Food Glorious Food

My workshop: Kids, Clay, Cabbages and Corn

I've got  a confession to start this post with. I have simply not got around to logging anything on the myfitnesspal website since I was eating local delectable dishes at the Firenze ceramics festival. I have to admit that for me, at the moment, it's just one more thing to remember to do in a pretty busy day, which can include anything from making soup, to running workshops, to sourcing a replacement washing machine for the one that blew up.   Now you may think this is just a complete lack of dedication to fitness, and you may be right. I've realised already that I'm not a dieting kind of woman. However, my first challenge to myself was to get back on my bike and have a stab at upping my metabolism. One thing at once I thought. 

Fabric Printing with Anna Read

In the short time since I've been 

reintroducing myself to bike riding, I have discovered that biking folk fall into several categories:1) Die hard bikers who are very fit, generally environmentally committed and encouraging, but fail to see the huge leap from where I am now to where they are. (So are rather matter of fact about my gargantuan four-miles-each way efforts.)2) Super Bikers who have all the luminous lycra gear and are really all about having the right bike/helemet/outfit and who race up vertical surfaces at the drop of a protective hat. (another species)3) People who are fair weather bikers, who store their bike in a purpose build narrow shed and get it out at the weekend to take to the rural cycle paths. (They often lead a russian doll set of smaller bikes with wobbly children on them) 4) Average folk who have biked for years, will never win races but who can readily advise on the right kind of bike lock and the merits of baskets and panniers for getting around with a pile of work related articles and books, and where to buy your optimum (quick releasing) bike lights.  

David Otterson's wooden fruit selection
Alan Bulmer's painting at Gallery TS1

I met members of all those categories in that first week and I'm sure there are more. However I don't fit into any of them. Ten minutes up my local back roads and my heart is pumping. I wear whatever I have to hand. I'm not brave enough to set off in the rain in a pair of shorts and a topshop vest and get changed at my destination. I have acquired, through the gifts of people who don't ride, and therefore have no  use for them,  a fetching helmet and de rigeur reflective jacket. No lights though, and as yet, no lock. So I'm confining my adventures to the hours of daylight, and I only go places where I can stash 'her' behind a locked door.  

'Fruit' felt picture by LarchField Craft
at Gallery TS1

Within twelve hours of being back in Middlesbrough I was on that bike and cautiously picking my way up Linthorpe Road to Gallery TS1. The two big surprises of my first day were: A) A builders' wagon driver, who not only stopped pulling out of his parking spot to let me past, but used his own mirrors to check the way was clear for me and signal reassurance.  Gratifying; maybe he has the keen awareness of a father of enthusiastic kids who are newly venturing out on their bikes into the mayhem of the modern urban road system.  The second surprise, nay, utter shock, was B) The ambulance driver, who waited till he was immediately behind my line of vision in a stream of tea time traffic, before he turned on his siren, causing me to leap virtually out of my saddle and screech in horror, to the loud amusement of the smartarse in the car coming the other way.  I'm still pondering on making a formal complaint. Maybe they were short of RTA patients that day.

Anyway, with a combo of bravely biking with a backpack, and borrowing my brother's furniture restoration van to shift the heavy and awkward equipment, I managed to co-ordinate and hang an exhibition at the gallery, and the first gig of The Secret Artists' Company CIC from the saddle as it were! The annual Middlesbrough Town Meal, an extravaganza of local produce and healthy eating was the scene of our arts workshops, and the inspiration for an exhibition of local artists' work on the theme of Food Glorious Food. So in this atmosphere of food awareness and eating healthy soup, I forgave myself for not logging calories. Maybe next week!

 

Wren Miller's Healthy Still Life trolley
inspiring on the spot paintings & healthy eating