Category Archives: Random

Celebrating the legacy of Matilda Mae

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Beautiful Matilda Mae

Beautiful Matilda Mae

Last week was one I don’t want to revisit for a while. Thursday was spent with two close friends as they held a funeral for their beautiful baby girl Matilda Mae. Baby Tilda died while she was sleeping just a month ago, she was 9 months old.

Matilda Mae’s mum Jennie is a prolific blogger. Since she was first pregnant with her twins she has been sharing what it’s like to be pregnant, the experience of parenting premature babies, bringing them up, playing with them and then all over again when baby Tilda came along.

Jennie has got an incredible amount of help and support from the online world, and given back the same and more.

When it came to preparing what I’m sure was the most difficult day of her life, Jennie wanted to make sure the friends she had made through her blog were included and what they mean to each other was reflected.

The service was just lovely, it was a true celebration of Matilda Mae’s life. Susanne (AKA @Ghostwritermumm) and Heather (AKA @SAHMlovingit), both bloggers who I’m not sure had even met Jennie in real life before, read incredibly moving pieces about Jennie and Matilda and what their lives and experiences meant to them. They included other words from bloggers who couldn’t be there and I’m sure they could have read a lot more.

In the pub later, there was a Twitter wall showing all of the love and wishes from tweeters across the globe. For a while #matildamae was trending, a true social media baby. People changed their avatar to a special star picture, making Twitter twinkle for the day.

Jennie’s reason for including these social media elements in the day was to show her non-blogging friends and family just what strength, support, help and love she has got from the network. It was bloggers that rallied round to make sure Jennie and her husband looked after themselves in the horrible weeks following Matilda’s death. They arranged for Graze boxes and other food to be delivered, to keep up their strength for their other children.

An older man I sat next to in the pub – who I took to be a relative – asked me about Twitter and how the Twitter wall was working and then acknowledged that actually, blogging was pretty good. He admitted to only every having read negative stories in the press. I think that’s exactly what Jennie wanted.

Matilda Mae’s impact in the world, in just 9 short months, has already been incredible. As well as practical help and support the blog has given other parents in that time, over £3000 has been raised in her memory for the charity Bliss, and hundreds of people are already signed up to walk a Mile for Matilda for the charity FSID.

The connections you make with people online can be incredibly powerful and make a real difference. I am sure that Matilda Mae will continue to inspire for a long time to come.

Vegetable growing is go

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SeedsToday is the day that I planted my first vegetable seeds of the year.

I’m feeling ridiculously nervous about growing vegetables because I know there’s so much to learn and so many factors to get right. Have I chosen the right beds for things? Will they have enough direct sunlight? Will they have enough shade? Do they need extra nitrogen in the soil? Do they have enough nitrogen already? Aaaarrrgghhh!

I’m well aware that there are people in their 70s, 80s, 90s who still feel like they’re learning about growing vegetables, but I want to get it all right, now! We had such a disastrous year last year because of the rain, or maybe because of the old seeds I used, or maybe because I was doing things wrong, I’d love it if this year was a bit more successful.

I keep on reading books and websites about growing vegetables and they all say something slightly different and it’s making my heard hurt. Luckily Gardeners’ World starts again this week, Monty will tell me what I need to do.

The seeds in my picture are from The Real Seed Catalogue. One of the main reasons I chose to buy from them is the effort they put into encouraging people to collect their own seeds. The order came with a guide to collecting seeds from all of our vegetables so we’ll be well stocked next year, leaving some money to try out something new from the catalogue. Win win.

Thanks to Damien Clarkson for recommending The Real Seed Catalogue in the first place.

The future is now

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I have to admit that I’m one of those people who says “the future is now”. You find yourself talking to someone about all the amazing things that technology (usually social media tools) can do, they’re talking about the future and you have to stop them to say, “not the future, now!”.

It comes from being a techie I guess, always trying things out as soon as they’re launched. By the time they reach the masses you’ve already tested, analysed, looked for benefits, weighed up opportunities, got bored.

I had occasion to really stop and say “the future is now” when I watched this amazing clip on YouTube.

It’s Chris Hadfield - current commander on the ISS – answering questions from Canadians visiting the Canadian Space Agency. The special guest is William Shatner. What I love about this clip is that they’re both clearly in awe of each other. Shatner is fascinated to hear what it’s like to be in space and Commander Hadfield was obviously inspired by Star Trek.

At one point Hadfield talks about how, in Star Trek, the away team would communicate with the ship from the surface using their hand-held communicators and here they were, in 2013, having a conversation (of excellent quality) between Earth and space. Simply amazing. The future is now.

If you’ve found the clip as interesting as I did, someone posted this link on Twitter last week, 25 Science Fictions That Became Science Facts In 2012.

My day in six photos

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I really enjoyed reading some of the photo posts that popped up on Weekly Blog Club last year. I think it was Kate Bentham that had the original idea. Kate’s post was 10 pictures, unfortunately I only managed to take six.

These were taken on Saturday 5th January 2013:

LidoThis is a bit of a cheat. Normally I would come here to go to a class or swimming (not now, the heating in the lido isn’t on). On this particulary morning I was with my husband who was doing a run. It was very early (for a Saturday) and pretty cold.

CoffeeWhen we finally got home we had some well earned (for him more than me) coffee, mine in my favourite Moomin coffee cup.

GardenWe’re trying to get our garden ready for growing vegetables in the spring. We had a bit of a half-hearted attempt at it last year but this year we’re getting serious. The soil is really heavy so we still need to make up some raised beds here, probably 3 at 2x1m.

KnittingI’ve been working on this cardigan for ages. I think I bought the yarn in a shop in Salem, MA in 2008. I’m determined to get it finished in the next couple of months so any spare moment I’m trying to use for knitting.

Tree decorationsWe took down our Christmas tree. These are a box of decorations I’ve always had. My dad’s cousin used to be in the navy in the (I think) 60s and 70s and he got most of these from China. You might not be able to make it out but quite a few of them are actually Monkey, he of the cloud and magic headband.

BrownBrown by name, brown by nature. I love brown and couldn’t resist taking this picture of my trousers, socks and shoes before we went out for a pizza.

So, that’s it. My day in six pictures.

Turning online into offline in 2013

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On Tuesday night I went to a really great end of year gathering organised by sounddelivery.

Jude Habib – the amazing woman behind sounddelivery – did a wonderful job of sharing powerful stories from 2012. The highlight of the evening was watching a 30 minute BBC Scotland documentary about Martha Payne’s school food blog and subsequent fundraising for Mary’s Meals and then even better was some time Skyping with Martha’s dad David. As you could imagine from a room full of charity types, we all wanted to learn from what had obviously been a hugely successful awareness and fund raising campaign.

The reason I’m writing this is that I almost didn’t go. I’d been out all day for a meeting, I’d got on a really early train into London, a not so early but fairly long journey out of London, a three hour meeting and then the same journey back again. It was really cold and I was tired and just wanted to go to bed. I didn’t go home, I jumped on the tube and headed across town.

I was spurred on by something I’d been thinking for a while around how I’d like to make more of the relationships I’ve made with people online. I’ve found myself lately getting (probably totally unreasonably) angry with Twitter; the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th… time seeing the same tweet being sent, people being outraged by something that with a few clicks you can tell isn’t true, the auto posts of paper.lis or unfollowers, the days where it feels like everyone is really angry…. and I was starting to lose some of what had made Twitter great.

I think I’d like to make 2013 a year of putting real effort into turning more online relationships into real life ones. Just some of the people I’m hoping to meet are Janet Davis, Mark Braggins, Phil Jewitt, Ross Wigham, Kate Bentham, Janet Harkin, Gordon Rae, Simon Gough, Jude Clarke, Ross Wintle, Dan Slee, the list goes on…. I hope they all want to meet me too!

A few random photos I took inside the lovely Garden Court Chambers offices in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, hosts of the sounddelivery end of year gathering:

Nosferatu at Garden Court Chambers

Wurlitzer at Garden Court Chambers

Lincoln's Inn Fields reflections