Shopping in Ikebukuro

There are so many things to blog about today! We went shopping and I appear to have bought all the things! 

We went to Ikebukuro as I fancied going to the cat house at the top of the DIY  and home shop Tokyu Hands. I wish Homebase was like Tokyu Hands and not just because of the cats. This was my favourite cat. His markings were spectacular and I love his bandana. 

But Tokyu Hands is more than cats and DIY. You can equip yourself with a whole chemistry lab. 

I didn't buy any chemistry gear :-) I did buy a load of washi tape and some notelets. It's lovely that there is still a culture of writing by hand in Japan. 

We also went to Bic Camera and I bought myself some hair straighteners. They're pink they have dual voltage so work anywhere in the world, which will be handy for my trips to Paris, New York and San Fransisco over the next 11 months!  They have loads of accessories and a carry case. They were a bargain at £17 - in the U.S. they cost $70 which I think is about £40! 

I can't wait to try them out tomorrow! 

While we were in Sunshine City Shopping and entertainment centre in Ikebukuro there was a J-Pop girl band performing. I took a picture from above the performance as we were looking for something to eat. 

We had a lunch of curry at an Indian restaurant. The waiter seemed to be pleased to talk to us in English. I had a delicious Japanese style chicken and vegetable curry. 

On our way home we stopped by the food hall in Shinagawa station. It has some amazing food stalls and restaurants including the oddly named bakery Buzzsearch. This bakery specialises in cakes, usually bought when travelling to share or give as gifts. I've always wanted to try one of the fruit rolls. They're a bit like Swiss rolls. An outer layer of sponge filled with creme pat and fruit or other sweet things. I couldn't resist today and bought a fruit roll pictured below. We didn't have a knife at the hotel room so it didn't cut very elegantly with a spoon. It tasted amazing! We have a lot more left for later too. The fruit inside is banana, kiwi, strawberry, orange and peach. 

Of course it being Japan the cake comes in a beautiful box with packs of ice beneath it and the cake beautifully wrapped in celephane. 

I also bought myself some nail varnish from the local chemist. 4 bottles for under a tenner. It is not true that Japan is expensive! 

So it's been a successful day of shopping! 

Tokyo - the longest day!

As I write this I will have been awake for over  25 hours. It's beginning to take its toll. I feel faint and quite giddy. But the good news is we got to Tokyo safely at 7:10 this morning. The flight wasn't too bad. I watched two films both of which made me cry: Paddington made me cry with laughter and The Theory of Everything for being a bloomin' good film. 

We flew into Tokyo Haneda which is a smaller business type airport - a bit like City Airport in London. It's only 20 minutes from Haneda to where we're staying in Shinigawa. One of the first things we did on getting through security and customs was to by some green tea from a vending machine. Here's a picture of me clutching my vending machine green tea. 

We got to our hotel not long after 9 AM. Here's the view from the hotel lobby's ladies toilet. Yes the hotel starts on the 26th floor. Below it are offices. 

We have then spent our day exploring near to the hotel, there are lots of cafes and restaurants, a linear style park and Jason's office in Tokyo. We visited the coffee shop at Jason's work. 

Here's a couple of picture of the park. 

In the park smokers are forced to smoke in designated caged areas. Something I think we should introduce in the UK. 

We then went to Shibuya (pictured below) for lunch and a look round a couple of shops. 

The Shops in Japan are always full of great stuff like shelves upon shelves of post cards including these ones of cats, dogs and then food! 

Or there's the shelf of fish shaped scowerers in every colour you could want! 

We had lunch in Ginza Lion and then came back to the hotel. I am trying everything humanly possible not to fall asleep as I type this. So apologies for all the typos! 

Visit to Tokyo

I am incredibly lucky that this year I will be visiting some of the world's finest cities for holidays and work. This week we fly to Tokyo for a 2 week holiday. (I'm also having a work meeting when I'm over there but more of that later) then I'll be delivering training in Paris in June / July and grabbing a couple of days holiday there too. Then in September we go to New York for 10 days. Finally next April we're going to San Fransisco! 

As I mentioned above when we're in Tokyo I will be visiting Tsukuba University to discuss making reasonable adjustments for disabled students with academics there. They have invited me to spend a whole day with them being given a guided tour of the uni and city. Then we'll discuss how the university is making progress providing reasonable adjustments after ratifying the UN Convention on the rights of disabled people. 

Q&A with Ed Miliband in Bedford

Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend a Q&A with Ed Miliband in Bedford. I am so pleased that I went a long, and not just because I got a selfie with Ed or that the BBC ran footage of me getting that selfie on their rolling news! I'm glad I went because it has made me even more certain that I did the right thing in joining the Labour party again.

There's me getting my selfie

I joined Labour the first time round as a student in the early 90s. I let my membership lapse a few years later when I became a bit more disenchanted with Tony Blair but mainly I let it lapse because I didn't really think I needed to be a member of a political party. I was working in the disability and equality field by then. first working for Ken Livingstone and then the Disability Rights Commission. I could see progress was being made and I did enough campaigning in my day job; I didn't want to get involved in politics in my spare time.

But I joined Labour again a month ago, and I wish I had done it sooner. I still work in the disability and equality field and over the last 5 years I have watched that progress, I helped in a small way to build, be steadily eroded. Whether it's restricting legal aid and judicial reviews, or slashing vital support for disabled and older people, the last 5 years have brought real misery to many people. I want to stand up to the ideology of the Tory party, that says everyone should stand on their own two feet and help themselves, which in real terms has meant that the rich have helped themselves to more wealth whilst the poorest are relying on food banks and charity. That's not a society I want to live in. It is also not the inevitable outcome of the financial crisis as some may have you believe. You see we don't have an equal society, no where near that, which means it's a lot easier for some to help themselves than it is for others. Until we have equal opportunities for all, we can't expect the most disadvantaged to compete with the most advantaged. 

I was looking forward to seeing Ed Miliband yesterday but I did kind of expect it to be like a lot of political events I've been to in the past or even helped organise. I have been lucky enough to work in Westminster (for the Lib Dems back in the late 90s) and to have worked with government ministers and MPs through out my career. Some of the politicians I have met and worked with have been nice, I have deeply admired some of them, others are the kind of people you'd like to have a drink with down the pub. Some of them have been rather vain and not interested in what others have had to say, whilst a very small minority I've met have been hideous to deal with, rude and arrogant. 

I whole heartedly expected Ed Miliband to be one of the nice but perhaps aloof politicians. So I wasn't expecting to be confronted by someone who seems so genuinely to care. Ed Miliband came across to me as one of the most sensitive and thoughtful politicians I've met. He also struck me as honest. Yes I know, but he did. I think the reason why this doesn't readily come across on TV is that even with our 24 hour rolling news, for all the time they have to fill, the media still just pick sound bites and snippets to use. From spending an hour at the Q&A and seeing and listening to all the ground that was covered I was disappointed that the BBC reduced the whole thing to one 20 second bit about coalitions. What didn't come across and what I was most impressed with, was how Ed Miliband linked issues and policies together, looking at a bigger picture and considering how solving one problem can in fact solve many more. 

In the hour of the Q&A the questions asked ranged from NHS in all it's many services including, mental health, ambulance services, fertility treatment, nursing shortages and integrating social care to questions about  early years education, free schools and school place shortages, and private education, it covered housing for young  people, support for single mothers, the armed forces cuts and what to do about Trident, my questions on disability and employment as well as questions about supporting those made redundant and what Labour will do for those fairly well off middle earners who worry about their children not having the same opportunities they have, as well as supporting young people into work and education, and voting and democracy. But the news just shows you 20 seconds about possible coalition negotiations.

So what did I ask Ed. Well I asked him what labour would do to help disabled people, not just scrapping the bedroom tax but more broadly. I gave him the example of a friend who has a first degree but can't get a job in social work. He had already tackled questions about the shortages of social workers. How did he respond? Well first of all he acknowledged that my question was an important one he said that current legislation was a good start but disability equality needed to go further. He said the work capability assessment needed to be reformed but most importantly the assessment should be about what support people needed to get into work and what support employers needed. He said it was vital that employers were supported to employ disabled people. He said labour would work to improve disability equality to look at how the disability discrimination act and equality act could be taken further so disabled people can contribute and take part in all areas of life. 

I have a kind of radar that goes off when a politician or manager of some sort is uncomfortable talking about disability equality. It must be from all the years training and working in this field. But that radar didn't go off when Ed spoke. He meant it. He wasn't just saying warm words. I wish now my question had been to ask him to commit to a new disability task force. He committed to it in all but name I think. 

What I found most refreshing was to hear a politician speak for over an hour, on many topics and for me to agree with them and not be left feeling angry or exasperated. Believe me politicians of all parties do have that exasperation effect on me often. But not Ed. I disagreed with some of his points, on Trident for example but he acknowledged others felt differently to him and he was respectful of their views. 

I also appreciate that his message was a positive one, a message of hope, of creating a fairer society of supporting the vulnerable and caring about the NHS, its staff and patients. Of course there was criticism of the coalition government but it was criticism of policies not personalities. At one point he explained why he had met with Russell Brand and he explained that although he completely disagreed with Brand's stance on not voting, he was not dismissive of Brand's view nor those of his many followers on YouTube. He linked it to a question about disenchantment with politics, he said you could just ignore those people switched off by politics or dismiss them as jokes or you could engage with them and start a dialogue and try to move forward with a better understanding of each other. It was that message of understanding, co-operation and wishing to include not exclude which is at the heart of so many of labours policies that impressed me deeply. 

Here's my selfie with Ed Miliband 

Plants update!

Remember these tiny beef tomato shoots?

 

Well they're these big monsters now! 

The smaller plants in front are sweet peppers that are doing really well too. 

My other windowsill plants are my chillies and they are also doing brilliantly. My kitchen chilli is an Apache bought from the Fair Trade fayer back in March here's before and now shots.

Here's the plant not long after I got it. 

And now with flower buds developing! 

The little plant at its side is spearmint. 

The peach habenaro chillies have really put me through it. First of all they took weeks to germinate. Then once they had shoots I dropped the propagator and lost most of them! Luckily the strongest ones survived. They now look like this: 

I have some other tomatoes and chillies on the go and then there are my sunflowers. Some started in the propogator - the larger ones at the front of the picture below. The two plants started in the garden from seed are in the small blue pot at the back. They are dwarf sunflowers so in not growing them for height. 

You can also see one of the pumpkins at the left. 

Things are looking good plant wise in the garden and my windowsills! 

My favourite pictures though today are little Kasumi cat "hiding" under my viburnum. 

 

Heir Hunters: My thoughts on a missing life - disabled people's missing narratives

I was watching Heir Hunters this morning, you know that programme where they research the family trees of people who have died with out leaving a will. If you like social history or family history it’s interesting stuff. Sometimes they unearth secrets about the person who has died, sometimes they find long lost relatives and usually someone ends up inheriting some money they weren’t expecting. I like the ones where they discover a recluse had in fact been a code breaker at Bletchley during the war, or someone was a long forgotten author or when they help families find out what happened to their brother or uncle who disappeared. 

This morning part of the programme was about the death of a lady called Vera. She had died in a care home and had no close relatives still living.  Not that uncommon considering she was quite old and hadn’t had children. Vera interested me because she was blind and had been since childhood. She had been blind since birth. They showed some lovely pictures of her smiling wearing a pink knitted hat on a day out from the care home. The staff at the care home said some innocuous stuff about her liking to hear the birds, be in the garden and going to the seaside. But it was all rather bland and impersonal which worried me slightly.

Inside though, I was really excited - maybe they would uncover that Vera had done some secret work during the war. I know it was unlikely, but maybe she’d been employed listening to radio transmissions or morse code, maybe she had been an audio typist? Maybe her life story was about her being a musician or maybe it would be the story of so many disabled people in the 20th century, one of being in institutions or being cared for by family until they died and she had to go into a care home?

If Vera’s story was that of many blind people in the mid 20th century it would likely have included: 

• attending a special school for the blind, probably a boarding school, 
• then having a limited option of careers, working perhaps in a blind co-operative or factory, or maybe being a piano tuner or typist
• or being supported by family until there was no family left and the care home beckoned. 

That in its self is interesting social history, if you’re interested in disabled people’s lives and how their lives have changed in the last century.

Heir Hunters covered none of this. The programme instead focussed on a branch of her family who's modern descendants had no knowledge she existed, but this branch of the family had done exciting things. There had been a 19th century diver and a WW2 leaflet printer. I was more than a little disappointed. Vera left £12,000 to a relative, who was also very grateful that Vera had opened up a branch of their family tree he had yet to discover. He seemed a nice chap.

I did wonder where she had got that 12k from? A pension? Savings? Money she had been bequeathed? She must have had some kind of life before the care home!

I tweeted Heir Hunters on Twitter, they are a friendly bunch and got back to me straight away saying that they research all of the deceased who featured on the show and they could not find any information about Vera’s life. 

I believe them, I am sure they must have to research all the people they feature, not just the TV side of things but of course the Heir Hunters themselves have to. But really, there was nothing more that could have been said about Vera’s life? She was just an old lady, who had been blind, who had some interesting relatives and left another relative who knew nothing about her £12,000?

Why does this even matter? Well it’s because this so often is the narrative about disabled people, or should I say the lack of a narrative. They’re just people who move a story along in some way but have no story themselves. In this case maybe it was impossible to piece together this lady’s life. The trouble is there are plenty of disabled people’s lives that aren’t documented, pieced together or listened to within history. Heir Hunters is really a social history programme, its about bringing the recent past back to life through researching family trees. It’s something we can all relate to. It is also an entertainment programme, informing but also enjoyable. It's about solving mysteries. But so often disabled people's lives are a mystery to mainstream entertainment, arts and history output. 

Sadly through my work as a disability rights advocate and my background in history (My degree is in Literary and Historical Studies) I know that the stories of disabled people’s lives, before very recent times, are often missing. It’s as if, like Vera, they just didn’t have any lives. But that’s not true, it’s just you have to look in different places to find disabled people’s stories, you have to read between the cracks in history, you have to really dig and dig. I've not watched enough episodes of Heir Hunters to know if they have unearthed some exciting stories about disabled people. I'm not blaming them, this is a problem with history and how it's taught and covered by the media full stop.

And why is it important to dig and search out these histories and stories about disabled people’s lives? Well for a number of reasons. It’s our, that’s disabled people’s, history as much as anyone else’s, if we only hear about one group through our history, we end up with a very skewed view of then and now. History can inspire people today. Imagine Vera’s story had been one about her being some kind of audio typist or telephonist during the war, that would have inspired me and maybe any blind children or parents of blind children watching. If the story had been like one experienced by many disabled people in the mid 20th century, as I outlined above, it would have served to show how far we have come since then. How many more choices blind people have today. Or maybe it would have shown that progress isn't as rapid as you might think. But we’ll never know, because instead I’m left with this uneasy feeling again that there was a story there about Vera, that just couldn’t be unearthed, because it was too much hard work, not interesting enough or maybe even more sadly, because genuinely there was no record of Vera’s life and what does that say about our society? 

I've been saying for the longest time I want to write a book, well maybe I should imagine Vera's life for her and write that? Or maybe I can make sue that other disabled people's stories aren't lost in the future. The current narratives about disability range from being about "scroungers" to Paralympic "super heroes" the truth of course is somewhere else completely and as vibrant and mundane as everyone else's story. So lets make sure that our story is told in all it's brilliance, including our struggle for equal rights and the ordinariness of every day life. 

Pumpkin surprise

So I was wrong that rather weedy looking shoot was just that a seed. Not sure how that got in but I did pot up the seeds outside so a rogue seed could have blown in! This is what a pumpkin shoot should look like. 

And this is one emerging! 

Spring shoots

I've been planting seeds over the last week and my tomatoes have already germinated! 

These should grow to be beefsteak type tomatoes! 

I've also planted some pumpkin seeds and one has already sprouted 

I'm still waiting for my habanero chilli seeds to sprout and my peppers but they  need a lot of heat to germinate. Fingers crossed Im keeping them toastie enough. 

Marmalade malarkey

It's that time of year again when Seville oranges are in season and I buy a marmalade making kit from http://www.riverford.co.uk The house smells citrusy all day and home made marmalade is definitely tastier, tangier and actually cheaper than buying marmalade. Here's how I make it. This year in honour of Burns night we made orange and whisky marmalade! 

You start with 1.5kg of Seville oranges and 2 lemons which you peel thinly leaving as much of the white pith as possible on the orange. You then chop the peel thinly (or thicker for thick cut marmalade) as pictured below. 

Peel

The oranges are then left looking like this. 

Peeled oranges

You then cut the oranges in half and squeeze all the juice and pips out into a muslin lined bowl. You then tie the muslin bag up around the fruit, giving it a last squeeze to leave behind juice like this. 

Juice

You then add the juice and peel to 2.5 litres of water in a jam pan. To that you add the muslin bag of orange bits. You need this bag of mushy oranges to add pectin to the marmalade. Pectin is what makes the marmalade set. (You can use jam sugar which already has pectin in it but I'll corm to that later.) You then simmer this for 2 hours to soften the peel. I always find that it doesn't take 2 hours for this part but about an hour 45. 

Muslin bag in the pan

After 2 hours or when the peel is soft you squeeze out the muslin bag. (Best to wait until things have  cooled a little before doing this.) Jase actually put the muslin bag in a colander over a large mixing bowl then pressed another mixing bowl onto the bag to get the last gloopy orange stuff out. You then add that gloopy juicy stuff to the pan and discard the bag of fruit bits. 

You then need to know how much liquid you have left in the pan by either measuring it or using a jam pan like mine that has liquid measurements inside it. You then add 450g of sugar for every 500ml of liquid. I used golden granulated sugar. I've noticed that using dark muscovado is popular in some recipes. I may try that next time. You can use jam sugar which I think would mean that you wouldn't need to bother with the muslin bag of stuff but I'm not sure. 

Sugar added

You then slowly heat the pan to dissolve the sugar for about 15 minutes. Then you boil the marmalade for another 15 minutes. If you're using a sugar thermometer you'll need to start checking once the temperature hits 104C or like I did this time I just started checking every 5 mins after 15 minutes. And when I say checking I mean testing to see if it's set. 

Boiling

To test for setting point have some saucers in the freezer. When your ready to test take the saucer out of the freezer place a tea spoon full of marmalade on the plate and put it in the fridge for a minute. Then gently push the marmalade with your finger. If it wrinkles and a clear line or track of plate is left behind where your finger pushed then it's reached setting point. 

Finished marmalade cooling

This year we then added 120ml of scotch whisky mmmmm before pouring the marmalade into sterilised jars. This year we made the equivalent of 11 small jars (actually 8 small and 1 and a half large jars.) I'm always concerned at how liquid the marmalade seems at this stage  it's not pulpy like jam. But one year I over boiled it and although it was fully liquid at this stage it set too hard. So don't be afraid if it a appears to liquidy. I'll post how it actually turns out once it's cooled. 

New Year

Doncaster car park and moon

I've been in Doncaster for the start of 2015 (after having a few friends over on New Years Day which was lovely.) I've been helping my parents look after my four nieces and their new puppy Jabba a German Shepherd and Husky cross. 

Here's a few photos of him the first was taken a couple of weeks ago the others todsy. He's growing fast! 

We've had a lovely time. We went to see the Hobbit (and I cried again at the end) we've been to the park and the shops. We spent half an hour star gazing in a freezing garden, frosty grass crunching under our feet. We composed music using garage band and played with Lego. 

Back to work tomorrow appraising a NHS standard.