The London 2012 Olympics are here

Although there's another day to go until the London 2012 Olympics is officially declared open, for us and many others living so close to the Olympic Park it has already begun. 

Inside the Olympic Stadium last night

• Living in a big city, we are used to the Metropolitan Police helicopter hovering above us from time to time, but since last week there have been helicopters circling the skies each afternoon and evening.
• The purple-and-orange clad volunteers for the Games can be seen everywhere - at bus stops, on the tube, in local shops, in the park and walking down the street.  There are tens of thousands of them - all volunteers and all enthusiastic about the Games.  It is heartwarming to see.
• They know their stuff too - they've all been able to answer my questions so far.
• Not that I'm testing them or anything.
• For years there has been endless discussion and speculation locally about just how bad the traffic would be during the Games.
• On Monday - the first day of restrictions - I drove five and a half miles to Tottenham, to buy a sack of hen feed, with no problems whatsoever.
• Yesterday, emboldened by my success, I attempted to drive a mile and a half to Wanstead.
• I made it 600 metres and then had to abandon my car in a residents' parking bay because the roads were gridlocked and we weren't going anywhere.
• Luckily I was only 600 metres from home, so my own Olympic residents' parking permit was still valid.
• I have learnt my lesson.  I shall not be taking the car out again until 9th September, when the Paralympics finishes.
• A favourite local pub is opening a festival style Pop Up Pub in Leyton town hall for the duration of the summer.  Seeing as I can't drive, I reason that I might as well make the most of it.
• Olivia and I are festooning the house with bunting and flags today.
• Last night Cam and I went to the penultimate dress rehearsal of the Opening Ceremony.  It was utterly amazing and magical.  But I can't tell you any more than that because Danny Boyle swore us to secrecy.
• When Danny Boyle came on stage, Cam piped up "Oh look! It's the really strict choreographer who kept us back late on our last rehearsal."
• It turns out that Danny Boyle has been rehearsing the children for the Closing Ceremony in person.  I thought he would have delegated that job.  Cam and the other teenagers from his school just shrugged when I exclaimed "But he's not a 'strict choreographer', he's an iconic Oscar winning film director!".  There's nothing like a world-weary teenager for keeping it real.
• They were all still very excited to be in the stadium and to get an idea of what the atmosphere will be like when they perform at the Closing Ceremony in just over two weeks' time.
• Athletes and coaches from all over the world are here.  Yesterday I saw a pack of Australian coaches waiting at Leytonstone station, smiling and chatting in the sunshine.  Then today, on his run to work, Graham saw a flock of Kenyan runners enjoying a leisurely jog through Victoria Park at an eyewateringly fast pace.
• The USA judo, volleyball and boxing teams are training at the Score sports complex next to Leyton Orient stadium, just around the corner from us.
• I don't think you could live here and not be excited about all this.  East London feels like the centre of the world at the moment.

Stuck in Westfield at Stratford for an hour last night, waiting for tube platofrms to clear.

Anish Kapoor's Orbit sculpture in the Olympic Park

Endings and beginnings

A green and pleasant land

Yesterday I went back to Oxfordshire, to the village where I grew up, for the funeral of an amazing and much loved man.  Jack had lived a long and full life, teaching so much to everyone he met over the years, and the day had much laughter and reminiscing as well as tears and sadness that Jack was no longer with us.

I met childhood friends whom I'd not seen for decades, was hugged and kissed by people who'd known me since I was at primary school, and generally felt very loved all day.  It marked the end of an era, because Jack had just always been there.  He was a great age when he died and we all knew that the day would come when he was no longer with us, but it was still hard to take in yesterday.  He had been at the centre of the village and the community for as long as anyone could remember. 

But endings always come with beginnings and yesterday also marked a very important beginning for me.  I found out, just a few hours before I drove to Oxfordshire, that I have a place at University for this September.  I will be going to City University, in central London, to train as a nurse.  After three years at home with the children, and many more years before that working as an accountant in the City, this is a completely new beginning for me, and one that I am incredibly excited about.

It's official

I have recently started a voluntary job at my local hospital as a helper on the wards - I serve lunch, chat to patients and help them with small tasks such as fetching them books to read from the hospital library, pouring them drinks, chopping up food and propping them up with pillows.  I am based, at the moment, on a general ward for elderly women, and some of them are very frail indeed.

After the funeral yesterday I chatted with some of the people who had helped to look after Jack in his last few weeks.  They told me what I have seen for myself at my local hospital - gentle kindness from nurses means so much to people who are at the end of their life, and to their families too.  The best nurses are the ones who remember that little gestures can have a big impact.

I will try to remember that as I return to the whirl of study, travel, work and childcare juggling in September; Jack's still going to be teaching me things.

Imposing order

When it feels as though life is starting to spiral out of control, and everything is choatic and stressful, I take pleasure in ordered things.

At Kew Gardens on Monday I saw order and patterns everywhere I went.

The other thing that I like at times like this, is having nice stationery and using it to write lists on.  After I'd cleared my head with a long walk and a long chat, around Kew, I came home and wrote absolutely everything I could think of on a list.

The daily 'to do' lists start with a collection of bossy verbs at the moment.  I must pay, wash, check, phone, collect, speak, email and change all kinds of things.  Writing them down, and crossing them off, takes away their power to overwhelm.  All I must do is work my way down the list each day.

There are also lists of things which are overwhelming in different ways, but which I must accept:

• lists of issues which cannot be resolved yet, and so I must not fret about,
• lists of good things coming up in the school holidays, which I should look forward to
• lists of things I might sew when I have some more time,
• lists of possible solutions to potential problems.

These too seem much more manageable when I write them down.  For these stress lists I have some new sticky notes, which cheer me up just looking at them.

I bought them in Paperchase, and I'm using them to impose order on my life.  The house is bristling with them at the moment.

A kimono for my niece

I have another new niece on the way.  It is The Year of New Nieces, because Miss A arrived in early February, and Miss M is due any day now.

I've been thinking for a while about what to make her.  A June or July baby doesn't really need a kicking bag like a winter baby does, and I also had an urge to make something I hadn't done before.  Eventually I decided that what every summer-born baby girl needs is a floral, lace-trimmed kimono.

The pattern is from Weekend Sewing by Heather Ross - a book that is certainly the most used of my many sewing books.  I added vintage lace, which was given to me by my grandmother, as an additional trim onto the bottom.  I like the idea of passing a little bit of lace trim down to a fourth generation.

All I need now is the baby, and some greedy-Auntie cuddles with her.  I can't wait.

10 things

• This weekend, Graham will be racing in Trail Marathon Wales - a marathon through the stunning forests of Snowdonia National Park.
• This part of Wales is one of my absolute favourites, and I am very envious of his three-day trip.  I am staying behind in London with the children, but in a few years I'd love to go with him (not to run - but to walk the course beforehand if I'm allowed).
• We've been eating a great deal of pasta this week.
• Cam has been eating bigger portions than Graham - teenage boys' appetites really are extraordinary.
• As part of his training, Graham has been running home from work semi-regularly.  This is a 22km run from West London to East London, passing all sorts of fantastic sights.  He took photos the other day and has annotated them and put them into a Flickr set which you can see here.
• I went on a little spending spree at Abe Books last week, and picked up four cookery books for under a tenner (including postage).  Goodness, I love this website.  Most of the books were Elizabeth David ones that I somehow didn't have in my collection - she published more than I realised.
• Each day this week I've been into the garden, very early in the morning, and picked all the snails off the clematis, the rhubarb and the tomatoes - and then given them to the hens who shriek with excitement at this bonus breakfast.

• My clematis is looking better than it has done for years.
• I just finished reading The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh, which I loved.  I might have to go an rummage on Abe now for an illustrated guide to the language of flowers - there is a Kate Greenaway one out there, which would be excellent.
• I loved this wonderfully written article about roast chicken.  I often roast chicken in a similar way to this - covering it with herbs and spices in butter, and then serving it with a heavily scented rice.

Epic Epping

Epping Forest is massive.  The trees are giants and their roots curl up from the forest floor like pythons; it is London's largest public open space and I still get lost in it on a regular basis.  I love the size of Epping Forest and the feeling that I am only a small being within it.

Today, though, my eyes were drawn to things far smaller than me.  I saw tiny curls of bracken unfurling.

We walked over crispy carpets of empty beech nuts.

And I marvelled at a strange knot hole which looked just like rising yeasty dough.

There was even a tiny little dormouse, crawling through some brambles.  It was smaller than my thumb, and had tiny little round ears.  It ran away, looking very purposeful and busy, before I could focus my camera lens on it.

Epping Forest is both epic in its size, and in its abundance of tiny details.  And of course, this is why I love it so.

 

Walnuts, orange juice, cotton buds and baked beans

There's a lovely place I know.

• Which is only two minutes walk from my front door.
• Where you can turn up at 7:40am without having cleaned your teeth, wearing dirty jeans and a University sweatshirt that is over 20 years old, and nobody minds.
• Where even dressed like this you are still greeted with a big grin and a shout of "Morning, Gorgeous!" as you walk through the door.
• Where you can be sure of being able to buy whatever it is that you need - even if that's walnuts, orange juice, cotton buds and baked beans.
• Where you can chat as you do your shopping and find out about how his bad back's doing and discuss the water main up by the hospital which burst again this weekend.

This magical place is my local corner shop.  A good corner shop is the nerve centre of a local community, and I think ours is one of the best.  Their friendliness and always-open-fully-stocked policy means that knocking up a quick coffee and walnut cake for Dad while he's out on his early morning training run is...well...a piece of cake.



From pink to purple

Olivia's pink phase has come and gone.  Pink is now Not The Thing at all.  The 9 year old girls I know are all about purple these days.

"My favourite colours - in order"

She asked me to make a purple patchwork cushion for a friend's birthday this weekend.  "My friends are all VERY into purple too," she informed me.  So I did, and while I was making one purple cushion I thought I might as well make two.

A birthday cushion for J

Olivia now has a purple cushion on her bed, next to the one I made for her when she was in her pink phase.  "The purple one is closest to the top, because I like purple best," she told me.  I now want to make her cushions in every colour on her list, just so that I can see them arranged - and re-arranged - along the edge of her bed in order of colour preference.

The pink has been demoted by the purple

The perfect setting

I sat in the woods as the sun set, listening to the wind rustling the tops of the trees and marvelling at the changing light.  I had a plastic mug of very nice wine in my hand, and a campfire to toast my feet over.  I felt utterly content and took a self portrait.

Just two nights camping with friends was an idyllic break from everyday life.  These short trips usually seem to pan out like this, and it occured to me that over my many years of camping we - and our friends too - have acquired a great deal of experience.  It's a slick operation these days; we bring everything down from the loft, check it off our list, and stuff quilts and pillows into compression sacks.

Compressed quilts, sleeping bag and pillows



Decompressed quilt, pillows and sleeping bag

We stayed at Forgewood Campsite, in Kent, close to the Sussex border.  It is a delightful site which manages to create the perfect blend of wild camping (no electicity, no caravans, campfires permitted and acres of ancient woodland to pitch in) with helpful facilities (plenty of clean showers and toilets, purpose built washing up areas and a farm shop).  When we are camping with friends we want a campsite that lets us pitch our tents together, build a fire to sit round and cook over, and has woods for the children to run free in.  Forgewood had all of this.

Olivia, coming back to camp for food

We all brought great quantities of food - both to feed our own family and to share.  On Friday night we shared vegetable curries, made at home the day before by my friend, Cathy, and reheated over the campfire.  We mopped them up with breads we had all brought with us. On the Saturday we ate salads, also made at home and brought with us, fruit, slabs of homemade cake and endless cups of tea made on the Trangias and gas stove (of the three families camping one favoured a Coleman gas stove, one favoured Trangia with a gas bottle adapter, and one favoured Trangia with the meths burner - they all work brilliantly).  That night we barbecued sausages over the campfire, and ate them with garlic bread that Cathy made.  The children then toasted marshmallows later in the evening. 

Camp kitchen

We feasted like kings all weekend - good food is a non-negotiable element of a camping trip for me.  The only thing that can improve sitting in the sunshine, drinking beer with good friends, is when there's a perfectly cooked, juicy, pork sausage (or two) to eat at the same time.

The weather is something you can't control when you're camping - you just have to prepare for it.  The whole point of camping is to get outside and ground yourself in nature - whether that may be sun, rain, warmth or a cold breeze - but there's no denying that warm sunshine is what we're all after, really.  We pitched on Friday as the rain clouds started to clear from the skies.  It was extremely windy, and we were glad to be in the shelter of the woods.  The ground was very damp, but not too muddy because of the leaf litter on the forest floor.

My and Graham's tent, with added jubilee bunting

Over the evening the clouds moved further and further away, and by the time I crawled into my tent at about midnight, there were stars all over the sky.  It stayed dry for the whole weekend, and only started to rain as we brought the last of the bags in from the car, back in London on Sunday afternoon.

No wonder I look happy in that photo - I had good friends, good food, plenty of wine and beer, and I was sitting beneath green beech trees listening to them whispering.  The weather was incredible and our dirty children were running around in the woods jumping into ditches and plotting adventures. 

Every minute of packing, driving, pitching, unpacking, putting away and washing is entirely worth it for weekends like these.

Olympic questions

Red, white and blue bunting - up for the jubilee, and coming back very soon for the Olympics.

I was tagged by my dear friend Janine, who blogs at Chouxchouxbedoo, to carry on this Olympic meme. We don't have very long to go now - just 50 days until the Opening Ceremony. We live so close to the Olympic Park - just about 1 mile away - that the excitement around here is palpable.

1. If every day tasks were Olympic events what would you get a gold medal in?

Gold for coffee making, tidying up and writing lists. A silver currently for my bread-making, but I'm hopeful that will be gold too by this summer.

2. As a child (or now even) did you excel at a particular sport and if so which one?

Erm...no. At my secondary school we were put into ability sets for PE and I was always in the bottom one. This did nothing to improve my sporting skills because it meant I was always playing with or against other girls as hopeless and unenthusiastic as me.  My exercise of choice these days is walking or cycling.

3. Michael Phelps (swimmer) or Michael Johnson (runner) – which sport appeals to you more?

Running appeals much more.  Swimming is the absolute pits - water up your nose, the stench of chlorine, the nasty wet floors of the changing rooms. Gah!  I used to run when I was at University, but I was never very good.  I still love watching running though - especially long-distance running and the very upright Kenyans.  I am constantly tempted to take it up again and do Parkrun regularly, but I am intimidated by the extraordinarily good running skills of my husband.  There's probably enough lycra in our house already.

4. How fast can you get out of bed and ready to go out the door if miss the alarm and sleep in?

I don't think I've ever missed an alarm in my life.  I'm pretty good at getting up in the morning; I can be up and out in about 10 minutes if I have to.

5. What fantasy sport would you like to see made into an Olympic event?

Cross country or trail running would be good to see in the Olympics; but they're real sports already.  My fantasty Olympic sport would be eyebombing.

6. Claim to fame time – Have you ever met an Olympian and who was it?

I interviewed Jonathan Edwards last year - he was charming and friendly, and had very long elegant legs.  I once queued behind Colin Jackson in the Vauxhall branch of Sainsbury's.  He smiled at me and I swooned.

7. What event in past Olympics can you remember most vividly?

I vaguely remember the Steve Ovett and Seb Coe rivalry in the 1980 Olympics.  I was only eight.  More recently I remember Cathy Freeman's win from the Sydney Olympics and Kelly Holmes's incredible double at the Athens Olympics.  All runners again - I really do like (watching) running.

8. Tuning in at home, not for me or tickets clamped ready in sweaty palms?

Just you try keeping me away!  We were lucky enough to get Athletics tickets in the very first round of ticket allocation, and since then we've also bough tickets for Handball and day tickets to the Olympic Park.  Cam is going to be performing in the Closing Ceremony, but we don't have tickets for that so we'll be watching him on the TV.  Along with 4 billion other people - oh my.  Must remember to get his hair cut in good time.

9. Who do you think most deserves a gold medal (any walk of life not just Olympians)?

Oh, so many people actually.  But right up there at the top for me are nurses - very under appreciated generally.



Olympic rings greeting Eurostar arrivals at St Pancras Station

I'm going to tag Clair at Kids, Crafts and Chaos to keep this going, because I know how excited she is about the Olympics (and eyebombing!). But feel free to join in as well, and let me know if you do.