A chance to ask questions

Today I found somebody who qualified as a drama teacher and he knows a dance teacher who is starting to do some work with the Special Educational Needs department at a local school that I could get in touch with. I am so happy!! Any ideas and thoughts and anything really is welcome at the moment as I try to make sense of the Something To Say project in my head. If everything goes alright I guess I'll have lots of opportunities to ask interesting people who do interesting things all about what they do - which is actually quite an exciting prospect!

The things I say "yes" to...

...are numerous and sometimes rather odd.

Like, for instance, agreeing to lead a dance and drama group for people with learning disabilities.

Not entirely sure how that happened! But it did. And I've led my very first session of the drama group this afternoon. I know nothing about drama so the whole thing was rather stressful and I am rather euphoric now that it all seemed to go well (nobody's dead at any rate!). The group is called "Something to Say" and today was it's first meeting with me as the person facilitating the experience. The group as such has been going for over a year with a slightly different membership although it felt a bit like starting from scratch as there was only one volunteer who had actually been part of the group before. The rest of us were newbies. I decided playing a fair amount of games was a good idea - and thankfully that is something I can do after all this youth worker training I've done. And in all fairness I even enjoyed myself - although I'm still recovering from the shock of having done it. (And trying not to think about next week's dance group...)

We are concentrating on the theme of relationships so when I opened the floor up I got given the idea of East Enders. In some ways I guess that is a pretty good idea as what are soaps if nothing but full of relationship drama. I can already see the potential areas to explore. However, I'm also hoping there is a good Wikipedia entry on the said EE as I really haven't a clue of what goes on in it!:)

There's an elephant in the way...

This is amazing!

Curry Night

HM1 is taking a group of young people, about 15, to India this August and so we had a curry night last night as a fundraiser. A church hall was booked, tickets sold, lots of curry made, and 80 people showed up for good food and a chance to get to know each other. It was a really successful fundraiser too as the group managed to raise over £1,000! Not bad for some curry... I think it was a valuable event too as people got a chance to see the young people who are actually going and so they aren't a vague concept anymore but living breathing people off to India for a fortnight. They will be going to a charity in Puna called Deep Griha where HM1 spent six months teaching English so she does know the charity quite well.

We've had some other pretty innovative fundraising ideas including distributing (full) Pringles tubes to people and asking them to eat the Pringles and then bring back the tube with money in it! That worked too:) And in a couple of months time there is going to be a Grand Auction and I am wracking my brains to figure out something to offer for it. Somehow I don't think I can quite compete with the offer to stay in someone's holiday home in the south of France for a week, but I haven't quite given up on producing something.

We've got a random assortment of leftovers in our fridge now although there really isn't as much curry left over as I feared there might be. And I also have a lovely henna tattoo on my left hand which was a pleasant surprise this morning (I had fogotten about it completely when I went to sleep). I used to do a lot more playing around with henna at the Red Cafe youth club in Swansea so it was kind of fun to decorate my friend's hand. I had a very obliging guest stay this weekend (she's on her monthly course in London although she lives back in Swansea) who, bless her, kindly agreed to be dragged along to a fundraising dinner and pay for her food.

Anyway, it feels like the concentration on India has gone up a notch. I'm trying not to get too jealous!

A heavenly night

Last night I cycled through Crane Park Nature Reserve and it was utterly beautiful. The still winter-bare trees were silhouetted against the fading dark blue sky, dusk was hovering down low, there was no one else around, and I was cycling along listening to strains of Miles Davies wafting in my ears courtesy of the iPod... Last time I cycled through it in the evening there was a bright full moon lighting my way and a fox darted across the path. I'm beginning to get very fond of the place.

I also felt like a proper grownup cyclist in my flourescent yellow jacket! Goodness knows what it'll feel like when I actually get a helmet...

D'oh!

Yesterday as I was making paper with some children I managed to put my right foot in a bucket of water.

I was absorbed in the intricate details of explaining how to squidge water out of the paper pulp when I noticed a funny sensation in my foot and looked down to see my foot (and shoe!) soaking up loads of water. As a professional I merely shrugged inwardly, pulled my foot out and carried on making paper. Afterwards we all laughed, of course, as that really is a rather stupid thing to do! And to manage to get my foot wet without noticing I was doing it - that's quite something.

My shoe is still very wet.

Moore at Kew Gardens

Yesterday afternoon after a house Sunday lunch we ambled over to Kew Gardens in the glorious sunshine and ambled right through the Lion Gate as Botanist waved us past the attendants with his staff card. It's an exhilirating feeling going into somewhere as expensive as Kew without having to pay a thing!

There is an exhibition of Henry Moore's sculptures dotted around the Gardens at the moment and you can go around taking in as many of them as you wish while still looking at the trees and plants everywhere. I really enjoy the interaction of walking up the the sculptures and walking around them and seeing them from all angles, and also how they did work in the settings they were placed in. Some worked brilliantly, but there was a particular sculpture that I disliked in "real life" as it felt all angles and slightly aggressive. But when I saw a picture of the same sculpture in a different location with far more space around it it looked as if it were dancing and I took to it immediately. Actually, I didn't even realise it was the same sculpture until HM1 pointed it out to me.

Several of Moore's sculptures explored the space and tension between related but not touching parts of a whole. Some of them were almost like a rubik's cube or other such puzzle in the way the separate parts joined together, and the gaps managed to frame the Gardens in a wholly different way too as you peered through the circles and curves of the scultpures. Several of the sculptures looked so climbable and inviting to climb I had to restrain myself! And having looked after a young person a few weeks ago at Kew who was sorely tempted to do exactly that, I know it can't be just me... Sadly, there were plenty of signs telling me I really ought not to climb them! But I do find that quite an interesting response in me. I imagine it extends from exploring the sculptures and following the lines and curves round the bends with my eyes, but them being so enticing that my tactile senses wanted to get involved too:)

The afternoon light was perfect for enjoying outdoor art, and it also worked brilliantly in the palm tree house. One of my favourite colours is the green light that you get as sunlight shines through plant leaves, and there was plenty of that going on yesterday. All in all, it was a lovely afternoon.

Food!

My life seems to revolve a lot more around food at the moment. Eating it, making it, thinking about it...

It is probably due to our Lenten experiment, but I currently feel like I might be simultaneously going down the Maslow's Hierachy of Needs (towards the need to meet the physiological needs like food) and up towards the Self Actualisation by attempting to live what I believe. It is a very interesting balancing act.

So far we've had three dinner parties and I'm very pleased we're keeping up with offering hospitality. For one of them we only had to purchase an additional £2 worth of food to feed a two course meal for 8 people! (Our friend kindly brought a scrumptious pear and chocolate crumble to round the meal off.)

I've also started making lunches for myself again, a habit I had slipped out of. Now, I've not always been very impressed with what we've had in the fridge and the resulting lunch I've ended up with, but I have discovered a positive side to making lunches. It is a chance to reflect on the day ahead and it is an act of taking care of myself which is something I can be very bad at. Other things that I've restarted, like sprouting beans and baking, have a similar effect of taking longer but somehow helping a more holistic approach to my life. There is also a pleasing amount of creativity involved when faced with a red cabbage and some left over mayonaise from a school retreat HM1 led and creating a very nice red cabbage slaw...

I've been surprised by things, thoughts and ideas being tossed around my head since we started Lent. It has been a real vehicle for prompting memories and thoughts from the past as well as aiding a reflection on my daily life. It has also been a far more public matter than I had originally imagined and I am most definately placed out of my comfort zone in terms of people outside our Flat knowing what I am doing with my life!

Last Will and Testament...

We are currently sat round the living room and talking about our funeral plans and testaments. HM1 has bought a make-your-own-will kit, asked us to witness her will and we've been talking about our funeral wishes. And we've shared where we keep information, ie passports and addresses of next in kin, just in case we should die. It is a rather surreal conversation to be having with your breakfast. I don't think I've ever had this conversation with other housemates before.

My lack of assests have meant that I've never really considered making a will (and would thus die intestate...I'm even learnt some legal jargon this morning), and I guess I want as green a funeral as possible. But I think that's about as far as my thinking on the matter has got to!

HM1 has just handed me a photocopy of her blank will just in case I want to fill one out too. Perhaps I should give this some thought...

Eating out

Our friend celebrated her birthday today with a meal with lots of people in town (ie central London). Which is all very fine and good until you have to start explaining to everyone there that you can't actually contribute a 16th of the bill and will only pay for your own food... It sounds very antisocial, and it feels it too! But there is only so far we can stretch the £13 handed to us from our communal pot at the beginning of the evening. It is a bit embarrasing though, although I guess it did provide a conversation starter with other people on the table. However, once that bit was over with the meal and company were very nice.

Being awkward in a social situation is quite difficult to do.

Our Lent Experiment

This Lent period my flat will be living at income support level. The three of us will contribute £59.15 each into the weekly budget and we will be paying for our food, transport, utilities, and other small random things out of it for the six week period. The money that we "save" (ie the difference of what we might normally spend) will be donated to our individually nominated charities.

We started talking about doing this ages ago, even if Lent starting tomorrow seems a bit too soon, and I think there are a whole variety of reasons for us taking this sort of action. We are trying our best to be an intentional community and I think this is part of the larger community experiment. What will happen when we are so dependent on each other's actions? Iona community members are accountable for their use of time and money and I think this will make us be more accountable to each other about our use of money, something that hasn't happened much so far. And it isn't just our little community, but the bigger one around us. We've been fairly public about our plans so I hope others will be interested in what and why we're doing - even if they aren't taking part in this crazy experiment themselves!

It's also about our ideas of justice and simplicity. They are very complicated ideas and sometimes feel difficult to live out but I'm hoping this will provide an opportunity for it. Lent is also a time of taking stock and focussing on where we are and where we might want to be. In a pre-Lent buying spree I finally got round to buying two bread tins. Not difficult to do, nor that expensive, but it's something I've been meaning to do pretty much all year but never quite got round to doing it. (There's nothing like an impending spending cut for a bit of focussed panic-buying...:) Somehow that exemplifies for me what Lent/life should be about: living life fully, intentionally, and not always putting stuff off until later.

I agree with what we're doing and as an experiment I think it'll be fascinating to do. However there is also a part of me letting out a little sigh. I've just spent the majority of last year on income support or unwaged and having finally got a decent paycheck I've suddenly agreed to voluntarily cut my spending. The most boring thing about being poor is having to think about money all the time. I'm also slightly worried that my previous simplicity was more to do with frugality and not having any resources rather from the high moral ground I thought I was on!!:)

Nonetheless, the challenge is exciting and I'm ready to be creative with what we've got and what we do. As was said in our house meeting: "We'll just have to drink more gin." Our wine consumption will probably have to become more moderate over the next few weeks, but as we have a fair amount of gin and in the spirit of using up what is in the house we might just have to make do with that...

So I think it will be frustrating at times having to make awkward choices. But I am looking forward to it all too, as a chance to reflect on my own priorities as well as the household ones, as a challenge, and as a chance to make a difference.

I'll keep you posted...

Australia Day

Last night HM1 & 2, and myself went to an Australia Day barbeque. The only thing is: it wasn't Australia Day (that was on the 26th). It wasn't a bbq - more like grilling food in the kitchen. And our hosts had no real connection to Australia.

Brilliant excuse for a party! Hats off to that!

My very social weekend also included sitting outside (!) on Sunday for about three hours. Quite impressive in January even if I say so myself. The sunshine was lovely and the lunch and red wine and company were too. I was frozen by sundown, but it was worth it.

A weak vegetarian?

After a morning/afternoon full of meetings I helped staff a trip with a group from a SEN school. We took off to Kingston to see Alvin and the Chipmunks (the music is very irritating!) and a meal in a chicken restaurant. Not so PC after all the ranting Jamie Oliver is doing on TV - and also not particularly vegetarian friendly. Most places manage at least a half-decent veggie option but it was truly awful here: processed junk that leaves a horrible after taste. It's such a shame we took our young people there even if we are constrained by a budget.

Pulling into the bus station near my flat at the end of our trip I was unable to open the mini van door prompting disparaging remarks from colleagues about my choice in diet! Not much to be said in my defence though, as I did feel pretty awful after that meal:)

Hooray for our fully organic veg and fruit box my flat gets every week. What a blessed relief it is to eat real food.

And the walls came tumbling down

The images of the wall between Palestine and Egypt laying down on the ground with people, carts, and animals streaming across are a sight to behold.

And there are so many people crossing the border back and forth that there seems to be very little that could be done either practically or politically. Go people power!

Training, training, training...

I love training courses and I've been lucky enough to go to loads of interesting ones over the past year. I am especially lucky in one of my volunteering placements where I tend to look for an interesting course and then my manager will just stick me on it. It's brilliant! (Currently I'm looking for a course on how to grow vegetables:)

This week has been almost over doing it though as I've spent the past three days in training. One was a child protection course (always heartbreaking) and the past two days have seen me in the first section of a course on sex and sexuality work with people with learning difficulties. It is absolutely fascinating. And very thought provoking. Being new to this area of work there are a lot of things I've never really given much thought to, and this is definately one of them. There can be a very unfortunate tendency to view people in the terms of the disability they have rather than as a human in their own right, a human fully alive. Ignorance can never be good with such a vulnerable group so anything we can do to increase knowledge and empower people we work with can only be a good thing. I guess increasing my knowledge and allowing space to reflect on these issues is very helpful too.

The scariest thing about this particular course is of course the implication that once I've finished it I'll have to deliver it others... At least I've been doing the course with a colleague so we can share this task, but I'm glad the next two days next month will deal with the more practical side of things of how to deliver such work to our clients.

In some way this is very typical of my work where I am, as the American's would say, flying by the seat of my pants. Not exactly blagging, but then again not that far off either. It keeps you on your toes - and is so exhilirating when you pull it off!

Ethical Questions Prompted by Free Newspapers

Walking back from the Lyceum Theatre along the Strand our group, along with every other pedestrian, was bombarded by hoards of people thrusting the free newspapers into our hands. A number of the young people were happy to take the newpapers and we ended up at Waterloo clutching newpapers left, right and centre.

As we were standing waiting for the Responsible Person to tell everyone else which platform we were headed for one of the young boys wandered over to a stand selling paper and took one. Fortunately I saw the event and was able to have a discussion and we returned the paper to the lenient paper seller, but it was interesting trying to explain the differences between free papers and one that you have to pay for, and then also the reasons for the difference. "Would you steal anything from a shop?" I got asked, "Would you steal a chocolate bar if you had to?".

My mind conjured up all manner of situation where I might HAVE to steal a chocolate bar while I was busy saying "No, I would not steal a chocolate bar."

When I questioned further for a rational about why I might have to steal chocolate, a revealling: "Because your friends told you to" came out. What an opening for a discussion on ethics and our rules of engagement with each other! That's one thing I love about youth work: the creative opportunities and the thinking on one's feet that any engagement with young people offers.

"What would you do if you saw a fiver on the street? Would that be stealing?" was slightly more tricky. But I turned it round with the get-out-of-jail-free trick of just asking the same question back and carrying on the conversation from there!

The Lion King

Another work trip, another musical. This time round we took 15 young people to a matinee performance of the Lion King. It involved a rather complex set of logistical maneuvering to get everyone to the same place at the same time, but things like this have a tendency to fall into place somehow. I only got to see the second half of the musical due to being paired up with a delightful young girl who was not interested in seeing the Lion King at all. But what I saw I did enjoy! The set design, costumes, and lighting were very clever and I thought the giraffes were particularly brilliant.

However, I cannot wait for our adult social club trip - that has got to be easier I reckon.

On Monday I got given a more definate area of responsibility, volunteers and volunteering, which is helpful. At least I've got something else to say that "I don't really know" when people ask me what I do at work... We also got told that working unauthorised overtime is going to become a disciplinary action which is a novel approach (in my experience) to the pervasive problem in the Third Sector of people working 50-70 hours a week while being paid for 20. Okay, so maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but probably not by much.

Taking myself out for lunch

I'm celebrating the end of two+ months of unemployment and no benefits and feeling hugely excited about actually receiving a paycheck at the end of December! Because I got perilously close to the red line I feel euphoric to have money in the bank again. So on a whim I popped into a cafe and had a proper sitdown lunch today in between work. It's so nice to not be counting pennies every time I walk out the door. Although given the price of food around here I might be back to square one soon!

A change in language

Britain drops 'War on Terror' label. I didn't see this widely reported, I was alerted to it by another website, but I do think this is really interesting. And not before time either.

Wretched birdfeeders

Having returned safely back from Finland, today has been full of activities around the house before I disappear back into the world of work. Having ascertained which plants had been moved around and where to, I was ready to get to business (HM1 has a habit of periodically moving the plants around the flat). I tend to job share the filling up our two birdfeeders with HM2 but as he works the usual working week and only has time during the weekends it falls on me to fill the feeders during the week.

The feeder that holds the nuts is a personal enemy of mine. It was placed way up in the branches by HM2 (who is significantly taller than me), and while I do need the little stepladder to reach both feeders, the nut one is a particularly precarious endeavour. I balance on the top step and cling to the feeder while trying to undo the bottom to refill it and not let the branch whip back upwards and out of reach... It must be amusing to watch me for any of our neighbours. This morning there was a biting wind which chilled my hands and I had to keep stopping to put my hands in my pockets for them to carry out the task required. At one point the branch did swing upwards and out of reach and I had to resort to tying my housekeys to a bit of string and fling it over the branch and then haul it back down to my height. I'm surprised I got the feeder filled and back on the branch at all! Thankfully the seed feeder was - in comparison - far easier, although there was a moment when I thought I was going to unceremoniously fall off the ladder and onto the whirligig laundry drier.

The birds appreciate the feeders at anyrate. These are not shy country birds that take weeks to adjust to any new feeder, oh no! These are town birds who know exactly what a birdfeeder is and what to do with one. Satisfyingly, there are plenty of birds eating our offerings. Satisfying at least until the feeders are empty again. Fingers crossed that happens on the weekend!