Author Archives: worldenoughandtimeblog

“Look at my bad knee” – A story by Maya

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Chapter 1 – The Crunchy Sound

Once upon a time, Maya’s knees started to make a funny noise.

It was a crackly, crunchy sort of a noise, like the sound of scrunching up paper or tin foil, or crushing cornflakes up in your hand, and it happened every time she went up stairs.

Maya was worried about the strange noises, so she went to see The Physio, who told her she had under-developed glute and thigh muscles which were causing the problems in her knees, and that her knees had started to twist inwards in a way that could be described as “not good”.

Maya “So you’re saying I have a lazy bum?”

Physio “Well, yes, basically. Here are some exercises you need to do to strengthen your bum.” Continue reading →

Day 1…

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This week I took my first official step to becoming a parent.

First, a little background for those of you not in the know…..

I’ve always known that I wanted to have kids. Having a family and being a mum is something I’ve always known that I wanted – even when I was 16. As a teenager planning my potential/future career I even looked for jobs that related to working with kids, such as social worker, teacher, etc, and did a lot of summer jobs working with kids in summer camps, or with my mum’s research with children. I always took it for granted that by the time I was in my late twenties, I’d be married with kids.

By the time I was 29, I realised that wasn’t likely to happen – I’ve been pretty much single for my whole life, and I realised that waiting around for Mr Right might mean I miss out on being a mum, and having a family, and for me, that’s too important. I realised that if I wake up one day and I’m 50, and I never had kids, it would be my single biggest regret. So I started thinking about doing it alone instead. Continue reading →

Crafty Play Kitchen

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This was a little project I stumbled across on the internet and IMMEDIATELY had to make.

Luckily my god-daughter was about to turn 2, so I had the perfect opportunity to make it!! I was very pleased with the end result – it’s adorable, and the best part is that you can have a play-kitchen for your kids without having to have huge plastic toys and things taking up all the space in your house… It fits over a kitchen chair so you can just fold it up and put it away when you’re done. Continue reading →

Fairport’s Cropredy Convention

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This summer I went with a friend to Fairport’s Cropredy Convention, a small festival in rural Oxfordshire set up by the band Fairport Convention.

This year it was 50 years since the band was formed (although over the years they’ve had so many people leave the band, join the band, re-join the band, that the full 50-year line-up includes around 30 musicians!).

It’s predominantly a folk-rock festival, and the majority of the performers are ex-band members who have gone solo or formed other bands, mixed in with a few performers they just really love. An eclectic mix but really pretty good!

Here are a few video highlights: Continue reading →

Pete Tong and the Heritage Orchestra

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Betty and I went to an obscure little festival in Oxford back in May, purely for the sake of seeing Pete Tong perform his Ibiza club classics with a live orchestra on stage, and it was EPIC!

I absolutely loved it and thought it was amazing to get such an incredible live orchestral performance of club tunes!

Here are a few examples, though you can’t always see the performers that clearly, but it was really amazing to see all these tunes performed live by an orchestra!

Continue reading →

Raku firing and Kintsugi

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After getting really REALLY into my new hobby (and while wondering how I would fill my days in the summer with no pottery to look forward to), I have been watching The Great Pottery Throwdown on the BBC, and getting lots of ideas and techniques.

I then found a place in Wiltshire that offered Raku firings so I booked myself in for an afternoon of Raku!

Raku is a Japanese form of glazing pottery that involves an outdoor kiln, where you bring the pots very rapidly up to about 1000 degrees, then remove them and immerse them in a combustible (usually sawdust or similar) which starves the pot of oxygen while it is oxidising and producing a lot of carbon, (a process called “reduction”).

Then the pots are removed and immersed in water, and scrubbed to get some very unusual glazing effects. The most common ones are the metallic colours from the oxides you paint on while glazing (Raku glazes are oxide-heavy to get this shiny metallic effect), and something called Crackle glaze, which is usually white, and which cracks in a rather beautiful way due to the sudden changes from hot to cold.The bits you leave without any glaze on will turn matt black in the Raku process, so you can use tape to make interesting designs as well. Continue reading →