Growing up with Paddington & Paddington 2

Marmalade sandwiches all round!  Paddington is back in the cinema but before I get to talking about the film, I want to take you back in time.  Not far, just a couple of weeks, to half-term when we were in London.

Lucas happened across a mention of a props exhibition for Paddington 2 at The Museum of London while reading 'First News'.  (An excellent introduction to tough news stories for kids.). I looked it up online and discovered that not only was there an exhibition, there was to be a talk the next day by Karen Jankel, Michael Bond's daughter, all about growing up with Paddington!

Life lately...

Merry Christmas!

Hello! Long-time no see!

Life has been a mad whirlwind of activity since September and today is the first day in an absolute age when I've felt free to sit down and reacquaint myself with the sofa and do nothing.  (Well, almost. I'm bottling some sloe gin for a Secret Santa but that's hardly work.)

Make yourself a cuppa, pull up a chair and let's catch up a little.

In October I became an auntie again!  My brother and sister-in-law welcomed baby Zander into the world and I made him a gorgeously snuggly quilt (and began my new obsession with quilting.)  Isn't he scrumptious?  Lucas is thrilled to have a boy cousin at last, but I think he'll have to wait for a few years before Zander will want to play Godzilla v Mothra...

The Covent Garden tree was immense!

November saw me popping up to London for a fabulously decadent and boozy weekend with my lovely friend Kate.  We began with cocktails at brunch in Canary Wharf on Saturday and carried on with that winning combination all weekend.  In our defence, the weather was particularly dire so sheltering indoors was an absolute necessity. And if our shelter happened to include a friendly barman, then that was purely by accident!

We did manage to pop to the National Portrait Gallery, wander around Covent Garden, see the (disappointing) lights on Regent Street and best of all, Liberty!  I've always wanted to go there and I was not disappointed even though we could barely move in their Christmas Shop. The Narnia-esque wood panel lift put the biggest smile on my face before we even got upstairs! So many beautiful things, I nearly popped with excitement!  I managed to restrain myself and come away with just an Alice in Wonderland tea towel.  It says, "We're all mad here," which is absolutely spot on for our household!

Everyone needs a Gangsta Octopus tile in their life...

On the WI front, I've been really busy preparing for our first charity choir concert and also making beautiful things for our stall at a local Handmade Market.  I went a little crazy and crocheted thread snowflakes for a Frozen-inspired wreath as well as making sparkly snowflake garlands.

Here's our fab choir singing our favourite song, "Rhythm of Life"!


We'll be at The Royal Albert Hall in a few years, mark my words!

On the home front, we finally got the Christmas tree up last weekend and showered it with lots of gorgeously shiny baubles. The house feels so cosy with the tree lights twinkling away and all our Christmassy treasures out on show.  School finishes on Friday and I'm really looking forward to (bravely) making a gingerbread house with Lucas next week!  I may even light it...

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Book Benches around London

This is another one of those woefully overdue posts.  We went up to London at the end of August for the weekend as an end-of-summer treat for Lucas.  One of the big draws for me was the Books About Town book bench art trail around the city and we decided to combine tracking down benches with seeing some of the sights I've somehow managed to miss on my previous eleventy-million (slight exaggeration) visits to London.

I love these art trails which are all the rage these days.  Gromit Unleashed was the highlight of our summer last year and as I love books even more than Gromit, I was all set to absolutely adore this one.

The trail is now over, however, the benches are all congregating for one last hurrah prior to the auction on the 7th of October.  For this weekend (4-5 October, 2014) you can visit all of the benches at Gordon Square Garden WC1.

St Paul's Cathedral

We found our first three book benches in the shadow of St Paul's.  I had really wanted to walk around the cathedral and visit the Whispering Gallery but oh my god, the price.  I'm still struggling with the concept of paying to go into a church, even more with the idea of spending almost £100 for a family of three.  Still, there was plenty of gorgeous architecture for me to admire from the outside and once I'd had my fill, we went book bench hunting.

Mary Poppins

Our first bench was Mary Poppins.  I almost wish we'd seen another one first, as this was such a disappointment to me.  She looks wrong and nice.  I appreciate that it's highly stylised--check out the cherry trees--but it just felt wrong for the book.  Lucas wasn't very impressed, either.

Still, things picked up dramatically with Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch just a few steps along the square.

Fever Pitch

And I cooed over the Peter Pan bench for ages before I got dragged off to see the rest of The City.

Peter Pan bench

Isn't it perfect?  So whimsical and the watercolours are perfect for the book.  I love the gilt-edged pages and Peter's shadow is sword-fighting on the back!

The back of the Peter Pan bench

There turned out to be quite a few book benches near St Paul's.  I bought the unofficial app as we strolled along to make sure we didn't miss any along the way.

Usborne's That's not my...Bench

Lucas grew up with the Usborne "That's not my..." books so we all went a bit gaga over this bench.  His crazy-obsessive meerkat phase may be be over, but he still does a great meerkat impression.  Simples!

We crossed the Millennium Bridge--did you know it was in the Guardians of the Galaxy film?--and headed towards The Globe.  Another place I've never been to before!

Shakespeare's London

From The Globe, we walked down the Thames Path, enjoying the sunshine and the hunt.

Great Expectations

Lucas was pretty damn excited to find the Paddington Bear bench.  Unsurprisingly it was really, really popular.  There was actually a queue to take photographs!

Please look after this bear

Another super-popular bench was Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler's From Scarecrows to The Gruffalo.  It even had my favourite--Room on the Broom!

From Scarecrows to The Gruffalo

It was such a lovely walk.  I've never seen the Square Mile from the Southbank so I was happily fascinated all the way.  I didn't realise until the next day just how far we'd walked in our quest for the book benches!!

Such a great view!

After a pit-stop in Leon for lunch we started our quest again.  Just outside the restaurant was the War Horse bench.  I've never read the book or seen the play, but the bench was certainly very poignant.  Stark, simple and beautiful.

War Horse

Here's my favourite bench of them all.  The Librarian of Unseen University in Ankh-Morpork.  He seems to have the same approach to filing books as me.  Stack 'em high!

The Librarian 

There was a bit of a cluster of benches around City Hall...

Through the Looking Glass

Dr Seuss

How To Train Your Dragon

None of us had any idea that the How To Train Your Dragon movies came from a book!  I was really surprised when I googled and found that there were loads and loads of them!

Clarice Bean

I'm not familiar at all with Clarice Bean--I thought she was Lola from Charlie and Lola--but I agree with the sentiment.

On Sunday we intended to track down loads more lovely book benches, but just after we'd found our first two in Russell Square it started to rain.  Honestly, it was like the beginning of monsoon season.  So there we were, the three of us sheltering under a not-very-big tree with one very small umbrella, no coats, and the rain absolutely soaking my back.  We gave up on the benches right then and squelched off to Costa.  There's a slight possibility that we might be fair-weather adventurers!

So here are our last two.

Double-0-Lucas

Lucas and Dave loved this bench so much.  It's so wonderfully old-school Bond and super-cool.

Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly

Our last bench was Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly.  This was an early short story which got expanded by Agatha into Dead Man's Folly and the Miss Marple short story Grenshaw's Folly.  I'd love to read the original work at some point for fun!

I really wish that I could go up to London and see the benches all laid out together.  Hopefully a blogger or two will visit and take some beautiful pictures!

Welcome to The Cornershop

After several weeks of tripping over the box in the hallway, I finally unpacked my sewing machine and within hours I was in the grip of a torrid affair with it.  (Lucas brought me a square of chocolate and it sat beside me for a good hour before I noticed.  That's how intense it's been!)  I think I've sewn something every day since.  It is positively addictive, as evidenced by my shiny new loyalty card for the local fabric shop.  (And the lack of posts recently--sorry!)

Given my new stitchy love, I thought today would be a good time to write about The Cornershop art installation in Bethnal Green, London.  We popped in a couple of weekends ago when we were up in the Smoke.

Meet Lucy Sparrow, an urban textile artist.  The Cornershop is her brainchild (and source of RSI).  I have sympathy pains in my wrists from just thinking about all that sewing.

It started with an idea.  Then there was a Kickstarter, followed by arts grants, and now after seven months of sewing we have a wonderfully fuzzy corner shop to explore, complete with 'dodgy geezers' and 'local drunks' for local colour.  It's an amazing achievement!  

From the outside, The Cornershop looks like any old corner shop.  An unsuspecting shopper could nip in for a pint of milk without realising that they were surrounded by felt shop stock.  And in fact, this has happened!  Lucy said that it was her proudest moment when someone brought a two-pinter of milk up to the counter before doing a double-take!  Some of the felt goodies are very convincing indeed!  Particularly the sweeties at the counter...

The shelves are packed with everything you could possibly want in a corner shop.  There's a fine selection of biscuits--loved the HobNobs--bin bags, toothpaste, soups, and jam.  And beer!  Loads of beer!  In the chiller cabinet there's the usual milk, butter and sandwiches, and the freezer has loads of ice-creams and oven chips.  It's just a shame that you can't eat any of it!

As you can see, they stock all the essentials...

The combination of machine embroidery, hand stitching, and appliqué is incredibly effective.  Everything looks pretty damn real from a distance, and each object only gets more impressive when you bend in and take a really good look.  Even if you're the sort of person who doesn't see the point of this sort of thing, you have to admire the sheer level of skill and creativity on display!

Unsurprisingly, I had to buy something.  After lots of thought, I went for a tub of Cadbury's Hot Chocolate powder.  (I really, really wanted a newspaper, but £150 is a bit too rich for my blood.)  I can't wait for it to wend its fuzzy way to me in September once the installation ends.  I think it should take pride of place in my new sewing corner.

The most amazing till! 

Hurry!  The Cornershop closes its doors on the 31st of August!  

The Cornershop

19 Wellington Row

London

E2 7BB

Online sales at: http://www.thecornershoponline.com/

A Photo Every Hour (almost)

Saturday was my first attempt at Jane's Photo Every Hour challenge.  I think my offering would be better described as "A Photo When I Remember", but hey-ho...we were busy having fun!

8ish - On the M4 zooming towards London.  We surprised Lucas by getting up an hour earlier than we'd told him, then I told him that he wasn't getting to go to athletics today--his face fell--but we were going to London instead--his face was an absolute picture!

9ish - In a traffic jam at Trafalgar square.  A not very good snap of the giant blue cockerel and Nelson's column.

10ish - the Peter Pan book bench beside St Paul's.  I really wanted to go into St Paul's but was appalled by the entry price for the three of us.  We settled for starting our Book Bench hunt instead.

11ish - South of the river now and a pit-stop for coffee at Starbuck's near Shakespeare's Globe.  It took Lucas a while to notice that we'd been assimilated into Dave's collective...

12ish - After walking down the Thames Path, Dave took us into the Hay's Galleria for a quick look around.  It's a gorgeous building and positively festooned with bunting!  I love bunting.

1ish - Leon!! I've wanted to eat at Leon for years.  They've always been heaving whenever I've tried but we stumbled across this one near Southwark Cathedral which was empty and I couldn't pass up eating lunch there!

We all loved the food, so much so that I popped into Foyles later on and bought one of their books!

2ish - We walked over Tower Bridge and slowly walked around the Tower, marvelling at the poppies.  The sheer number is staggering and it brings home just how horrifying World War 1 was.  Lucas really struggled with the idea that something which represented so much death could be so beautiful, especially after he lost count of the poppies...

3ish Walking through the back streets of Westminster we stumbled across New Scotland Yard.  I had no idea that it was a mere stone's throw from Parliament.  I got ridiculously excited by this, but I'll spare you the photo of me grinning like a lunatic in favour of this slightly more iconic one!

4ish - Afternoon tea at the Intercontinental Westminster.  I loved this flower arrangement with artfully arranged succulents in glass teapots.

5 o'clock and all is definitely well - this was the dessert course of our British Summer Holiday afternoon tea.  All beach huts should be made of brownie and chocolate mousse!  I did feel a bit Hansel and Gretel when I neatly prised off the roof of the hut...

6ish -  Look Mum, No Hands!  We stumbled across the Look Mum No Hands! pop-up on the Southbank as we walked back to the hotel.  Lucas couldn't resist posing... I somehow managed to resist their jugs of Pimms.

7ish - We stopped for a SNOG at the bright pink SNOG bus.  (From a distance I'd assumed it was a disco!)

8 o'clock - This was a very welcome sign as it meant we were almost back at the hotel.  It also marks a learning experience for me: bridges can be windy!  I wound up doing a Marilyn all the way across the bridge in my flippy skirt.  Thank god for leggings!

Our day ends rather early by my usual standards...by the time we got back to the hotel we'd managed to clock up just shy of nine miles and I was asleep by about 9:30!

Next time I'll be slightly more organised and actually remember to keep an eye on the time!  Head over to Jane's blog to see who else took part in this month's challenge.