Category: Personal

Duck egg blue traditional style bathroom suite from Victorian Plumbing Old London range.

We’re in!

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Well, folks, we finally did it. Calum and I have finally completed the purchase of our first home – a lovely 1950s ex-council semidetached house with a utility room separate from the main kitchen and lots of storage for our tools and bikes. I think it feels quite cottage-like with built-in wooden cupboards, an adorable cubbyhole, and a rustic staircase that will be very pretty once it’s painted and recarpeted. My favourite part of our new house so far is our brand new bathroom, which we arranged to be fitted before we moved in.

When we purchased the house, the bathroom was actually two tiny rooms – a W.C. which contained just the toilet, and a bathroom containing the sink, bath and shower. Naturally, this was an entirely gross setup so we decided to prioritise getting the bathroom entirely remodelled. We hired an excellent plumber to tear down the wall between the two rooms, retile the surfaces and fit an entirely new set of sanitary wear.

Bathroom across two rooms – who invented this gross concept?

Initially Calum and I talked about getting an awesome gothic bathroom. We liked the look of an ornate black porcelain suite that I’d seen in a shop window in our local town centre, but it quickly became clear that the gothic dream would likely be out of our price range. So, I took my search online and came across the Old London traditional range at Victorian Plumbing.

Calum’s favourite colour is blue, and he was amenable when I suggested the full duck-egg blue set, with accompanying amenities in white and chrome. Although Victorian Plumbing was a little disappointing with delays, missed delivery days and lack of communication, the products themselves are great. I particularly like our set because the sink is part of a cabinet that we can use for towels, and there is more storage in the mirrored cabinet above the sink. We ordered a Victorian-style bath that looks like a rolltop, but is actually flat enough that we could get a shower door rather than needing to settle for a dirt-gathering curtain. I like the chrome griffin-like feet that Calum selected for the bath, but my favourite part of our bathroom appliances is the heated towel rail/radiator. It’s just so cosy!

Choosing tiles was quite difficult, since I was adamant that, although we would probably want blue on the walls, I didn’t want the room to look like either a swimming pool or a public bathroom. Our plumber suggested we might like linoleum flooring because it would be easy to clean and replace, but I was worried it might look a bit too 1970s.

I had found a reference photo online that showed a bathroom with wooden flooring, which I immediately loved but dismissed as impractical because I thought it would get damp and rotten too quickly. My mum came to the rescue and suggested that we might look at wood-effect tiles. In the end we settled on dark “Maddison Cherry” tiles for the floor, with simple white square wall tiles. But I also ordered some very thin, rustic, duck-egg blue rectangular tiles to create a border at the top of the white tiles. I think they’re very cute.

Look, no wall!!

After that we basically left our plumber to it. He was absolutely fantastic and finished the entire project in a couple of weeks. He knocked down the wall between the two rooms to make one proper-sized bathroom, and did a great job of the tiling and fitting. At all points he made sure he was working to our requirements: even if that meant using white polyfilla against his suggestion (he warns will yellow over time) and moving piping from inside to outside the house (even though it meant he needed to raise his original quote a little). He even went to B&Q on our behalf to purchase some shower equipment after we decided we wanted a new matching head rather than just keeping the original as we’d initially planned, and he got us a couple of taps for our radiator so that they would match the other taps in the bathroom, which was very sweet.

Honestly, I cannot recommend our plumber, Chris, enough – check out his Facebook site (Chrisdecor Home Improvements) if you’re looking for a reliable plumber in the Manchester area. We have him to thank for our beautiful bathroom and we’re so excited to start living in our beautiful new home.

The completed bathroom.

The Adventures of Laser Girl

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Please indulge me a little with this nepotistic post about how awesome my sister is. Having passed her PhD in Physics (with a specialisation in Free Electron Lasers) last summer, Doctor Morgan has now got a job working on a FEL in California and has just moved out there this week. I’m super super proud of her, and to mark the occasion I want to share with you the comic I made for her last Christmas. As you can probably tell from the comic, I actually have very little idea what she does, to the point where I even misspell laser a couple of times. But she’s worked really hard and it’s such a fantastic achievement that I wanted to brag about it anyway. Well done, Jenny (and sorry for exposing your double life as a super hero)!

  • The Adventures of Laser Girl
  • Laser Girl! Laser Girl!
  • Travels all across the world
  • Goes for runs! Tortures Bond!
  • (This is a free electron!)
  • Published!
  • She's Doctor Laser Girl!
  • A series of crossing lasers, each with the onomatopoeic "PEW!" label.

Back to School reflection: What I did on my holiday

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After a good amount of time off work over the summer holidays, I am happy (if a bit nervous!) to be returning to the school library tomorrow. I had a lot of plans for when I was off, and some of them I completed, some of them I at least started, and many of them I didn’t get around to. Either way, I thought it would be nice to reflect on the summer before the new school year washes all of it into oblivion.

School’s out for the students

The students finished their school year on Friday 9th of July, but I still had a lot to complete so I spent the following two weeks in the library most days working on four main tasks.

Firstly, I shelved almost all of the books and music that had been building on the Covid quarantine shelves. That was quite a lot of work, seeing as so much music was returned last-minute, and I’m still getting used to the layout of the chamber music library (where we have shelves and shelves of parts in brown envelopes). Full disclosure, there are a couple of items that have been left so that I can ask my ever-helpful evening staff where the music should go!

I catalogued and processed a huge pile of music. We had received a fantastic donation of beautifully bound full and miniature scores from a member of the public. They are in such good condition that I have decided to add all of them to the library stock (replacing tatty copies where possible), but with probably over a hundred items in total, getting through it all is quite a task. I made a dent, but never fear, there’s still plenty of cataloguing waiting for my return tomorrow!

I also did my best to spend the remaining library budget, having been advised if I don’t spend it I lose it. The students can look forward to a few more books, some replacement music for lost copies, and eight lovely new pairs of headphones – enough for every library computer. I don’t know where the previous pairs kept disappearing to, but I think it might be worth creating a headphone sign-out sheet, to make sure these new ones are always returned.

My biggest challenge in the weeks leading up to the end of term, and the two following weeks where I was in the library on my own, was creating lists of all of the music that was still out to school leavers and would need to be tracked down. This task was particularly difficult because, despite being a music school where ensemble music is in high demand, the library system software we use cannot track multiple borrowers. This means that every set of music is only ever out on one borrower’s account (regardless of how many parts there are). Although we try to keep a manual record of who has which part, with over a thousand outstanding items at the end of term, going through every single envelope to notify students of their unreturned music was a huge job – and certainly not one I want to have to do every single summer. I only just managed to get it all completed in time to send out final warning emails to all the students before I left for Scotland, but I’m going to have to work out a better system for future years, or I might have a nervous breakdown!

Four crates full of brown envelopes
All of the empty envelopes still waiting for parts to be returned to them!

Visiting my parents!

After all that stress, I was super excited to travel back to Scotland to visit my parents for a few weeks. It was so nice to see them again, and my sister, Jenny, was there too for part of my trip. On my first night, Jenny introduced me to the anime Assassination Classroom, which is about a group of school students trying to assassinate their evil yet adorable teacher: a betentacled alien that plans to destroy the world if his students don’t kill him first. It’s surprisingly good.

The weather was gorgeous every single day of my visit, so we did a lot of outdoor activities. One day we walked along the beach for a forest/water walk in Greenock and ate ice-cream and another day we went to a market in Helensburgh where we listened to Glaswegian busker Maryjane singing ‘Let It Go’ from Frozen (in the middle of a heatwave). My dad and I went for a 50km cycle along the River Clyde, which was super fun but also extremely tiring, and at one point I fell off my bike. Although I’m pretty sure I hated everything and everyone by the end of it, it was great to cycle with my dad again and we both really enjoyed it.

On another beautiful day we visited my aunt and uncle in Stirling where we walked around the King’s Knot and learned the story of the Stirling Wolf. Apparently, during a Viking raid, one of the raiders accidentally stepped on a wolf causing it to howl out and wake the sleeping Anglo-Saxon garrison. This gave the garrison time to prepare for the invasion and force the Vikings to retreat. And now the howling wolf emblem can be seen all over Stirling. How bizarre is that?!

What is property? Property is stress!

After my visit to my parents, I still had three weeks left of summer holiday, and in this time Calum and I wanted to make some headway into buying our first home. Calum took a week off work, so we set up a meeting with a mortgage broker and started looking at properties. In total, I was able to arrange eleven viewings although five of them cancelled on me before the viewing could take place. Calum and I attended three of the remaining viewings together, and I attended three on my own because Calum had to go back to work. Although it was quite frustrating and extremely stressful, there were still some good parts. On one extremely wet day, after a viewing, Calum and I visited Worsely Village, where we walked around the Tudor-style streets and along the canal in the rain. There were even some cute metal ducks!

Even with the support of my parents (who were great at sending me suitable houses that I might have missed), and Calum (who did everything he could while also working full time) and the mortgage broker (who’s invaluable advice was fantastic help), I found the entire process really grim. I looked at house websites for hours ever morning, calling up estate agents to try to arrange viewings only to be told the houses were already under offer, or they were no longer accepting viewings. Not to mention the palaver navigating the disgustingly stupid system of Freehold vs Leasehold housing (don’t even get me started).

But eventually, less than a week ago, we got an offer accepted. Hooray! It’s a nice house, in a pretty area, and well within our budget, which is fantastic. We will probably need to do some work on the bathroom, because for some reason quite a few houses in Manchester (including this one) have a toilet with no sink next door to the bathroom with the sink in it. This feels very disgusting to us, and we’ll need to get that changed, but otherwise the house is great. It has a lovely shed for our bikes, and a nice big living room, a pretty kitchen and a utility room where we can put our washer/dryer and install our first dishwasher (such luxury!). There are also two relatively big bedrooms. Calum’s has a wee cubby area where he will be able to set up his workspace, since he is planning to work from home more often, and mine has a huge built-in wardrobe and a cosy alcove where I think I’ll be able to fit my bed.

So that’s pretty exciting, and all we need to do now is meet with our mortgage broker again, set up our solicitor, get a survey from our mortgage provider and a homebuyer’s report, exchange contracts and keys, get a new bathroom, move all our stuff across to the new house, and move in. Easy-peasy.

A Man[chester]’s a Man[chester] for a’ that

Kirsty Morgan1 Comment

Earlier this week it was Burns Night – the first one Calum and I didn’t celebrate in Scotland. Manchester is only a 4-hour drive from my parents’ house in Glasgow but, I think like a lot of distances during the current pandemic, it sometimes feels a lot further. Don’t get me wrong, I am super grateful and happy to have my current head librarian role at Chetham’s School of Music – the kids are great, the staff is lovely, the work is fun and I’m in the very enviable position of having a permanent position in my dream job before I hit thirty.

But I miss Edinburgh. I miss my family and friends. I miss the comfort provided by first minister Nicola Sturgeon’s open explanations and conscientious decision-making. I miss uncrowded streets and parks, and generally better Covid compliance. I miss prevalent recycling bins and a proper pelican crossing system and standard bus fares that you can just contactless tap without needing to tell the driver where you’re going. I miss the security of knowing that most people around me will be anti-Brexit and have left-wing politics. I miss proper cycle lanes and conscientious drivers and being half an hour walk from the beach.

Nonetheless, Manchester has its good points. People are generally more friendly and helpful. We deliberately chose to live in Prestwich, which has a whole network of parks. And I did find what might be a cycle path the other day. The trams are fantastic and punctual. It has all sorts of Communist history (Calum and I went to see a statue of Engels’ Beard over the Christmas break, and the public library next door to my school has ties to Karl Marx). I’ve met lots of people in Manchester who are pretty left wing and anti-Brexit (and Manchester does have a Labour mayor) so I’m probably being a bit over-cautious about Mancunian politics. And, most importantly, it’s where Chetham’s School of Music is situated, and I’m super loving working there!

Although there were no Ceilidhs or parties with friends or public events, Calum and I decided to celebrate Burns Night anyway. I was working that day, so I wore my tartan pinafore, and I’d made a library display celebrating Burns Night. I lined the bookshelves with tartan fabric, and I used some of the remaining fabric along with some pipe cleaners and coloured tissue paper to make a highland dancer and thistles. I was surprised that the school library didn’t have any Burns poetry, so my mum donated one of her copies to the school, and in the same package she sent me her haggis piggybank that I put on the display as well. The lockdown has meant there aren’t many kids in the school right now, but I have still received three compliments on the display so far – which made me very happy.

When I got home from work Calum was wearing a suit and his tartan bowtie. We had haggis, neeps & tatties ready meals for dinner, and listened to Celidh music on Spotify while we waited for the microwave. We also danced a little – although neither of us could remember many of the steps. For dessert we made cranachan by layering Muesli, double cream, raspberries, and honey – Calum’s was prettier than mine, but they both tasted good.

Calum’s was way fancier than mine…

After dinner we browsed the internet for video games set in Scotland. I was excited (if a little bemused) to discover that there were three different video games based on Jeff Wayne’s musical version of The War of the Worlds (one set in Glasgow). Like, not merely the H. G. Wells book, but the 1978, synth-heavy, prog-rock opera concept album of the book. There’s a ZX Spectrum survival game, a real-time strategy game for PCs, and a vehicular combat third-person shooter for Playstation! Isn’t that utterly delightful? Don’t you feel the world is a little bit awesomer just knowing that these three separate, entirely different games exist?!

For some ungodly reason, none of these games were available to buy on Steam, so we watched the Disney Pixar Movie Brave instead. We’d both seen it before a few times, but it holds up to repeat viewing – I particularly enjoyed the mischievous baby princes, the cute will-o’-wisps, the crazy bear carpenter lady, and Patrick Doyle’s atmospheric score (although I do have to wonder why none of the characters sing – isn’t this supposed to be a princess movie, Disney?).

Overall, I enjoyed our Mancunian, indoors Burn’s Night (and day). It was quiet and a bit haphazard, but it was fun and reminded me of home. I am looking forward to being able to attend Ceilidhs again, though.

…Wait. Does Manchester even have Ceilidhs?!

[*Quick Google Search*.]

Turns out: yep!

You can’t really see it very well, but we’re both wearing dark tartan.

It’s Piano Day… again!

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Gosh, is it Piano Day again, already? Last year, I celebrated with this post about joining the Henry Ford Band. So much has happened since then!

I played keyboard with the Henry Ford Band, and they’ve released their album on Spotify, Amazon and iTunes! My acquaintance with the bassist then led to my being asked to play the piano for Carla and Seana’s art exhibition at Glasgow Skypark, which I really enjoyed and wrote about.

I’ve written four dance reviews with Bachtrack, and honed my skills at writing reviews that are less enthusiastically complimentary that many of my others. I do find writing negative reviews harder because I don’t like being mean, but I think it’s important to be able to critique constructively, so it’s a good skill to have practised. I don’t think I’m alone; I’m sure it’s a common challenge for many critics who value being fair and genuine.

I finally got around to actually sitting (and passing) the ABRSM Grade 8 piano exam, which makes applying for certain jobs considerably easier. Plus, it’s nice to have the official certificate – it’s very pretty!

I also went on a one-day course at the National Library, where I learned a bit about how the Library is organised and the features it offers. I saw all sorts of old manuscripts, including some medieval choir books, in which the monks had drawn funny faces to amuse the altar boys during long services. I also read some very cute correspondences between author Muriel Spark and her artist friend, Penelope Jardine. These two were such avid fans of a British TV soap drama that, whenever one of them had to miss an episode, the other would write a detailed description of the programme, including describing the advert breaks!

I’ve been back at university doing a Masters in Information and Library Studies (yesterday was the last day of teaching), and it’s been absolutely fantastic. I’ve made many new friends, learned all sorts of skills, and become a better person. Yesterday, as a fun, last-day exercise, we were asked to take what we’d learned from the course and, in groups, create a design for a library, assuming we had unlimited resources. My group decided to create the University of Mars Academic Library. It included anti-gravity elevators, a virtual reality holodeck, vacuum partitions to block sound waves and allow for quieter study areas, book-retrieval drones, lots of plant life for oxygenation and a scream-into-the-void balcony for finals week! It was a super fun activity, and I’m a little sad that the course is practically over (except a few final submissions and the summer dissertation).

University of Mars Library
“In the University of Mars Library, no-one can hear you scream”

As part of my Masters, I also completed a placement in the Music Library at the Edinburgh Central Library, where I was reclassifying their collection to follow Library of Congress subject fields. It was really fun, and I got the opportunity to attend a staff meeting and design a display for International Women’s Day. The reclassification project is very time consuming, and it wasn’t possible for me to do the full collection within my eleven-week placement. But, excitingly, they have agreed to keep me on to continue the project, so I get to continue gaining Music Library experience, which is totally awesome!

It seems a little surreal how many amazing experiences a single year can offer. I am excited to discover what the next year holds!

Piano at the Skypark: the Local Network

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I was recently invited to play the piano for an art exhibition at Skypark business centre in Glasgow! How did it happen? Well…Kirsty Morgan playing white grand piano at Skypark

If you remember, a wee while ago, I played keyboard for the Milngavie-based Henry Ford Band on their debut album, The Angry Young Man. That album’s available to listen to on Spotify, by the way, and to purchase on iTunes and Amazon music. At some point I believe there will be a CD released, although I’ve yet to hear further details about this.

Anyway, a couple of local artists, Carla Faulkner and Seana Doherty, were looking for a pianist to play a baby grand piano at the opening of their new exhibition and Geoff Foord, the Henry Ford bassist, suggested that I might be interested, and gave them my details.

Happily, I was available that evening, and since the artists were perfectly willing to give me free rein choosing the music, I felt that this was a feasible task and amazing opportunity. I selected a collection of twenty-or-so Pamela Wedgwood pieces: mostly New Age, smooth jazz background music with a few more upbeat jazzy numbers thrown in, for contrast. They are all pieces I already knew and regularly play for fun, so didn’t require too much preparation, the most difficult being Grade 6 level.

The day (Thursday 31st Jan) arrived, and I was excited. After university finished for the day, I walked along to the Skypark – and, thanks to Google Maps, I only got lost once! The foyer was beautifully decorated with Carla and Seana’s artwork, and the baby grand was lovely. Having had less experience playing grand pianos than uprights, I always find I need to adjust my playing for them. The keys on grand pianos tend to have more resistance and the sound comes from further away, making the instrument trickier to play fast and it is slightly harder for me, as the player, to hear the music in a noisy area. But the grand piano also gives a fuller sound and (as another less relevant point in its favour) is easier to record because you just have to set up microphones at the holes in the soundboard.

I played for almost the entire three hours of the exhibition, with a ten-minute break midway though to warm up away from the door (it was snowing outside!) and eat one of the delicious cupcakes that were provided. Even although I knew the pieces well, playing in a public setting is very different from playing at home. I tried to retain my concentration, but kept getting distracted by the action in the room – it’s probably just psychological, but I felt that any time a person came over to view the pictures behind me, I had to concentrate more to avoid making mistakes. There were also some little children at the event who were excited by the piano, which was adorable!

I did discover that my playing stamina has deteriorated slightly since I finished practicing for piano exams. Where before I was able to play non-stop for five hours, on Thursday only playing for three was pretty much my limit. A couple of songs before the end, I was finding my eyes were struggling to focus on the music and when I got home I fell asleep almost instantly.

That said, even although the playing was intense, it was an amazing opportunity that I really enjoyed. I’ve always fancied the idea of playing background music; I love it when there’s a pianist at restaurants, it makes me want to join in! Having now had the opportunity to try it out, I’ve developed a greater appreciation for the endurance of those players; but I’d also like to play in a similar setting again at some point. The event coordinator at Skypark did ask for my details, so we’ll see if anything comes of that, I guess.

All in all, the experience was super fun and a really great night. Thanks to Carla and Seana for inviting me, and to Geoff for advocating for me in the first place. I’ll leave you with a Pam Wedgwood piece I recorded earlier. Enjoy!

Never Meet Your Heroes; You’ll Only Disappoint Them

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Earlier this month, I was in Edinburgh to review Company Wayne MacGregor’s production, Autobiography, for Bachtrack. This post isn’t about that. Rather, it’s about an incident that took place earlier that day, where I, by chance, got the opportunity to meet my favourite living children’s author, Theresa Breslin, at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

A little backstory. I’ve loved Theresa Breslin’s books since I was in primary school. I enjoyed the Dream Master series because it reminded me of E. Nesbit, Enid Blyton and Edgar Eager. Her book Remembrance taught me about pacifism during the First World War. I learned about how awful dyslexia was for children in the past from Whispers In the Graveyard. And, although Marcus Sedgewick is a writer I also enjoy, I’m still slightly disappointed that the Booktrust Teenage Prize opted for his book, My Swordhand Is Singing, over Breslin’s The Medici Seal…

(although, at least the Booktrust had the decency to choose a more than halfway decent book as its winner, unlike SOME competitions I could name *cough*Carnegie*cough*…seriously, Just In Case was the actual worst.)

My point is I’ve been a Theresa Breslin fan for a while, so when, a couple of years ago, I saw that she was signing books at the Edinburgh Book Festival on a day that I happened to be there, you’d have thought I’d jump at the opportunity to meet her and get a book signed. And, I almost did, I swear… but I chickened out. It felt too weird for a 20-odd year old to be standing in line alongside a bunch of kids to get a book signed by a children’s author.

And then I forever felt bad about not having met Theresa Breslin when I had the chance. I was even lamenting about it to one of my work colleagues less than a month ago.

But then, earlier this month, I was in Edinburgh for a Bachtrack review, and I had time to burn. So my best friend Calum and I went to the book festival, where Theresa Breslin, coincidentally, was signing books again. Would you hate me if I told you I almost chickened out a second time? I am, undoubtedly, my own worst enemy.

But I didn’t chicken out, because Calum was there and he convinced me to go through with it. I was still a little nervous, but I bought a copy of Spy for the Queen of Scots and waited in a fairly short line.

And, unsurprisingly, Theresa Breslin was super nice. She asked whether I’d been at the talk that she and Holly Webb had given earlier that day… which I hadn’t. I managed to babble something about just having seen she was signing books and that I’d really liked her when I was wee. I didn’t say that she was still one of my favourite authors and that the last time I read one of her books was this year. That would have been weird.

Spy For the Queen of Scots - dedicated page2 (3)
Look at the pretty title page!

The meeting was a blur. She signed and dedicated the book to me, and then it was over. I was in a slight state of shock for about fifteen minutes after the signing and I kept asking Calum whether it had gone okay and checking I hadn’t made a fool of myself. I think it’s the most fan-girly I’ve ever been in my entire life. (Oh my gosh, what would happen if I, in some weird turn of unlikely events, were to meet Julie Andrews?! Would I faint? Or cry? Or cry and then faint?!)

All things considered, although I was nervous, it could have gone a lot worse. And now I have a book signed by Theresa Breslin, which I am extremely ecstatic about! I’ve even wrapped the book in some laminate casing to keep it nice. And it was an awesome extra add-on to a fun day out with my friend and then a not-so-fun dance show in the evening. And two out of three ain’t bad – I count that as a really good day!

Piano Day… Apparently, it’s a Thing!

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So, I just learned that today is the 88th day of the year, which can only mean one thing… today is Piano Day! Celebratory glissandi all round!

In all seriousness, though, I’d never heard of the day until I saw it mentioned on the ABRSM Facebook page. Doesn’t surprise me that it exists, though. If earlier this month we observed Pi Day and in May we’ll get to celebrate Star Wars Day, then why not have a Piano Day on equally tenuous grounds? There are 88 keys on a standard piano, Piano Day falls on the 88th day of the year; it’s not like we were using the 29th of March for any OTHER purposes…

Besides, it gives me a good excuse for talking about a super cool and exciting piano-related thing that is going on in my life at the moment.

I’ve been working as a Cultural Assistant in museums and libraries in East Dunbartonshire since September. It was while I was on my first shift at the Lillie Art Gallery in Milngavie about a month ago that I met a lovely creative gentleman named Geoff Foord, who is a member of the Milngavie Art Club. More pertinently to this story, he is also a musician in a band, the Henry Ford Band, that he recently created with his friend, John Hendry.

We were small-talking at the front desk, and I mentioned that I play the piano. It was lovely to have a nice conversation on what was otherwise a fairly quiet weekday, but I didn’t expect anything grand to come of it.

Imagine my pleased surprise when, a few days ago, I received a very courteous email from Geoff, asking me whether I would like to play the piano to accompany the band on a few tracks of an album that they are recording! This isn’t like anything I have ever done before. Sure, I’ve accompanied live singing, both privately with friends for fun and more formally while at university, and I’ve recorded piano videos for YouTube using my phone, but to get the opportunity to play in a real recording studio for an established band would be a super amazing experience and, while undoubtedly will require work to make a good job of it, I expect it will also be a lot of fun.

Having talked to Geoff yesterday, it also transpires that, rather than being given sheet music to play from as I would have been used to, I will be given track demos to listen to and, with creative input from the band proper, will arrange an accompaniment around that. This will be a completely new playing adventure for me, but I think, also, it will be a very valuable experience and useful skill to learn and practise.

It’s still in the early stages, with regards to my participation, but I am really excited about this wonderful opportunity that has been offered to me. Provided everything goes well, and they like what I do, this will be great fun and really cool. I’m totally psyched!

If you like, you can have a wee listen to my current favourite song of theirs. I think it has a kind of Razorbills quality, which I really like:

The Henry Ford Band – Diet

“That’s a Quarter of a Century – Makes a Girl Think”

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So, it was my twenty-fifth birthday this week. Thanks to everyone who wished me happy birthday – in person and via social medias.
The title of this post comes from Marilyn Monroe’s character in Some Like It Hot, where she talks about getting married. For the record, I currently have no intention of getting married, I just like the out-of-context quote, so I used it.
Aaaaaanyway, I’ve been planning this comic strip since I started this new blog, so I really hope you like it.Birthday Blues Comic Strip - with text

The Curious Incident of the Lens in the Nighttime

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I want to tell you about my experience of using Nocturnal contact lenses. Although not the most fascinating subject in the world, I’m super infatuated with these new lenses, which (hopefully) will ensure that I will never have to wear glasses or daytime contact lenses for nearsightedness ever again.

The lenses are worn overnight, and during this time they flatten the front of the wearer’s eye, correcting the vision so that it’s basically 20/20. In the morning, the lenses are removed and the wearer can see perfectly without needing any corrective accessories during the day. (It sounds like witchcraft – awesome, convenient, slightly icky witchcraft.)

I find this lack of daytime vision-correction particularly fantastic because glasses are utterly infuriating. They steam up in sudden changes of temperature, and collect water droplets in the rain, both of which annoyingly obscure vision. Glasses are also really frustrating because they get pushed to a wonky angle when trying to lie down on your side to watch TV, use a laptop, or read. And don’t even get me started on trying to do exercise while wearing glasses – they get in the way, they’re uncomfortable, they can get knocked off, they are unreasonably irritating!

Regular contact lenses are considerably better than glasses, but I always found I was running out of lenses, and for me, they had a tendency to leave my eyes red, dry and sore after having worn them for a few days, which meant I was back to the irritation of glasses (mentioned, in excessive detail, above).

These Nocturnal lenses, however, are better still because in the interim between wearing them overnight, your eyes get an entire day to be out in the open, which means they don’t dry up as easily. You don’t have to worry about accidentally knocking out a lens if you rub your eye, and you never have to substitute a lens for glasses if they become uncomfortable during the day – because you’re not wearing anything (on your eyes)!

The Nocturnal lenses are also safer than laser eye surgery. Even if we discount the fact that any form of surgery comes with risks, the Nocturnal lenses also have the advantage that, unlike laser eye surgery, the process is completely reversible. So if, for some reason, the wearer decides they want to go back to using glasses to correct their vision, they merely need to stop using the Nocturnal lenses and their vision will deteriorate back to where it was when they started the process. (Why anyone would WANT to start using glasses again is utterly beyond me, but it’s nice to have the option, I guess?)

There are a few negative aspects to the Nocturnal lenses, as well. Firstly, the price. Although cheaper than laser eye surgery, in total the Nocturnal lens process costs £200 – that is, £50 for the fitting process and all subsequent aftercare appointments, and £150 for the lenses themselves. This is obviously a major expense, but from my perspective, if it can be afforded, it’s definitely worth the investment.

The only other aspect that is a potential turn off is that the Nocturnal lenses are “hard” lenses, which are considerably less comfortable than regular “soft” lenses that most people wear during the day. This means you CAN feel the lens when wearing them, however, within a few days I got used to the feeling, and the lenses are not uncomfortable when your eyes are closed – and, given they’re worn right when going to bed, closed eyes are kind of the natural state. They still allow you to see when your eyes are open; in fact, my optician, who has two young children, likes these lenses because they allow him to attend to the kids if they wake in the middle of the night without having to fumble for glasses.

On a personal note, being forced to maintain a regimented bedtime routine (with the lenses being inserted last thing before lying down to sleep) has actually really helped my sleeping patterns. Each night, I set up an audiobook to listen to on Audible and find it more comfortable to keep my eyes closed while listening. This means I get to sleep much faster than I would if I was more able to be distracted. It’s an unexpected additional bonus!

All in all, I am very happy with these Nocturnal lenses, and recommend them unreservedly (especially to those who loathe wearing glasses as much as I do). I hope this short description of my experiences is helpful to some people.

eye-spy
Eye Spy