Tag: Ealing

262: personality goes a long way*

*13.1 miles, in fact.

This week – before I have the chance to change my mind after Saturday’s 25k Queen of the Suburbs Ultra – I have signed up for the Cardiff Half Marathon in October and am considering Ealing but that’s got a three hour cutoff time so I’d need to speed up a bit. Cardiff is four which is very doable. I’d rather run both but my knees have other ideas.

I am basically a lazy person. I like sitting down and reading and crocheting and naps and drinking coffee. So why, you might ask, am I signing up for very long walks lurches? Well, it’s because I am basically lazy, in fact. I know that if I’m going to do any exercise I need a reason, and ‘keeping fit’ just isn’t enough of a reason to get me out further than 5k. So I’m basically lazy but also quite stubborn and competitive, it turns out. It’s a difficult blend of personality traits at times like this, you know, but I have made my peace with it and signing up to stuff is like surrendering to my inner nag. I was all “FINE, but I WON’T ENJOY IT*”.

General entry to Cardiff was sold out in a matter of seconds, so I went down the charity place option and have decided to raise money for Choose Love, who work with displaced communities to provide on-the-ground emergency aid and support where it’s needed.

Regular readers will know that over the past few years I’ve been fortunate enough to meet and spend time with refugees and asylum seekers in East London and Essex, engaging with them through play in schools and family centres; trying to bring a bit of normality and joy into lives that they never planned and which they are living with dignity and more grace than I suspect I could muster in the same situation.

The Migration Museum’s 2016 exhibition Call Me By My Name, about the Jungle in Calais, has also stayed with me: it’s not often an exhibition moves me to tears. Stories about the people TT1 works with at Epping Forest Foodbank, the casual neglect, racism and dehumanisation families seeking safety in the UK encounter make me wonder about the lack of humanity some people display. Every time we’ve turned on the news for the past many years we’ve heard about Gaza, Syria, Ukraine, Afghanistan and so on.

When I first started teaching in London we had groups of children from Angola in our classes – untangling the relationships between the adults and the children was sobering. Many weren’t related at all. Village adults – often women – had been entrusted with the lives of groups of children and sent to London in the hope that the parents would escape and join them at some point. I don’t know if they ever did. Choose Love seemed like a natural choice for me to exercise on behalf of: we all need love, after all.

I haven’t set my fundraising page up yet as the website defeated me, but rest assured I’ll be asking for support – look, think of it as paying someone else to exercise so you don’t have to, and you can stay warm and safe in the knowledge that someone, somewhere, will be getting the help they so desperately need.

*Oh OK then, FINE, yes I will.

Things making me happy this week

  • Tan reminding me on Friday that the 25k was on Saturday not Sunday – in the nick of time, clearly!
  • Last Sunday’s lovely sunshiney training walk – I got befuddled and didn’t end up where I thought I would. No sense of direction, that’s my problem. Luckily the 25k was way marked with bright pink ribbon.
  • Popping in to the library on Thursday afternoon and seeing the Knit and Natter group still going after 15 years – my late MIL was one of the founder members, so it’s good to see it going strong.
  • My finished crochet cardigan it’s basically two giant granny hexagons stitched together and I LOVE it. Try this pattern for a similar one – mine is in a DK yarn so has more rounds. I was using the Attic 24 Hydrangea blanket colours, and I made the sleeves more dramatic.
  • Thing 3’s parents’ evening. His handwriting continues to be atrocious but other than that he is, apparently, a joy to have around.
  • Finishing Saturday’s event 16 minutes faster than I’d planned for – my chip time was 4 hrs  9, my Strava time was just under 3 hrs 59. I’ll take that as a win. And I made it indoors before the huge thunderstorm landed. I did not appreciate the really big hill at 19k or the smaller one at 23k.

Today I am off to the Stitch Festival at the Business Design Centre in Islington with Heather, my crafty partner in crime, where I will NOT spend any money. No.

That’s it for the week! Same time next Sunday then…

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading

The Heron’s Cry/The Rising Tide/Telling Tales – Ann Cleeves

Going Postal/Making Money/Raising Steam – Terry Pratchett (Audible)

The Trouble With The Cursed – Kim Harrison

249: move along, please

Aaaand…breathe. The out of office is on, most of the presents are wrapped*, the turkey crown is in the freezer** and the cake is marzipanned and practically hiccupping with the amount of rum it has ingested. The presents for France are in Ealing ready to go over with London sister today, and we had a very delicious lunch at Remoli complete with aperitifs and pudding (affogato, of course). Christmas can now happen.

*Despite definitely having finished the shopping last weekend, I still ended up in Flying Tiger in Ealing Broadway as the stocking presents didn’t look enough.

**We are going to TT1’s for Christmas lunch but the utter horror on Thing 2’s face when she realised this meant I wasn’t doing Christmas dinner was a sight to behold. Yes, I am a sucker but at least I drew the line at buying a full turkey just so I could make soup, despite the face. Boxing Day will be dinner for us then!

On today’s mooch round Ealing we visited the Christmas markets that seem to be popping up in every available shopping centre – the best was at Pitzhanger Manor, but even that was only about ten stalls. London seems to have taken the idea of these markets but hasn’t really managed to get the hang of them. The one in Ealing Broadway Centre was six stalls, half of which were overpriced food and the others were overpriced tat. There is a limit to the number of scrunchies and Swiftie-style bracelets that any one person really needs, and this is coming from someone who remained faithful to the scrunchie throughout the noughties and still has a bagful in case I decide to grow my hair our again. I went to Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park once – when it was free to enter – and swore never, ever, ever again. Having said that, the one on the South Bank is nice but there are way too many people at it, and if there’s one thing I cannot be having with in London it’s people who dither about the place. Chancery Lane tube station has been plagued this week by people in rush hour who go through the gates and then just…stop. Even my sunny disposition has been somewhat taxed by these muppets. Add to this people who can’t read the ‘stand on the right’ signs, people who choose to stop in the middle of pavements for conversations, people who walk slowly in busy places (I would have voted for a slow lane on Oxford Street) and anyone who hangs around by the entrances to tube platforms.

Even less fun this week was trying to despatch a parcel to World of Books – Royal Mail was not an option, only InPost or Collect Plus, so I chose InPost as they had two lockers in Epping and Collect Plus are in weird little shops. One locker was full, the other was broken – so I had to go to Ongar. It cost me more in bus fare to post the stupid parcel than I was earning from the books. This is the downside of living in a village in between two small towns, of course. Well, that and the buses which are a nightmare at the moment thanks to roadworks in at least four separate places on the route.

Things making me happy this week

  • Coffee and a catch-up with Rhiannon and cuddles with baby Otis on Friday, and the best (only) mince pie I have had this year made by Raf.
  • A Christmas drink with my lovely colleagues on Thursday at St John
  • Cat socks
  • Starting a non-Christmas themed crochet project
  • The library getting all the books I’d requested in at once – binging Vaseem Khan’s ‘Inspector Chopra’ series. Highly recommended.
  • Richard Franks’ take on teaching A Christmas Carol
  • The expression on my idiot cat’s face when caught with his new catnip banana

Today I am having coffee with Miriam and Edith after a chilly swim with Jill – and then I am going to do as little as possible for several days!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Midnight at Malabar House/The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra – Vaseem Khan

Hogfather – Terry Pratchett (Audible) – and the collected BBC dramatisations of various Discworld novels

Two for the Dough – Janet Evanovich

Making Thinking Visible – Ron Ritchhart, Mark Church, Karin Morrison

160: which way is Tring station?

Thursday found me in Ealing this week, for a work outing and then for a sleepover at London sister’s followed by a hike along a bit of the Ridgeway. Regular visitors to my little corner of t’Internet will know that we have signed up for Race to the Stones in July this year with two of our cousins, so a long weekend was an excellent excuse for a hike.

The work outing was to Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery, originally Sir John Soane’s country retreat and now restored to former glory as an art space. Their current exhibition is of works by Anthony Caro, including the Child’s Tower Room over which the well-behaved children of Ealing were scampering while leaving the other sculptures alone. To Museum of Childhood veterans this was a source of wonder, as had these been at Bethnal Green the tower room would have been demolished and the gaps in the other sculptures would have been filled with crisps, sand and small children. No parents were sipping cappucino in the gallery, no one was changing a nappy/using a potty on the floor and there were no riots. Most odd. There was a lovely family craft activity happening with cardboard and tape, none of which was being applied to priceless artworks. I wonder what they’re doing wrong?

In the evening we went for dinner at Piccola Italia, where I indulged in lovely garlicky tiger prawns followed by sea bass ravioli and an affogato with rum and raisins. It was here I put forward my theory of how to train the little owls who live in the tree on Ealing Common, which I still think would have worked if only they were prepared to try. It would have taken patience and an inexhaustible supply of Russian dwarf hamsters but the end result would have been worth it.

On Friday morning we loaded up our backpacks with flasks and hiking necessities like Frazzles and KMC (Kendal Mint Cake’s rebrand – just cover it in dark chocolate and add an electrolyte or something and it immediately becomes a health food. Possibly.) and headed off towards the Ashridge Estate, a National Trust-managed area in Hertfordshire.

Starting at the Bridgewater Monument, we followed a route in one of Tan’s books of circular walks which would cover Ivinghoe Beacon and some excellent views. We headed downhill first into Aldbury and then across farmland and a golf course where we met a family who asked us if we’d just come from Tring station, as they had gone off course somewhere along the way. We professed ignorance, attempted to help, and then realised as we carried on the walk that Tring station was signposted everywhere for miles around.

Once we’d crossed the farmland and some golf course we were onto chalk downlands, where the red kites were out in force. Skylarks were shouting their heads off and we were even lucky enough to spot one. The whitethroats were in song in the trees, and the views were indeed excellent. A slight detour meant we added half a mile or so onto the walk but it was worth it.

We stopped for lunch on top of Ivinghoe Beacon – sausage rolls, Frazzles, KMC, coffee for Tan and hot chocolate for me – and watched the kites doing aerobatics overhead and a kestrel balancing on the air while we ate. The skies were HUGE, as you can see, and we had a great view of the Whipsnade Lion chalk figure in the distance.

Tan on the Beacon
The Whipsnade Lion
Triangulating
REALLY big skies

Another slight detour while finding the path back to the monument meant we saw a herd of about 15 deer running across the path in front of us. Back on the right route, there were many little lambs, primroses, violets and early bluebells – spring was springing all over the place.

We covered about eight miles, appreciated our walking poles and the sunshine and are looking forward to next month’s hiking adventure in Majorca!

Other things making me happy this week:

  • Filling my Instagram feed with owls and baby Highland cows
  • Haagen Daz x Pierre Herme macaron ice cream
  • A skills sharing session with the learning team in the V&A cafe on Monday
  • A D&D field trip to the cinema this evening
  • Fixing the hole in my tights
  • March complete on the temperature supernova
  • Seeing my stepdaughters – one with child, one with imminent bump – yesterday, complete with mad dogs
  • Sock one done of a new pair
First quarter of the year done!
Mending Macaron by Ministry of Mending, vintage mending yarn from a charity shop find

A Happy Easter to you all, whatever you’re up to!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Kate Shugak investigations 1-7 (so far) in anticipation of #23 coming out this week – Dana Stabenow

Asterix volume 2 – Goscinny & Uderzo

Agatha Raisin and the Witch‘s Tree – M. C. Beaton