Yorkshire and Christmas

I arrived in Yorkshire yesterday morning to stay with my parents for nearly a week. Yesterday my 3 nieces and nephew were staying. So not much of a rest, but still really lovely to spend some time with them all. The play centre we took them to was an experience I wouldn't want to repeat every weekend! They loved it of course, but the noise! Not the most salubrious of surrounding for the adults to wait in either. The food was good though. Although you could definitely tell I was up north, I ordered a cappuccino and they guy serving asked me if I'd like anything to eat with it, nothing unusual there but the food he offered me was chips! Would you like chips with that cappuccino, love. It has a ring to it!

Today I met up with my friend Ruth for a coffee. The weather was abysmal, icy, driving rain so it was nice to have my first mince pie of the season and a latte. Lovely.

This week we plan to visit Chatsworth House for their "Candle light Christmas" which should really feel like Christmas is near, and of course see how the other half celebrate Christmas! At this time of year, I like to get out Stations of the Sun by Ronald Hutton, an excellent book which provides a really good grounding in how the rituals of the year have been celebrated in the Britain of the past. It really shows expertly how pagan, folk and Christian beliefs have been woven into our festivities today. It also shows how our modern celebrations incorporate the influences of many other nations. It doesn't just cover Christmas of course, but the whole year. Anyway well worth a read if you are interested in the history of "real" people, and its legacy today.

I have a busy week but a restful one, as well as visiting Chatsworth I should also be visiting my Great Aunts later this week over in Stoke on Trent. So should blog later in the week I am sure.

Giving thanks

I like to say thank you. One of the things I love most about Japan is that there are so many ways to say thank you and show appreciation. When I got back from Japan last month, I felt like I was being so rude in the UK because I was only saying thank you or thanks to shop and waiting staff a couple of times at most when receiving stuff.

Today being Thanks Giving in America I thought it would be an appropriate time to make a small list of the things I am really, truly thankful for. Not the obvious things like my family, or my boyfriend Jason; I could never convey in words how grateful I am to have him in my life. Or my friends like Lorraine and Ruth who I feel so privileged to know and call my friends. Don't worry you can get rid of the sick bucket now. I want to write about the really small things in life which actually turn out to be the things that make me thankful in life.

For example I'm thankful for the autumn leaves, most of which have blown off the trees during that last couple of storms. At this time of year, with the light dwindling, a tree topped with a shock of scarlet or fiery golden leaves really warms the heart.

But here is a list of things that I am very thankful for:

Attic bedrooms, I always wanted one and I have one now!
My Sony Reader
Chai tea
Visiting a live volcano
Bookshops particularly old dusty ones
Having tasted Sacher Tort at Hotel Sacher in Vienna
My lava lamp
Snow, particularly having played in the heavy snow of early 80s winters
Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster
My cat Rookie
Hot baths
Dame Shirley Bassey singing Big Spender or anything really!
Mountains
Being lucky enough to live in Cornwall
The smell of roses in the summer and lilac in May
Motorbikes
Seeing dolphins in the Canary Islands and in Scotland
Cat Bus
Blues, folk and loud, loud rock music
Pie and mash
The sound o af tennis ball on racket strings
Real ale or whiskey
Freshly baked bread
Shakespear

I could go on for ever.

So when I am feeling grumpy in the future and forgetting to be thankful I shall come back and look at this list.

A short history of my history teachers

Two twitter conversations this morning got me thinking about first my history teachers when I was at school and being thankful for having such good history teachers. (It's Thanksgiving in US today hence the being thankful thoughts.) This all started because of Andrew Marr's The Making of Modern Britain.

I was very lucky to have 3 totally different but brilliant history teachers during my secondary school education. I started secondary school at Newquay Tretherras School in Cornwall. Mr Jackson was my history teacher for the 2 years I was there. We did early British History with him and then right up to the industrial revolution. Mr Jackson's specialist subjects in history though were the Princes in the Tower and the Tudors. Mr Jackson organised a Tudor evening where we all got to try Tudor food and I developed my love of syllabub. Us girls thought Mr Jackson was quite dishy but impossibly old, thinking back he wasn't even 30! But the one aspect of history that he taught that really made him stand out was the Princes in the Tower. He was a member of the Richard III Society who want to promote a fairer more accurate picture of Richard III. Mr Jackson also had his own mission to prove that Richard III was not the only one who could have and had motive to kill the Princes in the Tower.

Mr Jackson taught us how to look at different evidence, evaluate it, search for bias, and make our own conclusions using the evidence we had. Until that point I thought history was just all fact that could not be challenged. I learnt for the first time that history is told differently by each person who tells it and you can learn a lot more if you understand the motivations for why that person is telling the story. History wasn't set in stone it was a huge puzzle to decipher.

In my 3rd year at school (year 9 now) we moved to Yorkshire and I attended the Hayfield School
where I chose to study history for GCSE. My teacher was Mr Fleet, an eccentric Scot, the type of teacher they just don't make any more. He called the dustbins a "waste paper receptical" a personal stereo was a "walking man" and when my brothers class were unreceptive he would produce a turnip wearing a hat and shades and address his lessons to the turnip, who would answer all questions in a suitably turnipy voice! With Mr Fleet we learnt about the wild west, the history of energy and the Northern Ireland troubles.

For A-level I continued to be taught by Mr Fleet, we had European History with him, Gustaf Adolfus, Catherine and Peter the Great, the Louis' of France all covered. He ran our lessons like lectures in preparation for university. I was always grateful for that. Our other history teacher was Mr Saddler, a red headed, left wing, Yorkshire firebrand. He could have been standing on a soap box in the middle of Donny Market in the 19th Century or early 20th speaking up for the working man and injustices to women. His lessons were run very differently, we were learning about 19 Century British History, Engels, Tom Paine, Jeremy Bentham, the corn law, the Catholic Emancipation Act, Wellington, Castlereagh and the working men of Britain.

Our favourite pursuit was to distract Mr Saddler from his task and get him to talk off topic, anything going on in politics was bound to get him going. Margaret Thatcher had just resigned and it was a great time to discuss British politics with him. The majority of the class were Tories largely because their parents were, my friend Ruth was the lone Lib Dem and then there was Mr Saddler and me holding our own against the rest placing our faith in Labour. I'd love to be able to ask Mr Saddler what he thinks of the last 17 years in UK politics. I am sure he is dismayed by most of it.

I had many wonderful teachers whilst at school, and since I have had the pleasure to work with some excellent teachers. But my 3 history teachers were so consistently wonderful and so utterly different. I am so thankful for being lucky enough to have been taught by them and to have learnt from them all.

Inside sport special - depression in sport

Tonight on BBC1 at 10:45 Inside Sport will be tackling the issue of mental health and sports, particularly looking at depression and anxiety. As the BBC website says:

"Marcus Trescothick is joined by former boxer Frank Bruno, Northern Irish footballer Neil Lennon and legendary All Black John Kirwan to discuss their battles against depression and to examine the myths and misconceptions that still surround mental illness."

Gabby Logan has written about it on the BBC website here

I am really pleased that this topic is being dealt with on a sports programme, for one it may bring the issue to the attention of many people who would not tune in to a programme about mental health normally and because some of those people may well find support from watching the programme.

I have also been writing today about language and disability on my sister blog The Salmon Leaping

Camp Christmas

I am not known for my restraint in taste when it comes to Christmas (or anything really!) This year I decided not to do my usual and by loads of new baubles for our Christmas; last year we had so many I couldn't physically put all of them on the tree! It was a real dilemma deciding which sparkly and twinkly ornaments to leave in the Christmas bag. So this year I have limited myself to buying a few non tree related decorations. So pictured above is my plunder. A pink feather boa wearing glittery stag, with a young pink sparkly deer with out a boa so a naked deer I suppose? There is also a candle decoration to end all Christmas candle decorations, it is resplendent with fake fir, apples, red berries, baubles, boxed presents including tartan ones. My Mum thinks you should always have a nice bit of tartan at Christmas.

We haven't put our decorations up yet although I am chomping at the bit to get them out. I really like being totally unsophisticated and breaking out the Christmas deckies before December. I know its naff but I celebrate the winter solstice as much as Christmas its self and welcome the brightness and cheer in such gloomy times. Up until 17th Century churches and communal buildings would be decorated from 1st December until 1st February to warm up the dark winter nights. Sounds splendid to me!

Oh and Christmas related literary trivia of the day: the first use of the word bauble, like so many other English words, is recorded in Shakespeare! I can't complete the fact because for the life of me I can't remember which play!

A trip to the funny farm

I have blogged a few times about my experiences at hospitals, there was this entry about Moorfields Eye Hospital A&E, or this entry from when I had an X-Ray at the Nelson Hospital. So why am I so reluctant to blog about my trip to the hospital yesterday?

Probably because yesterday I was visiting the Community Mental Heath Team, not as an adviser on disability rights or rights of access or even to advise mental health nurses, all of which I have done in a professional capacity in the past. No this time I was there as a patient to see a psychiatrist. Not something that I feel completely comfortable announcing on my blog, although of course you all knew it was coming, I have talked about my mental health before.

But as I have alluded to above I have worked for the last 10 years promoting the rights of disabled people including those with mental health conditions. So I should walk the walk as they say and do what I can to lessen the stigma attached to mental health conditions, to being mad.

So I went to the hospital yesterday to see a psychiatrist. I was incredibly nervous. I was shaking, twitching, trying to remember to breath deeply but somehow I just couldn't. The waiting was the worst thing. I'm not good at waiting generally but yesterday it was agony. I could hear the blood pounding in my ears, it made me feel like there was a boy racer car in my head, it's stereo blasting. Thump, thump, thump, thump.

As soon as I saw the psychiatrist though, I felt better; he looked totally normal and was clearly a smoker which some how reassured me. I didn't want to talk to someone who didn't have their own weaknesses. I would have hated to see some pious, holier than thou type!

I was there all afternoon, after being afraid that I wouldn't be able to talk, everything just tumbled out. I was like the local grass on a cop show, squealing, except it was my secrets I was telling not the local villains'. Afterward I felt pretty shaky for most of the night, but today I do feel relieved.

I suppose the turning point for me was that after 12 years of experiencing mood swings, anxiety, depression, panic, and fearfulness on and off, I finally want to do something about it and get better. I don't just want to be patched up and stagger on for the next few months until the stress gets too much and I explode again.

I have been signed off work for a while, I have instructions to avoid stressful situations and try to do normal things slowly. My existing medication has been increased slightly. I have been given some books and a programme of work sheets to go through before I see my psychiatrist again in a few weeks. There is the possibility of more medication in the future but hopefully I won't need it and cognitive behavioural therapy too. It is all remarkably sensible. I just have to co-operate.

I never intended my blog to become a journey into my mental health and how it is being treated but I'm cool with it touching on the subject every now and again. Writing is one of the few things I still feel able to do and to concentrate on for more than 20 minutes so its important that I do write at the moment. So my blog won't go bare!

Stormy weather

We have had a week of bad weather across the British Isles. Autumn storms first of all battered the south of England as I previously blogged about and yesterday terrible amounts of rain fell in Cumbria and South West Scotland. The BBC have viewers pictures of the floods in Cumbria here.

Today in London it is very dark and dismal, the kind of day when rain just drizzles all day and it doesn't get properly light all day. A good day to be at home with a warm drink and a good book to read.It has been hard for me to concentrate much this week, but today I am feeling a lot calmer so hopefully I will get quite a bit of The Girl who Kicked the Hornets Nest read. I have so many good books to read!

I wanted to find a picture which sums up the weather and my mood so chose the photo below which I took years ago with my first digital camera. I think it was 4 or 5 mega pixel and that was really good back then! The violas were in a window box on my window sill in my old flat in Forest Hill, south east London.

Inherit the wind

On Wednesday night this week, my Mum and I went to see Kevin Spacey in Inherit The Wind. It was one of the best productions and plays I have seen in a long time.

I've not been very well for the last couple of weeks, feeling very anxious, stressed and generally not good. As I have mentioned before on this blog, I have ongoing "mental health issues" over the last 12 years. Sometimes I feel good sometimes I don't. Anyway when I'm not feeling good theatres can really stress me out, it's the very small spaces and crowds as you are getting into the theatre that really freak me out and I have had some trips to the theatre ruined or abandoned in the past when the crowds are just too much. We got to the theatre early to avoid the worst of the crowds which was a good idea.

The other problem I have when I am not feeling good is my concentration span is totally rubbish! At the moment I am finding it hard to concentrate on watching TV, reading etc. so I was really worried I'd fidget and twitch my way through the play, not paying attention, even if the play was good.

The play and performances were more than good. They were fabulous. I was rapt. I needn't have worried. Kevin Spacey and David Troughton (son of Patric Troughton - Dr Who trivia of the day) had such stage presence playing their larger than life characters beautifully. The whole ensemble cast were amazing, the direction excellent, it struck me as rather cinematic in the way Trevor Nunn directed it but not in a bad way.

The play tackles the issue of religious extremism, 1920s deep south style, and it is timely that it is being shown in Dawin's anniversary year. (The play tackles the true court case where Bertram Cotes a high school teacher, was tried for teaching evolution when it was banned from schools in Tennessee, for being un-Biblical.) I went away from the play thinking that the greater message was about modernity and where we are heading, the speed of change. Some of the deep south religious extremists are cruel, bigoted and stiff necked. (If I remember rightly the Old Testament God isn't too keen on stiff necked people.) One of the characters representing modern America is also cruel, cynical and inflexible in his beliefs. The play is a warning of extremism of any kind, religious or otherwise. To think, to reason, to doubt, to reason some more and try to understand is what makes us human.

Storm

Ever since Michael Fish and his fellow weather men and women, failed to give us sufficient warning of the 1987 hurricane which hit the British Isles and caused death and damage, the UK Meteorological Office has been rather generous in issuing weather warnings, in my opinion. Then we had the snow chaos in London in 2003 when motorways were blocked and motorists trapped in their cars. That lead to even more cautiousness on behalf of the Met Office.

This means that I tend to not believe the weather warnings issued, though I still read them. I am British after all and so obsessed with the weather!

Any way the weather presenters had been bigging up this storm which was due to hit southern England over night including London. It would be the worst storm of the year and maybe the worst we have had for a couple of years.

Well it did hit as predicted and kept me awake on and off from about 4am. There was wind, rain, hail, lightning and thunder all you could want from a storm. The squally showers, as they call them, are still washing in now at 3pm, but the worst seems to be over.

I had a hair dressers appointment this morning, sods law, and 5 mins before leaving the house I recorded what the rain was like. The video below was taken from one of our upstairs bedrooms.
Hopefully it will give you an idea of what the weather was like and why I didn't get much sleep this morning. I have to say this shower was rather tame compared to others!



I guess it goes with the territory of living in a flat with attic rooms!

I have to say when I went out into the storm it reminded me of waiting for the school bus in Cornwall, this kind of weather is all to common down there!

Video from Japan holiday

My camera has a very basic video function, and I used it a couple of times on holiday when I wanted to capture sounds of Japan. Next time I go to Japan I will get one of those microphones for my iPod touch so I can capture sound properly and not have to worry about images!

The story behind this clip, is Scotland. When in Nagasaki we stayed close to Glover Park which was built around the large colonial style home of Thomas Glover who originated in Scotland. Thomas Glover brought the first steam train to Japan in mid 19th Century. He also built the first asphalt road in Japan. Modern day Glover Park loves all things Scottish, honouring Glover's home land. As walking around the park bag pipe music was piped out from trees and bushes, which is what I tried to capture on the video.

Tokyo Sky Tree

To follow on from my last blog entry - I have just been reading about the Tokyo Sky Tree which will be when completed twice the height of the Tokyo Tower, pictured in my previous blog entry. The Sky Tree is needed for Japan's digital switch over (see it's not just us Brits switching to digital) because the Tokyo Tower is just not tall enough to blast out those digital TV signals across Tokyo.

The Tokyo Sky Tree is being built out near Chiba, and when competed will be a whopping 630 meters tall! There is a great picture of what it will look like, cherry blossom at it's base and all, on the Wikipedia page I have linked to above. You can also check out a web cam of progress here.

It's due to be completed in December 2011 and opened officially in April 2012. I think a trip out to Japan at Christmas 2011 or for my birthday 2012 would be just great! On my list of places to visit next time are:

Mt Fuji
Kobe
Shkoku

Of course another trip would include southern Kyushu and Okinawa but that might have to wait until even later!

Final photos from Japan

I had these last few photos from our final weekend in Tokyo just waiting on my camera to be uploaded. Above is a picture of a rather wet cat who was watching Dave the hotel cat and a very similar cat we named Bob, who just had to be Dave's brother, shelter from the rain. Dave's mate Bob seemed quite mad. Every now and again he'd dart up the nearest tree trunk, about half way up the tree and then suddenly jump back down. The cat in the picture just watched them from up the bank. We decided she must be Dave and Bob's Mum and I named her Mo.

On the our last proper day in Tokyo, which was building up for a small typhoon, we decided to go for a walk around Akasaka which was deserted, it being a Sunday. We walked round to Yotsuya station. The station seemed quite old and the Wikipedia page says it does indeed date back to late 19th century. On the bridge at Yotsuya station we could see Roppongi Hills ( Mori sky scraper) So I suggested we take a train over to Roppongi Hills - not the kind of place I usually want to visit but as it was our last day, I thought it might be nice to do something different.

The Roppongi Hills sky scraper is so tall I couldn't get a decent picture of it close and I can't seem to find any I took of it from a distance. However when we got to Roppongi Hills Jase was able to take the picture below of the Tokyo Tower, which is Japan's tallest structure.
We discovered through wonderful Wikipedia that the hotel we always stay in in Tokyo - The New Otani was the tallest building in Tokyo and the outside was used in James Bond, You Only Live Twice as Blofeld's HQ

Outside Roppongi Hills sky scraper is a spider sculpture like the one that was at Tate Modern in London, as our holiday had featured a number of spiders it seems only fitting to finish on a picture of me below the spider.

Christmas cooking

I have decided this year to actually try to bake and make many of the Christmas goodies I'd just usually buy from the super market. This isn't because of the credit crunch or anything although it will help I am sure, but because I now have to restrict my diet and really monitor the amount of fat I eat. So I am planning to make my own mince pies, Christmas cake and maybe even pudding. As I type this I have my first batch of fat free mince meat bubbling on the stove! The flat smells delicious, orange, apple, spice and alcohol!

It's a simple recipe, I've only made a small batch to begin with to see what it is like. I've used:

125g of brown sugar
125ml of cider (I am using up some pear cider we had so it may not be ideal - I'll let you all know)
500g cooking apples (lovely British Bramleys)
peel of one orange (which you boil first for 5mins to get rid of toxins)
Juice and zest of half a lemon
75g currants
75g raisins
35g glacier cherries
35g blanched chopped almonds
1/4 tea spoon of mixed spice
1/4 tea spoon of cinnamon
pinch of ground ginger
3 table spoons of brandy

After boiling and cooling the peel, dissolve the sugar in the cider on a low heat, then add all the fruit, nuts and spices and simmer for 30 mins until mushy! Then add the brandy and allow to cool.

I have seen the recipe attributed to Nigella Lawson, and a number of other TV chefs. I'll let you all know how it turns out!