Rise

Well now, that was a longer than expected blog break. I have to admit to spending the end of February and much of March in a kind of fug. I think I managed to catch about three consecutive and different viruses which left me devoid of any energy, so zero running for all of those weeks! Even walking my beloved dogs became a slow short trudge and my eyes would slowly close every time I sat down at my desk to do any study. Grumble.

As well as being smothered by the cold, overwhelmed by the amount of work I still have to do in the diminishing time before my degree finishes, I have also had the weight of the expectations of other people placed upon me. Why is it that those who demand such unreasonable expectations of acquiescence from you barely manage to reciprocate those very same standards? Quite depressing and infuriating.

Now that I have all that off my chest, I am glad to say I am back on top form, yay! I have two runs under my belt this week. Unfortunately, I have gone backwards a few weeks in the couch to 5k plan but reassuringly I don't think it will be too long before I can catch-up and improve. I would love to be able to do a 5k Park Run at the start of summer. In crafty news I have been finding the sockalong hosted by Christine Perry on Facebook very inspiring -just search for Winwick Mum Sockalong and feast your eyes on the amazing selection of gorgeous home-made socks that all these ladies are producing. I have made a start of sorts -after four attempts and two changes of needles  this is how far I have come.

Knitting is tricky, I can't watch TV or read like I do when I crochet but hey there is always a little bit of time to spare for a new craft! I have also just recently found the knitting podcasts on youtube -such fun. Lovin' Little Bobbins Knits and The Grocery Girls.

In other news we have had some lovely family time together over Easter, back to London for a short break too. I found some great thrify treasure which I must try and show you later -the light is very poor here today. Lots of fun and plenty of time for the kids to pose dilemma's for Mum and Dad. E who is now 9 has been asking for a phone and unfortunately I suppose she wants a smart phone. Apparently Every Single One of her classmates has a phone and she feels left out. I don't know what to do, I don't want her to have access to such powerful technology at her age, technology that will also give others access to her. I don't want to spend the money on another phone but the guilt! Imagine being the only kid without one!

I wandered past this painting in the National Gallery:

I don't know what the title is or the artist but it is a Renaissance  painting of The Virgin and Child. Just look at the expression of annoyance on her face! I think it sums up parenting very well. I love you to the ends of the earth but why won't you do as I ask? She also knows that he is going to grow up to be a handful.

Right my dears, that is all for now. Are you all enjoying these first tentative signs of spring? Maybe where you are it is Autumn? It is still quite chilly here in Ireland, damp and wet but I can feel the stirring of life. I will leave you with some beautiful Hawthorne blossom from our walk this morning. Bye. xxx

London snapshots.

 

Old Spitalfields Market.

 

Kew

 

 

Hampton Court

 

We went to London and for the first time in a long time we became tourists in our former home city. All around the heat shimmered and we moved in a determined slow motion, there was a tube strike and we were disorientated and amateurish when trying to navigate our way around the cashless oyster card system. We glimpsed new tube stations, great soaring apartment buildings - too ubiquitous to become landmarks - new pathways and directions -my previously sharp London map slowly remembered and eventually restored. We checked off some places that we had never been and places half-remembered since childhood - the maze at Hampton Court has drastically shrunk!

I saw the ghosts of lost friends in many faces and felt 21 again as we danced, reunited with some old ones. We celebrated with our growing extended family, precious new-born babies and beautiful bumps. I marvelled at the shift in our parental journey, it seems like minutes since we were the distracted parents of small infants and focused on the mindful vigilance that accompanies the fast-moving toddler. In the face of the mighty force that is Grandma, myself and Mr S became slightly redundant, some unusual hours of child-free time opening. We had enormous fun but I got my cure , it was probably no accident that I bought this book. (The background is a 1970's shopping bag that had to be bought in no small degree because of the texture and the smell! It takes me back to a hot 1970's summer, my wee pram with a similar plastic cover.)

I went clothes shopping on a Saturday morning, all the shops packed with people, sales stock strewn into a bemusing mass, stale air-conditioning in the giant shopping centre. I wanted to give up almost immediately, forget about the new shoes and join the kids in the park. The old seduction of London  was still strong, the brisk efficient mass of commuters, the endless number of undiscovered streets; the potential for people watching, the stories writing themselves as the actors in each tube carriage  shifted, emptied and refilled. The teenagers kissing at Harrow-on-the-Hill, the old Punks with chiselled features at The Angel, the beautiful twins with immaculate hair and light graceful dresses at London Bridge, a vivid 1960's painting for a dream house in Old Street. A lovely exhausting time but an interlude, I missed my space. We went for a lazy pub lunch in the pretty village of Sarratt, strolled part of the Chiltern Way and it was here that I felt most still and content. I saw the sky and the distant fields, and breathed out.

 

A most fortunate rabbit.

 

Sarratt Bottom. Address envy. xxx

London Kills Me

I blame Paddington. Here I was happily pottering along in Oriel when it hit me, a wave of nostalgia and longing, a passionate love indeed but one that can never be. Me and London. Together for 12 years but the parting was inevitable but slow and punctuated by interruptions and false starts. Long drawn out as if I held a hidden belief that London would change for me - that one day we could make it work. We meet up occasionally we do, once a year at Christmas and it is intoxicating, London draws me back not least because I have family and friends there but also because of all the potential endless possibilities of adventure therein your dirty and picturesque streets.

We took the kids to the cinema to see Paddington and you know, I don't know who was more excited, them or me. I remembered the lovely gentle animated Paddington of my childhood and found a vintage set of the books which I am trying so far as yet unsuccessfully to read with the kids. The kids watched the trailer for the movie and I have never seen them laugh so much, they must have re-watched it a million times before we went to the cinema. What a thoroughly enjoyable film, the kids just loved all the boisterous antics of the lovably earnest bear and I loved all the eccentric styling of the film especially the Brown's house and Mrs Brown's enviable collection of knitwear. Even Mr S said he enjoyed it. The New Yorker has an affectionate and eloquent review of the film here.

I think Paddington conjures up for me an expression of an aspirational London lifestyle, the lovely houses, the grand democratic museums, the brisk freedoms of the tube (and with a family!) The numerous hidden alleys and historical streets promise an unknowable quality to London life, you won't ever map them all. There is always another little gem to be uncovered, a secret pub, a quirky bookshop, a verdant sliver of a park. However, the problem between myself and London is an old one, how to cohabit, how to afford reasonable living accommodation that does not involve commuting into the city from say Stoke.

I had nine addresses in twelve years, the last three with Mr S. We had great fun but all the while at the back of my mind was the uneasy fact that none of these houses were my permanent and secure home. We had landlords who refused to fix anything, who let themselves in without warning, roofs that leaked, doors that fell off their hinges, neighbours that slept in the communal hallways, estate agents that showed us many dirty and over-priced hovels. We viewed houses with perfect 1970's décor, damp former council properties with the linger odour of cat and dead granny. We did find the perfect flat once, signed the tenancy and paid the deposit but then the previous tenants changed their minds and refused to move out, only finding out when we went blissfully hand in hand to collect the keys. I cried into my consolation drink in the smoky shaded afternoon light of the pub.

We did find a decent place in the end, in the perfect location, a nice white sunny garden flat with a working gas-fire and a huge bath but by then the damage had been done. We lived there for two years and spent a huge proportion of our wages in rent and a huge proportion of our time working to earn those wages. One night while round at our friends new place in Brixton we complemented them on their quaint choice of location, a pretty little square with a central green and a Victorian pub on the corner, very Albert Square. They responded by telling of finding someone shooting-up heroin in their wheelie bin. Soon, our landlord would phone to tell us she was selling-up. It was time for a new chapter.

Our most recent visit was such good fun, we ate pie and mash, went vintage shopping at Greenwich market, went to see The Railway Children beautifully staged on a repurposed platform at Kings Cross, (running until 6th September 2015) I popped into the British Library to see the gorgeously curated Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination (which is unfortunately ended now) The kids really enjoyed running around the Cutty Sark, especially trying out the crews bunk beds and exploring down in the hold which smells intoxicatingly of tea. They stayed in leafy Brockley and sedate Maida Vale, wandered in the beautiful Cassiobury Park in Watford and became old hands at tube travel, clutching their maps and counting off the stations. E was especially delighted, proclaiming as she arrived at each destination, smiling as she emerged into the light; that London was the most beautiful place in the world!

I fear that I have lost her to our family characteristic, that of the desire to travel, to migrate. While I was having a having a little aimless wander while waiting to meet the rest of the family, I found this charming little street,

Keystone Crescent just off the Caledonian Road, five minutes to Kings Cross/St Pancras and so only 2.5 hours to Paris! The property envy! What must it be like to live here, I want to knock on every door and discover what stories are playing out behind those pretty painted doors. The reality of the London property market however is not so picturesque.

Almost weekly I read the horror stories of those desperately trying to put a roof over their heads, painfully high rents for half a room, the severe lack of social housing, and the obscene waste of the empty protected landscape of the uber-rich. As a family of four we would probably need to win the lottery to move back and continue to have any semblance of life/work balance. We would leave behind this:

My heart contracts and I feel a little bit teary though, every time I hear this:

 The Kinks: Waterloo Sunset.

 

 

 

This:

 The Clash, London Calling

 

 

 

 

 

And This:

Pulp, Bar Italia

 

Every time, every single time.