National Toilet day

I never really think of having a toilet as a commodity. I guess I just take it all for granted- It would be pretty difficult to even find somewhere to live without a loo.
This is the 'national toilet day' gallery from the bbc news website.
It's quite eye opening. I know we hear often about how much more we have than people in other countries, or different walks of life- I always think of that to mean clean water, food, health care or education. I guess it's easy to forget that it might even refer to being able to go to the toilet in your own home, safely.
Today I will try and be more grateful for the things that I have- including my indoor bathroom!

In pictures: My toilet

According to the United Nations, 2.5 billion people do not have access to proper sanitation, including toilets. To mark World Toilet Day on 19 November, photographers from Panos Pictures have been working with Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP) to produce an exhibition that documents women and girls with their toilets, showing the effect this has on their lives.

Australia

Renee is an artist. She left her former home in the densely populated suburbs of Sydney to live a quieter life in bush surrounds, a one-hour drive north of the city. She has built a shed on 10 acres of land and has an outside toilet. Renee has no concerns about privacy as she is not overlooked by neighbours.

Bangladesh

Sukurbanu, 65, has lived in Rupnagar slum, in Dhaka, since her childhood. She uses a hanging toilet - a platform built over water - from which she recently fell. She says she often suffers from illnesses that she believes are caused by using these toilets. She lives with three daughters, who face long queues to use the toilets before they go to work in the mornings.

Brazil

Isabela, 33, lives alone in a penthouse in Rio de Janeiro. She has an MBA in environmental law and works as a fine artist. "My toilet means comfort to me. But I know what is behind it: water supply, sewerage, pollution of lakes and oceans.

"The fact is that I do like to have a good shower, and for a Brazilian girl like me, it means at least 10 minutes of clean water being wasted. It's a privilege. I have a clean water supply, hot water and a comfortable toilet seat."

Ecuador

Fabiola, 69, lives in Cumbaya, a valley near Quito. Between the ages of seven and 21, she shared a toilet with 20 other people who lived in her condominium. Now she lives in an apartment, which has five bathrooms. Her bathroom is the biggest one and she is very proud of it.

Ethiopia

Meseret, a restaurant manager in Addis Ababa, shares a one-bedroom government house with her two children, two sisters and mother. She was widowed nine years ago when her husband was shot during the aftermath of the 2005 elections. Her shared toilet is a long way away, so for safety the family use the side yard next to their house.

Ghana

Ima, 47, is a toilet attendant in Kumasi. She lives in a rented room with her husband and four children aged 14-22. She is a very dedicated worker and relies on the income from her job to fund her children's education. She does not have a toilet at home. During the day, she uses the public toilet where she works, but at night she uses a plastic bag as it is not safe to go outside.

Haiti

Martine is 27 years old. She lives near a river in Cayimithe. "I don't have an enclosed toilet. My toilet is a hole in the ground by my house, which is now full and has become really dangerous. I only use it at night when I can have some privacy. In the daytime, I use a community toilet which is about 15 minutes away from my house."

India

Sangita, 35, moved to Delhi City 10 years ago. Before that she lived in a village where she used to go to the toilet in the fields, and says she felt ashamed of it. This made her adamant that she would have her own toilet in Delhi.

Japan

Eiko, 61, lives in Tokyo. "Since this department store is close to my home, I often come here for shopping. When I was a child, the public toilets were not clean and smelled bad, but every time I use the bathroom here, I feel so relaxed. I could spend many hours here."

In this department store, the toilet is called a switch room to describe a special place where people can switch their mood and feel relaxed. The toilets have features like surround-sound music and heated seats. In the powder room next to the toilets, Eiko can charge her mobile phone, watch TV and have a foot massage.

Kenya

Eunice is the co-founder of Kasarani Academy in Naivasha. Previously, the school had only two toilets for 250 pupils. Tenants living nearby used the toilets as well and left them in a poor condition.

Because of this, Eunice found that the children preferred to go in the open. Eunice and her husband Paul have now invested in child-friendly toilets. These tiny toilets have prevented adults using them as they cannot fit through the doors. "Parents will enrol their children here because of our child-friendly toilets," she said.

Mozambique

Flora, 19, is a high school student. She lives in Chamanculo C in Maputo with her mother, sister and niece. She shares a toilet with several other families living nearby. "I hate using the toilet. Sometimes men peek over the fence. There is no privacy."

Romania

Pana, 49, lives in Buzescu. Like almost half of the Romanian population, she lives in the countryside where there is no running water or sewerage supplied by the municipality. Pana does have a toilet inside her house, but it is used only by her nephews when they visit. She uses the outside toilet, even in the winter.

South Africa

Nombini has two porta-potties, which are used by the 12 people who live in her home. When she first moved to Khayelitsha in 2005, she did not have a toilet so she had to go in the bush, across a main road. "It was terrible in the bush - the cars hit you. When we were given a porta-potty in 2009, it was much better than going in the bush. Flush toilets are first class compared to the porta-potty though. My dream is to have a flush toilet."

United States

Mary is a writer who lives in New York City. "Living with two housemates, it is important to schedule our bathroom time and take turns cleaning it. I used to live in Beijing, where I had to use a public bathroom as my apartment didn't have a private toilet. While it was safe and relatively clean, I used to hate putting my coat on just to go to the bathroom in the middle of night during winter. That experience made me really appreciate the privacy and comfort of having a clean toilet at home."

Zambia

Susan, 46, is the founder of a community school for children with physical and mental disabilities. "It makes me proud and happy to teach disabled children so that in the future they can have a better life and not just stay at home. I was attacked by polio at the age of two. It's not easy being disabled in Lusaka. Using the toilet is a challenge, especially in the rainy season, as I have to crawl to the toilets on my hands."

More zombies!

I can't get over how many pro photos we managed to get ourselves in! This isn't better than the one of me that looks like part of a horror film- but we are all in it!
:)

re-created candle holders from the repurposed sign company blog

We’ve all seen them.

Small single wooden candlesticks at the thrift shop that get no respect, left to stand lonely on the shelves month after month. Well, we decided to do something about it, and here’s a little sneak peek.

We bought an entire village of them and got to work.

Then we started stacking them.

We actually love the mix of woods, but it wasn’t the final look we were going for on this project. So we started painting. To avoid the crazy time it would take to sand all of these curves, we mixed our own chalk paint. We’ve all seen the recipes so I’ll spare you yet another. But we actually just did a ‘mix it by eye’ type of measurement and got to work.

This next step is what we call the ‘ugly stage’. We painted the first base color using a dry brush technique. You just gotta give them a little love and understanding while they stand there and dry in this state of being. It’s quite humiliating for them.

The dry brush technique is quite easy. Just dab off as much of the paint as you can from your brush before you start painting. We wanted the sideways brush strokes, so for us it was a spin and brush process – and we made a quick little video for you to see what we mean.

Unfortunately, the next painting stage doesn’t do much to boost their ego either. We forgot to snap a pic until we had all but one of them already painted with the 3rd level of teal. So, here’s the one.

We like the teal color so much we think our next set will be a teal exterior. But for now, this is the painting stage before the final coat of paint.

Time for the final reveal. Ta-dah!

What a difference a day makes. Actually, it was two. But that’s still a pretty good transformation in a short amount of time. We saw the potential right away when we started stacking.

Calls to rethink remembrance day in schools

• 
• • Fran Abrams
  • The Guardian, Tuesday 11 November 2014
  • Jump to comments (17)

Sixth-form history students at Biddenham school in Bedford discuss remembrance while sitting under a first world war recruiting poster. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

It’s the week before Remembrance Day, and at Biddenham upper school in Bedford small visual portents are beginning to appear. A jacket hung in the executive principal’s office sports a red poppy; in a sixth-form history group a Royal British Legion collecting tin sits on a table.

Like most schools across the country, Biddenham will observe two minutes’ silence on Tuesday for pupils and staff, along with a special assembly. Poppies have been on sale for the past week.

But as in most schools, perhaps, there’s some ambivalence under the surface. Ruth Pineda, the head of history, puts it eloquently: “As a history teacher I’m aware of the complexities of war and the futility of it. If Germany had won the first world war, arguably the second world war might not have happened.

“I feel very uneasy about Remembrance Day, because I’m uneasy with the poppy appeal and the way it’s marketed,” she says. “The poppy appeal makes it [war] less complicated, and sanitises it.” Grasping for an explanation, she reaches for a scene in Alan Bennett’s play The History Boys, in which a young teacher points out that Britain led the arms race prior to the first world war, and suggests public ceremonies are used to gloss over Britain’s culpability.

“He talks about remembrance as a form of forgetting the reality of war, because it’s about ritual, and it doesn’t make you question what went on,” she says. “We need to make a distinction between the human cost of war and the causes of war.”

So what is remembrance for? Is it about erasing the horror, as Bennett suggested? Or is it about keeping memories alive in order to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, perhaps? A show of gratitude to those who died, or even a reinforcement of “British” values such as courage or self-sacrifice?

A controversial pamphlet published on Tuesday addresses these questions. It is part of the Impact series, which brings philosophical perspectives to bear on education policy, and argues that there has been too little debate about schools’ role in acts of remembrance.

Written by David Aldridge, a philosopher working in the School of Education at Oxford Brookes University, it argues children should learn about the horror of war. But says there is no justification in encouraging them to feel gratitude to those who died, because not all of them gave their lives willingly.

Should we feel gratitude also that those men were prepared to kill for us, it asks? And should we be grateful only to those on the winning side, or should we feel gratitude for those who fought and lost?

“It is not clear that gratitude is in fact owed … it is hard to establish that those sacrifices either directly or indirectly brought about a state of affairs that is more beneficial to us or overall more morally acceptable than any alternative,” the pamphlet says.

Perhaps even more controversially, it adds that charities such as the Royal British Legion should not be allowed to fundraise in schools. The sanitised poppy image and slogans such as “standing shoulder to shoulder with all who serve” tend to undermine the aim of conveying the horror of war, it says. Furthermore, there might be other causes more worthy of exposure.

“Educators should consider, for example, replacing associations with bright red flowers, pristine stone memorials, and elderly men wearing medals, with images or narratives of children killed or wounded in war,” it says.

Aldridge, a former religious education teacher, hopes the pamphlet will open up a much-needed debate. “Nobody’s addressed this specifically from an educational perspective,” he says. “At this time of year there’s all kinds of debate about what remembrance is, and whether we should even be doing it. But educationally, it seems to be kind of the last unquestioned front.”

At Biddenham, a sixth-form history group is grappling with some of these questions. At times the debate becomes heated – although all agree they’ve taken part in acts of remembrance throughout their school lives without really questioning their meaning before.

Lizzie Frost, 16, argues that some act of remembrance is necessary: “People your age have been killed, and it’s important to get across that war’s not just about glory, or just fighting political battles. We need to be aware of how lucky we are in this country that we haven’t had a war on our soil in recent times. If we were living in Syria it would be very different.”

But Tabitha Everett, 17, says it’s not appropriate to expose children to the war’s reality too young. “How would it help those people if our seven year-olds were crying to their parents about people being brutally murdered?”

There are other perspectives in the group. André Reece-Brown, 16, has a Rwandan grandmother and he visited the country recently. Some of his relatives were killed in the 1994 genocide. For him, remembrance – and visiting the genocide memorial in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali – was about showing respect and support for his grandmother and other relatives: “It was something we had to do, almost.”

And for Mojahid Hussain, 18, visiting family in Bangladesh has been equally instructive. “Quite a lot of the focus is on how Britain sacrificed its troops in world war one and world war two. I’ve been to Bangladesh a few times, and I’ve never seen poppies there despite the fact that there were soldiers from there who fought in those wars. They didn’t have a choice – they were forced to go. I think it should be up to the Royal British Legion to extend its remembrance for those soldiers.”

But the Royal British Legion argues the free resources it distributes to schools – 60,000 packs a year with no obligation to raise funds – commemorate all those who died. “The resources promote remembrance as something for people of all faiths and no faith, all political views and none, all ages and all abilities,” said the Legion’s head of remembrance, Dr Stephen Clarke. “Legion learning resources aim to encourage young people to challenge remembrance past and present, to question the reasons for conflict and to consider their own role in shaping future peace. They are also encouraged to research the impact of war on families, local communities and entire nations.

“Injured veterans of all ages, some with obvious injuries and not so obvious, certainly convey the ‘horror’ of war to young people through the Legion’s work and I have never met a veteran who has not said ‘war is terrible’.”

For the school’s executive principal, Mike Berrill, Remembrance Day is one of a series of events which mark the passing seasons – black history month, Holocaust memorial day, Eid, Ramadan and Diwali being among the others.

He welcomes Aldridge’s paper, published by the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain. “Without this debate there’s a risk that we come to engage with the mawkish sentimentality of remembrance and fail to acknowledge that – whether just or not – war is always horrific for combatants and non-combatants alike,” he says.

He has a poppy on his jacket this week – his father, who was chair of the Western Front Association in Cumbria, would have expected it, he says. “I think it’s out of respect,” he says. “We just engage in it like we engage in Halloween, without really thinking about it.”

Glass making workshop

Today Jen arranged for us to attend a Christmas Glass workshop in Ollerton.
The object of the course was to make xmas tree decorations uisng a number of different techniques. All but one other person on the course and I had been to the workshops before so they knew what they were doing!
For the two of us it was a very enjoyable and steep learning curve!

We started out with a short lesson and practice on how to cut glass- Which I had never done before. It was waaaay trickier than I'd anticipated.
It took me ages to get hang of it- and even towards the end of the session I still had to get Jen to finish the cuts!
you score the glass with a cutting tool to make the shape you want, turn the glass over, put it on a bit of carpet or something soft, press on the crack with two thumbs and the pressure should crack the glass along the scores.
Or, if the score isn't deep enough, it'll just break however it likes.
O_o

After practising cutting, we were given time to plan our designs and new glass to cut our shapes from, then we added confetti glass, copper shapes, coloured powders or squares of glass to make interesting xmas baubles!

These are my designs & Jen's Designs before firing in the kiln:

I'll post some more photos when they come back from being fired- Jen's bringing them up on the 13th December when we go to out next xmas craft workshop- this ones xmas patchwork!

My favourite time of year :)

I took this photo on my way home from work:

I love it when it's getting dark in the evenings so the sun is really low with a yellowy glow and all the shadows are long.
I Think the light is beautiful.
It's my favourite time of day to take photos, the light is so yellow it makes everything glowy and warm looking and the shadows immediately tell you that it's autumn. It makes me feel nostalgic.

It reminds me of being a teenager and aimlessly wandering around my home town in the evenings, or mooching about in parks or peoples gardens with nothing better to do.

It reminds me specifically of sitting about in the kids play park behind my Secondary School with Kirstie and Nik, I remember that it was freezing cold , she was wearing her cat jumper with matching mittens (I wasn't wearing a coat because that's just not cool but I was wearing my enormous pink flaired trousers from the american vintage shop in reading) and we were both wearing glittery pink eyeshadow (Stargazer brand and it specifically said it was not to go on the eyes) I remember sitting on the swings and looking up at the sun through my eyelashes because the glitter looked like stars.

It also reminds me of the bonfires we used to light and sit around in the woods behind Nik's house, when the evenings were dark and it started to get cold.
We just used to sit about doing nothing but being cool, then go home stinking of woodsmoke, covered in mud and soaked to the bone.
Not long after my parents finally relented and bought me a mobile phone (A phillips phone, with an ariel, I must have been about 14) I remember we sat about in the woods all evening- it was pitch black and raining- I was in such a rush to get home I didn't realise that my phone had fallen out of my (Marilyn manson) hoodie pocket.
My phone was so rubbish that when I went back the following day to look for it, it was still where it had fallen.
And despite the heavy rain, it worked beautifully for a number of years.

They don't make mobile phones like the used to.

Sparkler photos!

Tats and I treated ourselves to sparklers after the meeting on Monday night- So we took some cool photos.
:)
The trick with this is to make the aperture on the camera as wide as possible, and to make the shutter speed really sloooow.
these were taken on 5 seconds- usually I do them on 3 but I think I like these better.

Xmas crafts from Pinterest

 Ah, I can't tell if it's too early or not to start looking for christmassy crafts- not according to pinterest it's not- and none of these will break any more of my sewing machine needles!

Most of them look nice and easy- Something for the odd free evening to accompany my ongoing home made xmas challenge and art textiles stuff.

Excited now!

How not to make an embroidered cushion cover

Today, as it's my last day off now (for another 7 weeks urgh) I wanted to make a prototype for a new textiles project using embroidery.

I get really hopelessly bored when I'm embroidering anything. I love the finished product but I hate the repetitive, tedious task of sewing neat and perfect stitches. I swear I spend more time unpicking my embroidery than actually getting anywhere!
My mum is pretty damn good at embroidery- she had samplers hung up in the hall of the Oxfordshire house- And she has tried and tried to teach me, my progress was very slow.

I decided that the easiest way to motivate myself to practice the embroidery would be to "hit two birds with one stone" thus:
1) we need new cushion covers for the sofa- some of ours are tatty now and look a bit uninviting
2) I enjoy unusual homewares
3) So, buy some cheap, plain fabric for the covers and then practice the stitches for the textiles project- knowing that this is a home ware we need will spur on my progress.

So, I got some reduced price white fleacy fabric on Saturday morning before we headed over to Andy's.
When we got back I immediately measured and cut the sizes and pinned them- feeling really motivated and pleased with myself I went to plug in the extension lead for my sewing machine.
Then realised Traff had used it to put the washing machine.
So I had a potato farl break and watched the numbers tick down on the front of the machine- losing motivation every second!

Finally, everything was good- machine working properly, ace!
I managed to complete 3 of my 4 covers, and on the final seam of the last one, This happened:

I don't even know how that happened!
I'd already taken the pin out!
I do have more needles, but as I'm feeling a bit sorry for myself after my night out (and my hands are still shaking- I swear the needle unthreaded every time I even looked at it (I spent more time shouting at the machine than sewing today!) I've decided to leave that for another day.

I've marked out the patterns on two of the covers- I'll see how they go before I mark up the 3rd and complete the 4th.

I'll chalk this up as a partial success- especially as I know exactly where the machine needles are!

Peterborough Zombie walk

On Saturday, Traff, Andy and I took part in the Peterborough Zombie walk- this year in support of a local homeless charity. It's free to take part- Just give some pennies if you can.
It's a bit of a local institution, it starts at Charters boat-pub and ends at The Brewery Tap (Where they serve amazing thai food).
I didn't realise how much public support this event has- People came out to watch, film, photograph and heckle the Zombies- And I guess lots of the Zombies expected it and were playing up to it too.

We got to Andy's at about 2 to get ready- Zombieing up too ages- especially the contact lenses! Traff took almost 40 minutes to get his in his eyes- I gave up after 20 as the taxi arrived. So no zombie eyes for me.
It's my only regret of the weekend!
We got to Charters about 3:30 and it was pretty quiet- We were worried we'd got the wrong day except all the bar staff were dressed as Zombies- We got pints and went to sit outside- over the next 40 minutes or so it all got very zombiefied.
They started the walk by playing a "recorded message" over the pubs PA system- explaining that we were part of an experiment, and that to be cured we had to get Elixir- From the brewery tap.

Some of the costumes were really well thought out- there were conventional halloween zombies in proper fancy dress- but lots of people who had "become zombies" whilst carrying out everyday activities- there was a zombie show jumper,A zombie nanna with knitting, a zombie cleaner, zombie gardeners, zombie doctors and nurses!
Very clever.
There were prizes presented after the walk for the best costumes. We know what we need to do for next year!

The walk lasted an hour, not because it's far but because zombies walk slowly. After the walk we grabbed a table in the Brewery tap and had thai food for dinner.
Food well earned!
Ellie joined us after dinner and then we had some drinks and trashy disco in the function room until about midnight.

Traff demonstrated his drunken state at about midnight:
Traff: "You're a really cute zombie"
*Lunges and puts me into an affectionate headlock*
"I don't want you to be dead- you're cute when you're alive too!"
Me: "TAXI!"

We stayed over at Andy's to recover from our night out.
This morning we had greasy spoons breakfast.
:D