Surprises

There is so much about my running that is surprising; but still the biggest surprise for me is how much I love it.  

I've been running since May, so only five months, but it's now difficult to imagine my life without it.  I can now confidently and consistently run 5k in under 30 minutes and the longest runs I do now are about 7k.  Back in May the 60 seconds of running followed by 90 seconds of walking, which the Couch to 5k podcast begins with, were more than enough for me.  I guess a part of me is still surprised that I can run at all.

The nicest and most exciting surprise lately has been winning the September parkrunner of the month prize from my local parkrun in Hackney.  This means that I win a free pair of running shoes from Sweatshop - one of the sponsors of parkrun - which is incredible.  I have gotten so much from parkrun over the past five months that I feel like I should be the one giving a prize to them, not the other way round.  

Parkruns are free, timed, 5k runs that take place in parks all around the UK, and abroad, at 9am every Saturday.  They are entirely run by volunteers and welcome people of absolutely any age and running ability - the Hackney one which I go to each week has the fastest runners finishing in around 16 minutes, and the slowest between 35 and 40 minutes.  Everyone is welcomed over the finish line with applause and smiles from the volunteers and other runners.  Plenty of new runners run-walk the course, as Olivia and I did at first.  I try to run as fast as I can at parkrun now, because I love running fast, and I like the challenge of trying to get a new PB, but not everyone is a speed freak.

The exhilaration I get from running as fast as I can is another surprise to me.  I don't have any desire to run long distances like half marathons or marathons - I just want to be able to run a 5k as fast as I possibly can - eventually in 25 minutes I hope (at the moment my PB is 28:09, so 25 minutes is still quite some way off).  Mo Farah runs 5k in 12:53....

I am trying to do interval training once a week, where I alternate a few minutes of very fast running with a couple of minutes slow jogging.  It should make me faster, generally, and is also so much fun.  Thanks to the Couch to 5k Plus podcasts (designed for people who have finished the original Couch to 5k podcasts and who want to carry on improving) I have become much better at running to a beat.  I found that incredibly difficult at first, but it gets easier each time I do it.  I can now waste hours at a time compiling and fine-tuning interval training playlists that alternate songs of about 155bpm and 175bpm.  There are programmes you can download that will analyse the bpm on your entire iTunes library, but I just use a free metronome app on my phone and check the bpm of my favourite songs when they come up on shuffle.

I think what it all comes back to though, is not the music, or the speed, or even the friendships I've made at parkrun.  It's that I live so close to Epping Forest, which is a fantastic place to run.  Even though I enjoy it so much, running usually feels hard for me - yet what never fails to lift my spirits are the glorious expanses of skies and trees in this part of East London.

10 things

There's so much fizzing about my head at the moment.

• Cam came back from yesterday's Closing Ceremony rehearsal covered in blue body paint.
• He has been rehearsing with some Very Famous People and is not remotely star-struck.  I am though.
• I have finished my first crochet project.  What started off as a blanket, morphed into a shawl, and then eventually ended up as a scarf - because I had become so bored with making Granny Squares.  I love the final article though.  Full details on Ravelry.

• Becoming a nurse means that I have to have a whole range of vaccinations.  Most of these vaccinations require blood tests first, to see what levels of antibodies I have for those particular diseases.
• This means that I have been stuck full of needles today, and have loads more to come over the next month.  I have a sore, bruised arm and am now very sympathetic towards patients who require endless blood tests and injections.
• I've made a rhubarb and orange cake today.  It smells very good indeed.
• I've downloaded the Isles of Wonder soundtrack, and it is much better than the grumpy review in The Guardian would have you believe.  It is quite wonderful in fact, and takes me back to the euphoria of the Opening Ceremony in an instant.
• I have been doing anatomy homework before I start University.  Did you know that the proper, anatomical name for your big toe is hallux?
• We're off to the Olympic Park again tomorrow - this time to see a whole morning of athletics.  Absolutely cannot wait.  We will be seeing Mo Farah in the 5,000 m heats.
• I never saw Downton Abbey when it was on the tele.  I have now got Series 1 from LoveFilm and can see what all the fuss was about.  The costumes and the hair are quite as wonderful as Maggie Smith.

Saturday evening

We went to Party on the Pitch - a local concert to celebrate the Olympics, in the Leyton Orient stadium, only about 5 minutes walk from where we live.

We jumped around, sang, danced, chatted to friends, drank beers and cokes and screamed our appreciation for the artists.

I spent most of the evening dancing with Olivia on my back.  I can hardly move this morning.

And I've lost my voice.

10 things

• I went to a fancy dress party with a theme of Icons from the 1980s, as a ZX Spectrum.  I like to retain an air of dignity as much as I can, so I rejected my family's suggestions that I dress up as Madonna or Anneka Rice, and went for an inanimate object instead. A black dress and a homemade badge was all I needed.

• Naturally, the children couldn't quite believe that the latest home computer thirty years ago, was lauded for games like Elite and Manic Miner.  They live in another world, and can't quite get their heads around how we moved from the ZX Spectrum to Xbox Live in one generation.
• As I applied eye-shadow for the first time in years, I realised that I didn't wear any make-up at my wedding last year.  That seems very odd, but also kind of cool.
• I have some new earrings, which are making me smile.

• My saxophone is down from the loft, so that I can accompany O on her new french horn and give her a middle C to tune to.  She has to do all the tuning with her mouth, for each note she plays, and this is by far the trickiest thing for her at the moment.
• Once I'd played a few notes, I remembered how much fun it is playing an instrument. I dug out some music, reminded myself of the fingering chart and had a play around.

• My saxophone is even louder than O's french horn.
• I've got the bug now. My saxophone is going into our local music shop for a service later this week and then I'm going to save up for some refresher lessons and investigate local orchestras and wind bands.
• Amazon sells tenor saxophone reeds, and even cork grease.  Is there anything they don't sell?
• Olympic preparations have come to our street.  Because we live so close to the Olympic Park, we are having residents' parking restrictions put in for the duration of the summer.  This is our side of the street this morning, waiting for the contractors to arrive.  I've never seen our street without cars; it looks lovely.

Drumming

Snare drum, gleaming in the sunshine

With the move from Ironman training to mere marathon training, G finds that he has time on his hands these days to rediscover old hobbies.  Given how intolerant I am of his love of music which consists entirely of repetitive beats and no melody, it is perhaps a little surprising that I love listening to his drumming so much.  But I do.  As long as I have know him, he has been drumming.  He was a shocking 45 minutes late for our second date, but when he eventually showed up he had drum sticks poking out of his coat pocket and was full of enthusiasm for a new technique he'd just learned at his drum lesson - he was so engaging and interesting on the subject of drum beats that I forgave his (happily uncharacteristic) tardiness and we went on to have a third date.

I think proper hobbies are the ones that you can't help but doing, and the ones which you return to again and again during your life.   G first had drum lessons as a teenager, and when we first moved in together, in our early twenties, the drum kit came too and he played regularly. 

Moving the drums into our new flat in 1998

When the children were little there wasn't much spare time for drumming; we let them loose on the bongos, while the rest of the kit was packed away.

O, aged 2, with bongos

C, aged about 10 months, with bongos

But the love of drumming is always there for G, and can be slotted into family life surprisingly easily these days.  You don't need a full drum kit permanently set up in a spare (soundproofed) room to play the drums.  You can even enjoy your hobby of drumming whilst living in a terraced house in the middle of London - and we've even managed to stay friendly with the neighbours.  Like all good hobbies, there are plenty of opportunities to purchase drumming gadgets, and there is a wide array of gadgets to make drums quieter and less invasive.

There are practise pads to hit instead of drums - I find these particularly lovely to listen to, as they give off a gentle tippety-tap sound.

Snare drumming in the sunshine

There's also some beautiful blue gel which can be stuck onto the drum skin to lessen the resonance and calm things down a little.

G just has his snare drum out these days - but you can learn and perfect almost all the basic drum techniques you will ever need with just a snare drum, a couple of sticks and some quality practise time.  G has some wonderful snare technique books, from the 1930s to the 1950s, which he is working through. 

Progressive Syncopation - first published 1958

Stick Control - first published 1935

Advanced Techniques - first published 1948

I find the names of the different drum patterns he practises enchanting, and delightfully onomatopeic: paradiddles, flams, ratamacues, rolls (and then there are flamadiddles, rolls into ratamacues and all sorts of other tongue-twisting combinations).

It is the soundtrack of our weekends these days, and I find it very soothing to hear the syncopated taps and rattles coming from our bedroom or the sitting room as I potter around the house keeping busy in my own way - cooking or reading or knitting.

Late at the Library

I first heard this album in his tiny bedroom in a shared house in Brixton.  The curtains were pale yellow, thin and floaty.  We couldn't sleep, so we stayed up all night kissing and listening to music.

I listened to it in the recording studios in Soho, where he used to work.  The top quality, professional sound system made the bass sound as if it were coming from all the walls around me.
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In our first rented house together I played the album while I was studying for my accountancy exams.  I have never studied harder or more conscientiously for anything.  I set up a desk in the spare room, sprinkled lemon and rosemary oils around, and listened to the dreamy, pulsing music while I learnt about coefficients, probability curves, balance sheets and throughput calculations.

The midwife said I might want to have some music I liked for the birth, so G played the album over and over again for me while I was in labour.  Just before C was born the album finished and someone switched on Radio 4 instead, so he was born to the arguments of John Humphrys on the Today programme, but with O the album was still playing as she was born.  I listened, exhausted, to the last few tracks as she was cleaned and weighed and then handed back to me.

And now, nearly fifteen years after I first heard it, I still listen to the album all the time.  When I am sewing, when I am alone, when G and I are reading on the sofa late in the evening, on Sunday afternoons when I am baking bread, in the car, on my iPod on the tube, and when I am writing blog posts.  This album has always been right at the centre of my adult life, and of mine and G's relationship.

We found out a couple of days ago that Global Communications would be playing this album live, for the first time in fifteen years, as part of The British Library's science fiction season, Out of This World.  We went last night, stood right at the front, fizzing with excitement, and danced and danced.  It was magical.

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With ENORMOUS thanks to Auntie Alison and Uncle Richard who looked after the children for us at very short notice.  Without them, we could not have gone.  There are loads more photos of the night, and some videos of dancing aliens, in my Flickr set here. 

10 things

• I am very excited to be going camping this weekend.  Old, dear friends, sunshine, good food, celebratory drinks and all the children running wild in the woods.  It will be an excellent weekend.
• Another old, dear friend has started a blog.  Since she moved up north I very rarely get to see her, so I love that I can keep up with what she's been doing and cooking more easily now.  Check out the malteser cupcakes and her Mum's wonderful bread pudding (which I made last weekend and went down a storm with the whole family).
• I am late to the party, but listening to Adele's 21 album at the moment.  It is fantastic.
• I find that I very rarely get sentimental about the passing of a stage in the children's development.  I am always ready for the next stage.  No more crawling?  I just loved that they were walking.  Sad to pack away the cot? No - just loving how sweet they looked in the big bed.  And so suddenly I find I'm excited about C starting High School and the soon-to-be teenage years.  Bring it on.
• In this spirit I made him some new curtains - bye bye to the curtains printed with baby giraffes that I made when I was pregnant with him, and hello to bright, funky, green, abstract curtains.

• G is cycling 180km to Cambridge and back today - the same distance that he will have to do in his Ironman race this summer.  I still find it hard to get my head around the distances involved.  In the actual race he'll already have done a long swim, and when he gets off his bike he'll then run a marathon for the last leg.
• I am still a couple of years off 40, but I suddenly find myself seeing the point of gardening for the very first time.  This feels like some kind of middle-aged enlightenment.  When I turn 40 will I want to get myself one of those kneeler pads?
• I'm baking a great deal of soda bread.  Mainly because it's so quick and easy. Weigh ingredients, stir, plonk on baking sheet, bake.  All done in 50 minutes.

• I've also been making these onion bread rolls, which are delicious - especially with a couple of rashers of bacon and  a squirt of ketchup inside for breakfast.
• How did it get to be June already?

March of the Women

This evening I went to the Southbank, at Waterloo, for the finale of the three day Women of the World conference.  The finale was an evening of comedy and music, hosted by the deliciously naughty Sandi Toksvig and with performances from Susan Calman, and an all female orchestra led by Clio Gould (who usually leads the Royal Philarmonic Orchestra) and conducted by the multi-talented Sue Perkins.  There was even a guest appearance by Helena Kennedy QC.

The evening was so much fun and it ended with the whole audience all standing up and singing along at the top of their voices to March of the Women by Dame Ethel Smyth - the suffragettes' anthem. 

Ethel Smyth was a composer at the end of the 19th and in the early 20th century.  She joined the Women's Social and Political Union to campaign millitantly for women's suffrage in Britain, and even stopped working for two years so that she could properly devote herself to the cause.  Along with many other members of the WSPU she was jailed for her actions in the suffrage campaign.  Sandi Toksvig told us all the story of how one visitor to Holloway Prison found a whole group of suffragettes in the prison quad singing March of the Women, while Ethel Smyth conducted them from a window above, using a toothbrush as a baton.

So this evening we all stood up to remember the suffragettes and sing their anthem, which really should not be forgotten.  It was spine tingling and exciting, and although we laughed when we too were conducted with a toothbrush, the determined lyrics and forceful, soaring music of the song made sure we remembered and gave thanks for all those amazing women who came before us.

In concert

One of the things I swore I would do when I was pregnant with C, ten years ago, was carry on doing all the things I liked doing before I had children. I was not a fast learner and it took me over a year before I fully realised that my life had changed and I could not carry on doing all the things I did before I had children, in exactly the same way.
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One of those items on my long list of "Things I shall continue doing, with children in tow" was going to see live music. I do still go to see music I really love, but not very often, and I pine for it. One of my favourite bands, Royksopp, played at the Royal Festival Hall tonight, and for the first time in ten years, rather than organising a babysitter, we took the children with us.



We took them out to dinner first, and filled them with pudding. They were excited!
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I'm so glad we took them. The music was much more to our taste then theirs, but hey, we're the parents, so we get to choose the music. They can go and see things like Linkin Park or The Pussycat Dolls by themselves - when they're old enough to buy their own tickets. They loved the lighting, were rather amazed at all the dancing and screaming that went on, and had taken enough in to talk about all the different tracks we heard as we travelled home, rather dozy, on the late tube.
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Even O, who fell asleep in the penultimate song.
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The English summer

This song by Sheffield duo, Grandadbob, is one of my all-time, top favourite, Desert Island Discs. I am listening to it a great deal at the moment, because it is that time of year.

It has got me thinking too. The Grandadbob definition is brilliant, but what would mine be? A list clearly.

► Strawberries
► Broad beans
► Music festivals
► Drinking cider
► Damp grass
► Open windows
► Early dawns
► Tents
► Dragonflies
► Hay
► Midges
► Jam making
► Sunhats
► Cherries
► Sports day at school
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Last week was Sports Day and this coming weekend is the music festival.

On Thursday, G and I are heading off to The Secret Garden for five days of child-free, music-drenched outdoors relaxation. We’ve been to The Big Chill (many times), Womad and The Green Man before, but this is our first time to The Secret Garden. I’m looking forward to it so much.

For me a good festival is small, laid-back, beautiful, busy and slightly mad. I want to drink posh cider in the sunshine, read books, play games, eat middle-of-the-night bacon sandwiches, wear funky clothes, discover some new music and hang out with friends. I am sure all of this is going to be waiting for me at The Secret Garden.

There’s a festival packing list – obviously.

And my funky raincoat will be the first thing packed, but from the forecast it looks as though I won’t need it. Even an English summer is sunny sometimes!

See you all in a week’s time.
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Playlists and moods

I am a great believer in acknowledging your emotions and making the most of them as far as possible. If I am tired, I don't want to try and perk myself up - I want to give in to the tiredness. If I am excited, I want to fizz and leap around with excitement, not contain it.

When I bought myself an iPod a couple of years ago, the function I was most excited about was the ability to create playlists. Imagine - your very own 'mix tapes', as many as you like, and one to match every mood!

Among the dozens of playlists I have, there are some called:

• Energetic (good for walking in the sunshine)
• Happy songs
• Mellow
• Heartbreak (I don't have much of that in my life, but the songs are so good that its nice to pretend sometimes)
• Peaceful
• Sleepy
• Romance
• Upbeat

One of the times I listen to music most frequently is on the walk and tube journey home from work. For a long time now I've been trying to put together the ultimate playlist for this journey, but it has been a tricky task.

I first started off with one I called 'A walk through the City' and it has sweetly upbeat tracks like Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow by Michael Buble, I Get Around by The Beach Boys and Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison. But I am not often in a sweetly upbeat kind of mood when I come out of work, so although its a nice playlist to sashay about town in, wearing a new pair of shoes, it doesn't match my leaving-work mood.

Then after a couple of really bad weeks at work recently I created a playlist called 'Pretty cross' which has all the angriest, noisiest tracks I own. Tracks like Epoca by The Gotan Project, Stan by Eminem, You Had Me by Joss Stone and Firestarter by Prodigy. I absolutely loved walking home to this playlist - it matched my mood while work was so grim. But because it was reinforcing my mood, I would arrive home in an absolutely horrible temper, which didn't seem fair on G and the children.

Tonight at the tube station, I was scrolling through all the playlists again and after dithering for too long I plumped for the first playlist I ever put together - my list of favourite Country tracks:

• I'm Down To My Last Cigarette - by k.d.Lang
• There's Your Trouble - by The Dixie Chicks
• Lone Star State of Mind - by Nanci Griffiths
• Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue - by Crystal Gayle
• She's In Love With The Boy - by Trisha Yearwood
• Why Don't We Get Drunk - by Jimmy Buffett
• Hey Good Lookin' - by Tammy Wynette
• Annie's Song - by John Denver
• Save The Last Dance For Me - by Emmylou Harris
• Talking In Your Sleep - by Crystal Gayle
• Stand By Your Man - by Tammy Wynette
• Tonight The Heartache's On Me - by The Dixie Chicks
• Two Pina Coladas - by Garth Brooks
• Here You Come Again - by Dolly Parton

It turned out that this was just the playlist I need to listen to after work. It takes me out of my day by giving me happy, catchy tunes and memorable lyrics...

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Her daddy says, "He ain't worth a lick
When it came to brains, he got the short end of the stick"

But Katie's young and man she just don't care

She'd follow Tommy anywhere!

(She's In Love With The Boy)

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or:

So bring me two pina coladas

One for each hand

Let's set sail with Captain Morgan

And never leave dry land

(Two Pina Coladas)

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It turns out that the mood I am often in when I leave work is not one that I should give into, relish or enjoy after all; but one that I need to leave firmly behind at the office doors.

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Romance

For so many years I have firmly believed that romantic moments were not about the location, or the date. Romance could happen in mundane places, on weekdays, when you were least expecting it...and surely that therefore made the moment even more romantic?


G's birthday is on February 14th, so we never celebrate Valentine's Day; instead it is always a birthday celebration - and one that involves G's wider family as G's brother's birthday is on the same day and his father's is on the day after. We are not married, so don't have a wedding anniversary either. Our first proper date was on 11th January 1997 and that is the date we take as our anniversary - but mid-January is never very romantic because we are always feeling poor and puritanical after the excesses of Christmas.


More romantic have been moments when G has appeared home from work with a book for me that he thinks I would like, or when we spent on our first holiday together walking the Pennine Way and eating endless meals of egg and chips. Little, daily acts of love like bringing me a cup of tea in bed were what I thought romance was based on.

But, my thinking has changed over this past weekend....

This afternoon G and I came back from a weekend that we spent at The Dial House Hotel in Bourton On The Water, in the very heart of The Cotswolds. The hotel is a very old, classically Cotswold building with stunning gardens, a few beautifully designed bedrooms and a fabulous chef. Our room also had its very own, private garden, opening out from french windows at the foot of our bed.

The whole setting was deeply romantic and luxurious. In the main garden of the hotel was a summer house. A little, square wooden house that looked as if it belonged in a child's picture book. Inside, there were low sofas around three of the walls, which were scattered with silk cushions. In the centre of the room was a large, square table with some little candles in the middle. There was even a button to call for service.

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On Saturday evening we took our coffee in the summer house after dinner. We brought our iPods and little portable speakers with us, plus some board games. The setting was the most romantic thing I have ever come across. Night fell, the stars came out, and we were in a little, cosy house built for two, with music to match our mood.

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Here is a list from my iPod of music for romantic moments:

• You are always on my mind by Michael Buble
• Unforgettable by Nat King Cole
• Crazy by Patsy Cline
• All You Want by Dido
• One Love / People Get Ready by Bob Marley
• Promenade Sentimentale by Vladimir Cosma
• The Secret Marriage by Sting
• Don't Know Why by Norah Jones
• I Put A Spell On You by Nina Simone
• God Only Knows by The Beach Boys
• It Must Be Love by Madness
• Sky Holds The Sun by The Exploding Thumbs
  

I would like to say that in the spirit of romance and sharing, we didn't just listen to my iPod, but G's favourite Danish ambient glitch-techno band, Trentemoeller, didn't really set the mood....