Olympic ambitions

It's all Tom Daley's fault.  Really - it is.

I saw this picture on Instagram, and it reminded me that the Olympic aquatics centre opens to the public in just over a month's time.  For a split second I thought to myself 'it might be rather nice to have a swim in the Olympic pool', and then the thought faded as I remembered that I hate swimming.  Plus I can't really swim either.  I can float and tread water just enough to not drown, but I can't swim properly and the only 'stroke' I can do is basic doggy paddle for a few metres.  

The last time I did any amount of swimming was when I lived in Queensland, Australia for 9 months in 1995.  It was probably a condition of my visa that I had to swim while I was there; you can't be in Australia and not swim.  Any swimming I did was either snorkeling or splashing around in the sea though, so my 'not drowning' technique was perfectly adequate.  I can't actually remember the last time I went swimming in the UK.  It may have been as a child, with my parents.  I skived off every school swimming lesson at secondary school.  

I have never taken my own children swimming.  When they were toddlers I really wanted them to love swimming and be good at it, and I knew that the quickest way to ruin that would be for me to take them.  So Graham took them, and taught them both to swim at a very young age.  It is one of my greatest parenting achievements that they both swim like fish now, and love it, despite having me as a vehement, non-swimming, role model.  They are baffled at my dislike of it.  My parents have a pool in France, but I don't swim in it when we visit them.  Occasionally if it is really hot, I will sit in the shallow end sipping a cold glass of wine, or float for five minutes to cool down - but I'd rather be sitting in the shade reading a book and watching the others swim.

And yet...when I thought of the Olympic aquatics centre and how I would probably never swim there, I actually felt a little bit sad and regretful that I don't have a life skill that every other adult in the UK seems to have.  I remembered how I thought I hated running until I actually gave it a go.

"Right!  I'm going swimming tomorrow!" I announced to Olivia last night.
There was a long pause.
"You are?"
"Yes.  I'm going to give it a go."
"Wow."

I rummaged in my cupboard and found a swimming costume I bought over five years ago for occasional floating in the pool in France.  Olivia stood next to me, wide-eyed, as if she couldn't really believe I was going to go through with it.   She claimed never to have seen me wearing that swimming costume.

"You'll need googles," she said.  "Do you even have goggles?"
"No.  Do I really have to wear goggles?"
"Durr.  You can't swim without goggles."
"Okay - can I borrow yours?"
"I use Dad's second-best pair...but I think he's got a third-best pair somewhere that you could borrow."

Being a spoilt Londoner, as well as the Olympic aquatics centre just a ten minute bus ride away I also have two pools within walking distance of my house.  I have never swum in either, despite having lived here for fifteen years, but this morning after I took Olivia to school ("are you seriously going through with this?" was her parting shot as she got out of the car) I walked to the closest one and paid my three pounds (I don't even know if this is good value?  Is it?  It seemed pretty good to me).

In the changing cubicle I discovered that my swimming costume didn't fit.  I have - entirely accidentally - lost over 9kg in weight in the last year through running and working shifts, and the costume was gaping horribly.  I suspected that it would gape even more once I got it wet.  Happily, I discovered I could use the bracelet from my locker to clip the straps of my swimming costume together at the back, and this made it fit much better (although admittedly it left me looking like even more of an amateur - as if I didn't even know how to wear my locker bracelet).

The lanes in the pool were marked slow, medium and fast.  I got into a slow one, which only had two other people in it, and set off - not entirely sure whether I could swim a whole 25 metres in one go.  It turned out that I could just about manage a length of doggy paddle - and I stood up at the far end, heart pounding, feeling extremely pleased with myself. 

I had not expected everybody else in the pool to be so friendly.  Everybody chatted during the pauses at the end of the lengths.  There was much consternation and interest at my (lack of) swimming technique, and one man said, after watching me thrash up and down as hard as I could, "how come you're going so fast, given that you can barely swim?".  Polish Paul, in my lane, tried to show me how I could swim with much less effort. 
"This way, you won't be tired!" he said.
"I kind of want to be tired though," I replied, "I'm here for the exercise"
"No, no no.  You want to just glide up and down.  Don't wear yourself out.  I am an expert at gliding!"
As well as meeting Polish Paul, I learnt that the elderly lady in the green costume is known to everyone as The Fish, and that Mustafa, who is sixty this year, learnt to swim for his fiftieth birthday.  I suspect that if I turn up regularly at this time, I might become known as Crazy Doggy Paddle Woman.

I managed twelve lengths in total (not in one go - I stopped between each one), and when I got out, my arms and legs were trembling with tiredness ("you see - you should be gliding, like me!" said Polish Paul, as I rather shakily said goodbye).  

Graham's third-best pair of goggles

I think I might go again.

Thoughts on January

The first daffodils of 2014

For me, January has a clean, fresh feel to it.  It doesn't seem like the start of the year - for me that will always be the new school year in September - but rather, January is a tidying up and a re-grouping.  A shake of the shoulders, chin in the air, and carrying on with a renewed sense of determination.

Back at University today

A new term started for me today: a new module, new reading lists, new tutors, one new pen and no new notebook (so restrained of me), plus all my lovely nursing friends together again.  But, alarmingly, it's my last ever term of teaching on this course.  After this, I have placements until July, then the summer holidays off, and placements again up to Christmas, when I qualify.  Qualify!  It's pretty scary to even write that word. 

So I am enjoying the sense of calm and resolve that this time of year brings for me, and trying not to think too much about my time at University coming to an end.  I am grabbing as much fresh air as I can, looking out for the first British daffodil bunches in the shops (Waitrose had some this week!), running, baking bread, and reading novels.

 
And I'm also filling up all my spare days with plans of nice things I want to do while I still have a bit of time on my hands.  Its January now, and I've got the time and inclination to fritter away 20 minutes photographing blood oranges; but before I know it, it will be December and I'll be a fully qualified nurse.  Fewer blood oranges and more actual blood, I should imagine.  Not long now.
 

10 things

Bulrushes in Dulwich Park

• I met up with a friend in Dulwich.  We went to the Dulwich Picture Gallery to see the Whistler exhibition.  I loved the pictures in the exhibition - the detailed prints and etchings of life alongside the river were my favourites.  It is only on for a few more days, but well worth a visit if you are in the area.
• I had never been to Dulwich before.  It is a very pretty part of London, with a delightful park to wander around.
• Yesterday, I went up to Cambridge to see my sister and her small daughter, who is nearly two.  I spent a wonderful morning reading books, building duplo, sorting Postman Pat's letters and cooking play food.  My sister, who is due to give birth to her second child any day now, had a chance to put her feet up and do a little bit of cooking.  When she thanked me, as I left, for coming to visit I was instantly transported back eleven years when I had two small children and my sister, who was only about twenty at the time, would come to see me and spend hours just sitting on the floor with Cam and Olivia, building train tracks, playing, cuddling and reading books.  I had forgotten what a wonderful thing that was: adult company for me, and an adored entertainer for the children.  It's a good feeling to be able to return the favour for her.

  

  Small niece, looking at books

• In between visits to Dulwich and Cambridge, I have been studying pharmacology for an exam I have coming up later this term.  I find pharmacology really interesting but incredibly difficult to learn.
• Olivia was back at school for less than three days and she already had two birthday parties and a sleepover lined up for this weekend.
• I have had a great many turnips in my veg box the past few weeks.  I am rather enjoying them, although it can be a struggle to find many recipes for them as they are seen as quite an unusual vegetable these days.  I ate one raw and discovered that it tastes very like a radish.  Who knew?
• I baked an apple and almond loaf cake - it looks plain but tastes delicious.  I rather like cakes that do that - they seem quite classy and sophisticated.



A very pleasing new biscuit tin

• I have a self imposed tradition of acquiring a new biscuit tin each Christmas, which then becomes a new cake tin once all the biscuits have been eaten.  M and S is usually the best source for beautiful tins at Christmas, and this year's did not disappoint.
• I have read a run of really good books lately: The Butterfly Isles by Patrick Barkham, The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith (aka JK Rowling) were both gobbled up in a few days and I am now on The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion, which is another excellent read. 
• The cowl I knitted from leftover sock yarn has proved to be very disappointing.  It looks pretty but rolls up into a fat sausage whenever I wear it.  I think I probably should have used a thicker yarn, used a different stitch, and made it longer.  I shall go back to my default setting of knitting socks and shawls.

My newly finished cowl...

In its default setting - rolled up...

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     I was very kindly awarded a Versatile Blogger award by Phoebe at The Stylish Baker. Thank you, Phoebe!  Having blogged for nearly seven years there can't be that many more interesting things left to find out about me, so I have gone with my usual ten current things instead.  If you haven't come across Phoebe's blog already, do go and have a look.  Her Twelve Days of Christmas Baking had my mouth watering all December, and I made the 30 Minute Soft Pretzels as soon as I read the recipe - they were utterly delicious.

Where I was 2013

This year was a busy year.  I got used to working again.  I started to feel like a nurse.  I started to run - and I kept on running.

In March I had a lovely day with blogging friends, and Kristina gave us all handmade socks!

My parents and I took the children to the Cutty Sark over the Easter holidays

I knitted socks that matched my surgical textbook

In June I had a picnic in Victoria Park with some nursing friends

In August we went to see my parents in France, and I spent most of the time dozing in the hammock

I won some new running shoes!

I knitted some pink socks - started in the spring, finished in the autumn

Still running - I bought myself a running skirt and some fancy socks

Walking to university for lectures in October

Graham and I do parkrun every Saturday morning.  In almost-matching blue shoes.

A morning on the sofa after a long shift the day before

November leaves in London

Excellent, forgotten tights - found at the back of my sock drawer

Heading into university for the last time this year - to hand in my second year portfolio right before Christmas

Seasonal tights!

It was a good year.  A year of consolidation rather than new beginnings.  I tried to keep family life more or less the same, and incorporate work and study into it rather than let nursing dominate everything.  I didn't always manage it but it got easier as the year wore on.

It has been a peaceful but productive year, which is how I like it.

Ending the year in Norfolk with my brother's family

New Year's Eve beach walk in Norfolk

I ended the year with my brother and his family, who we don't get to see very often, in Norfolk.  We walked along sandy beaches under the vast empty skies, chatted, laughed, and eased into each other's company.  It was a perfect end to the year - with family... outdoors...relaxed.  Just how I like it. 

Graham and Cam - the same height now

Happy New Year!

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See all the previous Where I was posts here:
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012

No man's land

No more tree - my sewing and knitting corner restored to normal

I am always happy to see the Christmas tree come down.  It is never up for very long - this year was an all-time record from the 19th to the 27th.  The lights and excitement that come with the tree are very welcome, but the displacement of regular furniture and the cluttering up of empty surfaces with tinsel and ornaments makes me feel hemmed in and chaotic.  The moment when we pack everything away always reminds me of this book I used to read to the children when they were very little.

The removal of the tree heralds one of my favourite parts of the year: the no-man's land between Christmas and the resumption of school/university/work in early January.  Long lazy days where we might catch up with family or friends, or we might idle around the house, just the four of us, playing with new presents, watching TV or reading.  The house is full of good food so I do very little cooking after Christmas lunch - everybody helps themselves to leftovers, creating eccentric, tailor-made meals involving smoked salmon, brioche, fancy chutneys and cheeses and bits of stuffing (not necessarily all at once).  When I do feel like cooking, the amount of stock, made on Christmas day from the joint, means that it is almost always soup.  I love soup.

Today I went running (with new Christmas-present headphones), had a nap in the sunshine, watched some Friends with Olivia (who received the entire 10 season box-set for Christmas - very exciting!), ate some of the mulligatawny soup I made yesterday for lunch, did a few more rows of stitching on my kantha quilt, and read a little bit from two books I received as Christmas presents: Eat, the latest Nigel Slater book, and A Handbook for Nurses (published 1920).  This afternoon Graham and I are both going out and meeting up later at the pub.

A Handbook for Nurses - such a wonderful present

Really, what could be nicer than all this?  These days of Christmas no man's land are very special days indeed; that tipping point between the end of one busy year and the start of the next.

Christmas preparations

I finished work.  I finished my essay.  I made mince pies.  Olivia made even more.  Graham put up lights.  Cam counted the number of presents under the tree and ate mince pies. 

We are now turning our attention to the very large amount of cheese that I seem to have ordered.  Olivia says she doesn't mind eating the stilton all by herself, if that would help?  She has discovered that she likes stilton as much as Cam likes mince pies.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

The unlovely East End

I love London, and especially the East End of London, and am usually fiercely loyal...but the area where I am working at the moment is really rather grim and hard to love.  A dual carriageway thunders through the middle of it, the pavements are greasy and dirty, the Georgian and Victorian terraces were almost all destroyed by a combination of the Luftwaffe and the town planners of the 1960s, and replaced with tower blocks. The shops are tired and half-stocked and people hurry along to get somewhere else rather than linger here.  

My fifteen minute walk from the tube station to the hospital does not fill me with wonder and excitement...

...except for just one short moment when I walk over Regent's canal, and on a clear day can turn my head to the left and glimpse the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf rising out of the early morning mist.

And this is why I will always love East London.  Even in the middle of the grime and the deprivation, there's still something unexpected to see which makes me smile and feel alive at the start of a long day's work.

A new view

I've worked or studied in the City of London for over seventeen years, and it's one of my very favourite parts of London.  At once medieval and futuristic; both ruthlessly commercial and sweetly charming, there is a buzz about the City that I am still drawn to.  I feel at home there.  And happily for me, the City is also home to the oldest hospital in the world - St Bartholomew's, which is an incredible 890 years old - so I may yet get to work in the City again.

I used to spend my lunch hours happily prowling around the little lanes and quirky corners of the City; I didn't think there was much more left for me to discover.  But of course that couldn't be true.  On Wednesday, my friend Sarah and I walked back to St Paul's station together after a mid-placement review session at the University, and because we were still talking and didn't want to go home yet we did some window shopping, still chatting away and enjoying each other's company.  We found ourselves in 1 New Change, the luxury shopping centre that is all glass and posh carrier bags, and suddenly felt every inch the impoverished middle-aged nursing students that we were.  "Let's go up to the roof terrace," said Sarah, "it's free."

The lift doors opened and I stepped out to the most breathtaking view over the City skyline, with the sun setting behind St Paul's dome right in front of me.

We had a magnificent view of the new Shard too, as well as other favourites of mine such as the Eye, Battersea Power Station and the Royal Courts of Justice.  Sarah and I pointed out to each other buildings we'd worked in, or buildings we'd visited, and every few minutes I just had to turn around and take another photo of the sky and St Paul's.  I could even lean over the parapet and look over onto the roof of St Bart's.  

It's not often that you get the chance to see somewhere you're so familiar with from a completely different perspective.  The wide skies, the familiar buildings, the striped wispy clouds, the chill winter air...all made me very happy indeed.

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My friend Matthew camped on this same roof terrace not so long ago - you can read an abridged account of his night  here.

Running notes

My shift patterns and my tiredness levels the last few weeks have meant that I haven't been running much.  My usual three runs a week has faded to something like one run a fortnight.  But I don't think there's any point beating myself up about it - sometimes life gets in the way and a long sleep is better for your body than a long(ish) run.

On Tuesday though, I did make it out of the door for a run, and delighted myself with how much I enjoyed it.  I set off on a route that I know very well, so I didn't have to concentrate on where I was going; I put my music on nice and loud and just ran.

I loved how my legs and feet still knew what to do.  I loved how I ran just over 5k without it being a big deal.  I loved being fast, and I loved being pink-cheeked and pink-legged in the cold, dry winter air.

The night shift - 10 things

Trying to get to sleep at 10am, the day before my first night shift

Commuting to work from an empty tube platform - unheard of

A nearly empty train - another novelty

Reflections in the window of an empty tube carriage

Break time - 4am in an empty, silent staffroom

Heading home to bed - still in semi nurse mode with my hair up and my glasses on

I have to do a minimum of six night shifts as a student nurse before I qualify.  This week I did my first two.  There was much to learn - I didn't expect them to be quite so different from a day shift, but they were.  At the hospital I am at right now, the night shifts are the same length as the day shifts - twelve and a half hours, from 8pm to 8:30am.

• How any patient ever gets any sleep in a hospital is a miracle to me.  If it's not the sound of the other patients snoring or shouting, then it's the hum and hiss of the pressure-relieving mattresses, the beeps of the drip pumps or feed pumps, the call bells, the clatter of the nurses' medications trolley, the phones ringing, the lights turning on and off.  We try our very hardest to make night time feel like sleep time, but it's not easy in a hospital environment.  No wonder so many patients look tired and have naps during the day.
• I loved my commute to and from work for the night shifts.  A guaranteed seat on an empty train.
• On a day shift we have two or three small breaks of 15 or 30 minutes each.  On a night shift we have one long break of an hour and a half.  Some nurses have a quick nap during their break, others stay awake.  I tried both and much prefer staying awake - my body clock was less confused that way.  I did some knitting and listened to the radio on my break the second night, and arrived back on the ward feeling really quite refreshed.
• It's not the night shift itself that's so exhausting - it's the enforced jet lag you have to put yourself through.
• I liked having the time to talk to an anxious patient, chat with the matron who did rounds of the wards, or make a cup of tea for a family member sitting up with a dying patient.  There's generally more time for everything on a night shift.
• The crash trolley and the controlled drugs register must be checked every single night.
• I still haven't worked out how you eat normally during a run of night shifts.  I slept through mealtimes during the day, and didn't fancy eating a proper meal in the middle of the night; all I could manage was a couple of clementines and some cheese and crackers.  I was permanently hungry but it never felt like the right time to eat.
• One patient vomited all over my shoes thirty minutes before the end of the shift.  I just stared at my feet in surprise and then the patient and I both burst out laughing.
• I realised how many different people are on the wards during the day: visitors, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, porters taking patients to x-ray or theatre, pharmacists, social workers, speech and language therapists, nurse specialists, couriers and ward clerks.  During the night shift it is just the patients, the nurses, the healthcare assistants and the occasional doctor popping in to check on a particularly unwell or unstable patient.
• My children were amazing at keeping quiet when they got in from school.  I slept right through and never even heard them come home.