What’s on your summer reading list?

I read quite a lot, although unless its non-fiction for self improvement or role related, I tend to stick within the same genre of historical fiction. Most particularly Tudor related. The trouble with having such a niche category is I have read most of what is available.

I am just finishing up Alison Weir’s sixth part of Henry VIII wives, Katherine Parr. I have even read her short ebooks that accompany the series.

Next in line in that genre are two books from Nicola Cornick, an author I’ve not read before but taking a punt based on a podcast recommendation.

After that I fancy something different. Something that will make me laugh out loud and feel good. Listening to a couple of podcasts recently has provided some inspiration.

First off was Women of a Certain Rage by George Hall. Amazon reviews say it is “fierce, brilliant, honest and very funny”. A story about a wife who wants to shake up her life after years in a dull marriage and being written off at the age of 50. Unfortunately none of our local books stores have it so I’ve downloaded.

I’d much prefer downloading anyway but I have a ridiculous amount of book vouchers that can’t be used on line so I have to spend them in the shop. That means having to buy physical books that I don’t really want laying around the house, just to use them up.

Anyway, the second recommendation was by Ruby Wax “And Now for the Good News”. An uplifting read about the modern world and finding the positivity amongst the mayhem.

And third on the list was “More Than a Woman” by Caitlin Moran. Billed as a hysterical memoire of a middle aged woman, a manifesto for change and celebration of middle aged women trying to juggle work, home, teenage kids, aging parents and everything in between.

I sincerely hope these books live up to their hype. Let me know if you’ve read them and whether they did or not.

A pile, a shelf or a library?

I have spent most of this past week researching, hearing about, coming across, or just finding a number of books that have piqued my interest. I mentioned the other day about hearing of a new author (to me anyway) and fiction novels she’d written set in Tudor times. Then I came across an article in my LinkedIn feed of self help books that apparently we’d want to be seen reading. Then there’s the book that completes a series I have that had just been published and Amazon delivered my preordained copy of.

I have plenty of book vouchers to use up otherwise I would have ordinarily downloaded these onto my tablet. So I decided to go to the bookshops in town to get shot of these vouchers. Seems like the shops aren’t so keen.

Having gone into one well known High Street bookstore that I had a specific voucher for, I had the author and titles of the books written down. I couldn’t find the two by Nicola Cornick that I’d heard about in a podcast, but surprisingly did find the self help book with the slightly rude title. When I went to pay for that book I asked if they had the others in at all and maybe I just couldn’t see them. The shop assistant said “no we don’t have those“. Then just took the voucher, rung up the one book and gave me my receipt and told me how much was left on the voucher.

I went to the next very well known High Street bookstore and looked on the shelves and couldn’t find the Cornick books there either. Again I went to the assistant and asked. This time I was told “no we don’t have those in but I could order then for you and they’d be here in a couple of days“. Yes please that would be great. Details exchanged and I await a message when they’ve arrived. Pay on collection.

Now, I’m sure the first bookstore could also have offered to order them in, but as they didn’t offer I took my custom elsewhere.

This does now mean that I have five books waiting to be read. And still a lot of money left on the vouchers. Just need enough down time to sit and read them.

New Author (to me anyway)

I’m very picky about my pleasure reading. I really only tend to read historical fiction and even then only really Tudor period. It does make it quite difficult to find new books to read.

I was catching up with one of my podcasts Tudor Dynasties, when out on my lunchtime walk and the host was interviewing Nicola Cornick. Nicola has written fiction based on other, lesser known Tudor ladies, with a lot of artistic licence it has to be said.

The Phantom Tree is the story of Mary Seymour, daughter of the playboy Thomas and Dowager Queen Katherine Parr. Mary’s story is a bit of a mystery as after the Queen died and Thomas was executed, she was farmed out to an unsympathetic aunt who didn’t want her. The real life mystery is that there are no records of what happened to Mary. Did she grow to adulthood? What would life have been like for her? The story hypothesises.

Cornick’s second novel The Forgotten Sister is about the life of Amy Robsart, the feted wife of Elizabeth I’s favourite Robert Dudley.

Both novels are dual time period mysteries. There are parallel stories running through them and they don’t necessarily answer the burning questions…what happened to Mary? and did Amy fall or was she pushed?

Both ladies are little known in their own right and usually only a reference to the stories of the men in their lives. The podcast conversation was interesting and has piqued my interest enough to consider purchasing one, if not both books. I have about £75 of book vouchers to use up, that I have to use in a bookshop, although I would have preferred a Kindle version to download.

The Instant Gratification Monkey

I was reading an online article from Tim Urban, who studied why procrastinators procrastinate. He possets that they can’t help it. In their brain the procrastinator has the Rational Decision Maker who steadily guides the mind in to doing what needs to be done, and then there’s the Instant Gratification Monkey who sideswipes things and sends the mind off wandering for some instant satisfaction for information or other, that takes us away from our steady path.

The Instant Gratification Monkey takes us off to play in what Urban calls the Dark Playground, that space where all the fun, new, shiny things hang out that distract us from what we should be doing. In the back of our minds though is this constant feeling of anxiety or regret for that looming deadline or that thing that we’ve been working towards for ages. When that deadline approaches though, it’s time for a visit from the Panic Monster who scares us away from the Dark Playground back in to a sense of productivity to get things done.

Urban offers three steps to turn procrastination into motivation:

recognise that you are procrastinating. Being aware of something is usually the first step in resolving it.
Understand the reason for the procrastination. Is it the task itself, or is it you? Is it that you aren’t enjoying it, not qualified for it, or feeling overwhelmed by it?
Set objectives, tactics and rewards. Depending on the reason for the procrastination in the first place it might be as simple as having a to do list if you’re feeling overwhelmed, or someone that holds you to account, or if you promise yourself a treat if you get that thing done.

There are times that I procrastinate. It’s not usually because I don’t want to do something, more that I don’t want to do that particular thing right now. I will send that email out but after I’ve watched this episode of that tv programme I like. I will write that report just as soon as I’ve finished making lunch. I will learn how to ring handbells properly, just as soon as I’ve written that report and sent that email. Sometimes it can become a vicious cycle.

Other days, I can blast through even the most boring, or painful task without so much as a second thought. It’s about the frame of mind that I’m in. Sometimes, I find being in a particular place, or with particular people helps galvanise me into action. Sometimes I just wake up and tell myself that today I’m going to power on through all that stuff and clear my to do list.

Today has definitely been one of the latter type of days. I’ve finished the first draft of a strategy document. I’ve documented a framework that I invented that supports that strategy. I’ve been for a power walk. I’ve read the next section on learning to ring handbells and had a few goes at it. My Rational Decision Maker was in charge today.

I wonder if that means tomorrow I’ll be all out of juice and my Instant Gratification Monkey will be running the show.

Budding growth

As Public Relations Officer for both my local #bellringing Association and for the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers I’m always on the lookout for ways to get our messages out there and increase awareness of what we do.

I was reading an article online the other day about growing followership and there were two amazingly simple tips that could make a world of difference.

Include a sign-up link in your email signature. So, my emails signatures for both now carry not only a link to our website, but also to our social media pages, and for the Central Council a link to our mailing list sign up page. That was easy. My signature is now quite large, but I hope it will draw people I correspond with to find out more about us.
Include a “forward to a friend” link on each page/article on the website. As it happened, we had a local Association Comms team meeting last night and I mentioned it. I have no idea how complicated it is to set up or not, but before the evening was out, our Webmaster had added a link in the footer of our website and emailed me to test it. I clicked on the link, up popped a blank email with a link to the relevant page ready for me to forward to anyone I might think would be interested. I’ve also sent a request for a similar link on the Central Council website. Hopefully, it will be just as easy.

Two simple tips that have potential to increase awareness, get more engagement with our social media and spread the word.

It was also quite good fun having a look at some of the analytics from our website for quarter 1, again appealing to my inner nerd. There needs to be a bit more work on extracting relevant ones and interpreting them into meaningful data, but given that we only set it running recently, it will be great to track hits to the website during promotional campaigns. I can get the analytics from our social media sites and its all encouraging.

Top tips

I’m on LinkedIn, the professional network on the internet that allows you to connect and strengthen professional relationships and learn new skills. You can follow organisations and groups in much the same was a Facebook and Twitter and other social media sites.

One of the groups that I follow for interest and to support #bellringing activities, rather than work related, is about Public Relations and in particular this group focuses on internal communications. In fact its called The Institute of Internal Communication. Each week a contributor called Carole Searwert, a copywriter and newsletter writer posts an article called Top Tips Tuesday which gives you some pointers that you might find useful. Admittedly, most of it relates to the business world rather than the small, social charity, activity type world, but occasionally there’s something that make sense.

This week’s top tips were all about How to Grow Your Newsletter List. In the #bellringing community, we tend to use newsletters quite a lot to keep in touch with our ringers, let them know what’s going on and what’s been coming up. We have them at all levels. Some districts do their own. Most association’s probably have one. The Central Council of Church Bellringers (CCCBR) and the Association of Ringing Teachers (ART) are currently issuing a joint one on survival and recovery strategies. ART have two of their own, Tower Talk and ART Works for slightly different audiences.

Most newsletters are usually quite well done. Lots of uplifting news and case studies, information that may help, updates on what’s been going on and useful contacts or diary information. Hopefully they come with lots of bright shiny photos too. Invariably these days they come in digital format, but some are still produced in paper, and some are both.

I contribute to many a newsletter and have at some time or other been featured in all of the above. But how do we know whether what we produce gets read? How can we increase our readership?

The article offers 10 suggestions, some of which are business orientated, but the things that I picked up that might be useful in a #bellringing newsletter context were:

Offering an interesting “lead magnet” as a sign up incentive. Now, this relates particularly to getting new business sign ups, however, the suggestions offered actually could form part of your regular newsletter offering e.g. “how to tips”, a cheat-sheet (in our case maybe an article that explains a particular method like the way I learned Double Norwich Court Bob Major as first, treble bob, last, near, full, far) accompanied by some diagrams.
Include a sign up link in your email signature. This I thought was interesting mainly from a Central Council perspective and I shall be offering it up to see if it works.
Add a “forward to a friend” button (obviously for digital newsletters). Again, I’m thinking Central Council and local Association websites News Page at the bottom of every article so that if someone likes it and thinks that a friend ought to read it, they can easily forward the link.
Promote your newsletter on your social media to raise awareness. Sounds a bit obvious but do we actually do it? Probably not consistently.

A two minute read at lunch time has now just turned into an evening’s work to see if it’s feasible.

That was the week (or 2) that was

The end of my 2 weeks annual leave has arrived. Monday morning sees the return to the office. Have I had a good holiday? Do I feel relaxed and rejuvenated?

Yes, I’ve had a good couple of weeks off, considering. I don’t particularly feel relaxed or rejuvenated thought. But I suspect that’s to do with the fact that we’re in lockdown and we can’t go anywhere or do anything or see anyone.

If we have been able to do things, I might have felt more energised. As it was, I spent most of the week not venturing far from home.

The first week I took the opportunity to undertake an online Mindfulness course. This was quite interesting and useful, but not something that I’ve suddenly found enlightenment from. It did give me some focus for a few days.

I had 7 virtual #bellringing sessions during the fortnight, some which I ran. I watched a funeral online. I attended 4 meetings and 1 virtual dinner. In between, I did some reading, played some games on my tablet and celebrated my 50^th birthday, lockdown stylee.

I did spend some time, quite purposefully, doing not a lot. C still did all the housework and cooking.

This sort of gave me an insight to what life might be like at a time when I could give up paid work completely. However, if that was the case, things would happen very differently. I would see a fair distribution of household labour. I would also probably do some form of exercise, whether down the gym or online stuff at home, or more walking at least. I would definitely do more baking and cooking. I do miss that a little bit.

I’ve had a good couple of weeks off and enjoyed not having to get up early and go to an office and get grief all day. I’m sure that feeling will be short lived when I open the office door.

50 Ways to Enjoy Turning Fifty

My sister bought me this book for my birthday last week. I thought I’d better take more than a cursory look at it. It claims to have 50 ways to make this the best year EVER. The book is set out in chapters based on making the most of turning 50, planning the best year EVER, implementing the plan, treating yourself well, having fun, looking back, looking within, expressing gratitude, putting things in order, eliminating what you don’t need, giving and looking forward.

Each chapter has key questions to help you analyse yourself and figure how to make the most of turning 50, thought experiences to delve a little deeper and activities to do. It does say that you can dip in and out of the book, fast forward to the bits that most interest you and so on but being a pedant, I started at the beginning.

Way #1 Accept your age.

Thought experiment 1 asks you to make a list of people you admire who are over fifty and who are living terrific lives and make a note of what you admire about how this person is living their life. OK, so first thing is to think of people over 50 who I admire.

I’m not going to list them all here because some of them might read this and either be embarrassed or disagree. I’ve written each of them in the book. Suffice to say that it includes C, my parents and siblings, a few former work colleagues, and some ringers I know. In some cases, I admire what they have achieved over adversity. In others I admire what they’re currently doing with their lives, and if I’m honest, I’m probably a bit jealous of. Some I admire because I wish I were more like them.

The key questions were what are some benefits of turning 50? and What are you looking forward to this year?

I guess benefits might include being that little bit wiser sometimes. Having more opportunities to reflect on what I want out of life and trying to achieve a better work/life balance. Nearer to retirement age (although still some considerable way to go). Looking forward to getting to see R again. This year has been an exception and we haven’t been able to spend time together, so as soon as we can we’ll do that. Can plan for the trip that we should have had for my 50^th birthday.

Thought experiment 2: what concerns do you have about turning fifty? What challenges are you experiencing or expecting? Which of those can’t you change? What constructive actions can you take regarding that item?

I’m not really bothered about turning 50. It’s just a number. I guess ill health, or my level of unfitness is probably going to be an issue at some point. I’m feeling less tolerant of other people, which I need to reign in a bit sometimes and there are other things that I’d rather be doing with my time but have to work instead. I can’t change that for a few more years yet unless something amazing comes up, like winning the lottery.

Every day’s a school day

It seems like it at the moment anyway. Between doing my online mindfulness course, which has really challenged some thoughts and feelings, and learning methods for virtual #bellringing in Ringing Room sessions, of which I had 4 this week.

The first #bellringing session was a district practice which I didn’t need to learn anything new for but the session that I run on Thursdays we’re consolidating methods that we’ve been learning for February. Some of those methods are repeated at a Friday morning session but sometimes something different. Then every other Friday there’s another session that changes methods every time. This week I needed to learn Newcastle and Alnwick Surprise Minor. And in 2 weeks’ time, we’re aiming for London and Wells Surprise Minor, and I set new methods for our Thursday session at the beginning of the month.

Some of these methods I’ve never even looked at, always thinking they are beyond my capability but with the advent of Ringing Room, have been able to ring things that I wouldn’t normally get to ring in any of the towers that I would normally frequent.

Learning to ring takes time, even just the basics of handling a bell on your own, then you need to join in with others and make a meaningful sound. Then you can move on to the more complicated stuff, but that tends to depend on others a bit more, as you can only ring to the standard of the most novice ringer in the band. However, learning skills that require longer term commitment can be rewarding and stimulating for the brain.

A quick internet search shows that there are a multitude of sites that promote learning something new, from new skills, to new languages, to cooking and baking, knitting and creating videos. I’ve always found learning something new to be rewarding. It doesn’t necessarily make me an expert in it but it gives me better understanding, better skills, better adjustment and a wider range of things to do.

Having just completed the 6 week mindfulness course, I’m now looking around the site to find the next thing to dive into.

The holy trinity

Its by no coincidence that my blog site is called Bells, Bakes & Bettering Myself. Today I got to do all three. The holy trinity. The hatrick. Whatever you want to call it.

This morning was spent with friends and family in Ringing Room, the virtual #bellringing platform. A group of us from Essex, North Lincolnshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire were able to ring together, have a good natter and make some progress in our learning. Bells part 1. Tick.

Early afternoon was taken up by decorating a cake for me and hublet for valentines day. Now, I need to fess up and admit that I didn’t actually make the cake, I only decorated it. A fantastic website called Sweet Success Cakes https://cccbr.org.uk/2021/02/10/the-survival-and-recovery-toolbox-issue-3/ can ship you ready make cakes in any size and different shapes and flavours you like. I’d already decided that I’m going to make myself a cake for my birthday next week and was looking at the site for some inspiration. They were offering 4 x 4 inch cakes, chocolate, red velvet, lemon and plain for £10. No brainer. Therefore, I decided that I would use one for valentines day, 2 for my birthday and have an extra tall cake and the other one for his birthday. I’ll have a rethink when it comes to our anniversary. All of these dates happen within a month of each other. The cakes can be frozen and defrosted when you need them so that’s handy. Cake done, although I suppose not technically baking but… Bakes. Tick.

Then came a meeting with some members of the Central Council and The Big Ideas Company, an organisation we’ve worked with before on major #bellringing projects. We were kicking around some new ideas for regenerating ringing when we can return post Covid. Bells part 2. Tick.

Then there was a little slot available until dinnertime to do a bit of research. I’m currently doing a free online course about mindfulness and wellbeing. See yesterday’s blog for how that went. The course does require you to do some independent learning so I was having a look about for scholarly articles on the science of mindfulness. Turns out there’s quite a few. I’ve pulled off a few that I think might be interesting. Bettering Myself. Tick.

Bells, Bakes and Bettering Myself. Does what it says on the tin.