278: girls’ night out

On Tuesday Things 1 and 2 got the train into London and we had a grown-up girls’ night out. It’s the first time we’ve done this, and we had a most excellent evening in Islington.

They chose Nando’s for dinner and afterwards we walked up to New River Head where I smushed history into their brains whether they wanted any or not. I showed them the historic graffiti in Myddelton Passage, and Clerkenwell Green, and nice houses in old streets, and then we went to the ballet.

Sadlers Wells had sent an email out with free tickets for Pete Townshend’s Quadrophenia, A Mod Ballet and two colleagues had given it rave reviews after seeing it the previous week. I’ve never been to a ballet before, and neither have the girls, so we weren’t sure what to expect. We were in the stalls, so we had a good view (give or take a few tall people) and the girls were absolutely rapt from the first moment. To be fair, so was I. It was magical.

The set was minimal and whizzed on and off the stage in a surprisingly elegant fashion. The costumes by Paul Smith were sharp and the music – by Townshend’s wife Rachel Fuller – echoed The Who’s originals. The set was enhanced by gorgeous, atmospheric projections – condensation on diner windows, the sea at Brighton, dramatic city scenes. It’s a long time since I’ve seen the film but the story of Jimmy came through strongly. We did the evening properly, with a programme and ice creams in the interval, and I think the girls enjoyed the whole experience.

Thing 2 turned to me at the interval and said, ‘Mum, this is SO GOOD!’ and Thing 1 told me she LOVED it. High praise indeed. The length of the voice messages T2 was leaving for her friends afterwards was a dead giveaway, too, and I think they’d like to go again. I know I do! It was SO GOOD and I LOVED not just the ballet but a night out with my beautiful girls.

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It’s been a very educational week all round, really. I’ve had two days in schools testing the new STEM x local history session. Chris, Toni and SJ have done four days – with Chris in Victorian kit as ‘Charles’ and Toni and SJ in hard hat and hi vis as ‘Emma’, our modern day engineer. We’ve been in classrooms and playgrounds, worked with 240 kids and and generally had an excellent time. It’s been so much fun watching the sessions develop – adding in new interactive sections and tweaking others. It’s definitely better in a large area like a playground or hall, especially when the 30 small people are being used to demonstrate the workings of a pump with three umbrellas and a lot of masking tape. I interviewed some of the kids at the end of one session and the message was that they loved the activeness and all the props, wanted the rest of the school to join in, and requested that we brought a person from the future in as well so they could compare that too. I promised I’d see what I could do…

The format we’re using – someone appearing from the past to compare and contrast similar projects with a modern engineer – is one that Chris and I have used successfully in the past at Museum of London Docklands when our modern engineer encountered Isambard Kingdom Brunel. On that occasion we compared the Thames Tunnel and the Thames Tideway project, and used the children to model the Greathead Shield and how to dig into sand safely. One of our more challenging hosts spoke to me afterwards and said ‘well, I get that Brunel was an actor, but how did you get a real engineer to come and do this?’. I took that as a win, and one teacher said that it was the best session they’d ever been to.

This time round we’re including illustrations – and bringing them to life with the pump activity – such as ‘Monster Soup’, No Fishing and No Swimming signs (communication without language), and a portrait of Hugh Myddelton and his excellent beard. There’s also umbrellas, ping pong balls, lengths of piping, beads, buckets, pinwheels and high vis jackets. There’s the story of the king falling into the frozen New River, Charles Dickens complaining that he pays for a large cistern but never has enough water for a bath, and – Chris, we missed one! The complaints from the people in Pall Mall when they found live eels in their pipes! We’re testing with some older children next week – I wonder whether they’ll ask such good questions?

Other things making me happy this week

A crochet project I can’t show you yet as it’s a surprise
A much-needed evening swim with Sue – the water was 26.4 and balmy, the ducks were flipping up and down feeding in the weeds and the little shoals of fish were zooming about in the shallows
Ice lollies.
Cally Fest last Sunday – it rained and it shined, we saw almost 300 people and a lot of cute dogs. This weekend its Whitecross Street Party, and we have a great activity planned. I’ve given strict instructions to the team to slather on the Factor 50 as it’s going to be HOT.
An excellent conversation with the black cab driver today about the New River – he grew up on Amwell Street and now lives in Enfield and runs along the New River Path every day.
Whitecross Street Party!

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This week we have the second of our community access panel meetings, and I’m really looking forward to next weekend… and a couple of days off after 12 straights days of work.

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Blood Lines/Blood Pact/Blood Debt – Tanya Huff

Amongst Our Weapons/False Value – Ben Aaronovitch (Audible)

The Wild Life – John Lewis-Stempel

159: you can’t go wrong with a good omelette

Last week’s bug continues fine, and is still rampaging merrily through my immune system. Having started with a sore throat it moved to my right ear and is causing raging tinnitus, a cold sore the size of Belgium on my face, and a migraine of mammoth proportions followed by severe post-migraine hangover yesterday. Next time I have the temerity to say how healthy I am, someone ssshhhh me. Please. It’s prevented me from going swimming today, that’s how miserable it is.

I am sure it was not helped by the persistence of couriers in making my life difficult on Tuesday, when I spent several parts of my day standing in the rain awaiting vans of various descriptions. The first company was an hour late as a driver had called in sick and no cover had been arranged, so we were an hour late to the museum. The second company arrived in a Luton complete with hoist and all our kit from the storage unit but first attempted to unload outside the museum gates, then reversed just inside, and then we finally got exasperated and ordered them to reverse up to the loading doors where they proceeded to unload a unit’s worth of kit at hoist height rather than making things easy for any of us.

By the time the Addison Lee courier started causing me grief my language had become…. Anglo-Saxon, to say the least. Despite being given an address he parked a ten minute walk away in a different street, didn’t phone the pick-up contact, and when he had finally picked up the boxes after she’d been standing in the rain for twenty minutes we watched him drive the weirdest route possible to Bethnal Green, then drive round the block five or six times (hurray for the tracking system). Finally I went outside next time he came round and shouted at him. Apparently he couldn’t find the gate. Yes, the gate. The gate with ‘Young V&A’ on it. And a phone number to call for access. I queried why he didn’t, perhaps, phone me for guidance as he had my phone number as the drop-off contact. This stumped him. Fortunately for his ears and my continued account with Addison Lee I decided to relieve him of the boxes (which he had unloaded into the road instead of onto the pavement where the dolly was) and refrain from further conversation. If they have the temerity to charge waiting time there will be words. They are rapidly sinking down my bottom ten courier list, creeping up behind Hermes/Evri and DPD.

We did go for a team lunch at The Full Monty on Globe Road, which made the world a sunnier place despite the rain. If you find yourself in East London in need of a big, reasonably priced lunch, try here. Especially try the omelettes.

Wednesday was a much better day, as I got to spend it out at my favourite secondary school in Ilford again, testing the last of the KS3 sessions for the Design gallery. Working once again with the very lovely Scott Ramsay Kyle on the ‘Design makes things last longer’ case study, we looked at different techniques for mending and embellishing fabrics using a range of materials. Starting with denim (not that we’re obsessed or anything) and encouraging them to work in threes, we encouraged them to think about how things could be added to make something different. All the Year 7s wanted to make bags (individually or as a group) and all the Year 9s wanted to annex the embroidery threads to make friendship bracelets, which wasn’t what we’d asked for but at least there was a lot of skill sharing going on! They were banned from wearing them in school but the teacher suspected that they were all going to say ‘we made them in DT sir!’ if challenged.

It was very clear which of the girls had previous experience with any kind of hand or machine sewing, but it was also evident that the others were mostly keen to learn. One thing that came across in the evaluations was that they valued just having time to sit and make, and wanted more lessons like that.

Scott had brought along a range of different embellishments like key tags, stickers and badges, cords and scraps of lace, and there was a very retro vibe about some of the outcomes, especially in Year 7. Lots of joining with big safety pins or acid house smiley faces, and tied on lace – you can see one of the bags above right. I also really liked the weave on the above left, which she joined with lots of pins and badges rather than sewing (below centre). Many of the girls (it’s a single-sex school) wanted to come back at lunch time and carry on working on their pieces, which I think I’ll take as a win! Although we’d planned this session as a 90-minute one, I think it’s going to end up as a full day option with lots of time for exploring and being inspired by the gallery collections.

Other things making me happy this week:

Progress on my Visit Tokorozawa cross stitch
Frogging half a sock as it wasn’t making me happy. Also deciding not to finish a book for the same reason. Life is too short.
Finding a hole in the foot of my woolly tights – now I can practise all those mending techniques!
Scoring eggs in the Co-op yesterday
Indira Varma narrating the latest audiobooks of the Discworld Witches series.

I am off to do useful things with my day! Till next week, then, when I’d quite like my ear to be working again.

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

The Truth/Equal Rites/Wyrd Sisters – Terry Pratchett (Audible)

Paper and Blood – Kevin Hearne

Asterix volume 1 – Goscinny & Uderzo

The Vesuvius Club – Mark Gatiss. (Gave up about a third in. Dreadful. Arch. Don’t.)

The Bridgerton series – Julia Quinn. To remove the previous listing from my brain.

104: Happy second birthday, WKDN!

Well, here we are with post 104 and that means I’ve been knocking these weekly rambles out for a whole two years.

And what an odd two years they have been. I have just looked back at week one, where I made a list of projects I was going to finish and some of them did get done, but several didn’t. Let’s mark them as ongoing (all the best action lists do this) and move on to the next item. We are still in the grip of Covid-19, despite the prime idiot’s best efforts to convince us otherwise by throwing parties and stuff: once again, this week more of my friends and family have tested positive at the same time than at any other point. It’s the second time round for one friend’s daughter, and the first time was less than six weeks ago. The tube is ridiculously busy and so many people aren’t wearing masks (I forgot mine a week ago and felt quite reckless, but after the person I was with tested positive two days later I have remembered it every day). It almost feels as if Covid is ‘soooo 2021’ and now we have to get on with worrying about nuclear buttons and Putin’s ‘special military operations’ instead.

This week I worked at an awards event – a black tie do, hosted by the fabulous Robert Llewellyn (aka Kryten from Red Dwarf). He was very professional and a thoroughly nice chap, and I got to be a glamorous assistant and hand awards to the presenting sponsors as they came up to announce the winners. One of the speakers has since tested positive for Covid, so I am still testing daily as I’m out and about in schools a lot at the moment and I don’t really want to be the one that carries it back in with me! I wore a red velvet M&S dress that I had grabbed in a charity shop without even trying it on as the last time I had to dress up was for this same event in 2019, and – quite honestly – who still fits into anything from back then?? Luckily it fit like a dream, and for £6.50 it was definitely worth it.

I finally got home at just before 1am, in a cab with a lovely driver who talked to me all the way home which meant I at least stayed awake! Back in London for teaching the next morning, I was so tired that I had a proper senior moment with my brain on autopilot: I got off the DLR three stops early, and had to get on a bus to get to the school I was working at. The sessions – Imagine This, delivered by artist, writer, facilitator and all round fabulous person Julia Deering – were a good way to spend a morning. Designed to get kids thinking about set and costume design, they are an explosion of colour and imagination with the end result of amazing jungles, ice caves, castles, restaurants, game worlds and seasides peopled by heroes, magical characters and (on this occasion) Sonic the Hedgehog. I’m back at the school this week with the ‘Think Small’ session. I always think you get the measure of a school as you walk through the door, and this one is so welcoming and friendly. The pupils are confident and happy, and keen to share their ideas – we’ve really enjoyed spending time with them. I was at another school in the afternoon to cover a coding club session, and somehow I made it back home without falling asleep anywhere – two days later I’m still shattered, though I did make it out to swimming this morning and for a walk yesterday. If anything has proved I can no longer party like it’s my birthday, it’s a midweek late night….

The #8 bus to Bethnal Green, looking surprised I was still awake

And that’s been week 104 – here’s to year 3 and more weekly rambles through the life of a middle aged muddle.

Same time next week then, gang!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Influential Magic – Deanna Chase

The Mangle Street Murders – M.R.C. Kasasian

Children of the Revolution – Peter Robinson

Doctor Who: Tenth Doctor Novels vol 3 (Audible)

82: thinking like designers – or possibly chickens

This week I took my new school session out to Thing 3’s primary school to test it on Years 5 and 6 – still playing with blue Imagination Playground blocks, but this time the tabletop version which are definitely easier to carry around. Added to these were scraps of fabrics, pipes, string and other loose parts, building on the work we’ve been doing over the summer.

The session, called ‘Think Small’, is an introduction to user-centred design, helping children to understand the iterative design process, work collaboratively and communicate ideas, and finally to work creatively with materials. These are some of the 5Cs of 21st century skills and are the some of the building blocks for learning in the new museum.

Photo and chickens courtesy of Chinami Sakai

We started by thinking about chickens, and what they need to be safe and happy: brainstorming ideas as a class, and then looking at the Eglu. The chickens in question can be seen above – Mabel, Doris and Tome, who belong to one of my colleagues and who were previously commercial egg-laying chickens. We’re in a relatively rural area, so some of the children already had experience of chickens, and were keen to share their ideas. ‘Space to play’ was the most important thing according to one child whose granny is a chicken keeper. We looked then at the Eglu, a chicken house which was designed to make it simpler to keep chickens in garden and which you can see on the left of the picture.

We moved on to talking about what pets we have at home – cats, dogs, guinea pigs, chameleons, geckos, the odd bird and tortoise, hedgehogs – and how they need different environments. I split the classes into four groups, and each team picked a mystery bag with an animal model. As a team they generated a list of things their animal needed which became their ‘client brief’. They were surprised to discover that they wouldn’t be the designing the home for their animal, but had to swap their briefs with another team. Each group then became ‘animal architects’, looking at the brief together and each child designed a home that they thought met that brief. The hardest bit, we discovered, was when the children had to decide which design from their group met the brief best and would be the one put forward to the ‘clients’. Some groups decided quickly, while others needed some support.

The clients gave feedback on the designs and then the architects used the creative kit to build the chosen design, incorporating the feedback, and finally the groups looked at all the designs while the architects talked us through them.

Over the four sessions I refined the format and changed some of the timings, and delivering it to the different year groups allowed me to see how it works with different abilities. The classes are quite small, with less than 25 in each which meant four groups in each session was viable. One thing about working with ‘animals’ was that it gave all the children a chance to shine and share prior knowledge from their out-of-school experience rather than reinforcing classroom learning.

I didn’t let them use sellotape or glue, so they had to come up with other solutions to hold objects together or in a particular shape. One boy shone as a project manager, helping his team realise the design he’d created.

Feedback from the children themselves was entertaining: one of them informed me that he didn’t know DT actually involved ‘making things’, another was keen to find out more about making structures stable. Apparently it’s harder to build than to draw, and it needs more brain power than they expected. Building with blocks takes a ‘lot of thinking’. They were surprised when they had to swap their animals to let other people build their ideas; DT is not just on a computer; and it was interesting to think about what other people need. One asked how long it takes to become an architect, so I’m counting that as a win! One wanted to know if I was really Thing 3’s ‘actual mum’.

Thing 3, of course, was mostly just concerned that I didn’t embarrass him too much…

Meanwhile…

As you can see I have some sewing to be getting on with! My first foray into swimwear, for example: a two piece that will be easier to get out of in the winter swimming. The water was 12.6 degrees this morning, so we’re on our way to single figures. There’s also been cross stitch in the evenings, which I’ll share when it’s finished. See you next week…

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Forests of the Heart/The Onion Girl – Charles de Lint

Comet in Moominland – Tove Jansson (Audible)