venta

Hurrah, we have the internet back! Someone had sliced through a critical cable, and Virgin Media Man has now, I dunno, knotted it back together or something. Expect a volley of blog posts, as various rough drafts from the last fortnight come out...

At the beginning of September, I went away for the weekend with my occasional dance team, Boojum.

Note for new(ish) readers: I do a form of traditional English folk-dancing called rapper. It looks a bit like this. It's from the north-east, and no one has ever heard of it. It involves short, bendy strips of metal which we (inaccurately) call swords, and usually happens in pubs. I belong to a team called Mabel Gubbins, based in Oxfordshire. Since Boojum formed in 2001 - of people scatted from Newcastle to Canterbury - I've also danced with them.

Boojum have always gone in for meeting up at odd times, in odd places, dancing wherever anyone would have us. We've had a lot of fun. But... we've decided to call it quits.

( We've travelled the country for pleasure )

So, as referenced a few times in recent posts, I went to take part in the carnival run by La Lachera di Rocca Grimalda. I followed the Questua (which translates, apparently, as approximately "the Quest"). I did not, as I claimed, follow a Questura (which translates as "police station"). Italian is not my strong suit.

So, Friday...

( Travelling there... )

Incidentally, if anyone fancies a break in rural North Italy I can't recommend Cascina Maddalena highly enough. Bed-and-breakfast-and-vineyard, it has beautiful, simple rooms, the most amazingly hospitable and helpful hostess I've ever encountered, and gorgeous views of mountains.

( Sausage bunting. Confusion. Wine. )

(I apologise for the lack of pictures - I'm so unbearably old-school that my photos are still trapped on those little celluloid roll things.)

This weekend, it was off to North Shields (read: Newcastle) for a meeting of my occasional rapper team, Boojum. It's a long drive - allowing for a short stop at Services, and a mild pause while I picked Angi up on the way, it was pretty much six hours door to door (the doors in question being my work's door, in Reading, and Jean's door in Shields).

( My friends in the north )

( Kites )

Thanks to zandev for suggesting the subject line.