Author: jl.boreham

A few weekends ago, after Saturday in Bristol, Sunday was spent in beautiful Bath, in lots of ways the opposite of Bristol but equally as beautiful. It is a stunning city. Designated a World Heritage site it is famous for its imposing architecture and its Roman remains, which are built around its natural hot spring which still rises today at 46 °C. It also has one of the UK’s top ranked universities – The University of Bath. In days gone by people travelled from far and wide to experience the natural spa at Bath.

The Georgian architecture there is so beautiful, you feel like you have stepped back in time into a Jane Austin novel. The Royal Crescent, built by John Wood the Younger is a designated World Heritage Building and The Circus, built by his father is equally as stunning. Then there is the imposing Bath Abbey, situated next to the river and the Pulteney Bridge, modelled on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. It also has an unrivalled selection of shops and the UK’s best Christmas market so always gets a weekend visit from me in December for me to do my Christmas shopping.

The real reason for the whole Bristol / Bath weekend this time was a belated 22nd birthday celebration for my eldest. I still can’t get used to them not being at home on their birthday, I really don’t like it. So I always organise to see them for the weekend around their birthdays.

The plan for the day was a good wander around the streets, sites and parks of Bath followed by a birthday meal and drinks.

It’s quite rare these days that all I get both of my boys together as they live in different cities and both have busy lives so I love it when I get to spend time with them both together. What makes it even better is the fact that they actually more than just tolerate each other now, they actually seem to get on.

When they were younger they absolutely hated each other….. and I mean hate! There are only two and a half years between them. When they were small I read every book on sibling rivalry that I could find, convinced I was doing something wrong. It all started on the day the eldest came to collect the new baby and myself from the hospital, the day after his birth.  He was two years old and I had read somewhere that it was a good idea for the new baby to come with a gift for the older sibling to help with the bonding process, call it a bribe if you like. So there I was, waiting for collection, baby in car seat, and a perfectly wrapped Scoop the Digger (from Bob the Builder) addressed to the ‘Best Big Brother in the World’. It all seemed to be going well and Scoop was very well received. Big brother had a quick nonchalant look in the car seat and carried on playing with Scoop. It all went downhill when the time came to leave the hospital …….he was absolutely adamant that Scoop was coming with us but we were leaving the baby at the hospital, he did not want it!

This continued until the baby was around 15 years old. He took every toy off the baby, wound the small toddler up at every available opportunity, fought through pre-adolescence and getting the teenage little brother into trouble with Mum was his number one pastime. Home was like a boxing ring, there were different zones and my priority was to keep them entertained and separate, it was just easier! We went out lots, the park, playgrounds, feeding the ducks etc. They were just easier to manage out of the house but they drove me absolutely insane.

Everyone told me it would pass. I never believed them but it has. There was a sudden realisation from both parties when the eldest left for University three years ago that they actually missed each other.

However, that aside, getting a picture of us together is a completely different matter. It was years since I had one of the three of us together, skiing in Austria around five years ago I think. They know I always want one so they wind me up by making sure I don’t get my shot. I had attempted to get a selfie the previous evening but it just ended with me falling out with them as they each took it in turns to pull a face and ruin the photo. I was determined that day in Bath was going to be my day!

So off we set, first stop Victoria Park and the Royal Crescent. Victoria Park is beautiful, especially on a sunny autumnal morning like it was that Sunday. It was opened by 11 year old Princess Victoria in 1830, seven years before she ascended to the throne and has an obelisk dedicated to her. The nice thing about visiting the park in the autumn is that it used to be an arboretum. It has so many trees of all different varieties and from all around the world and the autumn colours just take your breath away. The park is 57 acres in total so it was lovely to have a good walk around it and a catch up with them both together.

Next stop the Royal Crescent, probably Bath’s most iconic landmark. This is a Grade I listed crescent building of 30 Georgian terraced houses and in my opinion is one of the greatest examples of Georgian architecture to be found in the UK. Most of the crescent is still inhabited as housing today, with just a couple of units in use as a museum. The outlook over Victoria Park makes this one of the most desirable locations in Bath. It also marked the perfect spot for the Mum and sons photograph. I have now discovered that the key is to ask someone else to take the photograph rather than take a selfie. They suddenly become all sensible and do as they are told……..result!

Then onto The Circus. Similar to the Royal Crescent, but a little older, this is another Grade I example of Georgian architecture. It forms a complete circle of terraced houses, with three entrances to the circle. Time for some more photographs.

By this time we were ready for the real reason for the visit………Birthday celebrations! I can’t quite believe he is now 22 years old…….it has gone so fast. We all absolutely love food. Ever since they have been small I have always fed them all sorts of different food. I have travelled a lot with them too so they have been exposed to various different cultures and cuisines so their palette is quite varied. They have both loved things like olives and spicy food since being really small. So when we go out for something to eat we like to try something new and different and in Bath you are spoilt for choice.

We decided to go somewhere we’d not been before and opted for ‘The Coconut Tree’, a laid back casual place in the centre of Bath focusing on Sri Lankan street food. It was a little bit like tapas or mezze where you order a number of dishes and share. It also had the advantage of having an extensive cocktail menu, never a bad thing when you are there to celebrate, but not good for the wallet when you are there with two students and you are paying! The food was absolutely delicious. Favourites were the goat and coconut curry and the cuttlefish. As per usual they ordered enough to sink a battleship but managed to clear it all, washed down with a few ‘Hit Me Up Mezcals’ and ‘Raspbangin Martinis’. All in all an excellent Birthday celebration and I’d definitely recommend the cuisine of Sri Lanka.

Final stop, coffee overlooking the beautiful Bath Abbey and Pulteney Bridge as it started to rain and the light started to fade. There’s something magical about the Abbey though as the light starts to fade and the street lights illuminate the buildings of Bath. It’s quite Dickensian and I can see now why the town has been the choice of many directors filming classics such as Oliver Twist, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion. It’s like a ready made film set with hardly any adaptation required. The end to a lovely weekend.

I love Bonfire Night…….and we like to do it properly up here in Yorkshire.

Purely a UK festival celebrated on 5th November every year! So what is it? And what are we remembering? A lot of people might not even know……it’s a little bit like Christmas and Easter when people sometimes overlook the real reason for the festivities.

In the UK on the 5th November we are remembering the anniversary of a failed attempt on that date in 1605, by a gentleman called Guy Fawkes, to blow up the Houses of Parliament and everyone inside. This included the Protestant King James I. The intention of the plot was to replace him with a Catholic head of state. The plot failed and Guy Fawkes was quite literally hung, drawn and quartered.

So on the run up to 5th November it’s customary to make a ‘Guy’…….. (a scarecrow of Guy Fawkes). He is then burnt atop a huge bonfire which lasts for hours and culminates in fireworks to symbolise the explosives used in the plot. We get our old clothes on, because whatever you wear on bonfire night usually ends up smelling of smoke for ever and gets covered in ash burns.

We light sparklers and it’s also a good excuse to indulge in those bonfire night specialities……..toffee apples, pie and peas with mint sauce, molasses bonfire toffee, parkin (ginger cake) and just generally have a good old party!

In Yorkshire we like a party and we like to do it properly. This year did not disappoint. We might be a tiny village in the middle of nowhere but everyone turned out from miles around. We had a huge fire. I had my favourite steak pie and mushy peas with gravy and mint sauce in a plastic tray…….it would not be bonfire night without this! There was Bradfield brewery Belgian Blue in a plastic cup, banging tunes and we might be small in population……but certainly not in firework displays!

Until next year!

This week has been a strange week, the one I least look forward to all year, the week the clocks go back. I’m an outdoors sort of person, I love to be outside immersed in nature or in my garden. Turning the clocks back one hour makes this just that bit more difficult with my working hours. I’m up for work at 6:30 am, it’s dark. I leave work at 4pm, sunset time this week at home is 4:26pm. Assuming I leave work on time I get exactly 26 minutes of dusk per day, Monday to Friday. Needless to say my headtorch has had some use this week as I still need to get outside, it’s what keeps me sane. Tuesday evening was a very wet and rainy run in the dark with my fluorescent jacket on. Then Friday night was a headtorch lit 5 mile walk across the countryside and fields for a drink at the little microbrewery in the next village from home.

I don’t like dark and I don’t like being cold, so other than those lovely sunny crisp weekend mornings or those that are covered in snow, I’m not that keen on this time of year.

I’m also one of those people who daydreams a lot, about the most random things, and my mind wanders. I often stop myself and think, “What on earth am I thinking about that for?” In one of my moments this week I was thinking about what I would be if I came back in another life, I’ve no idea what got me onto thinking about that! This week I decided it would be a bear. Lots of fur to keep me warm and I could fall to sleep when all the autumn leaves have fallen and wake up at the end of February when the days start to extend again, perfect. Except that I love Christmas, so someone would need to wake me up for that!

So this weekend I was desperate to get outside having only seen the light through my office window all week. It was a nice weekend at home too, so I decided to spend all day on Saturday outside in my garden. I don’t seem to have been at home much recently. I was away all summer and then the weekends since summer I have been here, there and everywhere, catching up with all the friends and family who I did not see over summer. I think this has been my first full weekend at home.

I absolutely love my garden, and flowers. It got a little neglected over summer with me being away so it was ready for a good old tidy up and preparation for winter. Over the years I’ve done various evening classes after work as I love learning new things. The classes I’ve done have been varied. One of my favourites though, I did when I worked in Leeds city centre around 20 years ago. I wasn’t too far away from the Royal Horticultural Society gardens at Harlow Carr, Harrogate so I embarked on a Certificate in Garden Design after work. I absolutely loved it. I think it has to be one of my most enjoyable qualifications. We were each given the dimensions and topography of a piece of land and it all culminated in the submission of a portfolio and a final garden design. The inspiration for my design was Gaudi’s Parc Guell in Barcelona. All the lines were flowing, not angular. There were lots of mosaic features in Mediterranean colours, flowing water and the planting was bright and fitted the Mediterranean theme. I loved it.

I owe my love of gardening and plants to my parents. They are both avid gardeners, even now in their eighties. I was lucky enough to be brought up in a house, where they still live, which has a huge garden. It is still one of my favourite places to be. Mum has a keen eye for planting combinations and it is full of colour all year. Dad’s lawn is his pride and joy. It’s always very green, has perfectly mown stripes in it. At the bottom of the garden sits a dovecote, which when I was small was filled with his collection of pure white fantail pigeons. The pigeons are long gone but the dovecote still has pride of place in the garden. I spent most of my time playing in the garden when I was small and I’m sure this is why I love my garden so much.

So this Saturday was a day of clearing all the summer perennials which have died back and planting up some winter colour as I absolutely have to have flowers and colour all year round. My garden was my absolute life saver during the pandemic, I don’t know what I would have done without it. I felt so lucky and can’t imagine what it must have been like to spend a lockdown without a garden as I was in mine all the time: reading, knitting, working on my laptop, on what is affectionately known as ‘Mum’s bench’, called this because everyone else has to move if I want to sit down on it. It is perfectly positioned just outside my back door, overlooking my bird feeders, under my pride and joy, which is my Japanese wisteria which is absolutely huge now and spans the full width of the side of the house and is full of purple flowers in May/June.

My bird feeders deserve a post of their own but basically, I have a number of them. Birds are as important to me as flowers in the garden. Each bird type has its own feeder. So there’s one full of niger seed for the goldfinches, greenfinches and bullfinches, suet for the robins, mealworms for the blackbird, no mess mixed seed for the chaffinches, sparrows and blue tits and peanuts for the nuthatches and woodpeckers. I can sit and watch them for hours and they all have their own little personalities. Despite his small size the male nuthatch is definitely the boss! If anyone else goes near his feeder when he’s there he’s so aggressive he can clear everyone within seconds, even the woodpecker who is four times his size.

So, I thought I’d share some pictures of my garden that I’ve taken through this year and some pictures of today’s planting. These are my favourite plants and an explanation of just why I like them.

Let’s start with spring and summer.

My hornbeam hedge. Now why do I like this? There are no flowers, I know, but this is the hedge which tells me it’s spring and I can stop being a bear. I love green, it’s my favourite colour because to me it just says spring is here and this is the first sign of spring in my garden, new shoots on my hornbeam hedge. The hedge is around 20 years old and I planted it when I first moved into the house. It is around 50 meters long and marks the boundary between the house and the fields behind. When I first moved in it was a new build house with one of those roughly put together builder’s fences marking the boundary. Although twice a year it’s a mammoth task clipping it I love it. It’s full of wildlife from spring to autumn and has been the nursery for so many baby birds and small mammals.

Once the hedge has got underway then the perennials start to appear. Foxglove, just so elegant and pretty in pink, planted under my wisteria.

Then comes the peony – bright pink, blousy, show off of a plant.

Then the lupin – erect and tall and adds height to the back of the border.

Then there’s the nepeta (catmint) – sweet purple thing that the bees absolutely love. This is positioned next to my self built bug-hotel which is usually the site of a bees nest each summer.

Then comes the ‘orange thing’ – called this because I’ve had it years, forgotten its name but I love it all the same.

Then a big pop of colour with the Rudbeckia goldsturm – absolutely love this one because it’s so bright yellow, with a lovely chocolate centre and flowers right through to October.

Then I have my little wall pots which I fill with lovely trailing red pelargoniums.

Last but not least is my number one summer favourite, the Echinacea purpurea – I just love the shape and colour of this one. An orange/brown cone in the centre with bright pink petals that go right back on themselves so it’s a bit like a badminton shuttlecock. The butterflies love this one!

Then onto autumn. The Echinacea and the Rudbeckias are still in flower but in autumn the Japanese maples or Acers come into their own. My favourite two from my own garden are Bloodgood – bright red leaves, and Katsura – starts off bright yellow/green and then turns orange as autumn progresses.

I also love hydrangeas in the autumn. I did not mention them in summer as although they are nice in summer they are one of those plants where I think the dead flower heads actually have more about them that the flowers in full bloom – closely knit petals and flowers forming a big dried fist of pink, purple and green. I always leave these and cut them off at the very end of autumn.

Winter is a bit more difficult but I just have to have colour and flowers and this is what I have being doing this weekend as I have to improvise and do a bit of planting of seasonal bedding. I do have some shrubs and perennials that give a bit of colour in winter. I have lots of cyclamen in the shady woody areas and these just form a lovely pink carpet at this time of year.

I also have my pyracantha bush which is full of the brightest orange berries just now. The blackbird loves these so the berries are normally quite short lived as he overindulges on his seasonal treat.

This weekend has been about planters. The pelargoniums in the wall planters get replaced with pansies – this year I’ve gone for purple and cream. I like pansies as they are so colourful. They last right through to spring, are really hardy and survive a Yorkshire winter and they are the flower with a smiley face. I think they look quite cheerful when they bob their heads around in the wind. The square planter under my front window also gets planted with them and they are the first thing I see when I step out of my car when I come home from work. At my front door I have two lead planters. In the summer these are filled with geraniums, petunias, bacopa, nemesia and a riot of summer colour. This weekend these have been replaced with violas, ivy, cyclamen and silver leaf to cheer me up when I walk in the door.

So that’s it. The garden put to bed until spring and my winter planting done which will hopefully keep me going until I’ve worked out how to become a bear and hibernate. There’s always a winter sun holiday that can be arranged if all else fails and I can’t make it to February, but given that we have Christmas in between I might just make it.

Just back from a little half term trip to Spain I was so excited to have a surprise visit from one of my boys for Halloween. He needed not much encouragement to participate in my annual pumpkin carving competition. I take it very seriously…..the concentration on my face says it all!!

Only two of us taking part this year at home…..I’m waiting for the photo entry to arrive from the other from Bath.

I might be blowing my own trumpet here and a bit premature whilst we are still awaiting the final entry but I think there is no doubt about the winning entry this year! Yes, it’s me……again!! These boys really need to up their game.

Happy Halloween!!!

After the visit to the student accommodation the other weekend, Saturday afternoon and evening was spent with the youngest in Bristol.

I absolutely love Bristol! It’s got a real edgy city feel, a real diverse population and when you are 19 it is such a cool place to be. It is the UK’s only European Green city with some gorgeous parks, has a huge art and creative scene, historic harbourside, great food scene and is regularly voted the best and happiest city to live for under 26 year olds. Needless to say, he absolutely loves it!

It has strong links between art and political activism and is the home of world renowned graffiti artist and activist Banksy.

It is also home to some of the most stunning Georgian architecture and perhaps civil engineer Isambaard Kingdom Brunel’s greatest achievement the Clifton Suspension Bridge spanning the Avon River Gorge, 101 metres above the water, which marked a major achievement in the history of engineering.

The City was also the starting point of many famous voyages in the discovery of America including the 1497 voyage of John Cabot to Newfoundland.

However, try telling all this to a 19 year old who was under the impression he was going to sit in a harbourside bar for the afternoon at my expense! I’m one of those lifelong learners. I like to know the history of a place and love to wander around discovering new things…….at 19 he is not the same. However, we do have a love of discovering new places and food. We have had lovely trips to Amsterdam and Rome together but you have to make it into sort of a treasure trail……see a few sights and coffee, a few more and cake, a few more and a bar etc. but that suits me fine. So that’s basically how Saturday went.

First stop, the Cabot Tower in a leafy suburb park on the edge of the city. A beautifully preserved tower built in memory of John Cabot which you can climb up inside, using the spiral staircase, to be rewarded with some fantastic views of Bristol from the top. It’s quite high for those of us not fond of heights and the spiral staircase is very dark and narrow but with much encouragement from the teenager we made it and it was very worthwhile. Far reaching views over the harbour and over to Clifton Suspension Bridge.

This was followed by a walk down to the docks, still on the Cabot trail to see the statue of the man himself and the replica of his boat, the Matthew.

One thing I love Bristol for is graffiti. That might sound really odd as the majority of people find graffiti quite disrespectful and offensive, and a lot of it is. But some of it is fantastic art, but maybe just in the wrong place. Bristol is famous for its graffiti and you can download many a graffiti walking tour. By this point though the teenagers legs were refusing to go any further without a refuel. So burger and beer it was and Aperol for me before the graffiti tour. Now I just love Banksy……a lot of people don’t! A lot of his messages are a bit too left wing, I get that definitely, but I really do admire both his ability to communicate what a lot of us are thinking, and the ability to express it through art in the way he does. He does it with a simple picture, no words required, often with a double meaning, and some of the locations and placings are just so well thought out, clearly not chosen by accident. My favourite Banksy…..entitled ‘Rage – The Flower Thrower’ is not in Bristol and I’ll probably never get to see it. He travelled all the way to Jerusalem to deliver his message and paint this one. It depicts a masked Palestinian poised to throw a grenade…..but instead of a grenade he is about to launch a bouquet of flowers. The entire piece is in typical monochrome black and white, except the flowers which are in vivid colour to emphasise the need to make peace not war. Such a simple piece yet the message so powerful.

So off we set on our graffiti walk which always includes one Banksy. First stop, his ‘Well Hung Lover’. I’ve seen this so many times and it never ceases to make me smile…….both the double meaning in the title, and his absolute perfect placing on the side wall of the Bristol Sexual Health Clinic. It’s just a pity that some people don’t have the same appreciation for his work and it’s now been vandalised with black paint in addition to the blue paintballs that had been fired at it last time I visited. My other two favourites from this walk were one called ‘Lynx’ by street artist ATM, on the side of a semi-detached house in the Stoke Croft suburb and ‘Natural Adventures’ by Zase and Dekor. This one is so colourful and detailed and its placement at the bottom of the entrance slip road to the mundane M32 motorway is enough to brighten up anyone’s drive.

Grafitti tour done, then it was time for a trip to the suburb of Clifton. For two reasons…….another close up look at the Clifton Suspension Bridge as it never ceases to amaze me and also because outstandingly pretty Clifton has the best selection of small independent shops in Bristol.

Now this was done without the student. By this time his patience had worn thin and a night out with his friends was beckoning. He does not understand why I need to look at the bridge again……..”It will look the same as it did last time!” I explained that it looks different in different weather and different light and I learn something new about it each time I visit. I did point out that the XBox screen looks the same if you play the same game over again but that did not go down well. And he hates shops like those in Clifton…….they don’t sell branded sportswear! They do however, have excellent coffee shops and quite the best independent book shop. I did remind him of all those times I had spent with him in JD Sports looking at Nike trainers debating whether to buy Air Force Ones, 95s or 97s……which usually takes much longer than half an hour. Anyway, I continued on my own. After looking at gorgeous Autumn wreaths and decorations for home in the florists and spending at least half an hour in the book shop choosing and talking to the delightful owner about all things book related I emerged delighted with my purchases. I revived myself with a visit to an excellent little coffee shop and was delighted to see that the coffee shop recycles all its used grounds which I thought was an excellent idea…..I love to see good recycling ideas! I recycle mine at home as anyone with an allotment will know that coffee grounds are really good for the soil for all the reasons stated on the photo below. So out I came with a bag of used grounds.

Well that marked the end of a delightful day in Bristol. So it was on to Bath for a day with the eldest the day after…….and my company can’t have been that bad as the youngest opted for a second day with me too……..or could that be because I happened to mention belated cocktails and food for the eldest’s birthday?

So that’s a very, very brief look at Bristol in a day. It’s a city that’s well worth a weekend in it’s own right. So much to see and do and even better if combined with the very pretty, affluent, decadent, World Heritage city of Bath only 20 minutes away. Anyway, more of beautiful Bath and adventures there in a separate post.

Right, where to start! Last weekend I went to Bath and Bristol for the weekend to see the students…..otherwise known as my boys. Both absolutely fantastic cities a four hour road trip away that will each get their own blog post as we got up to allsorts over the weekend and had a good Mum and sons catch up but the student accommodation really does deserve it’s own post!!

It was the first time I have been down there this academic year as I made a point of making them sort themselves out this year with my new found determination to let go of the apron strings…..they have chosen their accommodation with their friends, sorted their equipment and even moved themselves in. I just pay for it!! So off I went to see what I was getting for my money.

Oh my goodness!! I’m still reeling. I just could not believe some of my discoveries. I thoroughly enjoyed my one hour nosey in each house. They don’t seem to be bothered where you wander and photograph and I am a bit nosey so I took full advantage of my opportunity to explore every nook and cranny.

When they decided to move down South I had mixed feelings. I was pleased that they were brave enough to spread their wings so far as there is so much more opportunity down there in their chosen fields and as a parent you want the best universities, life chances and standard of living for them. Selfishly though I was quite upset that I would not be able to see them that often. It’s worked out quite well though as I need no excuses for a weekend away and we always have such fun together when I visit, usually once a semester.

Now I feel I need to explain that they each live in a house with five of their friends, and they are all male households. So that’s two houses, one in Bath one in Bristol, twenty minutes drive from each other, one containing six 22 year old males and the other with six 19 year old males.

Whenever I leave them I always leave them with the same words of wisdom…….”live your best life, work hard, play hard and make the most of the fantastic opportunity you are both lucky enough to have been given”. I get to see the grades so I know they work hard most of the time but this weekend was evidence of the fact that they are definitely playing hard and living their best lives!

First stop Bath. A lovely 6 bedroom Georgian terrace house a few streets away from the Royal Crescent. I was fully toileted before arrival so there would be no need to use the student bathroom and with appropriate footwear to avoid any sticking to the floor I was greeted with a smile and a hug at the door from my eldest. Looking a bit bleary eyed he felt the need to explain before I entered the house that they had had a party the night before and it didn’t normally look like it did that morning. However, the Sherlock Holmes in me had already spotted the bulging can and bottle recycling bin at the front door!

In I went. It was quite quiet as no-one was up yet……it was 12 noon! First stop the bedroom, lovely big bay windowed room which apart from various things strewn on the floor did not look too bad. Then onwards to the lounge. After a couple of minutes clearing the sofa there was space for me to sit, avoiding the damp patch, and admire the empty bottles and remnants of a card drinking game.

I’d been told there was a garden so thought I’d have a little wander. Sure enough I found it, a bit overgrown but with a little patio some plastic chairs and a rather new looking table. I was informed that the table was indeed new and was a joint household purchase after the old one had ‘accidently’ got broken the week before when the legs had been removed to improvise as bats in a game of drunken baseball.

I then turned around to see the Grade ‘A’ Food Technology student eating for his breakfast the staple diet of the student, a chicken and mushroom Pot Noodle.

Off I trotted to the kitchen where I was offered a drink….if I made it myself. Looking at the worktop it looked like a choice of Vodka, Chenin Blanc, High 5 Protein shake, Smirnoff Rasberry Crush or Heineken. I eventually unearthed some coffee. Fortunately I don’t take sugar and it’s a good job I can drink it black as the milk in the fridge had a best before date of 28th September.

I settled back on my dry bit of sofa and what followed was like a scene from Zombie Apocalypse. Various bodies started to emerge from all different directions. Surprise on each others faces……”Oh I didn’t know you stayed last night…..where did you sleep?!?!” was the general question.

Now I love this household of six. Four of them came to stay in Yorkshire with me last summer when the pandemic restrictions were lifted. What I thought was a flying visit of a few nights from Brighton turned out to be a full week where they took over my sitting room, ate me out of house and home and provided much hilarity and entertainment. I obviously looked after them too well but they are a great group of lads.

Then it was on to Bristol to have a good old nosey around student house number two who had also been partying the night before. It did not dissapoint!

These are the 19 year olds and this is their first year in their own house, not in University halls. So just like I did for the oldest one in his first shared house I went with the ‘Welcome to your new Student Home Gift Box’ I like to make for them. Now what does this contain? The essentials:

• A mug with your name on – one each for Henry, Sean, Matt, Will, Nathan and Jack.
• Chocolate – everyone likes chocolate.
• Toilet cleaner – the toilet needs regular attention in a student house.
• Rubber gloves – absolutely essential for the above.
• Toilet rim block – masks various odours in the toilet.
• Lenor laundry scent boosting pearls – because all students smell.
• Smirnoff Raspberry Crush Vodka – I might be 51 years old and a bit out of touch but even I know the mugs are not going to be used for tea and coffee.

So in I went through the front door fighting my way in through an absolute mountain of cardboard! They felt the need to explain that they had only been there 2 months but hadn’t worked out how to get rid of the cardboard recycling. “Oh well”, I thought, at least the intention to recycle is there! It also gave me the opportunity to nosey at the recycling (you can tell a lot about someone’s lifestyle by looking at this). In this case it evidenced lots of pizza and beer. I got slightly worried af the sight of a large ‘Love Space’ box but a quick Google search revealed that this was not a flat pack build your own space for loving but an online space storage solution……thank goodness for that!

On to the living space and kitchen or ‘El Cocina…….home of el Jefe’……a bilingual household nonetheless! A well used cooker top with four dirty frying pans, two saucepans and a seive. They probably weren’t in the sink because they would not fit in it. Despite the presence of six scouring pads (one each) there was little evidence of washing up and the token bottle of multisurface cleaner on the windowsill made me smile.

The living room contained everything you could ever need as a student: keyboard, huge wall mounted gaming TV, karaoke machine, xbox, laptop, lots of wiring, a football in a washing up bowl, table top darts, dirty oven baking tray, token plant, drinking card game, dirty pots, Gorilla Thai takeaway menu, empty beer bottles and the best and most ornately carved and decorated bottle opener I have ever seen……everybody needs one of these!

However, the icing on the cake for me was the display in the corner, or is it a sculpture or perhaps just ornamentation. Most of us have a vase of flowers, pictures, an ornament or two but I bet there is no-one else out there with a beer keg, supporting a full size set of real traffic lights, wearing a top hat, adorned with an inflatable banana!

Asking no questions I moved on to the bedroom. A bit of a tip but still a little bit of floor space, a sort of made up bed and believe it or not some work on the desk.

Quick exit and on to the garden. Lovely little artifical grassed and covered area complete with broken bench, two indoor sofas, well used ashtray, two broken plastic chairs and a pair of Bristol Royal Infirmary Hospital crutches…….in case you have any drunken mishaps down the bottom of the garden I guess? And finally…….the BBQ which has seen better days and is clearly just a stand for the disposable BBQs because when you are a student why on earth would you use the real thing which will require an amount of effort and cleaning! 

So all in all a lovely start to my weekend with the boys. So happy to see them living their best lives and having so much fun. Not sure I’m getting £13,000 a year’s worth out if my rent payments but the upside is my own house felt incredibly plush, clean and tidy when I got home……I really need to upgrade my ornaments and up my game on the bottle opener front though!

This weekend I’ve been in my happy place, the Lake District, for two 10km fell and trail races, the Helvellyn and Ullswater Lakeland Trails series. I absolutely love the Lakes at this time of year, it’s so dramatic and there is possibly no other place in the UK I’d rather be. The backdrop of the lakes and mountains and the glorious autumn colours are fantastic and in true style it delivered four seasons in one day on both days. There were sun, rainbows, storms, wind, icy rain……just magnificent. After a tough few weeks at work and lots going on at home it was the perfect escape I needed.

It started off well on Friday when I arrived at the accommodation that had been booked so long ago. I’d completely forgotten the fact that I’d booked myself in a castle!! I can’t imagine how that happened, my finger must have slipped on the booking button! Yes, a mini castle, but still a castle………it was gorgeous…….and had so much history. It was part of Greystoke Castle where Edgar Rice-Burroughs stayed to write the novel Tarzan. Tarzan also went by the name of Lord Greystoke as Rice-Burroughs paid homage to his stay at Greystoke Castle. I had the most relaxing night on Friday which set me up just perfectly for the first race on Saturday morning, the Helvellyn 10k.

This first race I was absolutely dreading due to the weather forecast so I was so relieved to get up to the most gorgeous blue skies and sunshine. I even recorded a little video for family and friends to show them how wrong the forecast was and to showcase the glorious surroundings. I set off quite sprightly in just my t-shirt as it did not feel that cold. However, I spoke too soon. Just as in any mountainous area the weather can change really quickly……..and it did. Just as it said in the forecast the heavens opened and the smile was well and truly on the other side of my face. The rain was torrential and as we got higher up it got colder and colder and felt like ice as it landed on you. We were all absolutely soaked. It was running down my back, my front, my face, my legs and into my shoes, which by this time were absolutely full of mud. I was running as fast as I could just to get to the end. But funnily enough, I still enjoyed it. The camaraderie of all the runners was just fantastic as we all encouraged each other to just keep putting one foot in front of the other. I like to come in the middle of the field and anything above that is a bonus now I’m in the Veteran 50 class. There are some really serious runners out there decades younger than me. I was absolutely over the moon with my 86^th of 209 runners.  

Anyone else who had run that race and had another 10km race to run the day after would have just put their feet up and had a nice afternoon in front of a log fire. But not me! I like to live every second of my life as if it’s my last and when I go away, I like to see as much as possible. For me, one of the best views of Lake Ullswater is from a view point called the ‘Memorial Seat’. So, it was bobble hat on and a two mile up and two mile down trek on Gowbarrow Fell to sit on the ‘Memorial Seat’. Now if this isn’t just the best view, I don’t know what is. You could just leave me up there for ever with a book, only it was a bit windy on Saturday afternoon so I did not hang around for too long.

After a long day I headed off back to my castle only to face my next dilemma. By this time, I was aching a little so I decided to take a bath instead of a shower in the lovely castle bathroom and have a good soak with lots of bubbles. The dilemma was this………the castle has the best selection of complementary toiletries and bubble bath than anywhere I have ever stayed. What to choose? I was torn between ‘Feel Relaxed’, ‘Muscle Therapy’, ‘Muscle Soak’ or ‘Stress Relief’. I decided I needed all four so had what can only be described as a bubble bath cocktail with all four, you could not see me for bubbles!

By now my stomach was telling me I needed food badly. So off I wandered, torch in hand for the return walk, to the lovely village pub, The Boot and Shoe. I walked through the door promising myself I would make all the right choices as I had another race to run in the morning……..so no alcohol and something healthy. Two hours later I exited the pub after steak and ale pie and a gin and tonic……..ooops! I’d managed to convince myself that there were plenty of carbs in the pie pastry and a slice of very healthy lemon in the gin and tonic. It was delicious.

It then proceeded to rain all night, and I mean really rain and storm as it does up there. Fortunately, on Sunday morning it had stopped raining constantly and was just raining on and off. The race was still on and the boats were sailing. The Ullswater 10km starts with a transfer the length of the lake from bottom to top on the Ullswater Steamer boat. The race is then all the way down the east edge of the lake, around the bottom and then part way up the west shoreline to the start point at Glenridding. For anyone that does not like hills, this one is a nightmare of a race. You are either going up or down, and the up and downs seem endless. The race started well. It was freezing cold but I felt good. However, no sooner had we got to the edge of the lake that it became apparent how much rain had fallen the night before. The trail was absolutely waterlogged, parts of it would have been better suited to a kayak. The puddles were so wide and deep going around them was not an option, going straight through was the only way. Three miles in I had drunk all my electrolytes, was wet through and had decided that this was just not fun anymore. I absolutely hit a mental and physical wall. It wasn’t runnable………there was lots of slipping, clambering, dare I say it walking and I was really struggling. I didn’t know whether it was tiredness from the day before, pie and gin, cold, or frustration at not being able to run it due to the conditions. I had noticed however that no-one had passed me since the start where I set off reasonably well not too far from the front so I thought maybe everyone else was struggling too. I ran with a lovely gentleman for a while who could not quite believe I was up there having run the day before as he was only doing Sunday’s race. Then I seemed to find my stride and ran unintentionally with another woman from that point until the end. We kept overtaking each other at different points. She seemed to be stronger than me on the flat but I’m a little bit like a mountain goat on the rocky downhills and uphills so together we made quite a good team pacing each other on the bits we each were weaker. We eventually limped over the line and into the finishers tent within seconds of each other, each thanking the other for the unspoken encouragement.

By that time, I was so wet I donned my wetsuit and went for a dip in the lake to cool down my leg muscles which were by now absolutely screaming. The results came in and I was absolutely delighted. I’d actually placed 40^th out of 184 runners and 10^th Veteran 50 female……. now that, I wasn’t expecting and I’m absolutely over the moon to be in the top 25%. It’s a feat I’ll probably never repeat so I’ll make the celebration last for as long as possible.

Then the icing on the cake, or is it the twist of the knife……..I can’t decide which, was when I read the following post on the Lakeland Trails Facebook page whilst looking for the official photos. Congratulations to Richard on his 40^th Lakeland Trails run who to celebrate would generously like to treat the 40^th finisher from each boat to a free entry to the race next year! I’ve ‘Liked’ the post but I’ve not yet owned up to being 40^th on the 9am sailing, I keep looking at the results to see if by a stroke of luck someone’s timing chip wasn’t working and I’ve been bumped down to 41^st when the results are verified. Now I do hope Richard has had an absolutely fantastic 40th Lakeland Trails run without any mishaps and I also hope to goodness he’s moving better than I am this week. I’m still at the stage where if I sit still for longer than 5 minutes I just can’t move. So, it looks like I might be running it next year after all!

This weekend is the weekend of the Lakeland Trails Dirty Double and tonight I’m having a bit of a mental meltdown as I think I might have bitten off a bit more than I can chew. So, Saturday will see me huffing and puffing up and down the Helvellyn mountain 10k in the English Lake District followed by the Ullswater 10k on Sunday, both departing from Lake Ullswater.

I absolutely love the English Lake District and if anything, it’s an excuse for a nice Friday to Sunday weekend away. It’s stunningly beautiful at this time of year with all the golden Autumn foliage and there’s nothing like the good old British pub meal and a log fire after a run. The lakes themselves and the mountains that surround them make for the most stunning backdrop to these two races.   

I always get nervous on race day, even though I’m not racing anyone but myself. You just get swept along with all the hype and adrenaline, it’s a bit like stage fright. However, my nervousness does not normally start as early as Tuesday before the race!

The reason being is I think I was lulled into a sense of false security last year, the first year I had run these races. I absolutely loved them. The back-to-back 10k’s were quite tough but the sun shone on Saturday, the scenery was spectacular and apart from my spectacular face plant in the river on the Sunday it was quite dry.

Physically it should not be an issue, I know I can run 20k. I say should as I have been suffering from terrible cramp in my calves and feet every day since I did my Camino walk in the summer. It hardly happened on the walk and now I can’t get rid of it and I have tried all sorts. It happens at the most inopportune moments, like when I was half way up the climbing wall last Friday and had to be lowered down rigid on a rope by my belay partner who was in fits of laughter, unlike me who was nearly crying, it’s so painful. I’m up at least once in the night with it too, hopping round the bedroom trying to stretch it out. If anyone knows how to get rid of it, answers on a postcard please because it’s driving me insane.

Anyhow, anyone who knows the Lake District will know that some of the altitudes are quite high, these are mountains not hills, and the weather can change very quickly and before you know it you can get in quite a bit of difficulty with low visibility.

I started to get a little nervous on Sunday when the e-mail below came through telling me about the mandatory kit list due to the remote location of the route. “Why is there a mandatory kit list?” I thought. There wasn’t one last year. I was a bit disgruntled because I don’t like to carry lots of equipment when I’m running, I like to be free of clutter. I’m now going the have to wear a race pack and carry a cagoule, over trousers, hat and gloves………..extra weight. Then I went on to read it was necessary because they have changed the route and access is difficult with ‘rapid response safety teams only being able to access the trail by boat’. By now I’m getting slightly worried as I wasn’t expecting to be in a remote location, and I certainly am not anticipating needing an emergency rapid response team.

By now I’m thinking this is possibly not going to be like last year’s and definitely does not sound like what I signed up to. I’m thinking nice bed and breakfast lodgings, sunshine, glorious autumn colours, running up Helvellyn mountain, pub meal on Saturday night, crackling log fires, beautiful run around Ullswater on Sunday, all finished off with an English Cream Tea on Sunday. Now that’s what I signed up for. Running is always followed by eating, in fact most of my activities end at a café. I’ve been for my final little trot round the village tonight, nice slow 10-minute miles for 5 miles, and I won’t run now until Saturday. I’ll just eat, sleep, work repeat as I try and get rested and fuelled for the weekend.

That’s if I run as I have now made the mistake of looking at the Helvellyn Mountain weather forecast for Saturday. I can now see why the compulsory kit including hat and gloves is required and I definitely did not sign up for this!! I’m running this on my own, and I normally do end up on my own, there is usually a bunch at the front of the race and bunch at the back and me somewhere in the middle slogging it out on my own, so there’s no-one I can really tag onto. I absolutely hate poor visibility as my navigational skills aren’t that great and I just feel lost and scared.

So, bring it on! It’s a 10am start which according to the forecast below that means snow showers, yes, SNOW! But let’s not worry too much about the snow showers, perhaps the fact that it will feel minus 13 degrees C will be the issue, or could the 65km south westerly head wind blowing the snow into my face cause more of a problem?!?!? WHAT???? This is not what I agreed to. I could cry. I’m having a serious panic. I’ve never dropped out of anything in my life but this was never part of the deal.

So this is the final blog post until later next week as I’m hibernating for the rest of this week. The race kit is out on the bed and includes all the compulsory gear, headtorch for extra measure, fluorescent yellow coat in case I need rescuing and two pairs of everything as I don’t suspect anything I wear on Saturday will be dry enough to wear on Sunday. Next week there could be a race report. Or there may just be a blog post of me enjoying a lazy weekend in the lakes drinking Aperol Spritz in front of a roaring fire with not a pair of running shoes in sight. If there is neither, then you know I’ve been carried off by the Emergency Rapid Response Team. Live results will be available here, if like my mother, you desperately need to know if I survived.

https://www.lakelandtrails.org/results#2_F1E839

Today is world Mental Health Day! This post is a little late in the day as the day is nearly over and I guess it’s a little rant about something I feel really passionate about, not just mental health, but children’s mental health in particular. The views are entirely my own and are not in any way politically motivated as I don’t affiliate to any political party. I always use my vote, but politicians have to work for my vote and I’ve spread my vote widely over the years dependent on who is delivering what as actions speak louder than words.

I work in a primary school and we take mental health and children’s mental health very seriously. Today we all wore something yellow to work and our casual clothes and fundraised for Young Mind’s ‘Hello Yellow’ campaign. Now this in itself was quite difficult as I don’t do yellow but I managed to find my yellow flowery happy shirt lurking in the back of my wardrobe! ‘Young Minds’ are a mental health charity for children, young people and their parents, making sure all young people can get the mental health care they need. 

I haven’t always worked in a school, for 18 years I had a career in banking. I became disenchanted with banking when I had my children. My hours were long, work was stressful, a lot of travelling away from home was involved and I was working very hard just to make as much profit as possible for a bunch of shareholders I’d never met nor was likely to do so. I wanted to do something where I felt like I made a difference and I absolutely love children so I decided on a career change and ended up firstly in a secondary school (11 to 18 years old), in quite an affluent area, and later in a primary school (3 to 11 years old), in a deprived area where I am still based now.

It’s hard work and it’s opened my eyes and continues to do so. According to the 2019 Index of Deprivation the area the school is in ranks 9 out of 10 (with 10 being the worst) for income, employment, education, health, crime and overall deprivation, but I love working there as there is the potential to make such a difference to the lives of young people.

In 2019 I did my Mental Health First Aid Certificate to enable me to provide First Aid to people who may be experiencing mental health issues such as depression, anxiety and psychosis, another subject I feel passionate about, as it’s ok not to be ok and stuff happens to most of us at some point in our life that we just can’t deal with on our own.

Anyway, two of my passions, children and mental health! So today is an important day, but so is every day and today I have been made aware of some statistics which I have to say have horrified and saddened me and are the reason for me getting on my soap box now.

• According to the British Journal of Psychiatry in 2019 about 7% of children in the UK have attempted suicide by the age of 17 and almost one in four say they have self-harmed in the past year………. that’s 25%!
• According to the children’s society 1 in 6 children or 5 in every class of 30 have a mental health problem.

Now that’s a huge number of children and that first bullet point horrifies me. But what horrifies me more is the lack of action that is being taken to rectify the situation. For me this is a bigger pandemic than Covid and its long-term impact will be far greater. These people are the next generation, we are reliant on them to look after us when we get old.

Over the last 13 years I have gradually seen the demise of the British education system and the wheels have now well and truly dropped off. According to a National Education Union Survey this year 44% of teachers plan to leave the profession by 2027. That’s nearly half the workforce, with teacher recruitment and retention at an all time low. Perhaps it’s about time someone looked at why. The latest Government survey cites Government policy, lack of support from leadership and workload as the 3 main reasons for high turnover.

I’m not saying that the state of the current education system is to blame entirely for the child mental health crisis as there are so many social factors involved and the demise of society in general, but it certainly does not help. School should be a happy place where we nurture and foster the individual strengths of each and every child. We seem to have lost the sight of the fact that they are all different as the Government come up with the latest buzz word and treat them all like a scientific experiment.

The latest buzz work ‘Age Related Expectation’ defines as: what children should have learned, or be able to do, at the end of each Key Stage. It works on the premise that the average child of that age and stage should meet the given standard.

But they won’t all meet the given standard as they are all different!! And we are only testing them in English and Maths, what about those that are good at science, art, languages, humanities! Are we telling them they have failed to meet expectations because they did not achieve age related expectation in a Maths paper and an English paper, they sat on one morning when they were 10 or 11 years of age?  Yes, I get that we need a baseline to measure against but there has to be a better way of doing it with less repercussion on the children and it has to come from the top. We have to stop penalising a profession when their pupils fail to meet, what for some, will be an unachievable target and we need to stop making children feel like a failure if they don’t meet that target.

Since when did trying your best and not giving in become not good enough. I have two boys. They have both been through the broken education system. One flew through, one didn’t. He considers the last few years of his secondary school education as some of the worst of his life and I find that sad…..his best was simply not good enough and that was made quite clear to him. I never for one moment had an expectation that academically they would reach that same age-related expectation in Maths and English, they never have been and never will be the same. He’s lucky, I saw him falling and was there to catch him, but not every child has that support network around them. He got up, brushed himself down and makes me so proud every day. He has the most fantastic creative mind, is studying architecture, is a wonderful artist, kind, generous and has the potential to go just as far in this world as anyone who meets ‘Age Related Expectations’.

Government Policy has to change and here is why. The system can only be fixed with competent leadership from the top. Since 2019 we have had six Secretaries of State for Education, yes six, and four of these in 2022, one of whom lasted 36 hours in the job! Each one has a different agenda so no sooner do you put one thing in place to have the tables shuffled again and be shooting off in a completely different direction. There is confusion, lack of clarity, no-one knows what they are doing and in the middle of all this are children!

Below are the last six Secretaries of State for Education and their careers before politics, sourced from Wikipedia. See if you can spot the one thing they all have in common

• 2018-2019         Damian Hinds                    –              Pubs, brewing and hotel industry
• 2019-2021          Gavin Williamson             –              Management in Fireplace and Ceramics
                                                                                           industry
• 2021-22              Nadhim Zahawi                –              Chemical Engineering
• 2022-22              Michelle Donelan             –              Marketing
• 2022-22              James Cleverley                –              Army and Hospitality Management
• 2022 –                 Kit Malthouse                    –              Accountant

Yes, you’ve guessed it!!! Not one of them has a career background or qualification in anything remotely linked to education (army might be similar on a bad day). These people have never stepped foot in a classroom on a normal day, have no idea what issues these children face on a daily basis and do not see the impact that their policies have on everybody from the headteachers, to the teachers and ultimately to the children. Come on Britain, we have to get this right and get someone on the case who is suitably qualified and gets it or this pandemic really is going to come back and bite us in a few years. It really does show a lack of respect for all of us working in schools who have studied for years to gain related qualifications.

So today, on World Mental Health Day, and every day after, connect with other people, give them a smile or a hug, they might just need it, they might not be ok. Where children are concerned always reassure them that their best is and always will be good enough, highlight their strengths and celebrate the successes and the wonderful little people they are. Let’s stop giving them a hard time because they’ve not achieved the latest pie in the sky target set by a bunch of people out of touch with the reality of what these children are living on a daily basis and the struggles that they are facing.

So that’s it, rant over, back to light hearted posts from tomorrow. I feel so much better for it, I love the fact we live in a democracy and can say what we want. If I’ve offended anybody we’ll have to agree to disagree, I don’t do falling out, life is too short! I’m off now to give someone a hug and a smile on World Mental Health Day! Stay happy, keep smiling and if you aren’t, remember it’s ok not to be ok, reach out, there will be someone there who, like me, will give you a smile and hug you to within an inch of your life on any day of the week, not just today.

This post is about the allotment garden but first things first. This morning I conducted my sports science experiment as to whether I am faster or slower with a thorn in my shoe. I thought possibly slower as I was desperate to get to the end in last week’s 27:49 minutes. So I dragged myself out of bed early this morning to have another go minus the thorn. Now I’m not a rise and shine person, I’m a night owl. I always go for a coffee after my run and the sign below that I spotted in the coffee shop this morning made me smile as that is me, I don’t rise and shine in a morning……. I caffeinate and hope for the best! ……and this morning felt harder than last week, possibly due to the consumption of wine last night. However, I am pleased to report I am a full 45 seconds faster without the thorn at 27:04 minutes and an 8:42 mile. I’m happy with that and that will be the end of the experiment as I really do think that is my limit. I do have a slight problem with the 4 seconds and whether I could have got below 27 minutes but I’m not going to dwell on that.

My thorn injury last week meant I have spent a lot of time in the garden this week rather than exercising and training as I have to be outside when the weather is fine, I’m not an indoors girl. The allotment garden has been the possession of the household for around 10 years now. I like the idea of growing your own and doing all you can to reduce your food miles. Homegrown also tastes so much better than anything you buy too and I love to cook. When I retire, I have two dreams: travelling lots and ticking off all the places on my long bucket list and residing somewhere warmer than Yorkshire and living a simple life, surrounded by nature and being as self-sufficient as possible. I like to grow from seeds too rather than buy plants as I’m still fascinated by watching a little seed as big as a pin head, germinate and turn into something on your plate.

The allotment garden however is hard work and it’s not quite as idyllic as it sounds. For 10 years an attempt as been made to space the planting out to ensure a steady flow of vegetables through summer and Autumn, however, this year, as in all other years, everything seems to be ready at the same time. So, for the last two weeks I have been drowning in a sea of fruit and vegetables. So many that I don’t know what to do with them. I give them away to random strangers walking past, deposit them on the doorsteps of grateful friends and cook, eat and freeze as many as possible. There is beetroot, sweetcorn, gooseberries, potatoes, beans, pumpkin, rhubarb, figs, onions, courgettes, late strawberries, cucumber and you name it.

I am also pleased to report that I am Mum to the village’s largest pumpkin this year weighing in at 9.5kg, heavier than two babies, and here it is above! I have no idea what I’m going to do with so much pumpkin and it may possibly end up being this year’s carved masterpiece at Halloween as although I have no children at home with me now, I do love a celebration and will have my sweets, pumpkin lantern and dressing up outfit on ready to dish out my chocolates to the mass of children that normally come knocking for ‘trick or treat’. I might even borrow a child and go myself.

So, this week on top of work, running, and the adopted guinea pig there has been lots of cooking going on: rhubarb crumble (my absolute favourite with custard), strawberry jam which I like to make look all pretty, pickled beetroot, pumpkin soup and lentils with goat cheese and walnuts to use up carrots, onions, celery and vegetable stock.

I think it may have actually been harder work than my adventuring and training but that’s about it for this year. I’m not a winter grower as it’s too cold to grow anything well up here in the north, everything will be asleep in its blankety bed until Spring when the cycle will start again and I’ll once again try to get the timing better.