Vann-tastic

The Vann Clan has just expanded in a spectacularly wonderful and amazing way: world, meet Josiah Daniel, new member of the human race. 30 hours after hearing my sister-in-law had gone into labour we still had no news and so my folks and I decided to drive down south to the hospital to counter our feeling of inertia...we arrived just in time to see my brother walking out of the delivery ward, dazed and beaming at his newly-acquired status of 'dad'.

I am so, so grateful for the timing and the privilege of being the first to congratulate my brother, and to meet Josiah in his first hours in the world. Now I have to tell you, a bunch of friends and acquaintances have had babies and I find all of it very cute and heartwarming - I also have 2 awesome nephews who are older, but living overseas means I have sadly only met them a handful of times and didn't get to see them brand new. It's been fun watching people in my life grow their families, but something seriously hit home when I met Josiah. I felt something warm and deep shifting in my heart and even now I find myself regularly overcome with emotion about this new little person in the world.

Now I know what you're thinking - most people will put that down to broodiness, but I don't think it's quite that. I still have not reached the point in my practical or emotional life where I want to push one of these bad boys out myself, but this is the first time I've felt such a visceral connection to the whole process of creating new life. I've never seen a newborn, and I was floored at how perfect he is! A little perfectly formed person, ready to roll. I've never understood new life as a miracle more clearly than I did meeting him.

I think mostly I feel connected to the experience in part because Dave and Laura have been on a very long and and emotionally draining journey in trying to have a baby, and in part because Josiah is family - he's one of us, I'm connected to him and by extension feel responsible for him. As such, I'm determined to be his best aunt ever - I'm already hatching plans to teach him practical jokes to play on his mum and dad and take him rock climbing...

Blog-readers and facebook followers, prepare yourselves. I am seriously in love with this little dude and you can expect much gushing, picture-taking and sighing about him for many, many months to come. :)

Diving for Dosh

I've mentioned a few times in previous posts how much I'm enjoying my final MA placement with the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, so I'll make this post snappy. They are a national charity that provide counseling and medico-legal reports for survivors of torture and my time there so far has been eye-opening and challenging in many ways. The counsellors are extremely dedicated - most of them volunteers - and they work with clients often for years to help heal broken minds, broken bodies and broken spirits that have resulted from experiences of torture. I really believe in my colleagues and in the work that MF does and as such I'm taking part in a skydive on June 19th to help raise awareness of and money for the Medical Foundation to continue their amazing work.

Now that your awareness has been raised by reading this blog post, all I need is your money! Even £1 will help toward our goal and will be extremely gratefully appreciated by the whole team. And I promise I won't think you're stingy. Just click and donate!

www.justgiving.com/divefordosh

Being a participator

I love how when you get to know someone really well, you not only get to understand what makes them tick and what gets them fired up, but it rubs off on you and you start to get a taste for those things too. One thing I've been learning from Andy is how amazing, inspiring and often moving collective experiences can be. Andy gets such as buzz from creative, well-executed group experiences and the unique atmosphere that is generated in bringing people together on a big scale for a common purpose. He loves live shows, theatre, festivals, interactive public art, etc.

In the past month I've been having a LOT of fun participating in some collective experiences; each time it has been at a friend's suggestion and while I might not have (let's be honest) been proactive enough to bother getting involved off my own back, I am really not regretting saying yes to stuff that comes my way. Some highlights:

1. Games night at Tate Britain. That's right. My good pal Liz clocked the event and so we went down and stumbled into a crazy world of interactive fun for the evening! The gallery was open super late and the entire place was filled with group games: treasure hunts, parlour games, virtual reality sets, and the world's biggest pass-the-parcel, you name it. People of all ages were running around with balloons, fake moustaches, instruments...awesome.

2. Tweed Run. Less of a run, more of a cycle ride. Around London. In tweed. This was without a doubt one of the most fun days I have ever spent and it still brings a smile to my face just thinking about it. My friend Keith gave the heads up this time and we joined 400 others all dressed in tweed with flat caps, pipes, amazing facial hair, vintage bikes, etc for a 12 mile cycle around the best bits of central London. The sun was shining, and the atmosphere was simply wonderful - there was such a feeling of good will and jolly good fun about the whole thing. Strangers bonded over tips on moustache trimming, tea and sandwiches were served in the park, and the whole event ended with a good old knees-up with (free!) gin and tonic and a swing band. As if the day couldn't get any better, I even won an award for my moustache!

3. Spencer Tunick's 'Everyday People', Manchester. The artist known for his photographs of large groups of nude people was in Manchester this weekend and yours truly went along with some good pals and 500 others to get naked for the sake of public art. Organised by the Lowry and with the concept of recreating the themes of some of Lowry's paintings, we spent the (very early hours of the) morning in several locations in Manchester posing for Tunick. It was certainly a surreal (and sometimes chilly) experience, but totally magical and fun. Highlights included being serenaded by a drunk homeless man who must have thought he was hallucinating at coming around the corner to 500 naked people! Unperturbed, he approached one man and asked, "have you got any change?" :)

Hopefully 2010 will see me continuing to be more of a participator.

Long over-due updates!

I've been so slack at updating this thing...not for lack of things going on, probably more because there's been a lot happening! Stand by for a flurry of postings to bring you up to speed.

Let's start with a quick update: It's May. MAY!! How did that happen? Into month 5 of 2010 I can safely say that year is already shaping up to be so much better than the last. Andy and I are both working hard but also devoting as much time as possible to playing and dreaming and I'm loving that. I'm coming into my last weeks at the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture and still loving it. Working here has stretched my mind and heart and I'm really hoping to find work with asylum seekers and refugees once I finish my MA; I might save ruminations on this topic for another post. I'll talk your ear off if you're interested :)

We're both now job-hunting; while my MA doesn't finish until I hand in my dissertation in September, I'm looking for work once my placement is done and Andy is looking to use the financial freedom that might bring to leave Liverpool (hoorah!) and find more creative, fulfilling work - ideally in the city in which he lives for a change. Exciting times!

Come summer our lives are a blank canvas - it's kind of surreal but kind of exciting. We're open to moving to the bright lights and faster pace of London if there's interesting work there, but likewise open to getting jobs here in Manchester and rooting ourselves here for a while longer. Over the past few months we've simultaneously talked ourselves into a state of excitement about the idea of moving to London for a few fun and crazy years, and at the same come to understand what an awesome set of friends we have here in Manchester, not something we want to leave lightly.

All in all, it feels like we're in a good place. We're both working really hard but with an energy and an excitement about what is around the corner, most of it as yet unknown. So far I'm honouring my intentions to have 2010 be a year for living - I've been having some extremely fun adventures involving tweed, bicycles, fake moustaches and nude public art and have a skydive coming up next month...more on all that in following posts.