7 weeks, 5 days: from cycling to Klezmer to ancestors to X-Factor!

Unfortunately today I had a really bad training session. Not sure whether the cause was the cold I've been trying to fight off for at least a week or the result of having to cycle in the path of a car which belted out more smog from its exhaust than I've seen coming out of a steam engine, but either way it culminated in me having what felt like a mild asthmatic attack on the grass verge at the side of the A505 :( and I decided to call it a day after only a few miles.

As a result I had an unusual treat, I actually had time to sit on the sofa and watch some tv, not a regular occurrence in my life! This led to the thrilling discovery of an ancestor's Hansard record and a portrait of him that I never knew was hanging in the National Portrait Gallery this evening. This was all sparked by watching BBC4's fascinating programme on Klezmer music (the photo is of some Klezmer musicians). I only found out a couple of years ago that I had an ancestor - my great great uncle, my maternal grandmother's uncle - who had an 'interest' (putting it very mildly) in politics. I was a bit of an anomaly up until then and we initially scoffed when my grandmother told us about him. His name was Philip Hoffman and he was a bit of a mystery to us as there was rumoured to be a rift between him and my great grandfather caused by my great great uncle's refusal to change his surname from Hoffman to Stanley to help assimilate in post-WWII Britain. He and my great grandfather had come to England from Germany and I suppose must have faced the same difficulties as many people at the time migrating from a conflict-zone in which several groups of people had been totally villified - most obviously Jews. My great grandfather's answer to this was to change his name to something more quintessentially English, while my great great uncle refused to do so. At the risk of offending my late ancestors I would definitely have been on the latter's side!

Because of their roots there has been some musing that they may have been Jewish, but no one in my immediate or slightly extended family seems to know. Definitely feels like a project looming for 2013 to find out! Philip Hoffman became a Labour MP, firstly winning South East Essex in 1922 then becoming the MP for Sheffield Central in 1929. As the party would imply he was very interested in employee rights, he introduced a Private Members' Bill on Shop Workers rights and wrote a book called They Also Serve, which I was really pleased to have found and bought for my grandmother before she died. The latter now has pride of place on my bedside table. So that's why all of tonight's googling was sparked by a programme I was watching with my family about Klezmer music - a tradition of the Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe.  In and of itself it was pretty fascinating and reminded me of a book I read a few years ago by an American sociologist called Barbara Ehrenreich, entitled 'Dancing in the Streets'.

Listening to the programme and watching the frenzied dancing and singing reminded me just how important music is in shifting a mood, motivating and inspiring, depressing us, sparking a memory or transporting us back to a feeling we once had. I know I get this a lot. Certain bands, artists or songs have really strong associations for me. Lots of those associations are with places when I've been on adventures, Mausam by Nitin Sawhney takes me back to the Namib desert every time while Basement Jaxx remind me of leaving Beijing for the first time. There are songs I associate very strongly with people and they with me. When you know the power of this I think you need to choose quite carefully what you listen to - knowing you'll be reminded of it for time immemorial!

So I wonder what I'll be listening to in India? Perhaps it won't be anything I take with me but instead something somebody else who I don't yet know brings with them? Whatever it is I'm sure the memories will be very potent and very special to me - so let's hope it's not something dreadful like the latest offering of an X-Factor contestant!

Beyonce eat your heart out - a call to the female masses!

I've just got back from a killer three-week stint at party conferences and I'm totally 'exhaustballs'! I really could use a night on the sofa but unfortunately I have too much to do - not least training! I think I'm too knackered to actually cycle the 20 miles I had planned to tonight but I've decided to compromise on some fundraising activities and a 20 min run instead to assuage my guilt about doing nothing.

On the fundraising side I've just set up a Facebook event and I'm working on ideas for a calendar I want to make & sell for the cause. Actually it's a lot about awareness-raising too. At first I thought it'd be funny to do a re-working of the WI Calendar Girls' one using 'Emcupcakes' for modesty....but then I'd just signed that petition going round 'Get the Bare Boobs Out of the Sun' http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/dominic-mohan-take-the-bare-boobs-out-of-the-sun-nomorepage3 and I thought it'd be a bit hypocritical to then produce a calendar full of women with only 'buns' covering their boobs!

So instead I've been thinking about all the freedoms women enjoy in the UK which women around the world  sadly can't. Things that include (but a not exhaustive list):

- driving
- spending leisure time with men other than family members
- access to contraception
- choice of who we marry (or don't!)
- recognition of domestic violence
- access to education
- freedom from stereotypically gendered roles in the workplace / home

and so on....

I appreciate there is still room for improvement with some of these things in the UK, particularly in the context of things like the news today of the conviction of Justin Lee Collins and the 'derisory' sentence he has received.

However, we cannot ignore the fact that we do have better health care appropriate to our particular needs as women, we don't face discrimination if we try to become scientists or car mechanics, we can wear our hair out if we choose not to conform to a faith that requires it to be covered, the law recognises that we can say no to sex with someone with whom we have previously consented and many other things.

Amnesty devotes much of its resources to championing the rights of women around the world. Here are just three reasons why I want to support this work:

- pregnancy kills one woman every minute around the world. 

- two thirds of the 774 million illiterate adults worldwide are women, a proportion which hasn't changed for 20 years

- more than 60 million girls worldwide are forced into marriage before they reach 18

I am very lucky to have lots of brilliant women in my life: my mum, my two sisters, my niece, aunties, cousins, and many, many friends who make me feel lucky to be a woman and inspire me every day. I think we've got a huge amount to be thankful for - freedoms, access to services and rights over our bodies, minds and reproductive systems that women around the world do not enjoy. 

And for that reason I'm appealing for ideas and volunteers for my calendar. If you can think of other freedoms that mark out women in the UK as luckier than their counterparts elsewhere in the world, please let me know so that I can start gathering ideas. And even better, if you'd like to be in the calendar, please contact me via the blog, on twitter or via facebook (emcupcakes).

Thanks

The countdown has begun: 8 weeks and 5 days...

Is it nearly Monday again??

How do the weekends always go so fast? I've had a brilliant one but as usual very busy. Today my older sister and I spent a few hours digging up weeds on her newly acquired allotment. It's absolutely huge (probably about 10 square metres) so when we first saw it I felt like flaking out immediately! But we persisted and after some backbreaking determined routing out of evil weeds we clearly about a quarter of it. As you can see from the pics it was a pretty tough job and we were very pleased with ourselves when we'd finished! I was rewarded with some lovely smiles and giggles from my niece when we got back home :).

I met up with an old friend on Friday night for dinner which was really lovely - haven't seen her for probably 6 years ish but as with all good friends we just picked up where we left off :). She told me all about some really interesting work she's been doing with ex-offenders to help them turn their lives around in conjunction with Crisis, her children and grandchildren and I regaled her with tales of woe from my own life, ha! I spent Saturday evening with some friends and watched X Factor for the first time in probably about 8 years (I'm so out of the loop).

Training-wise I managed my first 30 miler along the canal on Saturday. The nice, clean gravel towpath gave way very quickly to grass and mud and stingers! I can't actually believe I'm saying this but I actually found myself thinking I'd like to do one of those 10k runs through assault courses and mud! I remember rolling down a massive hill when I was about 14 and getting absolutely covered in the freshly cut grass and dew. I was soaked by the end but it was loads of fun and I think all this time spent outdoors getting muddy and wet is bringing out the big child in me, happily so.

The canal route was surprisingly treacherous and in places I really did narrowly miss ending up in the canal itself. I'm not sure it'll be a good idea to take that course in the depths of winter, particularly if it's icy, but it's good to try out different routes. I think that's one of the great things about cycling actually, the scenery is constantly changing and makes a huge difference. I'm one of those people who finds it difficult to do fewer than 2 or 3 things at any one time and gets bored really quickly but I have never once felt that cycling, instead I just get totally lost in my own thoughts.

Anyway, today my legs and knees were definitely feeling the 30 mile cycle from yesterday and the effects of the workout I had on the allotment so I'm afraid I only managed about 10 miles tonight. Not great but I actually reckon I'm better off not over-tiring myself as it then takes a good week to get back to my peak, so I'm going to head out for a run tomorrow before work and then I'll have two exercise-free days as I'm off to Tory conference with work.

Better go and pack now - this blog post has really been about procrastinating!

Singing (and cycling) in the rain

So today it's 8 weeks and 6 days 'til I go....scary stuff!

I'm going off for my first 30 miler today - want to see if I can cope with a cycle to a station further down the line so that I can squeeze in more rides during the week.

I went out on Thursday night after returning from a few days away at party conferences and had, surprisingly, a really good run. I'd only had 1-2hrs sleep but I guess the advice I'd been given about nutrition is paying off as I felt really energetic and ready for action!

It started raining pretty hard while I was out and the rain itself was really cold. Normally that's the kind of thing that would put me off entirely but I have to say I absolutely loved it and was quite gutted when it stopped! It reminded me so much of a holiday years ago to Florida during the stormy season. Every day there was a huge thunderstorm in the afternoon for about an hour. One day my sister and I were waiting for our parents and younger siblings to get back to the car so we could drive back to our apartment and shelter. We were sitting in the car watching the windscreen being pummelled by the downpour when we heard 'Singing in the Rain' start playing! We couldn't resist getting out of the car and dancing around, kicking puddles at each other and letting the sheets of rain soak us through. It was so much fun! I relived that a little bit on my cycle the other day when I took my feet off the peddles and turned my face towards the sky. It was as much as I could do not to belt out a few lines of the song again (which begs the question I find myself constantly asking - why is it not more acceptable to sing randomly in public, you know when queueing at the shops, walking to work etc.?)

I hope it rains today!

Some inspiration on national poetry day

I heard it was national poetry day today so I've decided to put one of my favourite poems up on the blog. Apparently Nelson Mandela used to recite this to himself when he was imprisoned on Robben Island. If you've ever been there you can imagine just how powerful the mind needs to be to compensate for the sensory deprivation and hardship prisoners were subjected to, often for more than a decade. But powerful the mind is and this tells you how inspirational this poem is! 

I wanted to include a photo from my own visit to Robben Island but I'm afraid the 2,000+ photos I took in South Africa are all on discs and safely filed away in storage. So instead here's a pic from Cape Town I really love the sentiment of.

This poem really inspires me to keep persisting whenever I'm struggling to be happy - whether it means powering through lactic acid agony to make it all the way up the hill on a cycle or when life throws a bit of a curve ball at you to deal with. I hope it inspires others to persevere when times get tough.

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul. 

William Ernest Henley

Amnesty publishes report into Trafigura waste-dumping incident

Today Amnesty International released a report on the illegal dumping of toxic waste by Trafigura in 2006 in Cote d'Ivoire and called for a full inquiry into the matter. For those who haven't heard of Trafigura, it's a Dutch multinational which trades commodities and in this case had leased a ship to move waste to a legal processing facility in Amsterdam.

When the processing facility realised the waste was actually rather toxic they upped the price for taking it. Understandably wanting to pocket as much profit as possible, Trafigura decided to try elsewhere. The ship sailed from Amsterdam and made its way down the West African coast looking for a port to dump the waste but got rejected everywhere until it reached Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire. Trafigura made a deal with a newly formed waste processing company and here, rather than processing the waste, it was simply dumped. Since then over 100,000 have received medical treatment for illnesses attributed to the effects of the waste and 12 people are believed to have died as a result of exposure.

In 2007 Trafigura reached an out of court settlement with the government of Cote d'Ivoire which bought it immunity from further prosecution. Since then Trafigura has also taken out injunctions to prevent press reporting of the incident and to prevent the leaking of internal documents which acknowledge the known toxicity of the waste.

Amnesty International is calling for a full inquiry into the incident, for which no individual has been punished or made to answer for their actions. More information on the case and the full report published by Amnesty today is available here: http://www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=20342.

New things...

I'm supposed to be having an early night as I've been burning the candles a lot at both ends lately and that's set to continue with party conference season kicking off this weekend (it's one of the busiest points in my working year you see).

But having just looked at my blog for the first time in ages and realised quite how neglectful I've been I decided to do a quick post. I'm feeling very reflective at this point in the year, having been through a very turbulent, creative, sometimes difficult but often exhilirating 9 months of 2012 so far. So I thought I'd write a quick list of all the new things I've done as a result of taking on this challenge:

1. Talked to lots of people I never knew until this year and forged some great new friendships
2. Baked a hell of a lot of cake!
3. Learnt how to add a Paypal button my website (which does feel like a massive achievement to someone as technophobic as me)
4. Started a blog
5. Discovered I actually can cycle
6. Started drinking protein - who knew it came in liquid form for people who don't resemble Arnie?
7. Worn padded cycle leggings (and invited people to poke me in intimate places, only to discover there's 5 inches of padding between me and them)
8. Taught a whole class on piping techniques (still can't quite get over my graduation to teacher)
9. Sold my own photographs (see above)
10. Found a very effective new chat up line!

Ok, so the last one is not really valid point, but it does seem to work! I feel quite chuffed reading that list back. When I decided to take on the challenge I was emerging from basically a very crappy time in my life. I can't say this year has been the easiest one ever as there have been plenty of other challenges I've had to face, but I am really really glad I decided to do this as it's given me so many new strings to my bow. So at this point in time, despite having not yet actually completed the challenge myself, I'm throwing down the gauntlet to anyone else reading to say come and have a go! You honestly won't regret it.

And with that, goodnight!