Press your back button now if part of your summer holiday planning still involves the annual childcare juggle. I’m about to be unbearably smug.
My Horde are now 14, 16 and 19 and while the teenage years come with their own set of challenges (their hormones coming in while mine are going out, romance dramas, friend group angst, the constant growing out of shoes and trousers, to name but a few) those challenges no longer include having to trade off annual leave, swapping childcare with friends or considering packing them off to boarding school and leaving the country till they’re 18. I read all the Chalet School books, I know it’s all kaffe und kuchen every day and midnight feasts and adventures up mountains. They’d have been FINE. Probably.
While we’ve always been amazingly lucky with the various childminders and big sisters who have looked after them over the years, it’s still flipping excellent not to have to worry about it every year.
The flipside is never knowing quite how many teens will be scattered about the house and garden when I get in or who will be around for dinner. If they’re here they get fed and I assume that works when they’re at other people’s houses too. We’ve always operated open door parenting, on the principle that if we’re there for the fun stuff they’ll know the door will still be open for the harder stuff too.
Several nights a week there’s at least two teenagers asleep in the living room, one in the cabin and right now there’s nine people ranging from the ages of two to 27 racing around the garden with water pistols. I’m sitting surrounded by chaos and the remains of an impromptu barbecue and – honestly – I love it. Especially the bit where they just get on with it with no input from me.
It also means I can go and work in France for a week and then have a week of peace before school chaos starts again; go for a drink with colleagues or friends after work; or be at my desk by 8am.
This is not to say parenting teens is a breeze: emotional crises arise, there are still dramas and we’ve got T-level results this week and GCSE results next week but, on balance, I think we’re doing OK.
I expect one day they’ll all leave home and I won’t know what to do with myself but till then I’ll keep embracing the chaos.
A lovely day off on Friday with Miriam, with breakfast at the Mayfield Bakery and a very relaxing massage.
Finding Breton cidre at St John after work on Thursday, and remembering how nice it is to do these things.
A peaceful day at Shelley Church fête crocheting toadstools and chatting to nice people. The meerkat went home as a raffle prize with a very excited teenager.
Painting wooden toadstools with Things 1 & 2 in the garden
Well, here we are back from France, having eaten our own bodyweights in baguettes, boule and in Thing 2’s case, brie.
On Sunday we headed off to Port-Louis where my ever- tolerant family put up with me pottering off into the sea for a dip in my bobble hat. The water was so clean and clear, the sun was out and the kids had a wonderful time exploring rock pools, collecting seashells and poking crabs to make sure they weren’t dead. Port-Louis is always good for tiny jewels of green seaglass so I came back with a pocketful for my collection. Thing 2 wants to try making some jewellery with it.
We hit the beach again later in the week for Dad’s birthday at Larmor-Plage, which is a bit further round the coast and has shiny mica-rich sand. The shoreline was populated with tiny sanderlings sounding like squeaky toys as they skittered in and out of the waves. Cormorants, geese and ducks bobbed up and down a bit further out. We pottered along the headland and onto the next beach, with more rock pools and bigger chunks of glass. The Things are becoming more discerning – not frosty enough, still too sharp – as they scan the sand. Lunch was at Le Tour Du Monde, where I had moules mariniere, and Thing 3 excavated an entire lettuce worth of greenery just to remove the tomatoes from his club sandwich.
Further inland, we took some walks along the Blavet, a canalised river which comes out at Lorient. The towpath has been underwater for a lot of the winter so far, and the water is still high. The usual cormorants were haunting dead trees like baby dragons, a heron and a white egret lurked in the shallows and we were lucky enough to see a few kingfishers flashing along. Tan saw a Daubenton’s bat but it failed to make a second appearance no matter how hard we looked.
The most striking thing is the huge increase in coypu activity. The banks are riddled with their holes and on one evening wander we saw a whole family playing and swimming, including a baby pottering about near its mum. The rain last night was torrential so their dens are probably submerged again.
Considering it’s February we’ve been incredibly lucky with the weather. It only really turned bad on Thursday when we went to Hennebont for the market. We changed our minds and took the kids to Decathlon instead to spend their holiday money, and then took a lengthy detour around Lorient and Lanester on the search for the Chinese buffet for lunch.
Every trip out seems to have ended with a visit to whatever supermarket is on the way back: Super U and the Leclerc Hypermarket were the favourites. I seem to have gained a whole shopping bag of French food (and I remembered treats for the office!) including my favourite Surfizz sweets, cherry compôte and caramel sauce. The kids are amazed by the range of food on offer. I’ve got butter and proper Port Salut too.
In the evenings I’ve been working on my crochet jumper: the back, front and half the first sleeve are done. I chose the pattern as it reminded me of a jumper I loved when I was at uni – the link to the pattern is in the Insta post below.
Dinner times have been a chaos of conversation, as usual when we get together. I think Thing 3 will be quite relieved to get back to normal!
And now it’s back to normal service – kids are back to school on Monday, I’ll be back in the office and I’ll have to think about what to feed people again. I’ve missed Thing 1 and my Beloved, of course, and I think I’ve missed being woken at 5am by starving felines!
Same time next week…
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
Lost Man of Bombay/The Dying Day/City of Destruction/The Last Victim of the Monsoon Express – Vaseem Khan
Well, here I am back in a cloudy Essex after a week in cloudy (but not cold or rainy) West Wales. No dolphins or seals this year, but we still had a lovely time once we’d recovered from the drive down. Today’s cover photo shows the cottage we stayed in – the blue one! – taken from the beach so you can see how close we were.
Sunday started with an early solo dip, accompanied by a rather insouciant cormorant ducking and diving near the rocks. I named him Kevin, and he didn’t seem to mind. The water all week was around 14 degrees, and completely flat – not a wave to be seen.
At lunchtime our cousins Jane and Sal (last featured in this blog when we did Race to the Stones) arrived in Sal’s camper van Hetty. After coffee and things with chocolate on we headed back to the beach for an explore: Thing 2 was keen on rockpools and we found Thing 3 en route. He was all about the solo walks, as apparently he doesn’t like walking with ‘old people’.
We wound up the day with a family swim, even convincing Jane to come in although I am not sure she enjoyed it! Sunday dinner was cooked by Tan (with prep assistance from Thing 2 and I, in the shape of vegetable peeling and chopping. There was a gadget for doing julienne veg but not a peeler, so it took a while and a lot of mangled carrots) complete with amazing Yorkshires and cauli cheese.
Monday started with an early dip with Tan and Sal (Jane hung out on the beach and made friends with dogs). Despite the drizzle, once we’d warmed up we took the coast path to Tresaith to see the waterfall. We had lunch in the Ship Inn watching people fly kites on the beach and then walked back to Aberporth in the sunshine. Thing 2’s geography learning has had practical applications this week as she talked about erosion and meanders, and compared the caravan site to a favela (I’m sure they’d be delighted!)
On Tuesday, leaving the kids with strict instructions to stay out of the sea, off the cliff path and to get a chippy lunch (Thing 2 had popcorn cockles again), Tan and I headed back down to Raglan to say goodbye to an old family friend, Little D, who for a tiny person will be leaving a big space in the world. We spent many holidays in Wet Wales with her and her family, watching them attempt to put up their caravan awning and find a signal on the telly. The memorial service was lovely, an outpouring of memories and lots of laughter as well as tears. We had coffee in the Beaufort Arms before, where we met a group of elderly ladies chatting away in Welsh. One of them liked my hair colour, so we ended up chatting to them as well.
Poor Tan got sleazed at by the local barfly – honestly, I leave her alone for five minutes and a disgraced politician hits on her.
We called in on lovely Faye who fed us banana bread and tea (hello Faye!) and marvelled at the fact that the Wicksteed horse is still in the park despite it being quite lethal. The drive back was foggy and autumnal – the trees had turned in just a few days, and were showing off gorgeous oranges and yellows.
On Wednesday I hopped back in the sea first thing, and then we went to Cardigan where we wandered round the town. There’s a lot of crafty gift shops, and the town felt busy and buzzy. We had lunch in The Fisherman’s Rest, where Thing 2 ate crab and Thing 3 ate a lot of cheese.
In the evening we had a message from Mum to tell us that one of our favourite writers, who had become a friend of hers over the years, had died. Phil Rickman wrote atmospheric crime novels set in and around Herefordshire and Glastonbury, and we always looked forward to new books. If you haven’t read his novels you’ve missed out.
Thursday took us to Aberaeron, where the harbour is mostly inaccessible while they reinforce the walls and improve the flood defences. After a wander we headed up into the hills to Bwlch-Nant-yr-Arian to see the red kite feeding. Thing 3 had stayed in Aberporth as his toes were hurting, so we did one of the walking trails and then had pasties in the visitor centre before making our way down to a bench to watch the kites being fed. A few crows have taken to chancing their arm (wing?) for a share of the chicken pieces while the kites are still feeding. I hope that Natural Resources Wales keep this centre open, as it’s so well used by walkers, cyclists and geography students from Wolverhampton as well as the kites themselves. On our return we coaxed Thing 2 into a wetsuit and headed in for a dip.
Friday kicked off with a dip for Thing 2 and I, and then we headed back to Aberaeron with Thing 3 in tow as well. We bought pasties from Y Popty and went back down the coast to New Quay for lunch on the quayside, where we were watched intently by a hopeful seagull and a jackdaw. The dolphins and seals were nowhere to be seen, so we had an excellent ice cream and went down to Mwnt for a walk – we visited the tiny church and climbed the mwnt, then went down the steps to the beach. I love the waterfalls that parallel the stream, and the little wagtails that skip around them.
In the evening we went to the local Indian restaurant for dinner, which was delicious but also entertaining – the waitress is very local and was carrying gossip from table to table. Asking for dessert came as a surprise to them – quite possibly no one had wanted one for a while!
The drive home was much more straightforward than the drive down: we knew the A40 was closed again and so hit the M4. Less scenic but behaving itself for a change! And now back to work we go on Monday….
Things making me happy this week (other than holidays):
Helping out behind the bar at the annual school & Scouts firework display – I love fireworks, and this is always a great village event.
Working on a jigsaw with Thing 2 (we didn’t finish it so we’ll have to do it again at Christmas!)
Not politics, which seems to be loopy all over the place.
Not having to get on public transport of any kind.
And that’s it! See you next week.
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
The Spellshop – Sarah Beth Durst
Our Lady of Mysterious Ailments/The Mystery of Dungevan Castle – TL Huchu
This week my corporeal self has been in the office but my spiritual self has been journeying to Wales. Flashes of scenery from the very well-known journey have been popping up in my brain: familiar views, landmarks (not just those where my sister threw up, which is often how the family measures journeys) and glimpses into the near future. It’s been very distracting, especially while I’m trying to concentrate on things like research into illustration as a learning tool, emailing everyone I have ever met about National Illustration Day 2024 and how they can celebrate it with us, thinking about evaluation, schools programmes, funding applications and what on earth I’m going to cook for dinner. My brain is so fuzzled this week that I forgot the name of the filesharing website I needed and had to ask the team. Luckily they knew but my mind was a complete blank. Spotify has helped – our office is on a mezzanine floor above a comms company and some days it’s very loud, so I plug into a playlist and get my head down. In the ears this week have been They Might Be Giants, Rusted Root and Dolly Parton.
It hasn’t helped that Thing 1 has inherited TT2’s inability to respond to an alarm and has them going off constantly from 5am. Apparently they sink into her subconscious, but I think its more that they wake EVERYONE else up and we all go and shout at her. Not that that works either, but we feel marginally less furious.
The journey to Wales, when it finally came, gave me a LOT of time to look at the scenery. It took us five and a half hours – the usual length of the journey – to reach the border due to unexpected road closures, tractors who were thoroughly enjoying leading a holiday parade, standstill traffic on the M25 and surrounding roads. We avoided the M4 as it was a mess, and kept to the M40/A40. Once we hit Wales it was pretty plain sailing apart from another unexpected A40 closure, with no diversion signposted, and the route we found took us over Mynydd Epynt and the Epynt Range complete with vans full of soldiers in camo paint and the odd group of squaddies in full kit appearing as if from nowhere, sheep roaming the roads and big signage telling us DO NOT STOP and that the road was open to the public that day (phew). The views were amazing, and we could see the training town on the next ridge over. We eventually arrived just before 7pm after leaving Essex at 10am. The views will be lovely in daylight!
Chip butties for dinner with popcorn cockles rounded off the day. The out of office is on, we are in Wales, aaaaaand…. relax. The cottage overlooks Cardigan Bay, so hopefully we’ll see the dolphins and I can’t wait to get in the sea.
Things making me happy this week
Watching Season 4 of Slow Horses which was way too short, and starting Bad Monkey based on Carl Hiaasen’s novel. I love Vince Vaughn.
We celebrated Thing 2’s 16th birthday, with a Wiggles the Caterpillar cake (other caterpillars are available, much to M&S’s disgust) and dinner of her choice which this year was tacos.
Seeing skies full of stars in the mornings and London at dawn, with the ludicrously Gothic old Prudential Assurance Building looking at me as I exit Chancery Lane station
Late Autumn sunshine, although it makes dressing tricksy.
Sunday finds me sitting here in my DIY dryrobe, thermal socks and warm layers after the first winter swim of the season – 12 degrees in the water and about 10 out and after two loops round the first buoy I was definitely feeling my edges. Feeling amazing, also, but that 3 degree drop since my last lake swim is noticeable.
Anyway, I am back from my half term holiday and ready to face what looks like a mad month building up to National Illustration Day, after which I will need another holiday. Logo design with Lena Yokoyama has been carrying on without me and the outcome is celebratory and joyful and gorgeous and we can’t wait to put it out into the world, hopefully before the teacher’s CPD on Wednesday evening.
We headed off to Wales on Monday, having packed extremely lightly – apart from traffic on the M25 (hurray for SatNav detours) we had a clear run through with only a brief stop for lunch in Luigi’s in Abergavenny. The mountain views through Bannau Brycheiniog (also known as the Brecon Beacons) were spectacular as ever, although Things 2 (Phenergan) and 3 (Stugeron) slept through it all, leaving Aunty Tan and me to spot red kites, hares, the odd deer and a lot of sheep on our own. We arrived in Llangrannog around five, met a friendly cat and the kids went down to see the sea while we unloaded the car.
We were staying in Bryn-y-Mor Isaf, a lovely little cottage in the village – Thing 2 decided she’d rather bunk in with me than her brother, but at least the bed was kingsize and she sleeps like the proverbial log. Once she is out, she is out. Thing 3 stayed in the twin room while Aunty Tan had the first floor double. There was a comfortable sitting room which the kids were banned from taking drinks into after a hot chocolate disaster, bult luckily there was a comprehensive cleaning kit which the leaving instructions were very clear about using. I’m not sure I’ve ever stayed in a cottage where we were instructed to strip beds and clean every surface – not that we made much of a mess, being the nicely brought up children that we are, but we were a bit surprised.
Day one, Tuesday, was a mix of sunshine and showers – there were a few jigsaws in the house so the children and I worked on a couple of those together. Thing 3 has always loved a puzzle, and Thing 2 was inexorably sucked in as the puzzles progressed. Tan and I went for a walk up onto the cliff path, where we were excited to spot a couple of dolphins playing just off shore. We all went in the sea in the afternoon: Tan was very taken with her new wetsuit, which she discovered made her very buoyant (not her usual state of being in the water).
Things went downhill in the evening when Thing 3 came down with a stomach bug and spent the night throwing up every hour or so – at 22 minutes past the hour every time, which meant I was running up and down the stairs a lot. He’d been sharing a drink with Thing 2 on the previous day, so the rest of the week was a bit of a waiting game to see when she’d succumb and a fervent hope that Tan and I wouldn’t.
Wednesday started for me with a well-deserved solo swim – four widths of the beach which we worked out to be about 400m. I followed that with a late morning nap with the sun on my back through the skylight, and then Thing 2, Tan and I went to Y Caban for fish and chips for lunch, followed by ice cream and a walk on the beach where about a dozen dolphins were playing quite close in to the shore. Tan and I had a late afternoon swim, with a seal bobbing about near the rocks which was amazing.
In the evening I stupidly clicked the Tube Map Memory Game that a couple of my friends had shared on Facebook and that was it for a few hours – I got to about 64% on my own and then enlisted Tan, and between us we got to 88.8%. There’s one station on the Hainault loop of the Central Line that I can’t recall, and we’ve nailed inner London, but the Overground, the western reaches of the Lizzie line, and a chunk of South London is beyond us. We started watching the latest series of Bake Off, while I crocheted and Thing 3 snuggled under a duvet and felt sorry for himself.
Thursday found us in Aberaeron, where the kids tried crabbing (unsuccessfully – not a single nibble!), we ate pasties from Y Popty and had honey ice cream while walking along the harbour. Tan and I snuck off and had hot chocolate while watching the surfers from the beach shelter, and the kids didn’t even notice we hadn’t followed them into the house.
Late in the afternoon we ventured back into the sea – the surf was up and there were a fair few people on boards. We borrowed a pair of bodyboards from the garage of the house and remembered how much fun they are. Where the tide was coming in, there were cross currents so wave jumping became a challenge and the last one dumped me comprehensively, followed by another while I was trying to get up – luckily I have a sister who at least will help me up while we’re laughing like fools. We went stargazing in the evening, spotting Jupiter and various constellations.
At 2.22 on Friday Thing 2 started throwing up, but at least she was quieter than her brother. Hers was a shorter but more intense experience, and she was wiped out for the rest of the day. Aunty Tan took Thing 3 off to Tresaith to see the waterfall and then off for chips and ice cream on the beach while I crashed on the sofa.
I joined Tan on the beach in the afternoon, where we watched Bob the Seal swimming around the surfers – the tide is building up to the big one next week so the surf was well and truly up, with some spectacular rides coming off. After sausages and mash for dinner we went back to the beach for what turned out to be a very high tide: the waves were coming up into the car park and throwing sand and stones onto the road. The pub had its steel shutters in place, and the fool who had parked in the area clearly marked ‘Keep Clear’ had to come and move his car as it was at risk of being damaged. Cars driving along the front had to wait for waves to break before moving forwards, and the booms as the waves smashed into the cliffs were enormous. More Bake Off followed, and then Tan insisted on watching the rugby – a quiet night was then had by all, thank heavens!
And here we are, back at home and ready for November! And I’ve already finished the laundry.
Other things making me happy this week:
Tiny crocheted Christmas stockings
Lots of reading (see below)…
…including the latest Elly Griffiths novel
A new flavour of Haagen-Daz to try
And that’s it for me! This week is a rollercoaster…so I am off to make the most of what’s left of the weekend.
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
Rivers of London 11.4: Here Be Dragons – Ben Aaronovitch et al
Well, here I am back on my sofa with freezing toes after a lake swim – the parents are probably basking in the post-grandchildren peace. Happy birthday to my Dad, who has been impressed by my afternoon nap skills for the last week although is now probably relieved to get his favoured sofa back. We’ve had a lovely week in France: the kids have put away their entire bodyweight in baguettes (daily), Aunty Tan has scienced at them, and the cupboard is stocked with Nutella.
Sunday: after a marathon sleep (even I crashed for the best part of ten hours) followed by an enormous breakfast we had a peaceful day, dragging the Horde out for a walk along the Blavet in the afternoon to stretch their legs a bit. We said ‘bonjour’ to everyone we met (because that’s what you do), saw cormorants and listened to the coypu shouting, and explored the little beach below the lock. I even managed to take some photos of the Horde where they aren’t pulling faces. We walked downstream to the little bar (closed) and back, which is around 5k. The Horde surprised me by wolfing down Dad’s coq au vin – anything in a sauce was unheard of a couple of years ago, so this is progress indeed.
Sneaky photo of kidsCormorantMore cormorants
Monday: after another marathon breakfast (I have never seen croissants disappear so fast) we headed for Pontivy to the Lantern Rouge, a buffet restaurant offering saveurs d’Asie. If there was a prawn in it, Thing 2 tried it. Over the week she also tried Patagonian garlic scallops, crab rillettes, galettes, camembert (she’s already hooked on Brie), Port Salut and pretty much anything else on offer. From a very early age she has always been my foodie child – if you took her eye off her in a restaurant she’d be peering solemnly at other people’s dinners over the edge of their table. Her Aunty compares her expression at these moments to the T-rex in Jurassic Park – “clever girl!” I think it’s more like the Velociraptors in the kitchen.
Later that day they explored a French clothes shop where they were spoiled by their granny, Decathlon where Thing 3 spent his birthday money on ‘cool trainers’, and they got to go to a supermarket where we were all overexcited by shelves with no gaps in them, fresh vegetables and the sheer variety on show.
Tuesday: saw the beginning of my vendetta against the angry cockerel over the road, who started crowing about 6am and just kept going. He was very lucky I didn’t turn him into a chicken casserole, quite frankly, as this anti-social behaviour continued all week. Dad described me as a little oasis of calm when he came down: audio book on and embroidery in hand while I enjoyed the peace before the chaos.
After breakfast Tan and I decided we’d get in a bit of training and headed off on a walk along the river – the plan was to do 90 minutes and then turn round and come back. We covered just over 10 miles, with a total elevation gain of a whole 6m, which of course is the joy of walking along a nice flat river. The return journey was downhill all the way…
We saw loads of cormorants, herons and various birds of prey, practised with our walking poles, snacked on Tribe bars and coffee, and bonjoured everyone we passed. The river was so still it was throwing off perfect reflections of the trees.
After a nap (me) we dragged Things 2 and 3 off for another walk to the lock and back, and were delighted to see the bridge lizards out enjoying the sunshine. Less fun was Thing 3, who appeared after his shower…
‘Aunty Tan, we have a….situation…’ This turned out to be a shower disaster, where he’d managed to create a waterfall with the shower curtain which flooded not only the bathroom but the sous-sol underneath, where water was pouring through the ceiling. It took many towels, mum, Tan and I to mop up and he was restricted to baths for the rest of the week.
Wednesday: the temperature hit 17 degrees and we – along with lots of French families – hit the beach at Port-Louis. Only one idiot went in the sea though. The kids explored rock pools and collected seaglass and shells, and we walked along by the fort to see the Resistance memorial.
In the evening we ate at the Vieux Bon Temps in Baud: galettes galore, and a burger for Thing 3. The kids were impressed with the flambe-ing of the dessert pancakes (grown ups only!).
Thursday: another early start thanks to that damned chicken, but I did get to finish the embroidery. Later on, abandoning the Horde to their grandpere, mum, Tan and I headed off to visit Barbara (hello Barbara!) who likes reading my blogs, and we put the world to rights over coffee before heading off to pick up dinner and other bits and bobs. UK Lidls always feel a bit grubby, but French ones are shiny and full of exciting biscuits so I stocked up. I also got some chouquettes for the Horde to try – not choucroute, which they would not have appreciated. The boulangerie was chaos, but the religieuse made it worth it, and the bread was amazing.
Wonderful Women – Swimming (kit by Hawthorn Handmade)
The rain set in over the afternoon so we stayed in and relaxed (I had a nap) and hoped for better weather the following day…
Friday: having asked the kids what they wanted to do (a choice of a visit to Vannes to see a historic town or Larmor-Plage for the beach). The decision was unanimous, so we headed off to Vannes where Thing 3 had a s Nutella crepe, Mum and I had kouign amman and Things 1 & 2 showed no interest whatsoever in the beautiful historic buildings. Sometimes I am not sure they are mine.
View from the Ramparts at Vannes
Saturday:I frogged all the crochet I had done over the week as it was too small, after another cockerel alarm woke me at 6am. Damn. The journey back to Calais was mainly uneventful apart from some patchy fog – and we even got put on a slightly earlier train much to the perturbation of the man in the car behind us who clocked that he was Z and we were A, and therefore why were we on the train ahead of him? The terminal was packed with post-half term returners, many of whom were sporting ski racks and snarfing down Burger King. It was reassuring to note that all teenagers in cars seem to sport the same stroppy faces as my own dear Horde….
The cats were pleased to see us, I think – Thing 3 was definitely pleased to see them…
Back to school/work tomorrow! See you next week…
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
Dead Beat/Proven Guilty – Jim Butcher
Jingo/The Fifth Elephant – Terry Pratchett (Audible)
Family favourite films watched – Young Frankenstein, City Slickers, The Princess Bride
I have just woken up from the longest sleep I have had in what feels like FOREVER, probably aided by the fact that yesterday London sister (aka Aunty Tan), the Things and I waved off my Beloved at 5am and headed off to France to see my parents (aka Granny and Grandpere, depending on who you’re talking to). They’ve been living in Brittany for almost 20 years, enjoying retirement with the aid of good wine and excellent baked goods.
The view from the Pont in Pont Augan yesterday evening
Specifically, they are in the Blavet valley, in a tiny village bisected by the river which is currently not in flood so Tan and I have some walking planned this week. I have also rather optimistically brought my swimming kit – neoprene boots and gloves, a woolly hat and my bathers – in the hope that we’ll pop over to Port Louis, where there’s a restaurant serving excellent hot chocolate right on the beach.
The last time we were out here was when Thing 3 was about 2, and he turned 12 last weekend so it’s been a while – in the intervening years we have all gathered in West Wales with Irish sister and her family instead but thanks to Covid this is the first time we have seen my parents since 2018. Zoom and Skype just aren’t the same.
Things 1 and 2 now loom over their Granny and it won’t be long till Thing 3 joins them, especially if he keeps eating the way he is! He’s just had a growth spurt and is now taller than his aunty and catching me up fast. Soon only the cats will be shorter than me, as the Things like to tell me.
Anyway – we were on the 7.35 crossing from Folkestone to Calais, and arrived in Pont Augan about 4.30 after a picnic lunch just past Caen. Travel sickness pills meant the kids slept most of the way, waking up only to demand a sherbet lemon or chocolate lime (travel sweets of choice) and so Tan and I could sing along to the travel playlist and spot a LOT of birds of prey who were perching on posts all along the roadsides. Sparrowhawks, buzzards, kestrels, a merlin and a hobby, and even some harriers – the cloud and fog were keeping them at ground level but once we crossed into Brittany and the sun came out (justifying Tan wearing her sunglasses on her head since 5am) we started to see them soaring instead. The kids were supremely uninterested, but there we are.
The Things and I went for a quick walk to stretch our legs and see the goats before dinner (lasagne – a traditional welcome from Mum). Thing 2 made friends with the dog next door and we wandered over to the bridge and back to see the river. Bed was before 9pm for everyone… Today will be a quiet day, I think!
Seconds later the dog had all 4 paws in the air for tummy rubs
So, the out of office is on and I am looking forward to a week of downtime. I have brought a new crochet project and some embroidery, the kindle is stocked and no one is to ask me anything about storage, interactives or museums in general.
Thing 1 has just surfaced and informed me that she misses the cats, but unlike when her brother got homesick at Scout camp for the same reason I don’t think her dad will drive to collect her. Of 2 and 3 there is no sign as yet. Happy half term!
In the other direction…
What else?
DPD and Parcelfleet joined Evri on the list of couriers from hell – Addison Lee are on a last warning.
I did finish my crochet socks though. I love a crochet sock.
Pattern is Magdalen Sock by Vicki Brown, main yarn is Lovecrafts Paintbox Sock
And that goes for this blog too…I’m typing this listening to the tide coming in over the beach at Llangrannog, West Wales, drinking a Tarquin’s Black Cherry gin and tonic. London sister, Things 2&3 and I are here for the week and my plan is to dip in the sea as much as I can, to sleep and not think about work (other than to think positive thoughts about the rest of the learning team in half term hell).
West Wales is my heart home, where I feel happiest in all the world. So I’m getting my fix!
Other things that have made me happy this week:
A day with a colleague at M-Shed in Bristol, where we spoke at the annual Dress and Textile Specialists conference
School assemblies with Really Big Pants Theatre, causing chaos with spacehoppers
Giving people handmade gifts
Trains. I like train journeys.
And now I’m signing off… Have a good week, all of you, and normal service will resume next Sunday.
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
Tuesday Mooney Wore Black – Kate Racculia
Doctor Who: Tales of Trenzalore/Twelfth Doctor Tales (Audible)
I confess to being a little bit down as I write this, as – had it not been for some pandemic or other – I should be tapping away on my tablet, sitting in the garden of a farmhouse in sunny Pembrokeshire surrounded by my family, some of whom I haven’t seen for two years. Yesterday my mum and dad would have arrived from France, my far-away sister and brother-in-law and their children from Northern Ireland, my London sister from the other side of of the M25, and my beloved and I and the children from Essex. We’d be planning a day on the beach at Newport or Newgale, or a mooch around St David’s or Fishguard, making a stack of sandwiches and coffee and counting the windbreaks. At some point in the week we would have seen the extended Wales family of cousins and hopefully my beloved’s Welsh family as well. Instead, here I am in rainy Essex, suffering from mosquito bites after a bike ride on Friday (how do they bite through leggings? How?) and waiting for the kids to emerge from the tent demanding Sunday pancakes. I bear a strong resemblance to Tove Jansson’s Little My in temperament today.
Friday marked the end of the school year for Things 2 and 3, and for Thing 2 also her final year of primary school as she will join Thing 1 at secondary in September. The school organised a socially distanced leavers’ assembly on Friday morning, so they didn’t miss out on all the usual events: yearbooks, a chance to sign each other’s T-shirts (not while they were wearing them for a change!) and to see their friends. Thing 2 is not going to our local large secondary, and she won’t be in the same school as most of her little gang so it was quite a sad moment for her. I think the teachers have definitely earned their summer holiday this year (as they do every year, of course) but this year some won’t have had a break since February half term, and their heads are probably spinning with all the things they have had to adapt to – remote teaching and pastoral care, social bubbles, and much more. I have said this before but I really hope that people start recognising the amazing work teachers do not just this year but every year – and trust them to do what’s best for our kids rather than scapegoating them.
Thing 1 had a birthday last week – she was 14 – and despite a few wobbly moments of anxiety leading up to it I think she had fun. Two of her friends came over and they had a cake picnic in the park, frightening the local youngsters with their mad hair, and taking a lot of selfies. She had her undercut dyed pink on Friday – one of the good things about lockdown is that it’s allowed her to ‘experiment with her aesthetic’ (as she tells me) without the restrictions of school uniform requirements. It’s done wonders for her confidence, and I am loving the baby Goth look she’s developed – I have serious envy of her birthday-money shoes! My hands are still tinged with hot pink from the dye-fest – I did her older sister’s hair too, and forgot the gloves.
Baby goth – Hello Kitty Gothcore, I am told.
I was abandoned on Thursday by my walking buddy, who had a bad back. I went out solo and enjoyed the sunshine on a four mile ramble through the lanes and fields on one of my favourite routes past Dial House and North Weald Redoubt. The hedgerows and verges are now showing the fruits of the flowers from earlier in the season, and they’re alive with insects still – ladybirds and crickets, and so many butterflies (none of whom would stay still long enough to photograph).
Fruits and insects
There’s also a new set of wildflowers popping up – the bank of willowherb on the farm track is a luscious wall of pink, and the purple of thistles and vetch is lovely.
Even the nettles and thistles have their party frocks on
Back to the title – what’s that all about?
The Case of the Disappearing Nine Patch..
I’m a reader. A big reader. A REALLY big reader. One of the first things I did when I started uni both in Preston and in Aberystwyth and when I moved on to London and Essex later was to find and join the local library. I can sniff out a second hand bookshop or charity shop at a hundred paces. When I visit you, if you leave me alone in your living room I’ll be snooping your bookshelves. I am that person on your Zoom meeting who’s peering past you at the bookshelves. The joy of finding a fellow series fan is unbounded – meeting a fellow Pratchett fan in the wild, noticing a Rivers of London reader on the Tube, those who know the significance of the number 42. (The museum world is a good place to find these people, by the way). We be of one blood, you and I.
But the first series I really got into – I mean, really got into – was Nancy Drew way back in the early 80s. I read them all from the library, snapped them up on market stalls, bought them when they went on the discarded stock shelf. Classic Nancy – not the later series. One of my best sewing buddies was introduced to me first as ‘Ah, Alli likes Nancy Drew too – you two will get on really well’. (We do) I wondered what happened to them all when I left home and then a couple of years ago a younger cousin messaged me and asked if I wanted them back. Why yes, I said, the kids might like them.
Who was I kidding? *I* wanted them back. I wanted to read them all again. I wanted to immerse myself in the adventures of the titian-haired detective, her tomboyish friend George and Bess, the girly one. Cool coupes! Lawyer dad Carson! Ned Nickerson, the handsome boyfriend! Honestly, that girl could not go anywhere without falling over a clue, a secret, a mystery of some kind, which she would solve with her loyal girlfriends and her brilliant deductive skills. I never trip over mysteries – except the old ‘where did all the money go this month’ one that we all encounter once we hit adulthood.
So just as soon as I finish my current series, I am opening up that box of delights and taking a trip back to my childhood.
That sort of childhood passion doesn’t really go away, of course, and I still have a sneaky fondness for ‘girl detectives’ though they (and I) are much older now. I’m currently working my way through the wonderful V I Warshawski novels by Sara Paretsky. I first encountered VI at uni, where I was reading American Studies and Indemnity Only was one of the texts on a unit called ‘Images of the City in the American Mind’. VI is a tougher, more streetwise version of Nancy, who fights for the underdog against corporate America. The joy of Kindle is that I don’t have to wait for the library to reopen, of course, to catch up on the later ones.
VI opened up a world of grown up ‘girl’ detective novels – I won’t go into them all in detail but here’s some of my favourites:
Kinsey Millhone by Sue Grafton. I am heartbroken that the author died before ‘Z’ was published.
Stephanie Plum by Janet Evanovich. Brilliant cast of comic characters.
Ruth Galloway novels by Elly Griffiths (and an honourable mention for her Stephens and Mephisto books too)
Carlotta Carlyle by Linda Barnes. Tough Boston PI who drives a cab on the side.
Rev. Merrily Watkins by Phil Rickman. Set in Herefordshire, so makes visits home a bit spooky at times.
Kate Shugak novels by Dana Stabenow. Alaska! Moose! Bears!
Mentions also for Dr Temperance Brennan, Bubbles Yablonsky, Trixie Belden, Jimm Juree and Precious Ramotswe.
I don’t limit myself to girl detectives, of course, but my heart will always hold a sneaky place for these feisty, clever, quick-thinking females.
Their male counterparts will have to wait for another day, but will probably include Harry Bosch, Marcus Didius Falco, Brother Cadfael, Dave Robicheaux, John Rebus, Dr Siri Paiboun, Bryant and May, DI Thomas Lynley, and Richard Jury. Perhaps detectives and their sidekicks are a whole other topic…
If they come with a side-order of the supernatural, so much the better! I’d better come back to that one as well.
Where did that nine patch disappear to?
It hasn’t disappeared at all, really – it’s the name of the quilt block I ended up using this week. Its not one from the book I mentioned last week, or any of my quilt pattern books, but one that popped up on my daily digest from Bloglovin’.
I’d spent a couple of days trying to decide what to do with the blue charm packs I’d bought, and had pretty much decided to go with basic squares again. I discarded the brighter blue solids and some of the prints, as they didn’t quite fit, so I was left with teal, candy blue, buttermilk and buttercup for solids. I still wasn’t entirely happy with the basic layout so I didn’t start to stitch them together – and I’m glad I didn’t! So I grabbed some of the leftovers from the row layout and did a test block, then abandoned the rows entirely in favour of these nine-patches.
Test block
Since each row had been sorted for colour already, I started to build the nine-patches from the rows, making sure I had one of each solid colour in the block with five different print patches. I ended up with 20 blocks, which I trimmed to 12″ squares before stitching them together to make the final quilt top. Some of the patches had directional prints which limited which way up they could go (in my head, anyway).
Spot the block I put together wrong…
I really like the way this has come together. It needs a border as it’s not quite wide enough, but I think I have enough neutral solids left to make one, and it’ll need to be backed and quilted before it’s finished. I’ll be backing it with a large curtain I picked up in a charity shop ages ago, so I won’t need to piece a backing.
This week I am going to finish the commission dolls, try open water swimming with friends, try some more drawing, and try not to feel too out of sorts about not being in Wales. At least school is over…
See you at end of week eighteen.
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading
V I Warshawski series (only 1 more to go!) – Sara Paretsky
Last Act in Palmyra – Falco series by Lindsey Davis
What Kirsty did next 