289: sorry, what?

I was going to write about protest songs this week but I haven’t had time to do the research into it that I wanted to. So I’ve saved it as a draft somewhere else instead and you’ll just have to wait.

Do you know, I’m not sure I managed to get the hang of last week and now here we are on Sunday again. A couple of four day weeks are all very well but at the moment there’s way too much work for those four days. My email inbox is in triple figures when my ideal number is ‘less than 20’. Double figures are but a pipe dream right now, and there have been days when I haven’t even managed to read them all and delete those which don’t require any action.

It’ll all be worth it though, when we welcome all the new team members we’re interviewing (22 interviews down, three to go), when we throw open the gates to a new venue fully committed to accessibility and inclusion, with new programmes for people of all ages and a fantastic set of exhibitions. Until then, I suspect there will be a lot of 4am wake ups. It’s dark at 4am, you know, and even the stupid birds aren’t awake at this time of year – which is an improvement on the peacocks all summer or the angry chickens in France. I think. At least earplugs muffle the birds. Is there a brainplug available? I couldn’t even go downstairs as my living room was full of people asleep on sofas and airbeds.

In a coaching session in July I had a great conversation with someone who helped me work out a plan for just these moments but it involves having five minutes to yourself to do the thing.

It helps (a bit) when you talk to people about what you’re doing and they’re excited, or you talk about access to an expert and you’re doing all the right things, or when people contact you because they want to work with you – or they say yes to your ideas. That was Friday’s meeting with a local SEND school which turns out to be about ten minutes from our site.

What doesn’t help is when public transport conspires against you to ensure that you can’t get anywhere on time: on Wednesday I planned my journey to arrive in Stratford with an hour in hand to get some quiet work done in a coffee shop somewhere. I arrived at Discover with a minute to spare: the bus to Epping was late and then got stuck in traffic, the train took well over an hour to do a journey of 22 minutes, and then they took the train out of service. The rest of the week was not an improvement. There seem to be speed restrictions in place between Epping and Woodford so everything is slow – but not slow enough to be able to claim the journeys back from TfL as that needs to be a delay of 15 minutes or more. Grr. Still, interminable train journeys at least meant I got to start (and finish) this little Autumn Fairy. She fits perfectly in this Bonne Maman jar which I’ve been saving for a moment just like this.

Things not causing me stress this week

The very beautiful Wye Valley, which I walked 15 miles around last Sunday over two walks. The first one was solo and the second was with my sisters and cousins. There’s a lot of uphill, you know. We walked across the Biblins Bridge, had an ice cream in the cafe, an excellent Sunday lunch at the Saracen’s Head and enjoyed the autumn.
By Tuesday I ached all over but I feel in good shape for the Cardiff Half Marathon next Sunday – there is still time to sponsor me as it’s an excellent cause which really annoys the local racists. It would be amazing to make it to £500.

Afternoon tea in aid of Macmillan at Jill’s house on Saturday
Seeing the live action How To Train Your Dragon with Thing 2 on Saturday. A worthy remake – I really enjoyed it.
The right person winning the Sewing Bee for a change (it took a while to catch up)
Conker season
Making a start on stock for the Christmas stalls
The Merlin app – identifying so many different birds. I am a convert from BirdNet now.

Next Sunday I’ll be live and lurching around Cardiff, hoping to come in around the three hour mark – pray for nice weather!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Stone and Sky/What Abigail Did That Summer/Winter’s Gifts – Ben Aaronovitch (Audible)

How Not To Be A Supermodel – Ruth Crilly

285: quit bugging me

There are many things I like about summer but mosquitoes are not one of them. No matter how much go-away spray you use before you go out for a walk the little beasts always manage to find the single square centimetre you missed – the bit where your bra strap moved, or (as has happened to me a lot recently) they fly up your trouser legs and savage the backs of your knees. I’m sporting five on my arms and one on my neck at the moment. I’m sure they play a vital role in the ecosystem or something but if they could do it without nibbling me I’d appreciate it.

They are the price you pay when you’re staying by a river and want to go out bat hunting at dusk, however. After London sister Tan spotted a Daubenton’s Bat on a walk along the Blavet earlier this year we were quite keen to find some more. Although the weather has changed from summer heat to muggy drizzle, we’ve made it out a couple of evenings this week for a wander along the tow path.

It’s been magical – there will be a glimpse of one bat skimming along the river near the bank or zooming over your head, and then suddenly they’ll be everywhere – chasing each other in circles, divebombing the river or flitting in and out of the trees. We’ve found that the bridges are popular bat haunts, and we’ve stood for ages on the towpath by the road bridge watching them zip around on eye level with us catching insects. They’re so batty they look like toy bats – the sort of bat shapes that Laszlo turns into in What We Do In The Shadows or Count Dracula in Hotel Transylvania. The battiest bats, in fact.

Bonus points have been scored for the kingfishers catching a last few snacks before heading off into their holes for the night, an indignant heron who took off from the path in front of us, a muntjac deer watching us from the other side of the river before disappearing into the crop growing behind it. There’s a coypu couple who swim among the waterlilies near the bridge, chuntering away to themselves as they potter around doing whatever it is coypu do. The owls start muttering to each other shortly after the bats come out.

No sign of the hen harrier or the short-toed snake eagle so far, but there’s a week to go. The two cockerels who live on the same lane have been much in evidence, shouting at random times throughout the day, and the cherry tree outside Dad’s office window has been alive with long-tailed tits while I’ve been shortlisting job applications over three days this week. It’s great that so many people want to work with us but by Thursday afternoon my eyes were crossed and I was thoroughly fed up with AI generated introductory paragraphs. Still, I’m looking forward to meeting the interviewees.

Things making me happy this week

Not having to think about what to feed people for dinner
French bread and patisserie, especially my favourite religieuses
Time to do some fiddly crochet in the sunshine – these peas in pods are crocheted with perle thread and a 1mm hook. I’ve made some bigger ones as well, with friendly looking peas that pop out of their pods.
French supermarkets and their fruit and veg sections

Various family members are arriving today and it’ll be lovely to see them, and hopefully over the next week we’ll see more exciting wildlife (that we aren’t related to). I’m assuming my Things and my Beloved a) have noticed I’ve gone and b) are missing me at least a bit. Two of them have texted me with demands for money, so business as usual there.

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading

The Book of Doors/The Society of Unknowable Objects – Gareth Brown

Lies Sleeping/The Hanging Tree – Ben Aaronovitch (Audible)

Miss Percy’s Definitive Guide to the Restoration of Dragons – Quenby Olson

267: stop the week I want to get off

Last week’s paean to four-day weeks (or three, at least) has been overtaken by the experience of this week’s four-day week which didn’t go nearly as well. Not for any specific reason, but…

…on Tuesday I took Lulu to the vets for her annual inspection – this minimises the actual experience of my Beloved and I acting in a pincer movement to wrestle her into the cat carrier, me forcibly lifting her out again as she clings to the sides like the facehugging xenomorph from Alien so she can be weighed and checked over, and watching her slinking back in in an attempt to make herself invisible afterwards. I popped to the library to pick up my holds (another recommendation from a colleague and a couple of Ann Cleeves), came home, set up my table, logged in…..and realised I was supposed to be in the office as we were interviewing in the afternoon. Cue throwing tidy clothes and my face on, racing for the bus and heading for the office. The Central Line was misbehaving with delays on both journeys. On the way home I had to get rescued from South Woodford by my Beloved as there were no trains and luckily he wasn’t far away.

The rest of the week continued to fluster me: never quite working out what day it was, not being able to finish one thing before starting the next. Part of it is the continued joy of menopausal brain fog, part of it is just trying to do too much at once on too many different things (but they all need doing!). Whatever it is, this week wasn’t working for me. I did get to meet some interesting interview candidates – I like interviewing – and had coffee with Amanda on Thursday.

Friday was great, on the other hand. As my communities colleague was off on her holidays I got to sit in on the first session of our new co-creation project. This is the third project of four before we open the Centre next year, and this one is in partnership with Islington Centre for Refugees and Migrants and the artist MURUGIAH. These are a series of projects exploring heritage and what it means to people. MURUGIAH grew up in South Wales (like me!) with Sri Lankan parents (not like me!), and our participants yesterday came from the Ukraine, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Morocco and Turkey. Their co-ordinator is Polish/British so we had a broad set of heritages to draw on. MURUGIAH’s work builds worlds of colour and shape, and always reminds me of the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine.

We thought about the things that make us ‘us’ – memories, language, family, food, music, the journeys we have made, the things that have happened to us. One of the things that I love about these projects is sitting with the group, working alongside them as they’re drawing their stories. Done, from Turkey, drew her childhood garden and told me about climbing the mulberry tree to pick the fruits from the top as she sat in the branches. She drew baskets of cherries, birds coming the eat the mulberries – she liked the sour ones rather than the sweet – and the bees who’d come to the flowers. There was a green house with a red roof, and she missed the garden when they moved to the city. The Ukrainian pair drew big blowsy poppies and sunflowers, flower headdresses framing blue sky and golden wheatfields, rivers – there are always rivers, they said – and a soldier standing to attention. Herve, from Cameroon, drew flags and a monument; our Congolese participant shared her memories of beach parties where they’d dance and catch tilapia to eat cooked in banana leaf parcels, and the colourful clothes they wear. Our Moroccan lady drew things from her country and their London equivalents – taxis, trains and buses, food, flags and more. It started quietly and as they started to draw the stories came out, and our two hours flew by – I’m not usually in on Fridays but I’d quite like to drop in on these sessions. Regular readers will remember previous experiences working with refugees and asylum seekers have made a massive impact on me (and also that this is why I am doing the Cardiff Half Marathon in October for the Choose Love charity, and any pennies you can spare towards my target are much appreciated! I have £170 to go….).

I also got to catch up briefly with Jhinuk Sarkar, another of our community illustrators who is delivering a co-creation project at Bethany House – this is a supported housing project for women from Islington experiencing homelessness/houselessness for a wide variety of reasons. They’re making bunting and flags and I can’t wait to see them – enough to stretch from Bethany House to the Centre is the ambition!

Other things making me happy this week

An Easter Monday swim with Jill and Rachel followed by simnel cake and hot chocolate
More Northern Exposure – we’re up to Season 3 now and I can’t find my Season 4 box set anywhere
Crocheted jellyfish. Curiously satisfying to make with their curly tentacles! I like the neon green one – the photo doesn’t do it justice!
Running into TT2 with GT2 at the station on Wednesday – how is he two already? It’s his party today and Thing 2 has created a gorgeous birthday cake.
Seeing the trampoline populated by bouncing kids – next door’s small people like to come and run round our garden and see what my Beloved is up to, as well as say hi to the cats
A ten mile ramble through fields on Saturday in a wide loop around Toot Hill, Stanford Rivers and Tawney Common. Not too warm, with a lot of geese around for some reason, a muntjac, a bouncy deer (without benefit of trampoline) and a lot of consulting of my OS map.
Being talked into signing up for another half marathon next month – it took Tan all of five minutes to convince me,

That’s all, folks! Have a good week.

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

The Makioka Sisters – Tanizaki

The Trouble with the Cursed/Demons of Good and Evil – Kim Harrison

A Letter to the Luminous Deep – Sylvie Cathrall

Talismans, Teacups and Trysts – K Starling

The Last Continent – Terry Pratchett

262: personality goes a long way*

*13.1 miles, in fact.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*Oh OK then, FINE, yes I will.

Things making me happy this week

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

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

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

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading

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

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

The Trouble With The Cursed – Kim Harrison

244: scrappy tits and chunky squirrels

This week I am coming to you live from the Forest of Dean in darkest Gloucestershire, where we have spent the morning sitting in the hot tub watching nuthatches, tits (blue, great and coal), blackcaps, robins, blackbirds and some cheeky squirrels stuffing their faces with birdseed. We’re here to celebrate Tan’s upcoming big birthday at Forest Lodges near Coleford.

Tan knew we were joining Jane and Sal (last seen on a beach in Aberporth a few weeks ago) but wasn’t expecting cousin Hev and Irish sister Steph to be here waiting for her either. We’ve been plotting this for months. Tan is not very good at surprises at all, and has packed for every eventuality, including four – four! – first aid kits and a number of hats. She gets quite grumpy about things, you see, and she’d only been given a short packing list.

After a giggly, slightly boozy pizza dinner followed by Sal’s layer cake, Hev, Sal and I tried out the hot tub under the light of the supermoon. The lodge has three bedrooms, and these were distributed according to how badly each of us snores and whether we were likely to get up early or not. Jane and I, as we’re guilty of both, bunked in together (with our earplugs) and sure enough we were up just after six and out for a walk in the forest at seven. I found Tan on the sofa when I got up as Steph is apparently now a snorer…

We followed the walk with coffee in the hot tub, watching the birds flying in and out snatching seeds from the deck and being menaced by squirrels attempting to help themselves to dregs of coffee. Breakfast was very late, with much toast and boiled eggs and watching the birds out of the window.

Saturday afternoon saw the gang head over to Puzzlewood, an ancient woodland near Coleford where the Romans used to mine for iron ore.

Nature has reclaimed the area in spectacular fashion, with fantastical mosses and rock formations. It’s a temperate rainforest and ancient woodland, and paths were laid in the early 19th century to make a tourist attraction. It’s been used for filming Doctor Who, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Merlin and lots of other stuff, as it’s such a unique landscape. We stashed Steph and her broken foot in the cafe while we explored, had a good wander round all the paths with MANY photos taken on the way round. Autumn has got itself together at last, so the colours in the trees were gorgeous too.

Both Tan and I spent a lot of time in the Forest as teenagers with various friends and boyfriends, so we know the area well. My first ‘proper’ date was to see Buster at Coleford Cinema (yes, we had to cross the border to get to our closest cinema). It’s so lovely to be back here with all the cousins, too, and we’re getting better at doing more of this!

Other things making me happy this week

Coffee and cake with Sue and the Bella-dog
Babysitting for TT2’s little one so she could have a night out – I’d forgotten the joy of a warm sleepy baby snuggled on your chest. The midnight Sesame Street binge when he woke up was also fun – he’s a big fan of Elmo, it turns out

Today I have to hop on a train from Hereford to Manchester to work at the World Skills UK National Championships. This is the train I used to catch when I was at uni in Preston so I just need to remember not to change at Crewe.

Next week I’ll be back in sunny Essex and gearing up for National Illustration Day on Friday 29th. See you then!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

The Kamogawa Food Detectives – Hisashi Kashiwai

More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop – Satoshi Yagisawa

Fortune and Glory/Game On/Going Rogue – Janet Evanovich (Audible)

We Solve Murders – Richard Osman (Audible)

At The End Of The Matinee – Keiichiro Hirano

The Last Word – Elly Griffiths

Wild City – Florence Wilkinson

242: not a dolphin in sight

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

The Crow Folk – Mark Stay

230: there’s a nap for that

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.

Things making me happy this week

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.
Unputdownable books.

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

Honeycomb – Joanne M. Harris (Audible)

The Full English – Stuart Maconie

The Covent Garden Ladies – Hallie Rubenhold

Necropolis – Catharine Arnold

222: a nettle-strewn hellscape, you say?

Last Sunday afternoon London sister Tan and I went for our first long walk for aaaaages – well, since the ludicrously long one we did last July. She’s been running a lot (marathons and half marathons) while I have been doing weekend wanders and hoping that at some point the rain will stop long enough for the footpaths to dry out.

Despite her belief that Essex is a fly-blown wasteland, Tan trekked over to my ‘ends’ and we did the Moreton and the Matchings circular walk that I’d tried a couple of times last year. It takes in a few pretty churches and villages, and – as it turned out – a LOT of nettles that haven’t been cut back. These were head height in places, with added brambles, and some farmers haven’t cut the crossfield paths so many detours were taken. I spent some time on Monday morning reporting all this to the council, who may or may not get round to looking at it in an estimated nine weeks or so. Add the detours to my legendary (lack of) sense of direction, and the 17k walk came in at just under 20k.

You can just see the top of my head – this was a waymarked footpath!

We stopped for a snack break (Mini Cheddars, Snickers and coffee) on the green at Matching, next to the very pretty medieval marriage feast house and the church, facing an oak tree that was planted for Queen Victoria’s jubilee in 1887. The friendly vicar came along and very helpfully told us that they had a toilet, which made us happy. We saw kestrels, heard a lot of pheasants, snuck up on a few bunnies and a muntjac, and apart from the extremely hardcore nettles it was a good ramble. We finished with a look inside the 13th century St Mary the Virgin church in Moreton, where we’d parked the car, and then she refused to take my directions on the way home and insisted on using the satnav. Honestly!

Still, Tan’s opinion of Essex has changed – it’s now a nettle-strewn hellscape. Which is nice.

So how’s that skirt coming along?

Very well, thank you for asking! Having definitely said last week that I wasn’t going to do any boro patching as it would be too cottagecore for words, I remembered that not only did I have some Japanese prints in the stash, I had a boro inspiration pack from Japan Crafts that some lovely Secret Santa gave me a couple of years ago when the Young V&A theme was ‘blue’ so clearly DESTINY was saying DO A PATCH.

Also, the skirt doesn’t have pockets, and I NEED pockets, so I made a boro patch as a pocket. I used some of the indigo fabrics, some scraps from the V&A sample sale, and a square of cotton as a base, and lined it to make a patch pocket. That was my portable project on the tube this week, and it was clearly performance crafting as people kept watching me. As well as the running sashiko stitch, I also used some of the fabric features to embellish with lazy daisy stitch and outlining hexagons. I enjoyed it so much that I looked for other things to boro – starting with some of the zillion cotton tote bags I have collected over the years, probably! This will also encourage me to use some of the embroidery threads people keep giving me…

I gave up on all my marking tools and just used washable poster paint to mark out the final bits of stitching I wanted to do on the skirt, which was lovely and messy and a good way to spend a Saturday afternoon after a morning of ironing. While waiting for the front of the skirt to dry, I marked up a fabric pouch that I bought in a Hobbycraft sale with the Seigaiha (wave) stencil, and then used Bondaweb and more fabric scraps to create a boro panel on a tote bag. The yellow marking pencil worked on this, so I used the Sakura (cherry blossom) and Fondou (weight) stencils for a panel as well. That should keep me busy! Also, guess what everyone is getting for Christmas?

Things making me happy this week

Cat insurance. Lulu isn’t well and the vet quoted me £600. Once I’d stopped freaking out they helped me put the claim in so that they would be paid directly. Now we just need to get the meds down her.
Inter-library loans, and new colleagues who recommend books to me. The two may be connected.
Lots of strawberries and raspberries from the garden
Coffee with Brian on Thursday morning and a colleague who is leaving asking if they can join my early morning coffee roster. This is clearly now A Thing.
Cinnamon Bun flavoured Pretzel Flipz.

Today I am off to hang out with illustrator Skye Baker at the Little Angel Theatre community street party in Islington, where we’ll be illustrating houses.

Next week I may even have finished the skirt – the problem is always knowing when to stop with these things….

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Demolition Angel/The Forgotten Man/The Watchman/The Promise – Robert Crais

Shadowstitch – Cari Thomas

Neither Here Nor There – Bill Bryson (Audible)

204: unexpected water hazards

Yesterday I accidentally went on a nearly-13km walk. I’d woken up at 6am and been unable to go back to sleep, so once I’d had a cup of coffee and had a bit of a read and since it wasn’t raining I decided I’d go for a bit of a wander in search of inspiration. My plan, such as it was, was to head to the farm to say good morning to the baby cows, turn around at 2.5km, pick up some milk and be back for breakfast. Yup, that sounds pretty straightforward, I hear you say. Baby cows, milk, breakfast.

Well, once I’d said good morning to the baby cows and arrived at the 2.5km point, I was feeling full of the joys of spring, as you do when the sun is shining, the bushes are full of robins and blue tits and there’s a good playlist on Spotify (a lot of glam rock, as it goes.). 10k felt doable, so I kept going into Toot Hill and turned down towards the wonderfully Hobbitish-named Clatterford End.

This is a lane that I’ve been down before, but always turned round at 5km as I don’t really know where it goes. Clatterford End isn’t really a place at all. So – and I can pinpoint this as the moment it all got out of hand – I looked at the map. Just a little Google, I thought, to see where the road goes. I might see some interesting things to put in my sketchbook at the end of the day, at the very least, and I might find some new footpaths to explore when swamp season is over in Essex. We’ve had so much rain recently that the clay is saturated and the footpaths are running water, so offroading was very definitely not in my plan.

Well, it turned out that if I carried on down this lane and turned left I would end up going in a big circle back to Toot Hill and it probably wouldn’t be much more than 10k. So I carried on. It was all going well- I even knew where I was which, as it happened, was a bit of a blessing. My mental map of the area had just connected a few dots….and then there was a flood, So deep it had an abandoned car on one of the banks. I could not go over it. I could not go under it, and I damn sure wasn’t going through it.

Offroad it was then. You can see from the map that there’s a weird loop-the-loop. This is where I opened the Ordnance Survey app, found a route back to the road which would take me past the flood, only to find that the footpath was blocked by brambles and more water. So I resigned myself to a trek along the Essex Way and it was exactly as swampy, sticky, slippy and slurpy as I expected it to be in early February. I muttered and grumbled and slipped and slid slowly back through to Toot Hill, glaring at small streams and puddles and passing dogwalkers, said hello to the baby cows again and stomped back up the hill. I remembered the milk though, and treated myself to a hot bath followed by tomato soup and a Spanish hot chocolate. And a nap.

I did get to draw my day, and was quite inspired by some road signs mostly as I didn’t feel brave enough to try sketching the baby cows. I did try the cherry blossom from the garden, and noted down my soundtrack and a lyric from one of my favourite songs. Saturday is clean sheets day, so that was marked too, and I took a leaf out of Bob Ross’s book and turned my mistake into a bird. I enjoyed playing with pencils and markers and colours, and I’m quite pleased with how it turned out.

Also this week…

Last Sunday the entire clan visited Get To know Animals, a relatively new mini-zoo and animal experience centre just outside Epping. It was an interesting experience – Thing 2 ended up traumatised by seeing two ring-neck parakeets attacking a quail in the bird enclosure. Grandthing 1 handled a rabbit called Gandalf that was almost as big as he was, and Thing 3 was given a ferret experience as a birthday present from his big sisters. He and my Beloved were rolling around the floor with them.

Thing 2 loves a ferret, and feels I should love them too. Actual conversation:

Thing 2: You should hold the ferret, mum

Me: No thank you

Thing 2: No no, hold the ferret, he’s really furry

Me: I do not want to hold a ferret, thank you.

Thing 2: <puts ferret on me>

Ferret: <sinks fangs into my chin>

Me: OOOWWWWWW

I liked the flirty alligator though and I’d happily adopt a cloud rat or take home a tortoise or two.

Thing 3 and I had a great night out seeing the RSC’s My Neighbor Totoro at the Barbican for his birthday treat – no photos are allowed, but I can say it was absolutely magical: the special effects for the Totoros, soot sprites and the Catbus were so cleverly done, and we had an amazing evening. It was his first theatre experience and it’ll be hard to beat. Thing 2 made him an amazing birthday cake.

Also…

Coffee and a good catch-up with an ex-Museum of London colleague
Taking part in a Careers Day at a school in East Ham
An inspiring meeting with the wonderful Parent House in Islington
Coffee with a friend at the King’s Head
Getting up to date with this year’s cross stitch temperature tracker

And that’s it for me – it’s been a pretty busy week, in and out of London and wrestling with the Central Line every day (ugh), but that does mean I have done a lot of crochet on the leafy scarf!

Same time next week then!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Over Sea, Under Stone/The Dark is Rising/Greenwitch – Susan Cooper (Audible)

The Fever of the World/The House of Susan Lulham/The Cold Calling – Phil Rickman

Draw your Day – Samantha Dion Baker.

199: there’s a map for that

I picked up book called Map Addict in a charity shop a few weeks ago, by a chap called Mike Parker who apparently does all sorts of stuff on radio and telly about maps. I hadn’t heard of him, as he’s not doing it on Absolute Classic Rock, and I can’t bring myself to commit to Radio 4 quite yet. He may not still be doing it, I don’t know – I checked with my beloved who listens to R4 in his van, but he hadn’t heard of him either. Anyway, this book is described as ‘a tale of obsession, fudge and the Ordnance Survey’ and while I haven’t come across the fudge yet I am enjoying the story of the Ordnance Survey, and associated things like the politics around the prime meridian, the A-Z and the tube map.

Perhaps surprisingly for someone with no sense of direction, I love a map. I am building up my own little collection of OS maps, although sister Tan will tell you that me possessing a map is not the same as me being able to locate myself or, indeed, anything else. She has an excellent sense of direction, whereas I can’t find myself on a circular route unless we start at the beginning. Heck, who am I kidding? I can’t find myself in a large Sainsburys. I have found the OS map app very handy in the last year or so, as it has a little arrow that shows me where I am and which direction to go next. I love walking around my local area (aka ‘the flyblown wasteland’ as Tan refers to Essex) and take mental notes of footpath signs to explore when I’m rambling. If I can locate those on my paper maps when I get home I can plot out a rough route, and just hope I can follow it…

Google Maps is more of a challenge, however. On the rare (usually only once per driver) occasions I was handed a map and asked to navigate in those exciting pre-SatNav days, I discovered that the only way I can make sense of them is to hold them in the direction of travel. If you try this with Google Maps the phone autorotates and so it can take me three or four attempts to make the little blue arrow go down the right road. As for TfL directions which say things like ‘continue down Acacia Avenue for 500m’, well – this is fine when you’ve just got off a bus, but less so when you’ve exited a tube station from several levels underground and have no idea which way that is. External meetings in my new role were an adventure for the first couple of months as it was always hit or miss whether I could navigate back – my mental map of Farringdon is a bit better now, fortunately! I had the same problem when I started at Docklands, as Canary Wharf was very disorienting and the museum wasn’t very well known. After a few months I start building up my mental map, and I try and take different routes around the area to embed it.

As a form of illustration and source of information, though, maps fascinate me. When my Dad would occasionally have an interview in other parts of the UK – like England! – I loved to look up places around it and find funny village names on the map (Piddletrenthide, anyone?). I like the OS maps for finding little curiosities like archaeological sites – even if there’s nothing to see there now, I like knowing that something was there once. The London Underground map is a work of art, and colleagues have been known to use me as a travel planner (although not for walking routes), and I can spend hours falling down the rabbithole of sites like Bombsight (sadly not working at the moment), Layers of London and the Booth Maps, making links between modern and old London.. Maps in fantasy novels enchant me, and I’ll be making a trip with my team to the British Library’s current exhibition Fantasy: Realms of Imagination later this month.

Anyway, Mike Parker’s book is great – if you, like me, enjoy finding out how places like Greenwich became the centre of navigation (to annoy the French, apparently), and whose brilliant idea it was to triangulate the whole of the UK and what happens when bits fall into the sea, then I recommend this book as an entertaining and informative read. I’ve just ordered his book on the history of public footpaths, too, and added a few more to the wishlist.

Other things making me happy this week:

New Year’s Eve with friends
New Year’s Day swim with several of the same friends
A mooch round the market with Miriam (and a new jumper)
Early morning hot chocolate with Amanda
Finishing the Temperature Supernova and deciding on this year’s tracker
Finishing my very snuggly cardigan using The Maker’s Atelier Raw-edged coat pattern, and binding my Double Down Dress
Seeing my sister’s company featured in Woman’s Weekly magazine this week
Not the flipping rain though, no. Or tube strikes when I have to get to work. Not them either.

See you next week!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Map Addict – Mike Parker

December/Wine of Angels/Midwinter of the Spirit – Phil Rickman

The Man Who Died Twice/The Last Devil to Die – Richard Osman (Audible)