shared threads

You know my mantra by now everyone- don’t go buying more stuff you don’t need, for yourself or anyone else! We have been dramatically scaling back on gifts of late, but this doesn’t mean we can’t still  spoil ourselves.

We’re buying less but buying better, trying to support local businesses and seeking out experiences to make the New Year brighter.

With that in mind, I am excited to say that some of my FAVOURITE places are offering a discount if you buy online.

Deja Vu on the Lisburn are kindly offering a 10% discount up until December 22nd, if you are looking a gift or seeking a ‘new to you’ outfit for the festive season. For those of you unfamiliar with the shop, Ruth sells excellent quality second-hand clothes, shoes and accessories, many of which are designer brands. Shopping here is one of my greatest pleasures, as to me, few other stores can compete for service and I always find something surprising and original on the rails. Use HELEN10 to avail of the discount online or you can mention me in-store.

Little Love NI is an Etsy shop run by my friend Emma, who is a member of my Shared Threads Group. Emma sews a range of items such as purses, blankets and festive decorations, all exquisitely finished and beautifully packaged. She uses Liberty fabrics and the vibe is cosy, classy and jam-packed with love. Emma is a self-confessed eco-nut and LOVES reusable products, so look no further for pretty snack and sandwich bags which can be used time and time again. Use the code HELEN10 to receive a 10% discount from her Etsy Shop. Offer only available though until DEC 10th when her online store closes for Christmas.

Now on to treatments and experiences…

Betty’s Place is my go-to if I want a massage. My preferred way of doing it is to book in later in the day so I can come home, slip straight into pjs, zen out and channel my inner sloth. Betty works intuitively with your body to zone in to wherever she deems needs it most. I find a session particularly good after a running event, as she incorporates stretching into her treatments which are a balm for my hips when they feel stiff and clunky. Between January and March you can enjoy a relaxing shiatsu massage, with floor work and stretches with a 20% discount using HELEN20.

Now listen up -this one is a game changer if you’re a woman of a certain age. Recently I booked three treatments with  Jo-Anne Colgan in Rosetta Acupuncture Clinic for trigger point and acupuncture. Now, some folk immediately dismiss acupuncture because they hate needles, but these aren’t needles as you know them, I would say filaments, less of a prick more of a tickle. Plus, once Jo-Anne popped them in, I wasn’t even aware of them, especially as I was lying in a warm room, listening to Tibetan music under a blanket. Bliss. She also worked on my troublesome neck and shoulders, and brought immediate relief. I’ve been telling all my friends to go, because she definitely performed some sorcery with my hormones. Jo-Anne is an anaesthetist, so the woman knows her way around a needle. The discount code HELEN10 entitles you to a 10% discount, and this also applies to E-gifts.

And finally, who doesn’t love a donkey at Christmas? (Or anytime?) Kindale Donkeys in Ballynahinch has brought us JOY over the years. The girls don’t feel it’s a holiday without a trip to see their mates down at the farm. And it’s not just for the littl’uns either, check out their page to see everything they offer. Use the code, (you’ve guessed it by now), HELEN10 for a 10% discount on any activities booked in December.

ALEXA TURN OFF! That’s what I’ve been yelling at half-past the hour, every hour, because at home we listen to Radio 6 Music a lot and that’s when they broadcast the news.

I can’t hear it anymore – I get all shaky and sweaty and to my considerable shame roar obscenities in front of the children and have to then apologise and claim that everything ‘is ok.’

Everything is not ok. Everything’s shite, and every morning upon waking, I wonder what fresh hell awaits. Are bombs going to continue to rain down on Gaza? Will Hamas release hostages? Will Egypt open borders and does anyone in the Gaza Strip even have anything to eat or drink? Then selfishly, I wonder how the destabilising of the area with impact the rest of us, and I fear a terror attack; a nuclear bomb; World War Three.

I’ve been drinking quite a bit of red wine. No, it hasn’t helped.

But, also this weekend, we had a coffee morning and sale at the Quaker Meeting House. We were raising money for Shared Threads, the charity which was the brain child of my friend Kirsty King. We make pads from towels and leftover fabric and send them to India, Uganda and most recently to The Gambia. Kirsty has set up links with NGOs to ensure that every pack is delivered with education, to reduce period stigma, and help girls get to school. But we need money to buy the waterproof material for the pads and clean pants for each pack. Postage is increasingly costly too, to send off the boxes, so it all mounts up.

I didn’t know how many people would come to the sale. We asked at the Chelsea Wine Bar if they’d let us pop up a sign as they’re at the corner, but they said no. A few other places said yes though, and Robert, the producer on the Frank Phone-In, let me announce it there too. Readers, we made £1200.

My friend traipsed up from the Ards Peninsula, another came from Greenisland and brought her family. Friends brought friends. Joy in our group must have some sort of industrial vat at home and she made ALL the jam to sell. Emma sews and had a stall of lovely things, and the Small Child and two pals paid for a stall to sell their bracelets. My friend Aileen said her child was more excited about the event than she’d ever been at Christmas. They’re great wee workers and talented too- I’m hoping they keep me in my dotage.

The Quakers. They’re a fine bunch of lads. The KINDNESS of them, allowing us to use their space, racing into the kitchen to help us wash up, baking us mountains of cakes and buns. And the light. The morning was grey and bleak and rainy and I thought ‘F**king  typical.’ Then the sun appeared, beaming into the hall and lit the light within me too and I felt better.

Brian from Boden Park Roastery gave us coffee for the day and some to sell. He wouldn’t take a penny.

I popped down to Corrymeela in the City tonight, because their posts on-line all week have been the only thing that have made sense to me, and brought comfort. One member spoke up and said something to the effect that life is hard and full of mess, and all we can do is make our way through it, with as much care for those around us as we can muster. It is horribly messy right now. But there is hope, and there is goodness, and thankfully in Northern Ireland, we don’t have to look far to find it.

Saturday Shout Out for ‘Shared Threads’

This week I’m on about periods. What’s that you say? Periods, really? Again? Well hell yes, because for once I’m not just whinging on about my own (and the flipping big massive nuisance that they are) but I’m chatting about my epic friend Kirsty King who founded the charity ‘Shared Threads’. Wait til I tell you: Kirsty is a SUPERSTAR. Initial impressions would lead you to believe that Kirsty is mild and unassuming. But not a bit of it- this woman has a core of steel and grit like you could never imagine.  When she learnt that millions of girls worldwide miss weeks of school every year because when they have periods, Kirsty decided that she couldn’t sit on her hands and do nothing. And so began ‘Shared Threads’- a collective of women AND MEN who make recyclable sanitary cloths and send them to India. This initiative is not just about giving girls their own bag of period  pads- it’s so much more than that. It’s telling them that they are valued; that they deserve respect and that there is no shame attached to their bodies, not during their periods or at any other time.

Here in Northern Ireland we don’t much like talking about periods. I know this because I talk about mine all the time. I find it’s quite a useful way of shutting down a conversation if it gets a bit tedious. People, especially men, move along swiftly when you mention PMT or a crampy tummy. The Mothership gets very irritated when I write about mine on the blog. I can almost guarantee that she will lift the phone sharpish to tell me that no one wants to hear about my menstrual cycle, or my mood swings. ‘Too much information!’ she will say.

So imagine growing up in a country where there is a huge stigma attached to the female body and its cycles. I don’t think I’d cope very well. In certain parts of India, periods remain a taboo subject and because many young girls have no access to pads they then miss out on going to school. This is why Kirsty joined forces with an NGO who distribute pads and provide information in areas where this is likely to occur, thus alleviating the confusion and anxiety felt by these girls.

On International Women’s Day I joined Kirsty at her workshop in Portview Trade Centre to see every stage of the making process and see how I could get involved. I have a great aversion to sewing machines as I am risk adverse and they require far too much concentration. Happily, for the likes of me there are other ways I could contribute and I was given the infinitely easier job of cutting up towels which form the absorbent part of the pad. I took a bag of towels home with me that day and cut them up over the course of a few evenings.

During Lockdown, work didn’t stop for Kirsty, as her team of volunteers continued to snip, stitch and sign hand-written notes, staying in contact and dropping off their handiwork at each other’s doorsteps. I asked her for a few more bags of towels and she gathered up some for me. Since then some of my friends have taken a few towels each and snipped away. It occurred to me then that we could to get together of an evening when it was safe to do so, and a jolly soirée was had. We called it a ‘Cutting Party’, which sounds like some sort of tribal ritual but just meant that a small group of us  sipped while we snipped at my table in the garden. I do love an activity- I think conversation flows (pardon the pun) better when your hands are busy.

Everything about Shared Threads excites me. I love how, with the exception of the PUL (a waterproof fabric that is used in the pads), everything is made from second-hand material. I love how by repurposing household items we are reducing waste, and by switching to cloth pads there is ultimately less plastic in the ocean. Over the last year I’ve been using a mixture of cloth pads and period pants and it makes me feel better that I’m contributing less to plastic pollution- especially in the throes of this pandemic when the PPE is flooding all our landfill sites, and ‘reusable’ doesn’t seem to be a thing anymore. (I’m not saying it isn’t necessary, just that it’s happening right now and if we could off-set it in any way then that would be good).

So I’d like to direct you over to Kirsty’s fabulous blog where you can learn all about her endeavours, see how you can help and perhaps even consider becoming a patron so she can keep doing this for as long as women need it. We need to put an end to period poverty, and this is one glorious way to go about it.

(I think what really makes these pictures is my banjaxed shed as a backdrop.)

Since it’s International Women’s Day I’m in the mood for chatting about periods. Aren’t they a right pain in the arse? I’ve been on about them before, but as a topic I don’t feel that they get enough air time. Presently, mine are being very annoying, arriving at the most inopportune moments. Take November, for example. We were headed down to Dublin to see Liam Gallagher, and as I’ve mentioned before, I think he’s a bit of a gobshite so I wasn’t overly looking forward to the gig. I was, however, excited about a night away minus  off-spring, and in a happy turn of events, Himself had actually downplayed The Spencer which turned out to be a plush establishment with Egyptian cotton sheets and mood lighting and velvet throws, just the thing for an unencumbered pair.  How jolly, thought I. Well, I wasn’t through the door til the period came on, with an almighty splosh and a whoosh, all over the shiny white bathroom tiles. How I wish I was exaggerating.  That fairly put paid to any shenanigans of an amorous nature, I can tell you.

Maybe it’s because I’m getting older, but they are becoming more irregular, heavier and as a result are having a desperate impact on my moods, as LSB would testify in a heartbeat. As soon as he hears pots and pans being clattered about in the kitchen; detects my inability to recollect the whereabouts of my purse, keys or mobile phone, or witnesses my uncharacteristic desire to clean, he knows the bastard is on its way.

The Mothership loves a good rant and rave about them too, ever since she visited the South of France in the 1960s.  All excited she was, about a swim in the warm and enticing Mediterranean, unlike the freezing Atlantic in Portstewart to which she was used. One solitary swim she got until the frigger arrived and spoilt her holiday. She was very young and innocent and hadn’t a notion about tampons, (feck they may not even have been invented back then) so she sat miserably by the water’s edge, watching as her friends frolicked about in the waves. I don’t think she’s over it yet, truth be told.

(Folks I’m telling you, the phone call I’m going to be taking later will be worth listening to, saying the like of that.)

But that’s what they do, periods. Spoil your happiness. Wreck your sex-life. Give you cramps and nausea. Oh, and now of course, we discover, they contribute hugely to plastic pollution. 11,000 sanitary products is what the average woman uses during her lifetime. That’s a wild statistic altogether, isn’t it? Imagine being a wee turtle, going about your way merrily, fins a-flapping, when along come a shoal of Always Ultra. Must be a powerful shock to the system altogether.

And the thing is, for anyone of my generation, having any other means of dealing with them is not immediately apparent. Until my 39^thyear, I’d never used anything other than a pad or a tampon. Then a couple of my friends mentioned using a moon cup. It took me a while to get my head round this, and it took me even longer trying to figure out how to get them in and out. It’s possible that the husband, at one point, may even have been enlisted to aid the removal of such an item, as I became familiar with the extrication process. I recall that on this, the most difficult of occasions, I tried to text friends from the bathroom for advice, but they just sent emojis of fishing rods and pairs of pliars. 35 minutes I recall I spent, trying to get the fecker out.

Happily, there was another solution which I found infinitely easier. My friend Kirsty is the founder of Shared Threads, an organisation which makes reusable pads from recycled cotton. Kirsty sends most of her products out to India, and has initiated visits to schools where she goes out, armed with her trusty supplies to educate young girls on how to manage their periods. On these trips she has also taken supplies into women’s prisons to deliver her bags of brightly coloured pads to help women without any sanitary items at all.

Today I went along to an open day at her studio in Portview Trade Centre on the Newtownards Road in Belfast. I’m familiar with this area for the wrong reasons: the congestion, the murals of paramilitary groups, and the towering bonfires which spring up mid-June. But under the sunflower yellow of Goliath, is Kirsty’s studio with a Root & Branch Coffee Shop tucked snuggly underneath. Bright sunshine lit the whitewashed walls and the fresh smell of coffee greeted us as we wandered in.

All around were women and children, cutting cloth and sewing pads from bright oddments of material. There was chat and biscuits and small boys playing with Lego and Rubix cubes. I brought my friend Alison, who swiftly took a pew, carefully snipping out patterns and chatting to the lady beside her. It was ever so convivial.

My kids quickly got in on the action, sketching patterns and cutting out and popping the odds and ends into bins.

God, it was gorgeous. As you know, I’m a miserable fecker. I love nothing more than a good auld bitch and a complain. But I love community more. It pleases me no end to see people coming together to share what ever skills they have in pursuit of a common good, for women who have a far more shite time than the rest of us. So if you have a moment, check out Shared Threads online and see what other projects Kirsty has coming up.

As for my periods, I’ve managed to make mine almost plastic free, between Kirsty’s pads and the occasional use of Yoni sanitary wear, I’ve given up on Always Ultra altogether. It’s a small change, but ultimately, I feel, a significant one. And by talking about this, it’s also a  brilliant way to break down barriers, because we stop making them something that we should ever feel embarrassed or awkward about. I’m starting more and more, at the age of 40, to appreciate my body, and what its been through, and what its created. If I do have a fecker of a period, and need to curl up in the sofa with a vat of tea and a bag of chocolate digestives while watching repeats of Sex and the City, well I’ll take that, thank you very much, and frankly, be quite glad of the excuse.

‘Am I going to be middle-aged?’ I ask LSB.

‘Are you thinking of buying a sports car?’ he replies.

‘No,’ I say, with conviction.

‘Well then, definitely not,’ he says.

(I hesitate to tell him there’s a white Audi TT for sale down the street).

On Tuesday I will be forty. Months ago there was talk of a party, but then I not only joined the PTA with my friend but the two of us decided to chair it. Since that error of judgement, neither of us has an interest in organising anything ever again. We are done with organising now. Last week there was a party, an anniversary dinner for our school in a local hotel. We hired ‘The Bandoliers’ and such was the vigorous dancing on my part, that I feared I may be suffering from whiplash the following morning. I wasn’t, but that didn’t stop me lying in bed until 1pm after the exertion of the evening.

This weekend has been calmer. On Saturday morning I took myself to a sewing workshop at Portview Trade Centre in East Belfast. My friend Kirsty has a studio there and was showing a few of us how to make a decorative hoop to hang on the wall. LSB knows that Kirsty makes reusable hygiene products for women in the developing world. Given that I’ve recently started using a menstrual cup, he misunderstands and thinks that the hoop is some sort of Earth Mother gynae device. (His words). He is relieved when I tell him it isn’t, and that his intervention won’t be needed to extract it.

(One day, when I am brave enough, I will write a post about my Tulip Cup experience. I am au fait with the process now, but it took a while.)

Back to sewing and my friend. Kirsty is a bit of a legend, and I’m not one for bandying words like ‘legend’ about. She has founded the charity Shared Threads which brings hope and education and dignity to those who have none. She’s just back from a trip to India, where she taught women in a prison how to sew sanitary pads themselves. She took the family with her too. ‘Most people take their kids to Disney Land’, she laughed on Saturday. ‘Mine looked for tiger poo in the jungle.’ I think her children will remember that trip with fondness. None of that ersatz saccharine shite for them.

Kirsty’s studio has a minimalist feel to it, and it’s airy and uncluttered. Two spider plants sit on the window sill, underneath which is a table with a rose gold lamp and an old Singer Sewing Machine. It’s a space which wills one to be creative and exhale.  The vibe makes me feel like I could actually get some work done here. There is a rose gold cafetière containing extremely good coffee.

Kirsty shows us how to embroider messages onto fabric which will be encased inside a wooden hoop. I am sitting beside a heavily tattooed man with a well-groomed beard. He sews impeccable stitches in blue thread onto a speckled linen cloth. I am in awe at his precision. We sip our coffee and work steadily, mindfully, and I am grateful for the calm. I didn’t know what message to sew on my hoop, but I settle on the words ‘Still I Rise’ from Maya Angelou’s gorgeous poem. It’s about feistiness and courage and resilience; attributes I need to hone. I’m tired and bewildered and a bit directionless at the moment. Still, anytime I read the poem it brings me joy and a profound sense of hope. The letters may be a bit wonky but I kind of like the fact that life is messy, but that’s all part of the fun, or at least the journey.

Later on Saturday, a crowd of us gather at some friends to celebrate their child’s birthday. The men opt to drive and drink non-alcoholic beer while us girls sip prosecco. There are cheeses and pastries; fresh fruits and cured meats and two types of home-baked cake. The kids shed their shoes and bounce and play and there is a warmth and conviviality which has me almost in tears. I grow steadily more emotionally incontinent as the years pass. I identify the feeling which threatens to overwhelm as gratitude. I am so grateful for the kindness and the steadiness and in particular, the irreverent humour of the people around me. I find life a bit tricky at times. But like the title of Ruth Fitzmaurice’s beautiful memoir, ‘I found my Tribe’,  I feel I’ve found mine. I’ve a few tribes actually, some of which overlap. They all help me rise in different ways; whether it’s rising to challenges or rising above some of the nonsense in life one has to face.  I’m thankful for every one of them.

Did you know, that if you dance (with mild to moderate exuberance) to Arcade Fire’s ‘Here comes the Night Time’, that you can accrue 750 steps on your Fitbit, AND feel much sprightlier than you do before? Well, you know now, and if there’s ever been a time to boost the endorphins then this might be it. I’ll tell you how I came by this statistic. In the dark gloom of December, I trotted into Kaffe O for a latte and spoke to my favourite barista. She’s always smiley, radiating bonhomie, even when there’s a long queue. She manages this without ever being annoying, which is how I find most excessively positive people. ‘Tell me,’ I asked her. ‘How do you stay so upbeat?’ She puts it down to starting the day with yoga followed by a spot of dancing. Every. Single. Morning. I found this astounding, especially since she often has to wake at 5.30 if she has to open the shop. The very thought of that gives me the dry bokes. Dawn, in winter. I’d say there’s not a bit of need for it but then we all need coffee. ‘I’m going to take to the dancing,’ I told her, but if course I didn’t.

Fast forward three months and f**k me, but if I ever needed cheering up it’s been March 22. Everyone had Covid, bar me, so I still had to go to work. School was relentless. I had writing deadlines due, and then the cat started taking a shite in the living room again, just for kicks. Yep, I was floundering.

Inevitably, I wasn’t looking after myself either, rushing hither and thither, fuelled on caffeine and caramel squares, lashing the merlot into myself of an evening when all was dank and bleak. My work clothes were becoming as strained as my temper. I finally thought the barista might be onto something, and I roused my groggy self to get up early and cavort about a bit. Turns out, if the tunes are good enough, you can get into it rightly. It felt like a small win to be heading to work with over 1000 steps done, and the cheery thought that for four and a half minutes I had shut everything else out and danced in the kitchen. In an effort to improve my saggy arms I even danced with a 400g tin of butter beans in one hand and tinned pear halves in the other. LSB wondered if I was planning an odd sort of breakfast when he came down to put the coffee on. ‘Nope,’ says I, ‘it was just for the dancing.’ He nodded and said nothing, (sometimes that’s for the best).

Dancing isn’t going to solve the war in Ukraine, or help you wade mark coursework. It won’t magic away your anxiety, but it will give you a boost. But even in the midst of upheaval it you can find fleeting moments of joy. Recently I turned to Anne Lamott again, as I do when I need encouragement. I also reached out to a very wise and kind friends. Their advice was the same; havng a genuine interest in helping others, whether by making donations or volunteering will help you grapple your way out of the mire. That all sounds very righteous, and I don’t mean it to. But you can’t help anyone or be there for your family if you feel rotten.

Courtney Barnett sings, I’m having trouble breathing in,’ which sounds like the anthem of our times. But if you starve yourself of joy, as I was doing, it does no one any good. LSB was sick looking at me going about, with all the zest and vigour of a constipated goat. He did, in a fit of optimism, reference a certain survey I was talking about with Frank a couple of weeks ago, that suggested ‘getting intimate’ five times a week in a bit to keep stress levels down and relationships afloat. Bless him; it’s good to dream.