May : 2009 : Kinders Kinley’s blog

Archive for May, 2009

Walking, working, coursework and Art Week Sunday, May 24th, 2009

Today was a stunning day without a cloud in the sky from dawn to dusk, so Dan and I walked just shy of 24 miles to Brill, in the process getting very tired and very burned (luckily for the sake of comparison, it’s just down one side. Great). It’s the most either of us has ever walked and it’s a daunting vision of what we’ve let ourselves in for in July, but I also know that reaching the finish line of a 62-mile walk is going to be an elating experience.

(I have no excuse for getting burned; this week I discovered that you can add the weather forecast to Google Calendar. Sorry for geeking out, but this made me happy.)

Last week was Oxfam Art Week in Oxfam House. To coincide with Oxford Art Weeks, a few of us decided to create an exhibition of Oxfam staff’s art in the atrium at the offices. Usually the atrium is taken up with displays by Oxfam teams on current projects, and from the feedback it seems that people really enjoyed a) having something a little different going on and b) the artwork itself. I had great fun designing a poster and a booklet and, based on the experience and people’s reactions, I’m sure we’ll do another Oxfam Art Week again soon.

My current job was due to come to an end in the next few weeks; luckily I’ve been offered another one! The new job will last 9 months (I would have loved to have got a permanent position but I believe those are appearing less and less as we continue to be uncertain about our future income) and involve working on Oxfam’s climate change campaign. Campaigns is very much the cool department in Oxfam, and climate change is where it’s all Happening right now, so I’m very excited (although also a little nervous, particularly since people in the team keep telling me I’m going to be “very busy”).

Now I must away to compare and contrast the market liberal and critical political economy approaches to audience research (in 1,500 words). I must admit that I’d be much happier if the Open University classed media as an arts subject rather than a social science, since, where media is concerned, I’m much more interested in the artistic decisions than the socio-political ones. Still fascinating, though, and I just hope I continue to find time to study.

Posted in Oxfam, Personal, Science and technology, Trailwalker 2009 • 1 comment

Footy, French fancy, Wii and good company: birthday break day two Wednesday, May 20th, 2009

Photos from birthday break day one have now been added to the previous blog post.

Day two of my birthday break began with tour of Oxfam House for Ed and Cat, followed by a visit to cousin Adrian’s workplace, where we played with - and in the process destroyed - a football. We also learned about counseling sessions in which offenders face their victims, which sounded both fascinating and horrifying.

I have no idea what’s wrong in the middle photo

The soggy day ended with an open-top bus tour of Oxford (after 19 months in Oxford, I think it was overdue), and a trip back to cousins Rachel and Adrian’s flat for an oversized French fancy, some shell-chucking on the Wii, attempts to photograph head-launched poppers and a (quite gentle, compared to playing with the ruthless Robsons!) round of Munchkin. We also learned that we were being watched by Rachel’s kitchenbeast, the Gonk, which climbs down at night to enact evil deeds.

Aside from the ensuing nightmares, my two-day birthday break was utterly splendid. Thanks to everyone who joined in or sent words or gifts, you made it a very special birthday.

For the record, among other things, I got:

A Sesame Street t-shirt (my housemates think I look like The Count)

A greetings card-making kit

A journey into the 3.5-billion-year history of the human body (or at least a book about it [for some reason, while my copy says 3.5b years, the Amazon version says 375m...])

Very well fed

Well and truly flummoxed by Derren Brown

An interest in meditation

A massive French fancy

Posted in Oxford, Personal • No comments

Murder, pasta and an Enigma: birthday break day one Saturday, May 16th, 2009

Two counts, and the mad punters

My birthday this year was lovely. Big brother Ed and his wife Cat came to Oxford for a couple of days. They were hoping to go on an Inspector Morse tour - so, because the official tour only runs on Saturdays, I gave them their very own private Morse tour. We started with a detour to the River Cherwell for some punting, which is far more fun and far more strenuous for the legs than I’d imagined. Then it was off to the Randolph Hotel for a round of drinks the cost of which reached double-digits, then to the Ashmolean - alas, closed, so we had to make do with a peek at their outdoor exhibition of celebrities with scribble on their faces - and on to the Eagle and Child, favourite watering hole of Tolkein and the other Lewis (CS) for a spot of lunch that cost less than the drinks at the Randolph. Next up was the recently refurbished Pitt Rivers Museum (Oxford’s natural history museum, and one of my favourites) and yet another drink, this time at the wonderful Turf Tavern.

At the Randolph, the Eagle and Child, and the Turf

Zizzi: cousin Adrian, and our massive table. (Other people did turn up.)

It was nice to have such a structure to our tourism without the pressure of moving from stop to stop with a group of lost souls, but unfortunately that’s as far as our Morse tour got (we’ll have to do Brasenose College, the Sheldonian Theatre and the Bear Inn another month). The tour ended at Zizzi, where some friends from Felixstowe, Oxford and Edinburgh convened to get their fill of pasta and chat. Dinner was lovely (it’s always delightful when you introduce your friends and they seem to get on) and I was sad that we had to cut it short - but also for good reason: my birthday treat, a trip to see Derren Brown live!

What’s in a name? A lot more than you think.

Seeing Derren Brown live may not really count as a luxury any more, since I’ve now been four times to four different shows. However, I really think his latest show - Enigma - was, as usual, an improvement on the previous tours. I admit that his finale wasn’t as mind-bogglingly unlikely as during An Evening of Wonders (in which ultimately he spent most of the second half standing up seemingly half the audience, several at a time, and telling them all manner of details about their lives, before preceding to prove that he’d known right from the start what every member of the audience was going to do throughout the show), and I admit I’m such a DB geek that I unravelled at least one of his acts, but he has such fun with the whole show that you can’t fail to be standing with a big, silly grin on your face by the end. He also put us into a “trance” that left me feeling so peaceful I’m looking into learning to meditate, and featured at least one performance - an example of an old trick of the fake mediums of yesteryear - that was genuinely and brilliantly baffling. As with all of his shows, there’s a twist at the end that pulls you to your feet by its sheer, silly invention. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I’m going again for the West End run in July. Tickets aren’t yet booked and anyone’s welcome to join us if they let me know by this Friday (22nd).

The evening ended, as it had to, with a discussion in the Three Goats’ Heads that posited that Derren is, variously, brilliant, foolish and literally devilish. Altogether one of my favourite birthdays yet.

Posted in Oxford, Personal • No comments

At least 410 characters about Trailwalker 2009 Sunday, May 10th, 2009

My microblogging has kind of taken over from my blogging recently. In fact, now that my blog automatically updates my Twitter account, probably most people will find out that I’ve blogged because I’ve microblogged about having blogged.

The upshot of all this microblogging is that occasionally I’ll say something in 140 characters that it might be wiser to say in, say, 410, and it seems appropriate that to an undertaking as lengthy as Trailwalker I devote a slightly lengthier spiel.

The 140 character bit:
This July, I and my friends will be walking 100km (62 miles) in under 30 hours in aid of Oxfam and the Gurkha Welfare Trust.

The lengthier bit: what we’ve been up to so far.
Our team consists of three ‘Fammers - Julia, Dan and Kinders - and somebody Julia met on Facebook when we were desperately hunting for a fourth person dedicated or peculiar enough to take on the challenge: Sarah. We’ve named our team Nightcrawlers on the basis that

we wanted a name that was epic and sinister, and
by nightfall we’ll probably be lucky if we are crawling.

We haven’t had a single team practice yet. In fact, I’m the only Nightcrawler to have met all three team members. Last weekend Sarah and I, along with her other half and my big sister, went on a 16-mile walk. We started at the end of the trail and made our way to the beginning - realising quickly that the reason the beginning is at the beginning and the end is at the end is that, otherwise, the entire walk is uphill. However, we’ve all been practicing away - alone or in groups of two or three, on trails, in gyms, on saddles and in pools - and I think we’re all feeling confident about the big day. That 16 mile uphill walk took us 5.5 hours (including 30 minutes in a tearoom for a discussion on the pronunciation of “scone”) - which means that even if we relax our pace we may be able to finish the event in under 25 hours. And we can save time by talking about scones on the way.

Sarah’s partner Neil works on the Trailwalker project team - so he knows the route and is full of handy advice. This, coupled with the other three of us working in Oxfam House, where we’re a few steps away from the Trailwalker team and can go and pester them at our leisure, gives us quite an advantage.

My housemate Craig and two other friends from Oxfam, MC and Jenny, will be Trailwalking too. We keep talking about a joint team practice but, so far, it hasn’t happened. We also keep talking about competition, sabotage and betrayal, so maybe it’s for the best that we keep our distance. A fortnight ago they held a cake sale and tried to persuade me to sample a chocolate behemoth that HR nicknamed “The Monster“, but I wasn’t fooled: I noticed they didn’t eat any themselves.

My groovy socks (and hairy legs)

Finally, a word of advice for other Trailwalkers: buy socks. Expensive socks. Lots of them. Last weekend I spent £10 on a pair of walking socks, and I’m not sure if my feet weren’t actually in a better condition at the end of the walk than when we began. I’ve ordered another three pairs (as I’m reliably informed that changing your socks is just about the most important way to look after yourself during Trailwalker).

So now you’re caught up on the adventures of the Nightcrawlers so far. I promise to be better at blogging our progress to avoid another monumental infodump like this one - and of course I’ll continue to microblog updates too. You can also stay informed using RSS or subscribe to an email update. And finally - there was nowhere else this post could possibly lead - if you haven’t already, please throw a few pounds our way. (Take a look at my Trailwalker page to see what Oxfam might do with £1,000.)

Posted in Science and technology, Trailwalker 2009 • 1 comment

The right not to eat animals deserves support but I will never respect or support your right to do the same. Friday, May 8th, 2009

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