10 things

• About a month ago I realised that working as a nurse feels completely normal now, rather than strange and new.  This is A Very Good Thing, as it means I no longer feel overwhelmed, but I still retain my excitement and enthusiasm.

• I have just nine shifts left as a student.

• I am making time to run, although I am starting to realise that I can't always go running exactly when I want.  Such is life though - anyone working or looking after children, or both, has the same problem.
• Yesterday, when the coach at my running club said that our session for the evening was "Chats", I assumed that this meant running and chatting.  So I set off, cheerfully chatting to the person next to me.  It turns out that "Chats" is actually a loop of over 8km, which includes the long Chatsworth Road in Hackney.  And it also turns out that the lady I had started chatting to is very experienced, races competitively most weekends, and runs at a much speedier pace than me.  My good manners and sense of pride meant that I couldn't bear to either stop chatting or drop away from her, so I ended up running over 8k at my 5k pace, whilst discussing analytics methodology in the publishing industry.  An amazing achievement.
• I bought some new lunchboxes from Lakeland.  This yogurt-and-granola pot is my favourite, and means I can quickly re-fuel with much needed carbs during my 15 breakfast break at work.  Plus, how cute is the tiny honey pot?

• Cam is in Year 10, and has test after test at school at the moment.  Some of them are progress tests and some of them are official GCSE assessments.  He's characteristically laid-back about it all, but it strikes me as being pretty relentless.  I made him a chocolate cake yesterday, and when he came home from school and ate a big slice with a big grin on his face, I was so pleased.

• I read Gone Girl last week and didn't like it one bit.
• I've had some good walks lately - just locally around Epping Forest, Hackney and Walthamstow Marshes and the Olympic Park on my days off.  The damp, misty, golden autumn colours and smells just take my breath away.

• One of the first things I am going to buy when my salary comes through in January (the first money I've earned since 2009 - oh my), is a new pair of walking boots.  Mine are ten years old and the sole is coming away from the boot on the right foot; they are not really very waterproof anymore.

• There is obviously a very long list of Things I want To Buy when I am earning again.  

London's sculpture trails

Back in 2010, a parade of elephants came to London to raise awareness of the need for elephant conservation.  The children and Graham and I had such a fun summer going elephant spotting around town - ticking the elephants we found off the checklist, taking photos and deciding which ones were our favourites.

A 10-year old Cam and a 7-year old Livvy with an elephant in Green Park

Livvy crossing elephants off the map in 2010

I thought at the time, what a wonderful idea it was.  The project really captured the public's imagination; everyone in London seemed to be talking about it.  It got us all out as a family, exploring London and sharing with each other the places we knew best (Graham knows the Royal Parks extremely well from cycling through them on his way to work for years, but I rarely go there) and the elephants were just very lovely works of art in their own right - sometimes beautiful and sometimes amusing.

So I was delighted to find that there are two really good new sculpture trails in London this autumn.  

There is a trail of fifty Paddington Bears scattered around London to mark the release of the Paddington film and to raise money for the NSPCC.  The bears have all been designed by different people, and are mostly clustered in a few parts of London so that you could easily see a whole bunch in an hour or two (although I am perversely tempted to trek all the way out to Heathrow to see the Chief Scout Bear designed by Bear Grylls).  The Paddingtons will be in London until the end of the year, so you still have a couple of months to see them all.

The second trail is to mark the 2014 Year of the Bus (I know - who knew?).  This one I stumbled across completely by accident as I was walking in the Olympic Park last week.  I found a beautiful, floral bus sculpture, read the label on it, and knew immediately that I had to come back soon with my smallest nephew - bus-and-train-mad, four-year-old Leo - to see how many of the rest of them we could find.  

At the weekend, my brother-in-law and Leo joined Livvy and me for a stroll around the park to find the buses.  Well, Leo scooted at high speed while the rest of us strolled.  Instead of the paper map that Livvy checked off the elephants with in 2010, this time we had an app with a QR reader so that we could 'zap' the buses as we found them and mark them off the map on my phone.  We had so much fun, and Leo adored looking out for the different buses.  The trail around the Olympic Park is one of three bus trails - the others are in Westminster and around St Paul's and the Tate Modern. 

Livvy and Leo find a bus in front of the stadium

Self portrait in the mirrored bus

David and Leo with the number bus

Found another one!

This paralympic themed bus was mine and David's favourite

The floral bus from the other side - in front of the Broadcast Centre

I've got a whole, happy autumn of bus and bear hunting around London ahead of me trying to spot as many of them as I can - sometimes on my own or with a friend on a weekday day off, and sometimes with the family at the weekend.  That makes me very content.  
    

Seen in A&E

We do three or four twelve hour shifts a week, and we see EVERYTHING.

• A nurse covered in white splashes of plaster of paris.
• A patient being kept nil-by-mouth before going to theatre for emergency surgery, trying to sneak a swig of beer from a can in his bag.
• A bike helmet, crushed like an eggshell.
• A floor awash with urine.
• Doctors and paramedics in bright orange helicopter jumpsuits.
• Relatives crying and hugging each other.
• A passport drenched in blood.
• Porters pushing trolleys around with incredible skill.  How do they never hit anything?
• Nurses and doctors crowded around the radiographer, who is looking at a patient's brain scan.
• Nervous looking medical students.
• People practising walking down the corridors with crutches.
• A linen skip full of discarded red ambulance blankets.
• A nurse talking to a patient about cupcake recipes as she puts a needle in his vein to take blood.
• A man handcuffed to a trolley, escorted everywhere by two tall policemen with crackling radios. 
• Many, many people whose problems will be solved by going home, taking a paracetamol, and seeing their GP next week.

The new, blue, hospital behind the old one

Seen on the bus

Number W15 - Leyton to Hackney

• A extremely portly man, snoring so loudly that even the people wearing headphones could hear him.
• A teenage girl, taking her little brother to primary school, quietly reading out loud to him as he sits on her lap. 
• A tall man, with a rakish cut over one eyebrow, carrying a spade.
• An elegant lady with a bright pink scarf knotted jauntily around her throat, who sits very still with her eyes shut.
• A mother with five swarming children all in primary school uniform who like to jump off the seats and swing from the poles.
• A man with a pair of women's opaque black tights on his head.
• A boy and his Dad trying to do maths homework together.
• A rainbow of chattering teenagers, in the various brightly coloured blazers of Hackney's high schools and academies.  At least two local schools require their pupils to wear vivid purple blazers and ties.

Two heads are better than one - maths homework on the bus

Tights on head

The new normal

I am back at work; charging so very fast towards mid-December when I will qualify.

It is good to be working again, and to feel useful and skilled, but I'd forgotten how busy and chaotic everything can seem when I am working.  I am trying to remember to use my commute as a way of easing in and out of the working day. 

These past three weeks, I've been working in Hackney - very close to home.  I commute by bus, which is far more frustrating and unreliable than taking the tube, but has more interesting views.

 

I'm tired, energised, busy, constantly carrying around a heavy bag of books and clothes, losing track of which day it is, spritzing hairspray on my up do, texting the children to remind them to do their chores, feeling full of purpose...and also starting to feel a little bit as though this is the new normal.  And this is A Good Thing.  

Run report - a running club

Finishing an early morning run - red face clashing nicely with my orange t-shirt

Joining a running club is something I've been mulling over for about six months.  The running magazine I read (Women's Running - do you read it? I am a big fan) frequently tells me that joining a running club would be: 

• good for my running, 
• good for my social life, and 
• not at all intimidating.  

To be honest, I've been a little sceptical about those last two points.  The mere phrase 'running club' is pretty intimidating.  But Graham is also a member of a local running club, as are many of my friends at Hackney Marshes parkrun, and they tell me the same thing.

One of the major factors that put me off club running, was the commitment: I work full time, I work antisocial shift patterns, and I have plenty of other things I need to fit into my life.  Was joining a running club trying to fit too much in?  Would they expect me to be on committees and doing races every other weekend?  Again, Graham and other running friends assured me not.

The running club closest to where we live is Eton Manor Athletics Club - a 101 year old club, with a permanent clubhouse in a large, picturesque park, just a ten minute walk away from our house.  It has the added benefit of not being the same club that Graham belongs to - he is so much faster and fitter than me, and I didn't want to join somewhere where I might always be known as 'Graham's slower wife'!  When I looked at Eton Manor AC's training schedule, I saw that they train on three evenings during the week, as well as organise weekend group runs - so even with my unpredictable shifts, I should surely be able to manage to go along once a week? 

And still I dithered.  I've been running for just over a year now, and yet I still feel like a bit of an imposter most of the time.  Am I a real runner?  Well, a real runner is just someone who runs regularly, so of course I am.  I also worried that a running club would be be made up of super-fast young people, full of disdain for my 28 minute 5k time.  This of course, was ridiculous.  I know from going to parkrun every weekend, that running is actually an incredibly inclusive sport - where elite runners cheer on the beginners, beginners can run alongside people who've been running for decades, and everyone, aged from 7 to 87, is impressed with everyone else's time and effort.  

Last night I decided to put aside my uncharacteristic nervousness and give club running a go.  I went along to Eton Manor AC, for their weekly interval training session.  Right from the minute I turned up, everybody was so very welcoming and friendly.  They asked me about my running experiences, were impressed that I go to parkrun every Saturday, reassured me that the club was full of runners of many different abilities and speeds, and generally put me at my ease.

We ran in a big pack through the local parks to Walthamstow Marshes, chatting as we ran.  This was a very new experience for me as I generally do all my running by myself, listening to music on headphones.  Surprisingly I found I could chat and run at the same time though.  Once at the marshes, we found a straight, paved path and started interval training: two minutes running hard (the guide for 'hard' was at your fastest 10k pace, but as I don't run 10ks I tried to run at my hardest parkrun, 5k pace) followed by one minute walking or slow jogging (I walked - as did most people).  The first two minutes felt like the longest two minutes I'd ever run - it seemed to go on forever!  But after that I got used to it, and managed absolutely fine.  The nice thing about interval training is that everybody gets to run at the pace which is 'hard' for them, and yet as we were running back and forth along the same straight piece of track, you always had somebody in your sights and felt very much a part of the club.  We did this for 30 minutes, before jogging back together to the clubhouse for tea and biscuits and more chat.  

Someone told me at the end that we'd run 8k altogether - which is by far the furthest I have ever managed.  I've only run further than 5k once or twice before.  I couldn't believe what I had achieved - a longer distance than I had ever run before, and at a harder pace than I would ever do by myself.  I was so pleased!  This, ultimately, is why I will definitely be joining Eton Manor AC and incorporating a club run into my life once a week.  I was on such a high when I finished.  Running with a club will improve my running like nothing else, and push me to do more.  But in a friendly, sociable and surprisingly uncompetetive environment.

What about you?  Would you join a sports club?  Do you have similar hang-ups to the ones I had, and wonder if they are only for super-fit, semi-professional athletes?  

I'm really looking forward to the new developments in my running that I know being a club runner will bring.  I'll let you know how I get on, once my achey legs have recovered and I've managed to get out of the bath.

I really earned this muscle therapy bubble bath last night!

Commuting

I have the nicest commute at the moment.  I work strange hours so I'm never travelling at peak times, which means the tubes are not too rammed; most of the time I can get a seat.  I just have to travel six stops, and I can get from home to work in about half an hour.  

The hospital is in the City - an area of London that I know very well because I worked there when I was an accountant for many years.  I find myself taking out my phone and snapping pictures every day, because this part of London is just so photogenic.

Cycling in the Olympic Park

It's the time of year where I think about pulling my bike out from under its covers and using it again.  I am strictly a fair weather cyclist, and I would never dream of combining lycra with a bike.  I know - with some sort of spooky sixth sense - that it would not be a good look for me.

Graham and I went for a gentle, pottering sort of ride around the Olympic Park last weekend; now formally known as the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and fully open to the public once again.  It's a very big place, and we wanted to have a good explore and get to know our way around this new part of our local neighbourhood.  The aquatics centre opened a couple of months ago, and now hundreds of acres of parkland and the velopark are open too.  There are only a few more bits still to open (the Hockey and Tennis Centre next month, the Canal Park towards the end of this year and finally the stadium in 2016).

The velopark is the section closest to our house; it takes me just four and a half minutes to cycle there.  The indoor race track, the outdoor 'road' track and the BMX trails are all open at the velopark, and anybody can book a session and ride.  You can even hire a bike and take lessons if you want to.  There will be a massive network of mountain biking trails opening too later this year.  For now, I just wanted to stop off (there are plenty of bike racks outside, of course!) and have a look round.  We wandered into the velodrome and sat down for ten minutes to watch a local cycling club do some time trials.  I really want to have a go at track cycling, and I am totally going to book one of their taster sessions once I have settled into my new placement.

 

There is a very friendly branch of Cycle Surgery in the ground floor of the velodrome, and they didn't look even slightly fazed when I wheeled in my enormous sit-up-and-beg bike (with basket, obviously) to get a new tyre put on.  Admittedly my bike did look a little ordinary next to the shiny, sleek racers they had on display.

There's a cafe upstairs, where you can drink coffee and watch what's going on on the track below while the mechanics fit your new tyre.  Or you could walk round the corner to the Unity Kitchen Cafe and then sit outside under a tree for twenty minutes with a cup of coffee and a croissant, listening to the sound of birds in the trees and children enjoying one of the enormous new playgrounds, and just try and remember the polluted, industrial wasteland that was in the same place just ten years ago.  It's getting increasingly difficult to do.  Our part of East London was utterly transformed by the 2012 Olympics, and have to pinch myself sometimes when I think that all this splendour is now just four minutes away by bike.

 

Mothering Sunday

Early morning in the Olympic Park

In the morning we all went for a swim in the London Aquatics Centre in the Olympic Park, which opened to the public earlier this month.  It is one of my favourite buildings from the Olympics, and looks much better now than it did then, because the wings of extra seating have been removed.  It is beautiful inside and out, and I filled my camera with photos.  Cam shrieked when I asked him to take some photos of Graham and me, and we had a little smooch for the camera.

The children bought me presents (Cam this book, and Olivia a scarf with flamingos on it, inspired by my abiding love of all things flamingo) and made me cards, and Graham bought me daffodils and croissants.  I didn't have to lift a finger all day

In the evening Graham and I popped down to the local pub to listen to some live music and enjoy a pint of beer.

What more could anyone need? Perfect.  

Overheard on the bus

Number 56 - Clerkenwell to Leyton

• "I would go skateboarding, but I can't find one with brakes"
• "I literally can't even look at my own belly button"
• "I wouldn't want to own a shimmery skater skirt - but a black one might be okay"
• "I maintain perfectness at all times"
• "I wish Google Images was a shop"
• "I've been asked to draw my tattoo so many times - I just can't be bothered any more"
• "That's not even a thing"
• "You know, I can just sense which bus stop we're at - it's kind of like an extreme psychic ability"