Feeling jittery gotta garden

I’m writing this now in a time of anxiety because I’m recognising myself 8 years ago and experiencing the same dread, purposelessness and sense of loss of purpose. 

Being told that it’s okay, we’ll shuttle you through and pass you anyway isn’t the same as earning a badge or a qualification. I remember back in my pre-university days when I and my fellow Venture Scouts undertook an expedition in France. It didn’t involve mountains or isolated places; its main challenges aside from carrying heavy loads through fields and up hill and down dale across rural Brittany was the heat. Real, searing heat that bested anything that was blazing on Africa at that time if contemporary newspaper weather forecasts were at all reliable. Of the 8 of us, two came down with really nasty, need to be hospitalised heat stroke and diarrhoea. I was a borderline case. 

By day four, we knew we had to look after ourselves. Having passed a stressed out night in a wholly unsuitable field shared with unwelcoming cows and risen early but unrested to trudge on our last 12 miles we were soon outpaced by the rising sun which beat down unforgivingly as we stumbled along a glaring canal path and up steep roads with no walkways. 

Some time after lunch we should have been strolling victorious into the scout camp where we were to be the assistant camp leaders for the duration of the next 10 days. We were pretty beat, but we got there. We arrived by car after desperately flagging down a passer-by who scooped up our things and drove us the last half mile or so. Two of our number were immediately taken to the medical tent and their soiled clothes tended to over the next few days by others less affected by the uncaring sun. 

Telling the tale some months later, I recalled my shame that we took the stranger’s lift. That shame – and others – stayed with me for years and years. Only about 5 years ago someone gently broke it to me that we’d done exactly the right thing, ensuring everyone in our group’s health when it was under threat. 

Today I’ve been feeling a fair amount of anxiety again. I want to support the people around me and I want to focus on the things I’m supposed to be achieving too. University lecturers are at pains to help me and my fellow students through our MA and are being incredibly supportive. Of course, I don’t want to be waved through and told yes, that’s it, you’re done when I know I haven’t. I want to be doing my best, even though some of the expectations are impractical ones- the libraries are closed, online presentations just aren’t the same and so on. 

Musing on it while having some much-needed time in the garden I realised it’s similar to the dread and anxiety that went with some work changes years ago. Unexpected changes of responsibility; not being able to find news ways of working when I asked for them; no longer feeling needed; having someone turn round and say that something (not necessarily a big thing) that I’d done for years was now something they were doing and, basically, back off. It’s upsetting and undermining and not necessarily someone’s fault. But it is like a rug being pulled and it made me lose my way and made me stressed and anxious over more than a year. 

With all that’s going on at the moment and the uncertainties of this whole new way of living and working it’s probably no surprise that it’s bringing up things I usually push to the back of my mind. But I’m sure I’m not the only one feeling that sense of dread, and what was it all for all those years of trying and caring just to find I’ve got all the time in the world to ponder it while the world moves on. 

It’s going to take a while for the shift of gear to click in and to realise that actually the self care and the care for others or for a career can’t be at the expense of myself. But blimey it’s weird! 

Three months ago this hedge was completely overgrown - now I can finally see the hedge removal end in sight

Retro-blogging or the art of catching up with yourself

A couple of weeks ago I read about an intriguing exhibition I’d like to go to at the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow. It features a black US artist, Kehinde Wiley.

You may have seen photos of his Barack Obama portrait. Or you may have had the unexpected delight of seeing Wiley’s gloriously detailed and strikingly colourful portrait of himself standing in for Napoleon in a famous painting of him leading his men over the Alps. Housed in Napoleon’s wife’s home, Chateau de Malmaison, outside Paris, it’s a fantastic reimagining of the painting of the French emperor in which the original artist, Jacques-Louis David meets Wiley. I meant to blog about it before, and I haven’t, though of course I posted about it on Facebook and told a few friends about it.

Kehinde Wiley's riff on Jacques-Louis David's Napoleon portrait

Anyway, on learning of the Walthamstow exhibition, Wiley’s first dedicated show in the UK, I got all excited. There’s links to William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement, of course. Having recently bought a house built in a period heavily influenced by Morris, there’s plenty to pique my interior design interest.

Then there’s the link with that incredible book The YellowWallpaper (read many years ago when I was first at uni), about a woman trapped in a room and all but live-blogging her mental breakdown. Kehinde Wiley cites this as a major theme for his Walthamstow show.

And then there’s the not unimportant matter of what topic I intend to research for my MA on Literary London. And my admiration for Sarah Waters, whose last novel but one, The Little Stranger, was a mock gothic affair in which what’s hidden behind the wall coverings was a major plot point.

So don’t be surprised when I start retro-blogging – or latergramm-ing – some of these things as they slot into place and take on new significances. The road trip to Paris that ended up being about that day at Malmaison as much as anything, has its own tales to tell, for starters. And surely tales need telling.

Flab Fight February

33 inches! How did it get that my previously trim waist now puts me in the size 16 dress category? Well, I’ve a few answers to that based on my mid-January procrastinations and self appraisal. The only thing now is to do something about it. A little less Bridget Jones diarising and a lot more action, methinks. 

My father in law (retired) uses the mantra "I’m lapping everyone on the couch" when denigrating his own weekly gym efforts and he makes a good point. I tested the waters against last week, setting to with an assault on the 40ft long wall of ivy that came with our house purchase. 

Also feeling pretty good about a tentative gym session mid-week. The gym equipment at Lewisham’s Glass Mill leisure centre has finally been upgraded and they’ve kept the LifeFitness interactive trails based in some beautiful locations that I love. 

Since it popped up again on my FB timeline recently – 11 years ago since we were there; too long! – I started off with a cross training session in Natural Bridges National Park and Utah’s glorious Kachina Bridge. Now I’ve broken my gym absence, it’s time to become a regular again. 

It’s Saturday and a late start after a very busy but productive few days: MA stuff, making proper efforts at getting some more freelance writing, sorting out and posting details of the Brockley Max fundraising events I’m helping set up.

Inspired by the herculean efforts of Sofia Kenin coming from behind to take the Australian Grand Slam, plus the incredible Devon trio who have just rowed across the Atlantic (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51103423), I hauled myself down to the gym and plugged in. The new LifeFitness suggested my Apple Watch would work with it, but 15 minutes in I realised that the Nag-a-tron’s screen said otherwise. Still, I trundled around the Kachina Bridge area again, mentally waving hello to the benevolent-looking gentleman on the video trail who resembles my aunt’s late dad. 

Kachina Bridge in Utah Natural Bridges Park

The boyfriend of the young woman next to me dropped off a coke and nipped out for a smoke before returning with pasties and other incentivising treats. Turning up is half the battle, I reminded myself. 

Satisfied I’d gone twice round the trail, marginally increasing resistance and speed the second time, I logged off the crosstrainer, only to be greeted by Lucy wanting a loo break. I was tasked with baby-sitting her running machine. Ended up doing a couple of minutes of fast walking/light jogging with an incline all the way. Ha! I’ll regret it later but at least I took the initiative. 

The challenge now is to keep it all up. After a sugar crash and jitters yesterday (eating sweets on the drive back from Cambridge was foolhardy), it’s clear as can be that I’ve got to cut back on the sweet stuff. Not much point in exercising if I’m then going to snack. 

Also, noticing it’s the first of the month, I might as well make this ‘a thing’ so let’s hashtag it #flabfightfebruary and see if I can’t lose a couple of those niggling 33 inches. 

Facing facts

I first knew I was beginning to have a weight issue when the kids started asking me: "Miss, I don’t mean to be rude, but are you pregnant?" A surefire way of knowing whether an outfit suits you, your hair’s a mess or you’re looking less than groomed is the instant and sometimes brutal assessment of a Year 7 student.

Previously, I’d been able to dismiss such occasional comments relating to my bloated stomach as them not understanding the time of the month thing when some women seem to gain half a stone overnight. That and a lingering suspicion that my frequent burping was a sign of IBS.

But it wasn't that now. The doctor I consulted about a painful and ongoing hard lump to my lower right told me I was on the cusp of diabetes. He didn’t mean the type 1 my dad has.

I pointed out I’d just completed a walking half marathon the weekend before, was at the gym three times a week, racked up dozens and dozens of miles walking in a normal week and had done a 50km cycle ride on a whim in the previous fortnight. I was hitting my exercise goals on my Apple Watch (aka the Nag-o-tron) by 10am each weekday.

Apple Watch, aka The Nag-o-tron, made me feel I was fairly active

No matter, he told me to get a blood test. The results came back and the resulting advice ignored everything I’d said: Get more exercise. You weigh too much.

A few months earlier a student had looked at the dress I was wearing and advised that perhaps I’d grown out of it. The pregnancy comments continued and, knowing I didn’t appreciate them, students would dare each other to ask me whether I was married.... so I have kids... was I pregnant. I tired of the game and the no but maybe answers. Ha!, I thought, at least they don’t think I’m too old to have kids.

Still, I was becoming body conscious. I threw out lots of clothes I’d previously enjoyed wearing. I went through a not unfamiliar phase of nothing fitting, outfits not working, everything feeling wrong. I was still quite active, still walking lots and going to the gym twice-weekly.

I’d been learning to sew and was proud of a dress I’d spent week after week making. Come the day to wear it at my niece’s wedding a good six months after I’d finished it, it no longer felt the perfect fit it had before. The funky skirt I'd meantime made, twirled around in on our Easter break and emulated in another fabric.... that didn’t fit right either. The flattering darts and self-faced top now made the skirt fit higher up my body. My waist was no more. I was tubby!

The next time I was at my sewing class the tutor made a comment about how I seemed to have eaten a bit more recently. It was true. My weight fears, that is.

I’ve never been a huge eater, or a dieter. I’m Ms Average in terms of appetite. I like my vegetables and I usually top my meals with plenty of cheese, but I don’t go for biscuits, sweets, ice cream, chips or snacks.

Or so I thought.

The communal English office table. That must be it. We’d bring in food on the understanding that it was a help yourself zone. If it’s on the table it’s fair game, as Hannah, our department head explained to newcomers and visitors.

I’d feel bad if I didn’t bring in foodstuffs sufficiently often. And I always tried to make it fruit. Or at least dome of it was fruit. Requests if anyone was off to the Co-Op were less healthy. And inevitably having bought stuff in I found myself resentful if I didn’t get at least some spoils from the shared table.

The one thing about teaching is the tiredness. Reaching for an energy boost you feel you’ve earned is no surprise when you’ve been up and at 'em since 5.30am, classes are done and the long post-school meeting and lesson planning time is upon you.

I asked a generous colleague who sometimes brought in tins of biscuits or chocolate selection tins not to. It comes as part of the Tesco delivery, she said. A busy mum, she was busy shedding pounds on a ferocious - and expensive - diet and training regime. She daren’t have the chocolates lurking around at home.

So I was stealth snacking. That was clear. No problem, I’d be leaving the team soon, so that bad habit was also be left behind.

Sure enough, it was.

Less simple was to shrug off the late afternoon/early evening habit I’d got into of zonking our exhausted after 12 hours of teaching-related activity and laying a bed for an hour or so before getting up, eating dinner and either marking, lesson planning or being so exhausted I put the telly on and zoned out.

A late afternoon nap before dinner became a great restorative as I recovered from the school year and became a free woman again (by which I mean it was the summer holiday). Except now I wasn’t getting up before dawn. I wasn’t using up the energy but I was still napping.

I was working, but it was computer-based, more sedentary stuff with none of the frenetic dashing from place to place like at school. (Turns out, our office-bound lifestyles often have the effects I'm describing, as Personnel Today explains.)

Mentally, it was a lot better for me. My sleeplessness began to dissipate for a start. But now I was under-employed. This had always been an issue for me while teaching: the all or nothing of the school term and the deadness of the breaks. Colleagues with kids loved this part, for me it wasn’t good for my psyche after a week or so. I need some purpose, some discipline, a deadline.

Exhaustion and anxiety among teachers is common.
Image copyright: We Are Teachers

Buying a house gave me a fair amount of this. The online portal for the conveyancing didn’t leave us alone, emailing and texting, as soon as one task was complete another three would appear and need our attention. For once I wasn’t going out of my mind with depression and a lack of purpose. And I was still going to the gym. But I knew it couldn’t last.

Used to being so busy it hurt, I cast around for a new something to do. A-ha! I’d wanted to do an MA for years and my now-former colleague had often mentioned one I really liked the sound of. MA Literary London combined an excuse to get back into reading books – the irony of being too busy to do so due to the demands of an English teaching post wasn’t lost on me – with a focus for our frequent explorations and meanderings around London.

Yes, I’d do it and combine it with the project management refurbishing our new house would need.

So that’s what I’m doing. Along with a modest amount of freelance writing. I’m reading a lot. So much that we don’t get to discuss some of the materials we cram for each seminar. But it’s interesting and engaging and a great course. But I’m not yet out and about enough.
I need to be doing the other bit of the course that appealed. The being out and about in London bit. The saving myself from getting fatter and maybe diabetic and feeling pathetic bit.

So that’s why I’m going to be blogging again. Because if I need to hold myself to anything it’s to making sure it’s all doing me good – not just for future work readings and general knowledge reasons but for keeping my head straight too.

Studying in Greenwich is a real treat

A new literary chapter

After an extended hiatus on this blog, I'm hoping to use this blog again as a place to post items of interest to me that may or may not relate to my current course of study: I'm now a part-time MA student at The University of Greenwich, fitting work around it (or vice versa).

My course MA English: Literary London lends itself wonderfully to my love of London and anyone and everyone inspired by it. I'm hoping that by recording my explorations here, I'll have an informal record of places, people and events that I've encountered during my studies and some ideas to share for those who have already told me they intend to follow my explorations during this course.

For starters, we'll be visiting the William Blake exhibition at Tate Britain and I've already pencilled in a Witches Tour of London one Sunday. And if ever there was an excuse to take a Gin Cycle Tour of London with our friend David as tour guide....

Feel free to suggest literary and historical places of interest, plus apposite books, films and exhibitions I ought to know about.

University of Greenwich: such a glorious and inspiring setting for my studies!

George, Jon, Mikey and Roy

I’ve got fantastic memories of being 12. That time before teenage hormones and adult expectations start to burden us is a golden time of our lives. It’s the time of unfettered enthusiasm and energy and so many formative experiences – first kisses, crushes and adventures. Horizons are expanding as we seize on ideas and assert our identity.

Anyone who remembers me from when I was 12 will probably sum me up with the words ‘Boy George fan’. I was glued to the radio, TV, magazines, newspaper and records featuring the wonderful George.

Most of my schoolfriends had yet to declare their preference for a particular sort of music or allegiance to a band. This was to be the time of obsessive fandom. Duran Duran, Wham, Spandau Ballet or Culture Club – you couldn't like them all. I was the Boy George girl.

Internationally renowned Boy George fan

As well as all their music, I had badges, posters and stickers galore. I made fabric cases for my complete collection of singles and albums (including some imports and picture discs), and covered my Culture Club scrapbooks with montages of quotes and photos snipped out of magazines.

I regularly wrote to – and even visited – the fan club. A few times I hung around outside George's home where I met up with some of my similarly George-obsessed penpals. I'd work George into conversations, quote his quips in my essays and discuss imaginary dreams of hanging out the Jon Moss and the Duran Duran hunks with my classmate Jo.

Another of my classmates paid tribute to my obsession by dressing as George with a hat trimmed with coloured plaits for a drama performance. We held a fundraising three-legged race along the seafront (actually a 17-legger) and I donned a customised man's shirt with huge coloured letters and symbols, like my idol's. Once I celebrated George's birthday by making a cake decorated as his famous BOY cap.

Inevitably, my favourite band's fame waxed and waned after a few years and the band eventually splintered as George's drug problems became apparent. I continued to follow his every word and went to as many solo gigs as I could. My cunning move to London made it all the easier.

My admiration and love for George has grown and aged along with us both. We've had our ups and downs and have evolved into quite different people from when I first declared my interest in the 'flamboyant cross-dresser who sings blue-eyed soul' back in 1983.

But my love for Culture Club isn't the same. The group reformed for a couple of years at the start of the century and it was wonderful to see them back on Top Of The Pops and in concert. Teenage over-excitement came flooding back and with every heartfelt lyric I was transported back to being 12. Then they disappeared again and George went back to DJing and pursuing various musical and fashion endeavours.

This week, Culture Club played to a packed house at Heaven nightclub underneath Charing Cross station. It’s the very venue where they play their first London gig on their first tour and is an iconic club for anyone who loves the 80s. I was there – as was a poster asking ‘Duran Duran who?’. It made George chuckle when he peered at it.

Culture Club being back is brilliant. Their ‘oldies’ as they call their back catalogue still stand strong and they’ve got some great new tracks for their new album. The enthusiasm with which Roy Hay attacked his guitar and played the rock god all over again was immense. The whole band’s delight at playing together was infectious. As for me, I loved being transported back to my first Culture Club gig in 1984 and being filled up anew with energetic verve, fearlessness and simply enjoying an all-consuming unaffected love.

Zingy Lime Muffins

I'm a great one for seeing what we've got in the vegetable drawer or fruit bowl and making up recipes based on them. The internet makes it really easy to find successful combinations that other people have tried, but I often end up winging it on the ingredients front. 

Our great local market (a proper one rather than a fancy artisan farmers' market) sells great value, great quality fruit and veg. For simplicity, items at Lewisham Market are priced a £1 per bowl. "Pound a bowl! Pound a bowl!" comes the refrain. Last week, I needed both lemons and limes and ended up with a mixed bowl from the market of about six of each.

This week I had a few leftover limes that I knew wouldn't keep until we get back from a few days away. I was also wondering if I could rustle something up that we could munch on our long journey to Devon.

At first I thought I’d make a lime drizzle cake as an easy alternative to the lemon drizzle cake that's become a bit of a standby. But I didn't really want the hassle of eating slices of cake in the car and it's not long since I made lemon drizzle cake anyway.

Lime Muffins seemed like a good idea instead. There's a really easy recipe online for the basic mix. Better yet, it uses vegetable oil rather than butter. We slather butter on toast, so rarely have enough left over for baking. Here's a summary of the Taste Of Home recipe.

2 cups plain flour plus 2 teaspoons baking powder

Half a teaspoon of salt

1 cup of caster sugar

Third of a cup of vegetable oil

Quarter of a cup of milk

Two eggs

3 tablespoons of lime juice

Teaspoon and a half of grated lime rind

Beat the eggs and stir in the wet ingredients, then mix them into the dry ingredients. Spoon into 12 cupcake cases and bake in a cupcake tin at 200 degrees C for 18-20 minutes. Cool in the cupcake tin. 

I added a whole juicy lime's worth of juice to the mix rather than the three tablespoons the recipe suggested. I also added a whole zested lime rind.

The cakes took the full 20 minutes to bake and rose nicely. I'd used self-raising flour and half a teaspoon of baking powder rather than the plain flour and 2.5 teaspoons of baking powder in the original recipe. The cakes had a nice rise – but they looked rather plain. 

Tangy icing-topped lime muffin

Time for a nicely iced topping, I decided. As you'll surmise from the photos, I've not used a piping bag for at least 15 years. Nonetheless, I mixed up 4oz of butter, a cup and a half of icing powder, some milk and a bit more lime juice and zest to see what transpired. The taste was glorious: both sweet and very tangy. 

The extra juice made the icing runnier than ideal and I should have added a mite more icing sugar to make it a little stiffer. It piped easily but didn't set into swirls. But it was the taste rather than the look that I was really after. 

I'll add another tablespoon of icing sugar next time – which probably won't be long given the price of limes at Lewisham Market.

Zingy Lime Muffins

Toby the Tram Engine and his Belgian Cousin

The most money I've ever seen in one place was in a briefcase that my Grandad handed over to my Dad sometime in the mid-1980s. It was an actual suitcase of cash and it elicited the same sort of thrill that you might expect if you were in the presence of a suitcase of cash representing ill-gotten gains. I was about 13 and I was seriously impressed.

But this was no Great Train Robbery. The large sum of cash was needed to secure the purchase of an actual old train (perhaps one that hadn’t seen active service since the time of the Great Train Robbery, but that’s a fanciful detail I’ve just conjured up).

Right now, I expect you’re thinking something similar to what I was back in about 1986. Dad’s buying a steam train and it’s going to be amazing. Cue images of gleaming locomotives powering down the Great Western tracks, thick grey steam pouring out the top.

It wasn’t that unreasonable an expectation, either. My Dad’s train obsession goes beyond most people’s. By my teens he’d taken us on hundreds of photo reconnaissance missions in which he’d abruptly stop the car by the side of a bridge, hare up the side of the embankment and disappear for an hour with nothing but a camera for company. We’d go to monthly rail enthusiast meetings at which the members would pore over photos, project slideshows and show archive steam loco footage. Swap-meets for Hornby carriages and Dinky vehicles were used to furnish the meticulously assembled track layout in the loft, fully landscaped with its own handmade Forth Rail Crossing.

Every holiday managed to include visits to goods yards and preserved railway lines. (It still does, though these days my Mum also gets her fair share of wild flower stop-offs.) My Dad would always go beyond the public areas and make a nuisance of himself, nosing around where he wasn’t supposed to be. He wanted to know where ‘the good stuff’ was – the stuff that hadn’t been prettied up ready to be shown off.

Dad’s insatiable curiosity was legendary even in the 70s, when he got involved in the Isle of Man Railway. Even though we lived 200 miles away in the south of England, Dad managed to get himself, Mum and a toddler me to the island at least twice. He took a leave of absence to work the cranes there and made sufficient impression to be caricatured in a comic book about the island and its railway. My then two-year-old brother has never lived down his distressed reaction when ‘Kissack’ let off steam three yards away from him.

You see, my Dad doesn’t just spot trains – though his love of steam is meticulously recorded in many 1950s and 1960s notebooks. He chases it obsessively, and internationally. In the case of his very own steam train, he tracked it down to an obscure goods yard in Belgium. I can almost hear the story deflate as I write. Yet Dad and two other enthusiasts who wanted to salvage a piece of industrial history weren’t to be deterred by their quarry’s unglamorous resting place. They bought it, insured it and arranged for it to cross the Channel to Norfolk and be transported on the back of a flatbed lorry to a tiny hamlet where they could begin to cherish it.

Her name is Cockerill and she’s a hulking great steam tram. Back when I was still 13 and Dad and his cohorts were still full of enthusiast vigour, I helped scrape off all the grot and grease from her brass plate ready for it to be painted and her to be ceremoniously rechristened.

We thought it would be a few years before she would be ready to show her face to the world again, but probably no more than three, or perhaps five.  In fact, she’s been tucked away in a private station yard in the middle of Norfolk for the past 25 years. She was always at the back of my Dad’s mind (he’s worse than me for guilt-tripping himself about not making time to do absolutely everything he wants to), but periodic visits to tinker and do essential maintenance inevitably had to give way for more pressing visits to ageing parents.

By 2010 when my Grandad died, it was time to decide whether to let Cockerill go or make a go of a project we’d all hoped he’d have been able to see come to fruition. Time for a big push.

Lou and I went to visit her the day after my Grandad’s memorial lunch. She’s a big rusty beast, far larger than I’d ever realised. She’s an oversized Toby The Tram Engine, as it turns out, rather than a gleaming Gordon or James. In fact, she’s the closest cousin still in existence to the J70 tram that inspired Rev Awdry to create the Toby tram character.

Cockerill Steam Tram on show at Dendemonde-Puurs, Belgium Photo copyright: Vitaly Volkov (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Steam_locomotives_of_Belgium)

Amazingly – and despite living a day and a half’s drive from where Cockerill is based in mid-Norfolk – my Dad has managed to keep the steam train revival dream alive. Between my Dad and Mervyn, the other remaining owner and an accomplished engineer and industrial boiler repairman, Cockerill has been slowly brought back to life. Last week she passed her boiler inspection, meaning she’s officially able to steam again.

This Friday, if the paperwork, road transport, insurance and a dozen other things get sorted out, Cockerill will have her first public display in the UK. She’ll be on show as an invited guest at the Mid-Norfolk Railway Steam Gala Weekend from Friday 27 to Sunday 29 June. We’re even holding out for her being able to haul carriages or wagons up and down the track. 

My first book!

Books glorious books. I've a flat bulging at the seams due to my love of them and now I'm going to have a book emblazoned with my own name on it. Back in November, I was approached by one of the commissioning editors at Wiley about writing for them. I'd already taken on the 3rd edition of their hugely successful 'iPad For The Older And Wiser' title and enjoyed the experience. This time, rather than being co-author, I'll be going it alone. 

I wasn't allowed to reveal the details of what I was writing when the project was first agreed. It was under wraps for a couple of reasons: it’s a new title for Wiley and they’re rightly proud (and a little bit nervous) about putting out something different. The second reason is that it’s a project with Tesco, for which it will be a first ever publication. Tesco is getting into books in a big way and is busy building its own digital bookstore, set for launch in spring 2014. This book, Hudl For Dummies, will be published around the same time.

Watch this space for more info on when it will hit the shelves. 

10 signs you're a green gardener

Last week I was chatting with a colleague about silly mistakes that are often made when using technology – the sort of things we do once and immediately learn from. “Ah, a bit like me raking the lawn of petals last weekend and finding a bed of freshly-sown weeds days later”, I chimed in. 

Exactly that sort of thing, except I did it for the third year running this spring and have just spent a day undoing my unintentional weed-spreading. The garden is now a lot less weedy, but my limbs aren’t exactly grateful. Maybe next year I’ll catch myself in time before I rake. 

A day in the garden is always welcome, but I’m definitely still learning some absolute gardening basics. On Saturday, I was fascinated by a plant stall holder in Greenwich giving her thirsty plants a bath of water. She held the leaves out the way while she dunked each lavender plant in turn into a bucket of water and soaked its soil and roots. That reminded me that my neighbour Ann, who has little trouble maintaining a colourful balcony display of tomatoes, herbs and flowers at most times of the year, had previously advised me to water some of my windowsill seedlings from the bottom. I took her advice and used saucers of water for my herbs, but hadn’t extended the idea to the garden. I’ve been watering away and doing it all wrong. 

I’m learning though. I’ve managed to master the art of sheltering plants from wind and other elements having had a potentially great tomato harvest ruined by the howling winds. Windowsills, tops of cupboards and cheap plastic-coated patio greenhouses are now my friends. 

My potato-chitting skills are now second to none. I’m just hoping that the second batch of chitted spuds that went into potato growbags today are able to draw enough sustenance from the mix of compost and John Innes potting soil I ended up planting them in. I definitely need to gen up on soil types and which ones nurture which plant types.

I shan’t make last year’s mistake of trying to get more use out of bags of nutrient-rich soil than they have to give. If a pot uses up a whole 30-litre bag of compost, I’ll just have to go and get another bag of compost rather than adding dried up old soil and diluting the mix. The addition of roots and plant spores (always weeds) makes it a false economy – and often means the new plant withers rather than thrives.

Previous attempts to improve the soil in a particularly dry area of the garden proved fruitless, but the conifer that was sucking up all the moisture was taken out this winter. When I came to plant the nectarine tree I got from the excellent J Parker’s website, I found a stone-, weed- and rubble-free spot that apparently appreciated my previous attention. I was able to dig down the requisite spade-height-and-a-half and plant the nectarine tree in a pretty well-prepared spot. Thanks to a day of tree planting with The Woodland Trust, I knew exactly what to do. 

Greeting pastures new

After a year of working for myself - and for lots of clients, from the teeny to the enormous, I'm heading back into the world of paid employment.

I've had a lot of fun writing business advice articles, messing about with too-arty-for-their-own-good art brochure designs and simplifying needlessly complex websites. Blogging about community issues under various Twitter and anonymous guises has been very satisfying. Plans are afoot to continue these efforts with new impetus in the coming months. Look out for some exciting news about the Brockley Max arts festival and at least one new web-based venture from yours truly.

But it's tech knowledge that I'm known for - and where I shall once again be earning a crust. I'm joining the team at Computeractive magazine - the UK's biggest-selling computer magazine - looking after the features desk and bringing a few new ideas to a venerable title. 

Talking the tech talk

If you know me personally, you’ll know I’m rather a chatterbox. I don’t always mean to be, but I do talk a lot. So when I had the chance to review Blue Microphones’ Spark Digital device, it soon dawned on me that I could just as well create audio blog posts as written ones. I may as well try and commit some words to digital file.

I’ve always been more confident writing than I have speaking (chattering is nothing like the same thing as speaking clearly and authoritatively, after all). But lately I’ve been pondering podcasts for a few reasons. One is that I enjoy showing people how to use technology and that’s often done better on video with an accompanying voiceover than it is with just a written description.

Another is that I’d like to turn one of my Twitter feeds about local events into a listings and events site. A weekly podcast digest of what’s happening could be great.

Reviewing the Spark Digital microphone has got me into podcasting

The third is that I’ve been asked to be a speaker at a special event being put on in conjunction with the publishers of my about-to-be published book, 'iPad For The Older And Wiser, 3rd Edition' (I'm the co-author).

Being unused to such public-facing duties, the latter event is rather scary. But it’s important to challenge yourself every so often, and I think it will be a good thing for me to do. As I say, I may be good at chatting, but getting up in front of people and having them look at me and pay attention to what I have to say is a whole other matter. My school drama teacher reported that I was the shyest pupil she’d ever met.

Many years ago, when I was a Modern Languages student, I worked as a teaching assistant in several schools in Germany. I was scared stiff of speaking German and really struggled to find my feet when I first arrived in Munich. I had no accommodation arranged. My so-called mentor cancelled my lodgings when he returned from holiday to discover that, rather than the Oxbridge undergraduate he’d requested, his high-profile school had been allocated a timid student from a lesser institution. I met him perhaps once, two months into my 10-month stint at the tertiary college, and then only because I wandered into the Smoking Staffroom. I bet they still have one.

Thankfully, his colleagues were rather more welcoming and certainly felt they could make use of my native speaker status to benefit their students. Language teaching assistants are generally used to encourage conversation skills, taking small groups at a time and asking them to offer their opinions on a set topic or text. In the school in which I mainly worked, we were expected to source materials, plan lessons, explain tasks to the class and then run the lesson while the regular teacher looked on. It wasn’t an untrammelled success as my political and economic knowledge was no match for the adult students I encountered. But I could at least talk authoritatively about my mother tongue and about everyday life back home. It was a start.

I’m hoping that a similar process gradual increase in confidence will occur when I address the 150-or-so attendees at the U3A conference and talk to them about technology and how smartphones and tablets can fit neatly into their lives. After all, I’ve lived and breathed writing about such gadgets for more than a decade.

In the meantime, I’ve the perfect excuse to exercise my vocal chords and practice my lines. If you hear nothing more of my audiocasting endeavours, you'll know I tried and found podcasting wasn't for me. 

Bee walks for beginners

If one of your aims this year is to enjoy the outdoors more frequently, then Beewalks could be just the sort of prompt you need to get out and about regularly. A Beewalk is an hour-long amble through a pretty glade or other flowery spot. Armed with a crib sheet showing common bee types, you glance around you and note the number of bees you see and whether they are solitary or seen in clusters – on a gorse bush, for instance.

Beewalks are undertaken once a month and it’s best if you aim for a similar time of day each time. That way you get a better idea of whether bee numbers at that location are up or down. You also give yourself the perfect reason to go and spend time at one of your favourite spots. The beauty of the scheme is that you choose your own study location and the emphasis is on it being somewhere you can get to conveniently and regularly. Local parks and riverbanks are a good option.

Beewalks were set up by researchers at the University of Stirling and are a direct response to the sharp fall in honey bees in the UK (as well as many other countries). We need bees to pollinate flowers and fruit. Numbers have seemingly dropped off alarmingly. The BBCT (Bumblebee Conservation Trust) acts as a public census to discover just how widespread the decimation of the bumblebee population may be, and whether all varieties of bumblebee are affected. Ideally, you’ll log details of your Beewalk findings over successive years, so a picture can be built up of how your local bee population is doing. Results are collated on a national map.

In the three years that the scheme has been running, BBCT volunteers have made some unexpected discoveries. Several types of bee that were prevoiously thought rare have been found in strong numbers. Bees have also been seen outside their traditional March to September active periods. Winter bees are also now being enthusiastically logged, though beewalkers aren’t expected to commit to braving the harsh winter weather to confirm such sightings.

The discovery of a broader than expected range of bumblebees prompted the Beewalk organisers to add another option to the public survey: photography. This less formal bee sighting scheme is an ideal way of letting the Bumblebee Conservation Trust know about your bee sightings. Confirmed sightings of bees via the BeeWatch help the BBCT build up distribution patterns, says Elaine O’Mahony, the organisation’s surveys officer. Of course you also learn to distinguish bee types as you go, and have a great excuse to practice your close-up photography.

To find out more about Beewatch see this PowerPoint slide. 

Valentine’s Day chocolate-mint roulade

Cooking with chocolate is never a chore. So when I got wind of some recipes based on lighter-than-air Aero chocolate, I needed little persuading to give it a go. Before Christmas, I went along to the Bar Of Aero pop-up chocolate palace [video link] at the Truman Brewery in Brick Lane and marvelled at the bubbly creations a professional cocktail mixologist was able to conjure up. The hot chocolate fountain was pretty good too [see photo below]. 

Back at home, I wasn’t able to master the art of forcing enough air into whipped up Aero-based milkshakes to recreate those bubbly cocktails, but the idea of making fun recipes using the chocolate stuck with me. These recipes are a little simpler – and ideal for impressing your other half on Valentine’s Day.

Chocolate Aero Meringue Roulade - the professional version

Grating Aero is good fun. I recommend the larger cutter size on your grater (the one you’d use for cheese rather than lemon zest) as the chocolate can easily get stuck in smaller grater teeth. It’s surprising how much chocolate equals the 25g called for in the recipe I followed for a meringue roulade topped with Mint Aero.

I couldn’t resist adding some more grated chocolate to the meringue mixture itself to give it a lovely mint-choc flavour. 

You might need a couple of attempts at rolling up the meringue once you’ve smothered it with whipped cream and fresh strawberries, but the results are tasty. 

My first attempt at the Chocolate Aero Meringue Roulade

Here's the recipe

Chocolate Aero Meringue Roulade

25g coarsely grated Mint Chocolate Aero, plus some for the topping

3 egg whites

175g caster sugar

2 teaspoon of corn flour

1 teaspoon of white wine vinegar

1teaspoon of vanilla extract

284ml carton of double cream, whipped until stiff

300g strawberries

icing sugar 

- Preheat the oven to 140-degrees C or gas mark 2

- line a 33x23cm baking tray or flat tin with baking parchment

- whisk egg whites until really stiff peaks appear

- whisk in caster sugar a tablespoon at a time

- whisk in cornflour, white wine vinegar and vanilla extract

- whisk in the sneaky extra 25g of grated Mint Chocolate Aero [optional but recommended]

- spoon mixture into prepared baking tin and gently level out using a spatula

- bake in the middle of the oven for 30 minutes or until surface is just firm

- dust a sheet of baking parchment with icing sugar

- remove meringue from the oven and cover with a damp sheet of baking parchment for 10 minutes

- discard the damp parchment paper and turn out the meringue onto the icing-sugared parchment

- peel off the parchment the meringue was cooked on

- spread whipped double cream over the meringue

- hull and halve or quarter the strawberries, then scatter them over the meringue

- use the parchment underneath the meringue to help you gently roll it up

- carefully transfer your roulade on to a serving plate and sprinkle with more grated Mint Choc Aero

Trying the hot chocolate fountain
at the Bar Of Aero

Disclosure: this is a sponsored post, though I’d gladly have tried the recipes and written about them here anyway

Lewisham A&E emergency measures

Lewisham A and E is a huge asset - let's keep it that way

By now, you may well have heard of Lewisham and its residents' campaign to save the hospital at the heart of it. I jolly well hope so. Campaigners have made an awful lot of noise about it - and well they ought. Lewisham's Accident and Emergency department is pretty good (it recently had a multi-million-pound refurbishment). 

Even so, the A and E, the lifeblood of the hospital itself - one of the top 40 in the UK - is earmarked for closure. Why? Because its neighbouring healthcare trust is broke and the government needs to save face. The special administrator tasked with tackling crippling debts at hospitals in Greenwich and Bromley can come up with "no alternative" than to get rid of a flagship hospital in order to keep a failed one open.

Protestors on the march against proposals to close Lewisham A&E

Lewisham Hospital is not in debt. It is both solvent and well-managed, as independent reports attest. It's also well-located at the centre of the borough. If the A and E goes, the maternity unit will have to go too. Complications with births and in neonatal units demand ready access to emergency blood supplies and emergency care equipment and staff. Lewisham would therefore become an urgent care unit. At present, 70 percent of local pregnancies are handled here at Lewisham - 4000 a year. Lewisham already takes patients other hospitals can't; we need more resources in south and south-east London, not fewer. 

The hospital is also an important resource for the elderly - its location and the fact it's on multiple bus routes accessible from almost anywhere within the borough as well as further afield are critical. Lewisham isn't a rich borough and it's the vulnerable and the elderly who are most likely to need its emergency care services, in particular. For many, private cars and taxis aren't within their financial grasp.

Getting to the proposed alternative - Queen Elizabeth II Hospital on Woolwich Common - will involve two buses for most people. Allow at least 40 minutes on a good day; more if it's rush hour. Or if you live some way from a bus route heading that way. The 54 bus route from Lewisham is probably the most direct. Or you can take the 108 and change at Blackheath Standard and get another bus along the top of Charlton. 

There's a train from Lewisham station to Woolwich Arsenal. The half-hourly direct service deposits you in the centre of Woolwich. It's a long, steep hill or an £8 cab ride from there to QEH II, which sits resplendent in the middle of nowhere in particular. Not so practical if you're a new mum with a buggy and a sick child in need of urgent medical attention. Or a pensioner who uses a stick or a wheelchair.

London Ambulance Service has expressed grave concern at the longer journey times involved in getting emergency patients to Woolwich. Shooters Hill Road and the alternative, the South Circular, are both frequently snarled up. King's College Hospital in Denmark Hill is some way off too, as is the next nearest option, Guys & St Thomas' in central London. 

The savings to be made from the proposed Lewisham A and E closure aren't exactly compelling. £195m to implement them and £15.9m per year saved thereafter. That's even taking into account the money raised from selling off 60 percent of the current Lewisham Hospital site. It should make a fair amount - it overlooks a pretty public park which volunteers and council workers paid the minimum wage have spent the past three years landscaping and making into a lovely area in which locals can stroll, cycle and enjoy the wildlife.

Woolwich's hospital is also on a desirable patch for developers, of course, with enviable views across London. But it can't be sold. It's an asset tied up in a PFI contract for which Queen Elizabeth II's namesake is massively in hock.

Were Lewisham and Woolwich intrinsically linked - perhaps by dint of being part of the same healthcare trust - there might be some justice in sacrificing a highly performing, well-respected and solvent hospital in order to save one that was funded in the wrong way from the outset and is difficult to get to even for those who live close by. A few years ago I lived two miles away from QEH II in Plumstead. Getting there was a schlep even from there. If anywhere locally has to become a non-emergency site, then Woolwich would arguably be a better choice. 

But we shouldn't even be having the debate. Lewisham is not part of the same healthcare trust as the failed QEH II. And it's a demonstrably better hospital serving its residents admirably and showing how good the NHS can be. Yet this Friday the health secretary Jeremy Hunt will declare whether or not he intends to adopt the recommendations of special administrator Matthew Kershaw and consign one of the country's best-run hospitals to history. 

Should Hunt decide to forge ahead with the ill-conceived plan, it's likely there'll be a legal challenge over whether one NHS trust can be sacrificed to save another - imagine the outcry if Essex was robbed to bail out Norfolk. Ridiculous, isn't it? That's what the government's special administrator is trying to do to Lewisham A and E. 

20,000 people turned out to protest at the absurdity last weekend; I'm sure many of the drivers cruising past us as we marched past our hospital had come out just to slow down and sound their horns in support. 

Regardless of party allegiance, politicians and spokespeople have pledged their support for Lewisham. Every speaker on the recent Question Time debate expressed their horror at Kershaw's nonsensical plans. Newspaper article after newspaper article has queried the wisdom of the proposed closure. There's a succinct visual summary of what's happening here.

Our fight is being seen as a test case as similar A&E and departmental cuts to perfectly good hospitals are being proposed up and down the land. This despite the government underspending its allocated budget to the tune of £1.3bn last year. 

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a former local resident, called the proposal "scandalous". He's absolutely right. 

If you agree, please sign the petition against Kershaw's plans to close Lewisham A and E. 

Tangerine and ginger cake

Just after New Year I was in the mood for making a cake, but wasn’t sure I had a suitable combination of ingredients. I had a bowlful of bananas, grapefruit, oranges and tangerines. Of those, oranges sounded most promising. I was after a change from lemon drizzle and banana cake - my staples.

I soon found Dan Lepard's tempting orange cake recipe on The Guardian website, but didn't have enough oranges alone. Never mind, double cream aside I had all the other ingredients, including fresh ginger and cinnamon. And tangerines could easily make up the orange quotient. I'd make a store cupboard cake based on what I had left from Christmas. Much nicer than turkey risotto or Brussels sprouts fritters.

Aside from the six tangerines I used to compensate for the three missing oranges (from the total of five), I largely stuck to Dan's ingredient list. I omitted the walnuts, however. 

I discovered that getting the rind off six tiny tangerines takes a fair while. It’s not really worth measuring the amount of liquid the oranges and tangerines produces either. I had just the right amount (150ml) if I used three tangerines and two large oranges, but the additional juice from the other three tangerines would have made for a slightly moister, more tangy taste. I’d probably add a bit more ginger too.

Boiling the orange and caster sugar and then melting in small chunks of unsalted butter made a nice change from lots of whipping and whisking. The only time I had to whisk was when adding the eggs to the cooled down liquid. I then transferred the lot to a large mixing bowl to add the flour (Dan seems to have mixed everything together in the pan).

Since I was making a round cake rather than a deeper loaf, cooking took 40 minutes rather than the expected 50 mins. The aroma when it came out the oven was great, but the cake needs a good 30 minutes to cool. 

The first slice confirmed my thoughts about whether I should have added the extra juice. Next time I’ll include a little more in the cake mix and then drizzle over the remainder when the cake is on the cooling rack but still warm. (On this occasion I made the cake just before going out for the evening with my friend Vicky, so I wasn’t able to pour over the extra juice).

The texture and taste of this cake was pleasing though. It was light and rose well in the oven. I added a buttercream icing filling. Its sweetness complimented the slightly tart and zingy orange flavour very well. I'll make this tangerine and ginger cake again and probably tinker some more. 

Ingredients for my version (Dan's recipe is here)

5 oranges or 10 tangerines or clementines (feel free to mix and match your orange citrus fruit)

3cm fresh stem ginger, grated

225g caster sugar

100g unsalted butter

325g self-raising flour

3 eggs

75ml double cream

Buttercream icing

8oz icing sugar

4oz softened butter

50ml milk