Not my favourite day

I am a fortunate soul. I have a wonderful family, I know many amazing and inspiring people, we can afford (just about) for me to work for free at things that matter to me. I have far too many animals and a veg garden prone to flooding but that's OK.
And I love my city very much indeed.

However, sometimes it all goes a bit tits up. Yesterday was one of those days.

First of all - women, cross your legs. My apologies for this bit.
Today I had my 3-yearly cervical smear test. Like every woman in the country of screening age, I received the notification letter with a glum sigh. Yes, I know we have to do it, it's the smart course of action but still...
I procrastinated just long enough to side-step the Easter school holidays and scheduled it for first thing on a Monday. "get it over with first thing."
The speculum isn't exactly comfortable and I actively dread the click...click...click noises they open it.
Unfortunately, the nurse was inexperienced.
(I did warn you to cross your legs)
She's a total poppet. She's warm, friendly, kind, well-meaning and has a terrific manner with patients. She has the sparkly blue eyes of an old Hollywood movie star. She's great at taking blood and doing inoculations. She's just not quite got the hang of cervical smears.
Yet.
It took 8 goes.
 EIGHT.
I had to ask her to stop, I couldn't take it anymore.
She fetched an experienced nurse who sorted it - without pain - in 2 minutes.
Talking to one of my Very Excellent Mates afterwards, she'd had the same nurse with a similar result (fewer tries, more bleeding).
Ick.
I thought that was the worst my week would be. Everything's on the up from that, surely.

After dropping Z's forgotten lunch at school and buying the approved summer uniform polo shirts at the shop down the road, I drove to work on my lovely Vespa.
The roads are generally quiet at that time of day but a combination of road works, building works and changed lane marking mean a couple of sections are more awkward than usual. This resulted in the cars in the lanes either side of me simultaneously deciding to be in my lane, which they did without indicating and seemingly without noticing me on my scooter. Cars in front and behind, and moving in from either side - adrenaline spike! Luckily the car behind blasted its horn and they both swerved back into their lanes. People tell me scooters are dangerous. My experience is that no, it's dozy car drivers that are dangerous.
After that burst of near death excitement I went to the marvellous Play Lab.

Play Lab is a pop-up play space in the centre of the city. It's brilliant and if you are local to Leeds do come ad see us. It's on New York street opposite the post office, on the road down Kirkgate Market that leads to the multi-story carpark and the bus station. We're there 10-4 every day, sometimes later as well.
We have an empty shop that we've filled with Lego, toys, pillows, hula hoops, craft bits and a visiting coffee shop. We've pompom makers, chalks, markers and paper, stuff for den building, plenty to mess about with. That's the drop-in-and-play bit, totally free.
Downstairs we run workshops and inventors clubs to get kids exploring what they can build and create.  It's flipping lovely.

I'm acting as a self-appointed intern at this community-based project. It was clear to me the founder, Emma Bearman, couldn't possibly manage all her plans with the workforce she had funding for, so I nominated myself. I do a few days a week - mostly just being there to welcome people, help kids with activities, do the odd errand, clear up and so on. Having an extra body to (wo)man the play space can be a help.  It's very rewarding, if occasionally very noisy!
After a 4.5 hour shift I locked up and headed across town to collect a book from Waterstone's. My arthritis hasn't been great, so I was walking awkwardly and was jostled a couple of times. I put that down to my clumsiness.
When I got to Waterstone's and went to pay, I discovered my wallet was missing. On the unlikely chance I'd left it at work, I went back to Play Lab and searched for it. No wallet. I'd definitely had it when I bought those school shirts. I definitely had it when I tucked it in my cotton shopping bag when I got to Play Lab, and tucked it out of sight in the back of the cubby under the motorbike jacket.
There wasn't a lot in it - frustrating things to replace like loyalty cards, membership cards, drivers licence, credit and debit cards, and a couple of gift vouchers. Things I'll now have to reset on all websites I buy from. Hoops to go through because I bought out Hamilton the musical tickets with that card and I need it to collect the tickets.
Oh, and two really nice commemorative £2 coins in the separate compartment for my coin collection
(I know, I know, coin collecting is lame. Don't judge me. I've had a rough day.)
I'd been pickpocketed on my way through town.
That pretty much broke me.
It was such a crappy thing to happen, with so little advantage to whomever stole the wallet. It had been a really lousy morning followed by a nerve-wracking commute, a lovely but draining shift with my bad knees and now lots of inconvenience and frustration, as well as costing me about £50 to replace things.
I sang fed up songs on my way home (thanks to Lily Allen and Belle and Sebastian for their excellent work in this field), felt thoroughly narked with the world and went to bed early feeling drained.
Monday the 16th can piss right off.
So here I am on Tuesday.
I have an open bouquet of daffodils on my kitchen counter., which is enough to brighten my day. Yes, living in a city means there is crime and it's damned annoying when it happens to you. However, living in the city also means there are amazing things like Play Lab, providing a warm and welcoming space for families. There are large bookshops like my lovely Waterstone's, and fun places to go like my beloved Everyman cinema. There are Kirkgate Market traders who call out and wave when I go by, friends to commiserate with when rotten things happen, and thousands of connections and intersections of communities that make life richer.
I'm shaking off yesterday and looking forward to tomorrow. There are rumours of sunshine.

What I'm really thinking

(with apologies to the weekly feature in the Guardian of the same name)

What I'm Really Thinking... The Charity Volunteer

I'm standing in a busy public space, wearing the tabard with the charity's name emblazoned across it, and I'm holding a collection bucket for people the drop coins into.

I'm not saying anything nor approaching people, just standing still and smiling, holding the bucket. There are 3 other volunteers at the train station with me - one near the barriers, one near a display about the charity, and another near the other main thoroughfare to me. We're not close enough to speak to each other, so we're each on our own trying to look friendly and approachable while people walk past.

I wish I could say to you all "It's ok. You can smile and I won't take is as a commitment to give money. I'm in the middle of you all, and I am going to look at you and smile. I'm a friendly person, smiling comes naturally. You don't have to avert your eyes so obviously.  Making eye contact, smiling back, acknowledging someone... it doesn't mean you are obliged to make a donation. "

Instead I thank those who drop coins in, and wish people a lovely bank holiday weekend.

After about 40 minutes I'm a bit bored so I amuse myself by finding something positive about each person walking towards me.  Great haircut; nice jacket; shared book taste from the WH Smith purchase; warm smile as they greet their friends.  It makes it easier to keep being friendly.

But again, the carefully averted gaze, the swerve to avoid passing near the collection bucket. I'm feeling like a pariah. I've had about 20 donations (mostly small change)  but a good 300 people carefully *not* looking in my direction as they walk straight past me.

Guys. Seriously.

I am not so desperate for your pocket change that I'm going guilt trip you into it with big puppy dog eyes. That 20p the girl dropped in the bucket just now? That's nice of her, but not the sort of contribution to badger and harangue people over.

If you'd like to drop some money in the bucket, ACE. That's kind of you. It's a really worthwhile cause. But if you don't, that's OK too. No one is judging you. So there's no need to look sharply away like you've been caught. I know everyone has her own priorities, preferred causes, money worries, busy lives or just self-absorption. Relax. Catching my eye is and smiling back is just that - a smile.

And have a great weekend.

All Change

16 and a half years ago I went on maternity leave from my full time office job. Back then the leave was 14 weeks. I worked to 37 weeks and Luke was a little late being born. This meant I was due to go back to work full time from 8am to 5pm when he was just 9 weeks old.  

I couldn't do it.

I quit.  I worked from home as a web designer, admin and tech support woman for small businesses for a few years then started Cake Box, my bakery from home.  Other than 9 months of popping into a local estate agent to update their online files on a Saturday when our first child was a toddler I've worked based from home all that time.

All this changes now. I've got a job. Yikes.

I shouldn't be so surprised, of course. Millions of people have jobs. It's *normal* to have a job. And it's not like one dropped from the sky into my lap, I did have to apply for it. Indeed one of my challenges for this year was to find a way to earn money. But to work in an office, not be my own boss, have colleagues and - gasp - childcare issues seems kind of intimidating right now. I'm trying to work it all out in my mind so life will go smoothly but there's such a lot to think about . I need to leave the house at 7:30 am and Mark is in Slough some of the week, so getting our 9yo sorted and to school on time will be interesting. I am fortunate in having Very Excellent Mates who are willing to help out.

It's going to be fine, of course. It will mean a lot of changes for everyone in the family but after a couple of months it will be normal to us.  

One of the things I'm clearly going to need is a reliable method of transport. The school I'll be secretary for is just over 3 miles away, not on a direct bus route. Oh look, what a perfect reason to buy a new Vespa!

I picked a Vespa Primavera 125 - it's a lovely dark grey-blue colour with a beige seat; it's quite retro looking. It runs like a dream and those lovely new tires grip the road so well compared to my poor old ET4 it was a totally different riding experience. I'd better like this job; I have to keep it so I can pay for my bike!

My now-defunct ET4

Isn't that a pretty bike?

vroom vroom

Some of the other things I wanted to attack this year were  - 

• See friends regularly - I'm getting better at this

• Attend at least 5 book group meetings  - Tick! 
• Have a week of decluttering one room a day.  A month of decluttering weekends would do too - I've got some areas much improved but there's loads still to do.
• Walk 30km in a month - my ruined knee kind of scuppered this one, so I need to get back on track now.
• Learn a new skill
• Go to a WI meeting - I've been to 3 meetings and a meal, and have joined
• Volunteer on a weekly basis  - Between reading with the school and the food bank work I was doing more than once a week. Most of that will have to stop now I'm working, though.

Taking Stock - This Year's Fearless List

Last year I listed some of the things I found the very thought of rather tricky. Pah! I knew NOTHING.

In 6 months of mentoring from the lovely Andrew Edwards at BBC Radio Leeds, I did so many things I was scared stiff of that my earlier list seems laughable. Walking up to total strangers to ask their views on a subject  - without the shield of a BBC ID badge or other legitimising item - was scary enough.  Interviewing people terrified me but I did it.  Interviewing people on topics I knew nothing about was harder still. Trying for an interview I didn't have to edit - eek!  I never managed that to a decent standard but even trying it freaked me out.

Source of many scary tasks

Then there was the techie side - trying to work out for myself how to edit and tweak a piece with just the software on my laptop.  I got pretty good, considering. (Considering I know nothing and I never mess about with my computer just to see what it does. And I'm a pretty analogue person in a digital world)

From last year's list I did do daily exercise for a month, read Lord of the Flies, ate meat and something aniseed (still hate aniseed, still find the taste of meat fine but the texture distressing. Except pastrami, which is ace), and even kept my opinion to myself several times.  It nearly choked me, so I doubt I'll make a habit of it.  I didn't knit something other than a scarf but I did learn to crochet toys and made two - a rabbit and a dragon - and that blanket for Miss B's birthday, so I consider that a yarn-based ambition fulfilled.

Remember him?

Looking forward, what are the things that seem tricky, intimidating yet worth having a go at this year? I've had a good think about the areas of my life that aren't quite right, and what I could challenge myself to do to improve them.

I'm in the midst of giving up wine. Well, not entirely, but drastically reducing my wine drinking. Mark and I always have wine with our dinner, and then more while watching TV.  It just crept up over the years.  So we're mostly giving up alcohol except for the odd occasion - like my ballet weekend and last night, after hosting Miss B's birthday party.  Cripes, that was a draining day. I've 3 or 4 more things coming up in the next 2 months that I won't mind my having a glass of wine at, but that's about it. The plan is to continue in this vein until spring. It's good for our health and our bank balance. I know both could do with the boost!

I've also realised I'm lonely. I used to see people far more often - whether it was my marvellous pal Julie at sewing class and pilates, the truly ace Emma on our dog walks, or even my monthly book group with women I've been friends with for over 10 years.  Somehow I've retreated inwards and just don't see most of my friends very often. Thank heavens for my mate Kirsty and our procrastination coffees. Without them I might never see anyone. And the less I see people the easier it is to retreat inwards - never a good thing for me. I need people.

Essentially, I'm now unemployed. The school is offering loads of free clubs run by staff members, so demand for the clubs I run (that they pay for) has dried up. Understandably.  In fact, I think it's good for the school and good for parents (Miss B attends a couple and I'm grateful for the free activities) but it means I only had 2 sets of lessons to teach instead of 6.  I'm only baking a couple of cakes a week for Haley and Clifford's regulars, as wholesale baking margins just evaporated in the rising cost of ingredients and power. The franchise "Eggfree (in tiny letters) Cake Box (in big letters) played merry hell with my bespoke cake business, what with using the same damned name to all intents and purposes.  And the more pricey wedding/celebration cake end of things was something I did under sufferance anyway.

So I need a new way to spend my days. For the first time I have no day to day business and no tiny children at home. I need to look into ways to earn money without doing a soul-destroying job I hate, or to volunteer/train at something worthwhile. That could help with the loneliness thing too. The lack of schoolyard chatting, toddler group mornings and work interactions (and the lack of a home-educated kid, who gave me 18 months of good company at one point) and the lack of cash to go out and about only compounds things.

I don't want to think of myself as someone who doesn't work, doesn't contribute to the world, hides away from people. Although in the long dark stretch of the year, those are the easy choices. If I'm to be the Me I like, I need to alter this.

Still, making changes is scary.  Even looking into possibilities of changes is scary.  It is particularly so for me - for the last 16 years I haven't dared to look more than 6 months ahead, and the thought of the future repels me completely.  In fact, since I was about 25, the only time I've been happy to look ahead a year or two was when I was planning my first baby. The future - my future - scares me rigid.  But this blog is called Fearlessly Attempting, not Shying Away From, so I'd better up my game.

 Here are things I'd like to Fearlessly Attempt at least some of this year-

• Give up regular alcohol consumption until Spring
• Look for a new way of earning a living
• See friends regularly
• Attend at least 5 book group meetings 
• Have a week of decluttering one room a day.  A month of decluttering weekends would do too
• Walk 30km in a month
• Sew something someone could wear (me or the kids)
• Sew a copy of my favourite tunic by making a pattern from it
• Learn a new skill
• Go to a WI meeting
• Volunteer on a weekly basis 
• Apply to work at a community radio station
• Learn to quilt  (please help, Liz Merckel!)
• Build a new garden project

Yikes.

One thing I have decluttered already is my work shelving unit.  It was covered in a profusion of baking supplies and equipment, all jumbled together. Much of it I no longer need, other bits could be consolidated.  However, downsizing the baking shelves felt like admitting I wasn't working anymore, so I'd put it off.

Happily (!!) my craft supplies were slowly eating my bedroom.  It was chaos.  My lovely calm room was in a dreadful state and I had nowhere to put anything.  It was depressing.  But it was also the spur I needed.

So, I attacked the shelves. I binned some things, reorganised others, bought more IKEA small crates and labelled everything with my Sharpie. I have a shelf for cake boxes, boards and packaging, one for ingredients and the top shelf for things I only occasionally need, like sugar craft supplies and jam-making things.  I have 2 shelves for fabric, needle felting, craft supplies, pens, projects and equipment. The old CD shelves are stuffed with yarn (it looks like a wool shop!) and the tiny wall-mounted boxes that used to hold cupcake sprinkles now hold the kids' Hamma beads, sorted by colour.

It's ACE.  I can find stuff.

Here's a shot of it, part way through:

So, lots to think about, lots to do.  I wish you luck with your aspirations, and I'll let you know how I get on with mine.

J xx

Getting Down with Da Kidz

Hello my webby buddies

I'm feeling all Hallowe'en-ish today. It's grey and rainy outside, I've got the lights on at midday and my feet are freezing. I want to think about nice things like bright orange pumpkins, spicy ginger cake and costumed kids on a sugar rush. Well, maybe not that last bit.

Yesterday I spent the morning decorating tiny Hallowe'en themed cakes with Year 3 at our local primary school. There were 62 kids in all, across two classes. I don't know if you've ever been around that many 7 year olds, but it gets pretty loud. Very funny but at a high volume.

The most important class was the one Miss B was in, obviously. She'd begged me to do volunteering with them and was bouncing on her toes with the excitement of it all as she helped me set up. It was lovely.

I'd decided on two mini cupcakes per child - one with a spider made of sweets, the other a mummy. The mummy was a twofer - both seasonal and linking thematically to the Ancient Egyptians unit the class is doing right now. (I know, there is nothing Egyptian about a small cake iced to look like a cartoon mummy, but if it gives the class a curriculum tick I'm all for it.) The kids were very chuffed with both.

The previous evening had been a frenzy of baking the 130 cakes, cutting up strips of jelly sweets for spider legs because the supermarket was sold out of strawberry laces, dipping half the cakes in an orange glace icing and assembling all the things we'd need. I was flagging by the end of it all, and got less and less tolerant of my kids' repeated requests to eat 'any leftover Minstrels I might have. 1) I won't know how many Minstrels are left over until after the workshop and 2) If anyone deserves to scoff them, it's me.
I'm such a mean mum.

I set up lovely little workstations on the table, complete with a sample cake so they could see how the cake could look. Everything was counted out carefully. The was primarily to stop the first group from surreptitiously eating the Minstrel bodies and jelly legs I would need for the later groups, but also because it pleased me to have everything ready so  neatly. The neatness lasted under a minute.

My first error was judging what the class could do by what my daughter can do. She's been messing about with icing and baking in the kitchen with me since she was a toddler. I hadn't realised how adept she'd become compared with some of her peers. Confronted with a rolling pin, some icing and icing sugar she gets on with rolling it out. Some of the kids couldn't use a rolling pin and others were too worried about touching icing sugar with their bare hands.

Another complication was the open window the teacher wanted to keep the room cool. My tables were right next to it, and the cold air caused my bowl of melted chocolate to keep setting. The only way to heat it up was by putting it in microwave in the kitchen at the end of the corridor. The utterly lovely Teaching Assistant, Ms Lamb, did a few quick dashes down there for me.

A surprising number of the kids had difficulty following instructions. I had already iced the spider cakes. I put a blob of (mostly) melted chocolate on each one and the kids were to use it as the glue holding the (vegetarian and Halal) jelly legs in place and pop a Minstrel body on top. I thought this was a pretty easy one, but there were about 6 kids that needed to be shown what to do 4 or 5 times. On the plus side, no one stuck his fist in the big bowl of chocolate, although we had a near miss!

Added to all this, of course there were the high spirits and excitement of doing something out of the ordinary and the chance to mess about with sweets. This was VERY exciting and cool. We also needed to talk about who had won the Great British Bake Off final, who they had hoped for, who their mums and siblings had wanted to win, whether they themselves had every baked, or helped someone bake, or knew someone who could bake, or had ever entered a bakery. I had to laugh at a loads of the things the just *had* to tell me. Shyness is not much of an issue in Year 3.

All this meant that my time in the first class was extremely chaotic. I spent 75 minutes standing, bent over 3 tables at knee height trying to help 6 kids simultaneously.  The kids had a super time but I know the teacher was aware of the time slipping by and I kept trying to speed up. By the time I came to straighten up I knew I'd done myself no good at all. This morning just walking down the stairs hurt. Silly me.

The kids' cakes did look super. They were so proud, it was lovely.

By the time I went through to the second class I'd had a complete rethink.Prior to calling for each group of 6, I rolled all the sugarpaste out and cut it into little 'mummy bandage' strips, then made the little eye strips too. Rolling little balls of icing between their fingers to make eyeballs had proved a challenge for the first group. I laid out a 'spider kit' for each one - iced cake, jelly legs and chocolate body - to collect from the end of the table so I could sit down and help rather than bob about so much. I asked the teacher to give me 2 minutes between each group to set up the next one.

It worked like a dream. Those children experienced or confident with baking made their own things and those who weren't had all they needed to hand. They were still excited, chatty and full of anecdotes, but I had the time to listen more and be less pressured. I also wasn't in such a cramped space, which made things more comfortable. I'll know for next time.

And yes, there will be a next time. I've promised to do five more sessions this year.
Happy Hallowe'en
Jay x