understanding) to talk HRT in a couple of weeks. Whether I can actually get my hands on any HRT is another matter entirely, as there are huge supply chain issues with it and women are being sent away empty handed by pharmacists. At least (I hope) I won’t be fobbed off with anti-depressants, as I already have those and can rule that out for them.

My main symptom at the moment*, and the one that’s making work difficult, is the brain fog: the memory problems and the inability to concentrate. I find myself in the middle of a sentence with no idea how I got there or where I was planning on going next: last week, while talking to a theatre company, I found myself making a circle in the air with my finger repeatedly, but with no idea why. A quick recap with colleagues suggested I might have been talking about the design process, but this is happening with increasing frequency – it’s hard to advocate for a project if you can’t remember what it is. Some days I work like a butterfly – landing on one thing, fluttering off for a bit, coming back to it. The kids know that it can take several minutes for my mind to process something and for me to respond. Luckily the theatre company is run by women ‘of a certain age’, as they say, and they were very good about it, but I can’t count on this all the time.

If I know in advance that I’m going to be asked to speak about something in a meeting I can script it, but I am starting to dread being asked ad hoc questions as there’s no guarantee I can formulate an answer or that my brain has kept up with the conversation. Things are slightly better if I can do something with my hands in a meeting, which is much easier when the meeting is online, but not everyone is keen on me bringing my crochet project with me. I do think if Amanda Spielman, head of OFSTED and one of our trustees, can get away with knitting through important meetings and since our mission is all about creativity and skills I should definitely be allowed.

So, it’s off to the doc for a chat for me, and hopefully I’ll be a new woman – or at least a woman that can finish a sentence.

*apart from the rage that I wrote about back in week 68

So that’s it from me: it’s lunchtime, there’s a cross stitch that needs finishing, and after a 450m swim this morning I’m contemplating a nap.

See you next week!

Kirsty x

All the Colours of Darkness/ Watching the Dark – Peter Robinson

Villager – Tom Cox

Doctor Who: Eleventh Doctor Tales (Audible)

A Place of Execution – Val McDermid

111: Uphill all the way

Yesterday I fulfilled a long held ambition and went on one of Paul Talling’s guided walks through London, specifically the route of the River Fleet from Blackfriars to St Pancras Old Church. I’ve been a fan of his photos since the very first Derelict London days, when I stumbled across them while researching something completely different, and in 2012 he kindly allowed me to use some of his pre-regeneration photos of the Olympic Park to support a school session I was running at the Museum of London Docklands. When my friend messaged me the other day to say she had a spare ticket for the Fleet walk and would I like to come, there was only one possible answer. As one of my longest-standing friends (37 years!), ex-flatmate in our mis-spent London years and graduate of the Durham Arms school of Sunday drinking, the chance for a catch-up post-lockdown was unmissable too. (Kerst – you know that I’d have said yes even without the walk!)

I never planned to stay in London for more than a few years and certainly never expected to fall in love with it and all its history, but there we are. I have actually done the Fleet walk before, self-guided and in the other direction as part of a partnership with the Hampstead Heath education team: we used Paul Talling’s book and this one to guide us and completed the walk over two days. The first section, from the source just below Kenwood on Hampstead Heath through to St Pancras, was on a gloriously sunny day in early summer. The second part, a few weeks later, was in such torrential rain (in June!) that at the end of the walk we actually had to go to H&M and buy new clothes as everything we were wearing was soaked through. Still, the downpour at least meant that we could see as well as hear the Fleet through the drain on Ray Street in Clerkenwell. Yesterday was hot and sunny and perfect for a lazy ramble through the streets of London.

Blackfriars station, where we had arranged to meet, is on both sides of the river as well as across the middle, and it’s the only one of the big mainline termini I have never caught a train from. Eventually we worked out that if we both went on Blackfriars Bridge we’d be bound to cross paths, so having managed that we headed for coffee and a catch-up before the walk. The start point for the walk was the very beautiful Blackfriar pub, which has been recently restored and the frontage positively glowed in the sunshine.

I won’t go into too much detail about the content of the walk, except to say that Talling’s background as a gig promoter as well as his knowledge of London and its past meant we were treated to a whole lot of side anecdotes about various bands, pubs and local areas. The route took in what’s left of the Bridewell prison, a horde of Millwall fans with a lot of police keeping an eye on them, Smithfield Market (eventually to be the site of the new Museum of London) and Mount Pleasant where the Mail Rail originally started before finishing at St Pancras Old Church and the Hardy Tree. It was only about three miles but took four hours, and we felt we had earned the Nando’s lunch afterwards! We used to go to Nando’s back when we lived in Bethnal Green in the late 90s, so it felt like a good way to end our day. Sunny Saturdays in London always bring out the ill-advised fashion choices – the chap in the turquoise satin tracksuit carrying the bottle of Hooch really was a blast from the past. Here, mate, the 90s called and they want their outfit back!

Here are some of the photos Kersti and I took over the day. We’ll definitely be doing more of these, and perhaps some self-guided ones as well through our old haunts!

Other highlights of the week:

New haircut (short!)
Finally coming to the end of the D&D campaign with an epic battle
Meeting up with the fab Really Big Pants Theatre Company again
Hearing Miss Jacqui speak at a networking event at Rich Mix
Finishing the dragon scale shawl I have been working on
Lovely swim this morning with the swans

So that’s that! Same time next week, gang!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

The Old Success – Martha Grimes

Win – Harlan Coben

All the Colours of Darkness – Peter Robinson

110: so what does a typical week look like?

This week our new learning facilitator joined the team, after a gap of five months since ~~we broke~~ the last one left us to go freelance. It’s a funny time to be recruiting for a museum team, as we don’t have a physical museum and we’re all working in interdisciplinary mode to support the different projects. This new one – we shall call her E – was a printmaker and an art teacher before she joined the gang this week.

One of the questions several of the candidates asked us when we were interviewing for the role was ‘what does a typical week look like?’. Once we’d done the sage ‘oh yes, what a great question’ bit, followed by the slightly hysterical laughter bit, we were quite honestly able to tell them that at the moment there is no such thing. When we are back in the museum next year (from my lips to God’s ears, as the saying goes) things might settle down as we can set up a programme, but right now we’re all about R&D, testing new sessions, keeping ourselves on the radar and supporting each other’s programmes (formal, informal and creative). Formal, for me, means Early Years in formal settings right the way through to teachers – both serving and trainee – and post-grad students. Informal is families, early years informal settings, and pretty much everyone else. Creative is pop-ups, festivals, salons and everything else.

This week, for example, was only four days thanks to the Easter bank holiday but I like to think we packed enough in for five. E joined us on Tuesday morning and we introduced her around the museum, dragged her off for lunch in the staff canteen, made her sit in on Teams meetings about projects she knew nothing about (to be fair, they are in the development stage!) and abandoned her to the tender mercies of the IT team. Wednesday started at South Kensington and then ended in East London with a DT teacher training session for my favourite teaching alliance, including the bit where I didn’t have enough resources and challenged one team to find their own in the classroom (amazing result) – the outcome was a brilliant parrot house from the Think Small session, created from lunch bags and things they found around the room.

Thursday was a stay and play session for early years children with speech and language delays in Whitechapel, where we were testing a sensory play kit designed by Play Build Play, followed by more time at the museum. Friday was back at South Ken, where we had meetings, lunch in the garden and then spent a couple of hours prepping for a filming project, making fans and colour samples.

Cutting and sticking – yes, this is my job

Another week might have seen us out with the blue blocks at a pop-up, a play street or a school playground; running an afterschool club; delivering sessions in a classroom or hall; working at a youth centre with a designer; filming with various creatives; or any number of other things. Some weeks have a lot of meetings in, these days mainly on Teams or Zoom so we do get excited when we meet actual people. Sometimes we go and have brainstorm sessions at another museum, or go and see other galleries. Some weeks we get a day at a desk! I love the days when I’m out working with people of all sorts of ages, interacting, building, playing and making up stories and mad ideas. Equally I love being with the team, bouncing ideas around and problem solving, being creative and thinking about the potential for the new spaces we’ll be working in. I love researching and creating sessions, using museum objects to inspire. I consider a teacher training session to be a failure if at least one of the trainees doesn’t ask me how to get into museum learning, and this week it was a whole table of them.

But a typical week? There’s no such thing. Thank heavens.

See you after the next one!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Piece of my Heart/Friend of the Devil – Peter Robinson

Insidious Intent – Val McDermid

Amongst Our Weapons – Ben Aaronovitch

Doctor Who: Eleventh Doctor Tales (Audible)

109: wake me up for tea

You find me at the end of a week off, in which I have done very little that was useful but a lot that was good for my soul: afternoon naps, long walks with friends, family and dogs, relaxed coffees, crafting, reading and a bit of cooking. My beloved claims that there is no such thing as a day off, but that is because he takes Monty Don’s ‘Jobs for the weekend’ section to heart as well as all the other things that a garden requires. I, on the other hand, am of the opinion that if you take a day off the jobs (and the garden) will still be there afterwards and the weeds probably won’t have taken over the world. Unless it’s sticky grass or wild garlic, in which case all bets are off.

On Sunday, post-blog, I met up with a friend in the wilds of Hackney to see Damien Jurado playing at EArtH (Evolutionary Arts Hackney), a gig which had been postponed at least once and possibly twice thanks to the pandemic but which was well worth the wait. Jurado plays small, interesting venues – we have seen him previously St John on Bethnal Green church, at the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster and this time the venue was a reclaimed Art Deco cinema auditorium reached via a most unprepossessing doorway on Stoke Newington High Street. After a pint at the Brewdog bar a couple of doors along and up a few flights of stairs you arrive in the auditorium, which was locked up after the last film showed there in 1984 (Scarface, apparently) and left derelict while the rest of the building went through the usual ex-cinema permutations of snooker hall and community venue – not Bingo, for a change.

It’s a lovely space, still in need of a lot of restoration but the original Art Deco features remain and with simple bench seating and a wide stage the acoustics were wonderful. Add in an atmospheric setlist and good audience engagement and the result was a great evening. We particularly liked the young man at the end who begged for his favourite song, with plaintive pleases, and got his way – I liked the proper last song, too, with snatches of the Grateful Dead’s Morning Dew scattered through.

On Wednesday my beloved and I dragged the Things out for a family walk. Thing 1 sulked all the way up the hill but was won over by the tiny calves in the field and the friendly pig – I think we all were, to be fair. We’ve been very lucky with the weather this week, and on Friday the garden was full of one of the Timeshare Teenagers and friends, painting henna tattoos on each other and recovering from what seemed to have been a pretty heavy night out. Other walks have been in the early morning, finishing with coffee and croissants at M’s house in the garden while fending off the muddy paws of Dobby and Kreacher, who assume all laps are for sitting. These are two rescue dogs, who are now so used to the sight of me that they have given up barking when I walk in to the house for D&D sessions. M and I also had a mooch around North Weald Market yesterday, where we marvelled at the sheer quantity of polyester neon on display, pondered the possibility of all the blingy pictures refracting sunlight and starting fires, and were bemused at the current fashion for wearing fluffy mule sliders out in public with socks.

I’ve also been messing around with making some very geeky earrings from D20s and meeples, am up to date on the Temperature Galaxy and ‘Travel by Tardis’ is halfway done. There’s half a simnel cake left (it was a most welcome apres-swim treat this morning!) and Thing 2 and I tried our hand at making macarons the other day as well. I did do some gardening, weeding the wild garlic out of my little patch and planting a couple of saxifraga and a Bleeding Heart. I can see the shoots of this year’s physalis coming up, hollyhocks are poking through, and I don’t seem to have killed the hydrangea so with any luck I’ll have a nice show this summer.

On Tuesday I am back to work, so I am off to top up my nap. I blame my father. I must also do my Easter bunny impression and distribute some eggs, as the natives are getting restless.

See you next week!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

In a Dry Season/Cold is the Grave/Aftermath/The Summer That Never Was/Playing With Fire/Strange Affair – Peter Robinson

Insidious Intent – Val McDermid

Doctor Who: Tenth Doctor Novels vol 4 (Audible)

108: a couple of anniversaries

This week I celebrated not only the 4th anniversary since our stroppiest cat and this week’s cover star, Lulu, came to live with us, but also my 20th anniversary of working in museums – a long time, I agree, but a decision I have never regretted since making the leap out of the classroom way back in 2002.

One question I get asked a lot, usually by teacher training students who are already looking ahead in terms of their careers, is ‘how did you end up in museums?’ ‘By accident’ is my usual answer. Back in the heady days of properly funded Education Business Partnerships, when teachers not only got to go and do CPD but had supply cover paid for by the EBP as well, I went on a couple of training days – one at the Golden Hinde, where we got dressed up in Tudor sailor gear and spent the day doing the sort of thing children got to do on a school trip, and one at the National Army Museum where we experienced object handling and various other aspects of museum learning. I don’t think I had realised that working as an educator in museums was an actual career choice until the then head of education there, Andy Robertshaw, said that they were recruiting and on the off-chance I applied. I had just started an MA in Museums and Galleries in Education at what was then the Institute of Education (now gathered under the wider UCL umbrella) but not with any intention of moving out of teaching, more as a way to be a better humanities co-ordinator. I moved house a month later, and hadn’t heard anything, and a few months after that in February half term I had an irate phone call from the HR team there asking if I’d be attending the interview the following day. Somewhat bewildered and battered from OFSTED the week before and – quite honestly – out of my head on Benylin Day and Night tablets from the inevitable half term germs, I went for the interview. To this day I remember very little other than ranting about the marginalisation of history in the curriculum but something must have worked as they gave me the job.

I loved it. I got to teach the subject I loved but without parents evenings, PE or music lessons in the week, and on weekends and in the holidays we did family events, live interpretation, talks and conferences – in that team, we all did everything. Interminably, at times: if someone gave me the kit and the powerpoint I suspect I could still do the Florence Nightingale session, fondly known as the Mary and Flo Show, or the Civil War. I moved to Museum of London Docklands three years later, where I got to learn a lot about London (one of my other great loves) and create a lot of sessions, and then to the V&A Museum of Childhood in 2017 (now the Young V&A, of course) where I am helping create a new museum.

There have been tricky moments, I’m not denying that: the repeated restructures of the last few years and seeing the impact of these on colleagues has been really hard. Every so often I throw my toys out of the museum pram and declare that I can’t possibly work for them any more and last year that tantrum lasted about six months instead of a couple of weeks, but then I remembered that I actually do love my job and want to see the project through.

I still tell those teacher training students and serving teachers who ask me that it’s the best job ever, and happily attend careers sessions and work weeks to talk about what not only I do but all the other people who make a museum work: kids assume that the only staff are the ones they see, like the security, shop and front of house teams, and are amazed when they hear about the back of house team who make sure everything runs smoothly. Mine’s the best job, though.

As if by magic, the Shopkeeper appeared

This week the great shopkeeper in the sky appeared to take beloved author David McKee off back to reality. Those of us of a certain era will remember the bowler-hatted and suited Mr Benn and his visits to the fancy dress shop where he was cast into a series of costumed adventures before heading back to his peaceful existence on Festive Road. King Rollo was also his creation, and younger children will know Elmer the Elephant, the mischievous patchwork pachyderm.

Image https://nostalgiacentral.com/television/tv-by-decade/tv-shows-1970s/mr-benn/

My favourite, and one which I have read literally hundreds of times to both my own kids at bedtimes and to classes of children at storytime, is Not Now, Bernard, the story of a boy who finds a monster in the garden. He tries to tell his mum and dad about the monster but they’re too busy to listen. Poor Bernard gets eaten by the monster, who proceeds to go into the house and create chaos, but the parents don’t even notice their son has been eaten. The bemused monster finds himself tucked up with milk and a teddy bear.

https://shop.scholastic.co.uk/products/Not-Now-Bernard-Board-Book-David-McKee-9781783445134

This was a wonderful book to read aloud: the children recognised the distracted parents and gleefully acted out the repetitive ‘Not NOW, Bernard’ lines as we read through. I can still hear Thing 2’s baby croak as she joined in. Thank you, David McKee.

See you next week,

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Dry Bones That Dream/Innocent Graves/Wednesday’s Child/Dead Right – Peter Robinson

On the Bright Side – Hendrik Groen

Doctor Who: Tenth Doctor Novels vol 4 (Audible)

106: coming to you from sunny NI

This week’s blog is coming to you from a sunny Northern Ireland, where I’m on godmother duty for my adorable nephew’s first communion. And I’m feeling pretty sunny, too: it’s the first time I’ve seen my youngest sister and her family since 2018 thanks to Covid cancelling both our 2020 holiday and our trip over for the niece’s confirmation.

Clutching our shiny new passports, London sister and I met at Heathrow on Friday, planning to do the bag drop, get a nice lunch and relax… what actually happened was a queue for over an hour for the automated bag drop, a mad dash to grab a meal deal to eat on the plane and then we sat near the gate for another hour plus as the flight was delayed and delayed. Making faces at small children and chatting to elderly gents is only entertaining for so long. We finally took off just as we should have been landing at Belfast City, but we did get free crisps on the flight. Just as well as the flight attendant was about to get bitten, I was so hungry by then.

It’s so good to see my little sisters: we sat and chattered all evening, covering everything under the sun, decorating the house as a surprise for my nephew’s big day and blowing up balloons.

She promised me a field full of little lambs and sure enough they are skipping about and making me wonder if I can stash one in my suitcase to come back with. I have begun to make friends with them in preparation, lurking nonchalantly on our side of the hedge and smiling in a non-scary sort of way.

My nephew and niece have thrashed me at Harry Potter trivial pursuits, we’ve cried with laughter at S bouncing T off the bouncy castle (a first communion tradition!) and I did get a bit tearful watching my godson make his first communion.

First Communions are a huge event over here, with all the little boys in grown up suits and the girls in bridesmaid type dresses. They all got to do a reading or another part of the ceremony, and the church was full of proud families as well as many watching via the live feed. There’s a scrum afterwards to take photos on the altar, and the kids make a fortune from relatives.

I was slightly less fond when the combination of too many sausages and a bouncy castle had the inevitable messy result, but it’s been such a lovely day. He and I also had a long and philosophical discussion about confession and what happens if you’ve been really good all week and haven’t got anything to confess: do you make it up and then confess to lying the next week? He tells me he’s probably in credit as he only confessed to throwing a ball at his sister once but he’s actually done it a lot which should keep the priest busy for a few months to come. He’s a very curious child, so the priest will most likely have a lot of questions to answer, starting with ‘why does the Body of Christ taste like cardboard?’ and working up from there.

Hopefully we’ll manage a holiday together this summer so we can all spend more time together – I had the advantage of growing up near all my cousins, but these two and the Things don’t have that luxury.

This morning the new communicant has nagged his dad into taking him to mass again, so we are enjoying the peace and contemplating leftover cake for breakfast. Now excuse me, I’m off to make the most of being with my sisters before flying back later.

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

On the Bright Side: The New Secret Diary of Henrik Groen – Henrik Groen

Doctor Who: Tenth Doctor Novels vol 3 (Audible)

The Hanging Valley/Past Reason Hated/Careless Love – Peter Robinson