The last couple of months have been bringing home to me how fast the Things are growing up, not just physically (as I crane my neck to look up at them) but in what they are up to. I think I have been deep in denial that Thing 1 is actually planning to leave home in just a couple of short months, to head off to university to do Early Childhood Studies. Thing 2 is revising hard for her GCSEs and had an interview for a professional cookery course at a local college this week. Thing 3 is making his GCSE choices and wanting to join gyms and things.
It does make me feel a bit wistful looking up at them all, especially when the digital photo frames show ‘on this day’ pictures of when they were small: using their dad as a climbing frame, charging off into their first deep snow in the local park, picking me bunches of bright dandelions on the way to the shops, ‘gumping in muddy buddles’ in their ladybird wellies, being hopelessly overexcited at a toy train, being the Littlest Gruff on daddy’s lap at storytime. I still have their first shoes and their first tiny Welsh rugby shirts stashed in my wardrobe, of course, and locks of hair from their first haircuts*. There are certain photos which make my heart melt every time they pop up.
Now I look at Thing 3’s shoes (size 12!) and Thing 1’s varying hair colours. Thing 2 still picks flowers but is now more likely to press them and turn them into art than clutch them all around the town. It used to take ages to get anywhere as she was so engrossed in looking at all the small things. Thing 3 used to make us stop at every lamp post where he’d say ‘that sign means lightning! If there is lightning you must not go in the garden because you will DIE’. It took a while to get to nursery. Thing 1 used to talk to the meerkats that lived in Daddy’s shoes, which was a bit disconcerting but there you are. Who were we to say that there weren’t meerkats in his trainers? Imagination is one of the best things about being a small person, building the world the way you want it – I think if they get to exercise it when they’re small it’s good practice for improving the world when they’re older. I think we’re going to need the imagineers in the next couple of years.
Obviously I know in my head that kids are supposed to grow up (I plan on trying it some time myself) and leave home and be their own people and all that sort of caper, but it seems to have come round terribly quickly and without much consultation. I’m not sure I like it but apparently it’s not up to me….
*Thing 2 is reading over my shoulder as she revises and just said ‘urrgghhh, you kept our hair?’ She’ll learn.
Last week’s post being flagged as not meeting some tech corporation’s community standards – AHAHAHA. Like Captain Vimes says, if you’re annoying the right people you’re doing things properly.
The V&A Academy’s online ‘In Practice’ series – last Monday I did Ekta Kaul’s Stitching Nature session and had an enjoyable evening doing embroidery..
Meeting lots of lovely ex-colleagues from Young V&A as I was in Bethnal Green for a meeting.
Turning a Vicki Brown Designs yarn advent sock yarn set into piles of squishy granny squares. Eleven colours down, 23 to go. She designs gorgeous sock patterns too. Sock yarns are too nice to go inside shoes though.
Making some progress on last year’s temperature tracker which I hadn’t touched since August as I put it down in favour of Christmas crochet. Only four months to go…
The prospect of a lot of baguettes, canalside walks and a week off.
Well, gang, it’s been a while since I had to get up on this particular soapbox, but here we are again. This time it has a positive outcome but quite frankly it should never have been an issue in the first place, it being 2024 and all that.
I should probably include a trigger warning here for workplace bullying, sexual harassment, self harm and fury. Skip to the happy list at the end if you like. I won’t mind. Honest.
Thing 1 has been working for the last month or so at the local pub, where she and her best friend do a mix of kitchen and front of house shifts. Another of her friends, a lad she was at school with, also works in the kitchen. It came to light that she really wasn’t enjoying the kitchen shifts, and neither were her friends, due to another, older, member of staff who was making sexually inappropriate comments to these two teenage girls and bullying the boy. Not in front of other staff, of course, but in that nasty underhand way that bullies have, trying to make his other victims complicit in his behaviour – presumably with a sense of relief that they weren’t on the receiving end for a change, because that’s how bullies work. He commented on Thing 1’s self-harm scars and ‘advised’ her on more effective methods, and made explicit comments on the girls’ physical appearance. He threatened to get them all sacked and screamed at the boy so loudly in the kitchen it could be heard in the bar.
One evening last week they got together and approached their manager, with video evidence of an incident and detailed everything else that had gone on. The manager – also the father of a teenage daughter, but I would hope his reaction would have been the same anyway – offered the girls the chance to speak to his wife if it made them more comfortable, or for his wife to join the conversation. He didn’t make them make a statement, which is supposed to be procedure at the company. The bully was sacked the next day for gross misconduct and it’s been made very clear to all the staff that bullying of any kind is not acceptable.
I’m very proud of them for standing up for themselves, but furious (mama bear again) that yet again Thing 1 has been subjected to bullying and inappropriate behaviour. Having been the victim of bullying at work when I was a young teacher, I’m aware of just how long-lasting the effects can be, how damaging it can be to your confidence, and I didn’t want this to be her impression of what work is. I’m also pleased the manager’s response wasn’t to ‘have a chat with him’ as it was when I reported sexual harassment to an HR team in the first museum I worked in. It also demonstrates the power of working together – forming their own little union, if you like, and making things better for everyone.
My baby bird has come a long way since the incident a couple of years ago with the local business owner, and I am glad that the lack of action by the CPS on that occasion didn’t deter her from reporting this, but oh, how I wish that this sh*t (sorry Dad) wasn’t still happening in the first place.
Interesting online things – mentoring training for working with young people who want to get into the creative industries, and one on workplace wellbeing.
A good day at Copped Hall last Sunday, despite Thing 2 being convinced her feet were going to fall off. Converse are not good cold weather shoes.
Making crochet French Fancies. With google eyes.
Idris Elba’s In The Long Run, his comedy series loosely based on his East London childhood. At the same time I was reading Lenny Henry’s autobiography, set a decade earlier, but detailing his experiences growing up in the Black Country as a Caribbean migrant. There’s probably some clever comparison I can make but mostly Lenny Henry’s made me quite sad. Word of warning – Netflix have listed In The Long Run backwards so we watched series 3, then 2, then one and were very confused.
Brassic, which has gone from strength to strength as the series (serieses?) have progressed.
Bemused by Lulu-cat’s personality change in the last few weeks. She’s taken to shouting at us and demanding food loudly, herding us in a most Bailey-like fashion.
This has been a fairly chaotic week, what with one thing and another, juggling family, work and finally a mercifully brief (as long as I don’t move too fast) bout of vertigo.
Thing 1, as I have mentioned before, is doing one of those new-fangled T-level things, in Education and Early Years. After a rough start at Harlow College doing a beauty course which she didn’t enjoy, she began the T-level course and got a A in her first year. A large part of the course is practical, spent on placement in an early years setting. Last year she was in a setting in Harlow, which meant the better part of 3 hours travel every day at the mercy of her inability to get up despite approximately a million alarms and an erratic bus service. This year, she got a placement in our local town, which you’d think would be a good thing – except it was the one school locally where I didn’t want her to go, as when she was a pupil there she was badly bullied. The school were unhelpful to say the least, telling me that she – as the victim – had to take some responsibility for being bullied. I have never come so close to thumping someone as an adult in my life – I was literally speechless, and anyone who knows me will be aware that that does not happen often.
Her anxiety stems from this experience, so I was worried that going back there would trigger a crisis. She felt that she would be OK, but the two reception teachers made it clear that they had no use for a student and weren’t allowing her to plan and deliver the activities her course required. She was also very distressed about their handling of a child with behavioural issues and children crying (these are four years olds who have been in school for a matter of weeks). I have long held that this particular school is not supportive of children with additional needs, and I still wish I’d removed Thing 1 before the end of primary. Things 2 and 3 changed school when Thing 1 went to secondary, and it was one of the best decisions I’ve made – if your child’s only complaint on their first day is that people tried to play with her and ‘they didn’t even introduce themselves!’ I think it’s a good sign.
Luckily her tutors were supportive, especially as Thing 1 had already raised the child with a behavioural issue as a safeguarding concern with them, and they have helped her to find a new placement with a lovely local school. She’s been talking over the last few months about going to university and has expressed an interest in working with children with SEND, which I think she would be great at (obviously I am biased, but) and I really don’t want her to have a negative experience before she’s had the chance to find out what she wants to do. (My own final teaching practice began with the teacher saying ‘You can’t be a teacher in a year, I don’t know why you’re bothering’… and it went downhill from there.) The relief I am feeling and the gratitude to the local head for making an exception and taking an additional student this year are enormous. I know she’s 18 and all that, but I am pretty sure there’s no age limit to the mama bear instinct.
A visit to the Charles Dickens Museum on Wednesday – I took their learning person on a tour of the New River Head site (Dickens was a New River Company customer, it seems – even back then people were complaining about the water companies. Dickens paid for a bath-sized cistern but it was never full enough) and then we went for a return visit.
Later that evening the vertigo started – I probably shouldn’t have gone to work on Thursday but it was World Mental Health Day and I’d organised a team lunch and made banana and Malteser cake. The journey home was not fun, I can tell you that much. Luckily the cats kept me company all afternoon and Thing 2 looked after me.
An extremely slow walk around the Knitting and Stitching Show with Heather on our annual pilgrimage to Ally Pally – I didn’t buy anything at all, which is a first, and we remembered to take our packed lunches. We saw many Bees, including Luke who won this year’s GBSB, and I met some lovely textile illustrators. The Subversive Stitcher, who had an amazing exhibition of vintage tea towels in the foyer, was a favourite, and Harriet Riddell‘s amazing embroidered portraits and scenes. We liked Richard Box’s gorgeously tactile hares and flowers, too. The show had a couple of years when the big exhibitors didn’t attend but it seems to be back on form now – the graduate showcases and quilt exhibitions are always worth a look too.
Lots of making for today’s Apple Day at Copped Hall. Thing 2 is helping me out again, and we may have to be ‘those people’ in dryrobes as the temperature is looking autumnal.
You may detect a distinctly festive theme to the making, as I have just heard I have a stall at this year’s Epping Christmas Market, but there’s autumnal ones too…
I like sleep. I’m a big fan of it, quite frankly, and am willing to embrace it at the drop of an eyelid. Lockdown was brilliant, as I was on furlough, it was really hot and I could have siestas in my hammock whenever I wanted. Weekends almost always include a good nap or two. At night I like to read a bit (until the book falls out of my hands, usually) and then snuggle down with whichever cat happens to be on hot water bottle duty until the alarm goes off.
The hot water bottle on International Cat Day this week
One of the most annoying bits about menopause – which was saying something, given the rest of the symptoms – was the constant waking up at stupid o’clock and not being able to go back to sleep, but the patches seem to have sorted that out. Sleeping with earplugs has also helped enormously. My Beloved claims that earplugs aren’t helping him as he can still hear me snoring, but he can always get his own.
However, so far no one has made a patch that reduces wakefulness due to stress (the first of our National Lottery Heritage Fund community co-design projects starts this week, and what if no one turns up? I haven’t booked the transport yet! Is the bus big enough? What if it’s a total disaster? What if no one comes to the last day which is the really important one? What have I forgotten? What if too many turn up for the bus who didn’t RSVP? Argh! ).
There isn’t a patch to deal with having an 18 year old daughter on the loose in London with her friends, either. Thing 1 has embraced raving and has been off to South London (of all places!) a few times since her birthday. I am not sure why I am more concerned with her going to Vauxhall or Lambeth than when she goes to Camden, but there we are. We give her the lecture every week: no sex, no drugs, no sausage rolls (on the basis that rock’n’roll is in short supply at raves, but there might well be a hot dog seller or a 24 hour Greggs to hand). She’s quite sensible, we think, and we know she’s got a getting home plan and she’s with her friend from the village, but STILL. It’s my job.
At this point my mother is cackling away in her little village in Gaul and muttering about karma. I see you, mother. Don’t deny it.
A couple of evening walks with Thing 2 through the fields and woods between our village and the next. There were deer, we startled a badger on his dusk patrol up near the fishing lake, gorgeous waterlilies.
I say walk – my Achilles has been playing up so more of a hobble. Still, I made it to week 5 on the C25k before it went. However, this evening it went ‘pop’ which Google assures me is not a good sign.
A day at the Peel/Three Corners Street Party – bubbles, dogs to make friends with (including a puppy who’d never seen bubbles before and kept trying to catch them), a DJ playing excellent tunes, lots of people interested in our project.
Saturday with my gazebo, touting my wares at a local church fundraiser. Sold a few bits and bobs, talked to lots of nice people and cut out a lot of paper hexagons for an English Paper Piecing project while sitting in a pretty graveyard. I love a graveyard, as you know.
Hydrangeas flowering nicely thanks to no intervention from me
The prospect of a few days off and a new dress pattern.
Apple cakes using my mum’s recipe, making use of the windfalls in the garden.
Early doors walk with Jill on Friday, putting the world to rights and plotting dastardly deeds.
Progress on the kantha-inspired bag which I keep forgetting to take photos of.
And that’s it from me – next week I’ll try and remember to take photos, as I’m off with a load of families to Kew Gardens. If they turn up. And if the bus is big enough.
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
Still Life – Val McDermid
Joe Country/Down Cemetery Road – Mick Herron
The Diary of a Secret Tory MP – The Secret Tory MP
It’s Saturday evening and I am surrounded by small children jumping on and off the sofa and my stool as we run through my repertoire of counting songs, from monkeys jumping on the bed to frogs sitting on a log. We’ve exhausted Alexa’s store of jokes (turns out she doesn’t know any jokes about Transformers, much to Grandthing 1’s disgust) and all her fart noises. She’s now ‘having a rest’ (aka ‘Granny turned off the microphone’) and the kids are being kittens. The garden’s full of the Things and the Timeshare Teenagers – or Timeshare Twentysomethings now – and their partners, and various of their friends have been drifting in and out over the day as we do ‘open door’ parenting. If they know there’s a welcome for them and all their friends in easy times, they know the door will always be open when things get tough.
Our little blended family is expanding at the moment, and it brings me much joy: TT1’s partner has a little girl the same age as GT1 (they’re the ones being cats) and the pair of them are very much looking forward to being big brother and sister to the twins when they arrive in a few weeks’ time. This little girl loves Lilo and Stitch, collects snails and has an endless imagination. She’s a water baby and spent all afternoon in the pool splashing about. Turns out Grannies always have enough love to go around, although I think we’re going to need a minibus for the next family day out.
Airconditioning on the Elizabeth Line. Especially when the Central Line is up to its old tricks again
Running – I’m up to week five on the couch to 5k plan and while the 8 minute blocks came as a shock to the system today I still enjoyed it!
A day at the Royal College of Art with a colleague talking to the MA Visual Communications students -one of them told me that my talk had helped him decide what he wanted to do next. It’s nice to be a good influence instead of a terrible warning sometimes.
Also, they have a nice fernery in the middle of the college, with huge tree ferns, and the roof terrace has a view of the Albert Hall
Some gorgeous and much needed evening swims with Sue and a lot of ducks
Slow stitching on a felt hoop – a Corinne Lapierre kit of toadstools and ferns – at home, and on the sari silk patchwork bag on the tube.
The film of Paul Gallico’s book Flowers for Mrs Harris – they didn’t ruin it, hurray!
Sourdough crumpets – thanks to London sister Tan for the recipe, which is a winner
Now I’d better go and sort out tomorrow’s batch of bread….
Same time next week then,
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
The Stones of Green Knowe – Lucy M.Boston
London Rules/Nobody Walks/Down Cemetery Road/Joe Country – Mick Herron
Easter is here already, and I am relieved of the responsibility of getting anyone out of bed other than me for the next two weeks. This makes me quite cheerful. While I am known for being generally quite chirpy of a morning, this is only the case if I am allowed to have a cup of coffee and half an hour (at least) of solitary reading before I am expected to engage with anyone else. Having to coax various offspring out of their pits before my happy face is in place is known to test the bounds of my patience, and brings on what London sister refers to as my ‘psycho Mary Poppins’ persona. Gritted teeth, determinedly cheerful voice and walking (and occasionally falling off) the fine line between perky and profane.
It turns out that pulling an all-nighter in A&E with a miserable child (don’t panic, mum, she’s FINE – NHS111 sent us up there but their concept of emergency does not translate to actual emergency care) also tests my patience, especially when communications break down within the hospital and things are missed. The streaming clinician telling child they need to go to Urgent Care where they’ll be seen quickly, for example, but no one having told the clinician that Urgent Care had closed. Then, because we’d been through triage once and then got put back on the system as they’d taken her off because she’d been sent to Urgent Care (that wasn’t open), they failed to take bloods which were finally done at 4.30am – and then the doctor said they couldn’t do anything for various reasons, and to get a GP appointment. I laughed in a what was, according to the child, quite a scary way. These days you can only get a GP appointment if you phone in an arbitrary half hour slot on a Thursday afternoon, a month in advance, and there’s a z in the month. Or if you dial upwards of 50 times (my record is 96) to get into the queue at 8.30am and pray that by the time you get through there’s an appointment left. And now the nurse practitioner (lovely lady, did all the medication reviews, HRT and generally useful things) has left which will reduce options even more. The child also needs a consultant appointment – a telephone clinic – so she attempted to book online, only to find there were no appointments and to leave a number and the clinic would phone back. They did not phone back – the next contact was a letter telling her if she didn’t book an appointment she’d be discharged. I suppose the theory is that you’ll either be better or dead by the time you actually get to see anyone, which at least reduces waiting lists. You can’t fault the actual people on the NHS frontline (which includes some of my favourite friends) but something is going wrong somewhere.
AND the bloody coffee machine was broken.
After six hours I was forced to channel my inner dad, and explain that we’d been there many hours at this point, and that I did have two other children who I needed to make sure got to school and perhaps a doctor might like to talk to us so we could leave? I was extremely polite but my inner psycho Mary P was very definitely in evidence. The only plus was that we’d been there so long that the buses had started running again so at least we could get home.
We got home, I made sure the other two were at least awake and then went to bed, slept for a few hours and was in work for afternoon meetings…. FML, quite frankly. FML.
Back last November I opened the front door to a very distressed Thing 1, who – on her way back from walking her friend to their job in the pub round the corner – had been accosted by an adult who had tried to kiss her. Thing 1 is 16, she’s polite and friendly, and she answers when she’s spoken to which is how she’s been brought up. We live in a village, we see the same people on a regular basis and so you say hello, because that’s what you do in a small community. For the last couple of years this adult has been making comments which erred towards the inappropriate, but could be brushed off as just overly friendly.
Comments on appearance, on how she was growing up, asking if she was still at school. The sort of thing you’d laugh off as being a bit creepy, followed by ‘say hi to your mum and dad’. Innocuous. Then she turned 16, started at college, and the tone changed.
‘Have you got a boyfriend? I bet you’ve got lots of secret admirers. I know you’ve got at least one, you’re growing up nicely’. The sort of thing you need to keep an eye on, as it’s too creepy. She would come home and tell us when he’d spoken to her, so we knew what was going on but thought he was just sleazy as she’d laugh it off.
On this day in November she wasn’t very well, so wasn’t as alert as usual, and she was trying to get home. We spent the following day at the emergency GP, in fact, with severe tonsillitis. On this occasion he started with ‘was that your boyfriend? Have you got a boyfriend?’ and then he put his hands on her shoulders and went in to try and kiss her. She reacted by stepping back and came home in a state.
This is a married man, at least in his 30s. who clearly knows what he is doing is wrong – asking her if she’s 16 yet, for example, is a clear indicator that he is aware of the legality of the situation. He is a local business owner, who has been heard encouraging teenage boys to bring their girlfriends in as ‘he likes them young’.
After speaking to a friend in the police we reported the incident and luckily they took it seriously, sending someone to interview Thing 1 and I, taking video evidence from her – and doing everything they could to make it an easy experience for her – and eventually arresting him. He of course denies knowing her (and someone else who made a complaint against him) and is out on bail, and this week – as he’s denied it – she had to go and do an identity parade which is fortunately all digital these days. It wasn’t easy: she texted me after I checked in on how it had gone, and said,
‘Yeah it was fine it was weird though all the pictures were fine but as soon as I saw his it felt like his eyes were looking right at me it was so uncomfy.’
She’s been so brave, and I am so proud of her: she is clear that she doesn’t want this to happen to someone else, who may not be as speedy or as supported as she is. She has to walk past his business twice a day, three days a week to catch the bus to college, and his bail conditions state that he is not allowed to speak to her or approach her – as he hasn’t, I assume that he does actually know who she is, despite the denials. The police have been great, keeping us updated with any developments and taking her seriously.
I’m not under any illusions that anything will actually happen to this man as a result of my little girl being brave enough to step up and make her statement: much as I’d like to see him named and shamed and drummed out of the village, I’m quite realistic. I would like the parents of other teen girls in the village to warn their daughters away, or at least to make sure their daughters know that this behaviour is sexual harassment and they don’t have to put up with it. It’s not ‘cultural’, it’s not ‘being friendly’, it’s harassment and we now know that it won’t stop there.
What I’d like even more is to know that I won’t have to write yet another blog post next year calling out sexual assault, or harassment, or even inappropriate behaviour. I think we’ve all had enough.
Things making me less furious this week:
The safe arrival of my very gorgeous new grandson this week, two weeks early, courtesy of Timeshare Teenager 2 (she’s 25, but they’ll always be the TTs). I think Grandson 1 was hoping for a baby robot for a cousin but he’ll have to put up with a regular human baby.
A good 13.5k ramble in the sunshine this morning following a footpath I’ve been eyeing up for a while, seeing my first swifts of the years and a whole family of hares.
A day off midweek, with a lovely walk round Harlow Town Park with Sue and the Bella-Dog finished off with tea and an Eccles cake
The Gaslight Anthem’s new single with an album to follow
A catch-up with an ex-colleague about attracting secondary school teachers to the museums
BluebellsA meander!Glorious blossom in Harlow Town Park
Tomorrow I have a swim and a visit to the new arrival planned, a Long Walk on Monday with London sister, and then will be spending some time this week planning another Long Walk away from all media next Saturday.
Happy Long Weekend!
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
Desperate Undertaking/Fatal Legacy/The Silver Pigs – Lindsey Davis
This was secondary school week, when our year six kids find out which school they’ll be off to in September. For the lucky ones (including us) it’s your first choice school but others may not have fared so well. In our village, it’s a bit of a lottery – the majority of the children will have selected the school in Epping and will probably have got in, but if they’re in the half of the village that’s past the library they won’t be entitled to school transport as they’re closer geographically to the school in Ongar. Unfortunately as it’s so oversubscribed they haven’t got a chance of actually getting into Ongar – we got Thing 2 and 3 in on the sibling rule as Thing 1 started there when it wasn’t oversubscribed as Ongar parents didn’t want to send their darlings to a new school.
This is the first year the school has had a full cohort of students from Y7-Y13, as it’s been building year by year as a new academy. It has its issues (a severe shortage of maths teachers this year) and I shall be watching their options system with interest as it appears to be more focused than I’d like on the government’s EBacc targets than on the children’s own wishes, but we’ve been happy with it for all the kids. One of the reasons I chose Ongar was because it had more of a creative focus, and you all know creativity is one of my favourite things, but that does appear to be changing. Thing 2 will be making her GCSE options next year, so I will have my eye on it.
Still, that is not the subject of this week’s blog really – it’s more of a long-winded intro. This post is really about me, and Thing 3, and growing up and stuff. He wants to be allowed to walk home from school on his own which might not seem like a big thing in the grand scheme, but…
…one of the best things that’s come out of the pandemic is that I’m still working from home quite a lot and doing the school run a few afternoons a week. For me this is still a novelty. Apart from when I was on various maternity leaves, when school run was a pain as it meant wrestling the others into a buggy and coaxing a tired little one along the mile walk home up a big hill, this is the first time I’ve really had to do this. Our wonderful childminders did it for years, which I can’t complain about as we couldn’t have managed without them, but not me.
So, three afternoons a week I put the laptop to sleep and head off up to the school to collect Thing 3, and I get to brace myself as he hurls himself across the playground at me for a hug. I do the playground thing and chat to other parents, and I know which parents are attached to which child. I get to walk home and chat with my son as he tells me all about his day. This week we’ve compared secondary school notes. Sometimes I’m able to return the many favours my friends have done for me when the Central Line has failed or when I was ill last year, and pick up their children as well. It’s been easier to say yes to playdates. It sounds daft, but these are some of the things I missed as a working parent – once, when Thing 1 was in Year 4, my beloved and I both did school run and another parent did a double take and said ‘I didn’t realise you two were together‘. That was how often I wasn’t there…
And now he is into his last two terms at primary school and from September he’ll be on the bus with his sisters or my beloved will be picking up, and I won’t get to do it any more. So, sorry son, but I’m making the most of you while I still can.
A finish or two
February on the temperature galaxy55 colours, 15,434 stitches……but so worth it for the neon effectPattern from Simply Crochet – I’ll be making another D20 for the D&D baby
This week I have a couple of days off as I didn’t have any time off in half term, and am plotting and planning what to do with that free time! I’m thinking the new Folkwear Basics jacket, and maybe an afternoon nap or two.
Until week 103 (wow!) then…
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
The Library at the End of the World – Felicity Hayes-McCoy
The Innocents – Harlan Coben
Doctor Who: Tenth Doctor Novels vol 2 (Audible)
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry/The Music Shop – Rachel Joyce
Before this week’s reflections on the art of successful parenting (those who know me, feel free to laugh) I’d like to say thank you to everyone who read, shared, and responded to last week’s ramble. More than 320 people have seen the post, which is HUGE for me. I’m glad I shared it, and didn’t delete the draft despite my doubts.
Normal service can resume….
Stroganoffgate and other stories
Once upon a time, I was a brand new mum and wanted to do everything right, which of course included weaning. I cooked stuff and pureed it: sweet potatoes, butternut squash, all mushed through a sieve with baby milk. I followed Annabel Karmel’s tips. I froze things in ice cube trays. I bought organic when I bought readymade food. I didn’t add salt to anything. It became yet another thing to beat myself up about: Thing One didn’t like the pureed veg. She liked – mostly – to eat the Radio Times. Her first birthday photos show her with a face covered in soil from one of the pots in the garden. She would wolf down Heinz baby cauliflower cheese one week, then decide I was trying to poison her the next.
Not to Thing One’s taste, apparently
So, with Thing Two I didn’t bother with the pureed veg and went straight to the jars, and she ate pretty much everything. She was an adventurous eater and her favourite food was always someone else’s – she is that child peering beadily at you in a restaurant, always wanting to try your food. She took to Chinese and Indian far quicker than the other two, and her favourite condiment is sweet chilli sauce which, she tells me, goes with everything. How times change: she has now decided she doesn’t like jacket potatoes or sausages, unless it’s a battered one from the chip shop.
Tomato ‘goop’
By the time Thing Three turned up I’d had enough, and he pretty much ate what we did.
Because of my beloved’s shift pattern we’d got into a habit where I fed the kids early. We’d eat when he got home, which meant I was doing two different meals several nights a week: working full time as well meant this got quite wearing.
It was high time, I declared, that we all ate the same thing. I could cook it early and then the kids could have theirs and we could eat later! There would be no alternative meals,! My children would eat what was put in front of them or they would go hungry!
Thing Three. Spoons were a mystery to him.
Man (or woman) makes plans and god laughs, as some wise person once said.
I decided (wrongly, as it turned out) that this would be an excellent time to try some delicious new recipes, starting with a pork stroganoff. I left out the mustard, I made sure it wasn’t spicy, and I carefully picked the mushrooms out of the kids’ portions. It was delicious. You would have thought that I’d put a plate of live snails in front of them: Thing One went to bed rather than eat anything on her plate. Thing Two ate the rice but wouldn’t eat the stroganoff or any rice that had sauce on. Thing Three – once his sisters stopped making a fuss – ate the lot. I gave up on new recipes as it was just too stressful.
You’d think that over the years things would have got easier, and they’d try more things. To be fair, they are improving: this week we have had two new meals. These Indian koftas were a resounding success, and the sesame broccoli from this recipe was a revelation. They’ll definitely be on the rotation from now on, and I’ll be trying some more new things out on them too.
So, here are my top tips for feeding your kids of any age:
Invest in a couple of metres of wipe-clean tablecloth fabric to go under the high chair. It’s amazing how far a spoonful of peas can travel. Don’t even talk to me about rice.
Don’t beat yourself up if you haven’t got time to cook from scratch everyday. Fish fingers were invented for a reason. So were baby food jars.
Get one of those bibs that go on like a straitjacket. You’ll thank me when you’re not trying to get tomato based foods out of the elbows of the babygro. Get one for yourself too.
Mr Tumble Dryer is your friend during weaning and potty training.
Disguising food is fine. My mum grated liver in the mouli-grater for years and put it in the gravy. Last week I grated mushrooms into the spag bol and none of themnoticed.
Lying is also fine: “No, Thing One, of course I took your bit out before I added the spices to the chilli.” My mum fed London sister boiled bacon while the rest of us had gammon, and ‘long-eared rodent stew’ was quite popular despite the fact that we had a pet rabbit.
Ignore the people who say their child eats everything. One day they won’t. Try not to snigger till they’re out of earshot.
Apparently it can take up to twenty tries to get a child to eat something new. Maybe spread those tastes out a bit and don’t try it all at once.
Bananas stain more than you think they would. Trust me.
‘Green eggs and ham’ is a great story but won’t help you convince your kids to eat anything.
Back on your heads, lads
This week I have been back in the office twice, and it’s been bliss: the tubes in haven’t been too busy and I have half the foot of the second sock done thanks to the commute. I’m still swatching for Tunisian crochet – the pattern calls for 3.5mm and so far I’ve tried 3.5, 4, 4.5 and 5mm hooks and they’ve all come up too small. 5.5mm is looking good though, so I live in hope.
I’m able at last to share the latest instalment in the year of handmade gifts: a cross stitch I designed and made for my line manager. The lockdown birthday culture at the museum is lovely! This is one of her frequent sayings, worked up in DMC variegated threads on 14 count black aida.
A motto to live by!
Yesterday my beloved and I sorted through his collection of Royal Mail stamp cards, which rather than get rid of we’re going to use – especially the Christmas ones. There are some lovely artworks here – my favourites are the springtime ones by Andy Goldsworthy. and the wintertime hare.
Spring
Summer
Autumn
Winter
H G Wells – science fiction
Cats by Elizabeth Blackadder
I couldn’t resist this one, either – any excuse for a Monty Python reference! I’m not even sorry….
Arthur: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. THAT is why I am your king! Dennis: Listen, strange women lyin’ in ponds distributin’ swords is no basis for a system of government! Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony!
So that’s been my week: cooking, crochet, cross stitch, commuting! This week’s cover image is the snow moon seen from North Weald Common early on Friday morning. Spring is on the way – the song thrushes are singing their little heads off, the doves are beating each other up on the lawn and the male blackbirds are running off their rivals.
Next week is week 50 – it seems pretty unbelievable that we’ve been in various phases of lockdown for almost a year! Hopefully the kids will be back at school next week (well, I’m hoping so at least!) and the ‘roadmap’ back to normal is realistic. Fingers crossed!
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
Inspector Hobbes and the Gold Diggers/Inspector Hobbes and the Bones – Wilkie Martin
A Capitol Death (Flavia Albia) – Lindsey Davis (Audible)
When I was 29 I thought I had my life in order: I was a home owner, I had a settled relationship and I had a job I loved.
Also when I was 29, I found myself single and looking for somewhere to live. It was after viewing yet another dingy bedsit (sorry, ‘studio flat’) in East London that I found myself on Mile End station, standing at the end of the platform where the wall went all the way to the edge and the driver wouldn’t have time to see me. I stood there for a long, long time, staring at the track, and eventually a kind person came and talked to me and put me on a train instead of under one. Without the kindness of that stranger I would, in all probability, not be here.
That moment should have been the one where I recognised I needed some help, but as I had always seen myself as a bit of a Tigger – when I hit the ground I bounced. I put it down to viewing dingy bedsits, decided to stay in Epping, and carried on. I found a flat and moved in. The day after I moved in, someone phoned to check in on me. I opened my mouth and started to cry, and couldn’t stop. Even then, I didn’t go and get help.
I decided I would be brave and grown up and do Christmas on my own, as it felt like an admission of failure to go home. It wasn’t until I met my best friend for lunch in London and she went straight home and phoned my mother that things started to move: my dad came and got me and took me home for Christmas. My mum found me sobbing over the sellotape, phoned the doctor I’d known for many years and marched me off to see her. I was diagnosed with depression. 2003 is known to me and my friends as ‘Kirsty’s lost year’: I made very questionable decisions, I cooked a lot but ate nothing, I drank far too much (not a good idea with anti-depressants), I slept little. My beloved Grandad Bill died that year, which is one of the few things I remember. I made some new friends, who took me under their collective wing and put up with the fact that I was so far away with the fairies that Tinkerbell was my next door neighbour. My best friend had a baby and made me godmother, despite me being so patently unsuitable for the job at the time. It was a year of feeling like a ghost in my own life
In late 2003 I started to pull myself back together: I got a second job, in a pub, which meant I wasn’t drinking or staying home alone. I moved to another flat and met the man who would become my beloved, and slowly I started to feel ‘normal’ again. I came off the antidepressants after a couple of false starts, and a couple of years later Thing One arrived. I was terrified: labour had been frightening, long and painful as she was lying on my sciatic nerve. An aggressive healthcare assistant kept telling me I was breastfeeding wrong: I was failing at parenting after less than a day! They took my baby away as she kept breathing too fast and brought her back several hours later without a lot of explanation. The expectation is that your baby will arrive, you will fall instantly in love and motherhood will kick in instinctively – but it doesn’t. It wasn’t too long before that I hadn’t been able to take care of myself, and now there was a baby?
I went back to work when she was five and a half months old, to find I had a new line manager who I barely knew (he was lovely, but that shouldn’t have happened while I was on mat leave: this was before ‘keeping in touch’ days). I worked full time and I was exhausted. I felt guilty for going back to work but we had to eat and pay rent, didn’t we? She had terrible colic, so evenings were horrendous and for six nights out of seven I was on my own with her till 8pm as my beloved was either working or with the older children at his mother’s. At a couple of months old she stopped putting on weight, which was another worry.
I was desperately afraid I’d hurt her, but I had no one to talk to about whether this feeling was normal or not (it wasn’t). I loved my baby so much that sometimes just looking at her made me cry, but I was terrified of what I might do because I couldn’t cope. I couldn’t tell anyone though, in case they thought there was something wrong with me and took her away.
“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: It is easier to say ‘My tooth is aching’ than to say ‘My heart is broken.’
There was a baby boom that year, so her nine month check was delayed. When it eventually came round the health visitor took one look at me, said we’d deal with the baby next time, and made a doctor’s appointment for me on the spot. I was diagnosed with post-natal depression, signed off work, and put back on the tablets – this time with some counselling support, which took the form of cognitive behaviour therapy and which helped me see that I wasn’t a total failure. My London sister became my lifeline, as she was close enough to help – my parents were settled in France by then. Luckily her work brought her to the east side of London regularly. I don’t know what I would have done without her appearing and doing the aunty thing.
When the PND kicked in with Thing 2 I recognised what was happening and marched myself off to the doctor as soon as I started feeling odd. With Thing 3, I took up exercise and tried to prevent the slide, which mostly worked as long as I kept running.
This time round, I have been on the anti-depressants since 2014: a friend was killed in an accident, and I was heartbroken. Grieving so far away from their family and our mutual friends was hard. I went to Cornwall to scatter their ashes, foolishly thinking that that would give me ‘closure’ and I’d be fine afterwards, and…I wasn’t.
I don’t see the tablets as a cure, but they give me the time and the headspace to be able to see a way through each day. There are bad days still, when I feel as if I am wading through treacle and the world is a long way away. They are becoming further and further apart, which is a blessing, and I have to say that having six months on furlough last year made a huge difference to my mental state. I keep walking, and I keep making things, and I have friends who also have varying forms of depression and anxiety. We support each other and stage the odd intervention when we see things aren’t right.
On Thursday I took Thing One to the Emotional Health and Wellbeing Service for an assessment. We have been there before, when her anxiety first started in primary school after being bullied. We self-referred last September and pressure on the service is so high that it took this long to be seen, but the keyworker she’s been assigned was wonderful, and will be putting a care plan in place for her. She told me before half term that she just wants to go back to school: the routine, her friends, clear expectations. It’s hard enough being a 14 year old girl without a global pandemic preventing you from seeing your friends.
It’s a shame that this service stops when they are in their early twenties. Getting help after that becomes much more difficult, only really kicking in after a crisis and then anti-psychotics seem to be the default setting rather than care. This service is so underfunded, and a lot of responsibility is devolved to the schools who are also not equipped to cope with the levels of mental health issues being seen in pre-teens and teenagers at the moment. I’m pleased that Thing One feels she can tell me anything, and I hope that all my children (both natural and the timeshare teenagers) feel the same. I hope that my adult friends can too.
I’m going to break out into cliche here: if your leg was broken no one would tell you to pull yourself together, and it’s past time we had the same attitude to your heart and your mind. I was lucky to have friends who saw through the fragile bravado and the manic socialising, but not everyone – especially in this time of isolation – has support like that.
Postscript…
I started writing this on Friday, while I was reflecting on Thing One’s visit to EHWS, and over the past couple of days I’ve thought several times about deleting it. Is it too much? Have I been too honest? Do my friends, family and colleagues need to know this about me? There are things here that I have never spoken aloud, for example. Then I re-read the last paragraph above and realised that to delete it would be to become guilty of hiding my own mental health issues, when the point of the post was to talk about depression and anxiety openly.
So, the post will stand and I will stand by it. This is me: not brave, because it should not take courage to speak when you’re ill, it should be normal.
The fun stuff
I finished my sock at last! Now to do the other one. I do love crocheting socks, and as I’ll be back in the office and on trains twice a week for a while these are a great portable project. In one of my magazines there was a supplement about Tunisian crochet and it had a sock pattern, so I’ll give that a go soon too.
One sock!
There’s been a lot of cross stitch: here’s the temperature tree update, and I have been working on a Happy Sloth design of a galaxy in a bottle. I’ve also been frankenpatterning (combining two patterns to make a new one) as I wanted something particular but couldn’t find it. More on that later!
Spot the really cold week…
On Friday we had a family Zoom call: my lovely dad was 80 and we couldn’t be with him. Obviously as a teenager I was convinced both my parents were trying to ruin my life, but they were pretty cool really. Without my dad I wouldn’t still be able to say the formula for solving quadratic equations on demand or my times tables. I would have no clue about the need for balance and options in my life. I wouldn’t know how to annoy my kids by standing in front of the TV, and as I get older I appreciate his afternoon nap habit more and more – even at 47 he’s a role model! I blame my parents for my love of books, and Dad specifically for the science fiction and fantasy habit. Happy birthday Dad – I love you!
Mum and Dad, 1969.
So that’s been my week! Normal service (well, as far as that goes) will resume next week.
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
Inspector Hobbes and the Blood/Inspector Hobbes and the Curse – Wilkie Martin
A Capitol Death (Flavia Albia) – Lindsey Davis (Audible)
What Kirsty did next 