venta

Aye up. It's festival season already...

( Wales Goes Pop! )

( Tomorrow's Ghosts )

So, once upon a time I used to write stuff here about what I did. Which is useful, because I have an increasingly terrible memory.

This summer I have done many things that have not got written. I confidently predict that in about five years time there will be some form of argument in my household about what bands we saw at Indietracks in July, and I will have no record to back up my claims.

I will attempt - successfully or not - to remedy that, but in the interim, I think we better pick up with the now.

( Weekend Miscellany )

The story begins at Day 1. The short version: I fell over skiing and ruptured a bouquet of ligaments in both knees.

( Day 6 )

So, about a fortnight ago I said "proper review of Whitby soon". That was patently a lie. However, for the sake of my my own future self's memory, I'm going to press on and write some drivel about it. You are welcome to read it if you wish :)
( Thursday )

( Friday )

( Saturday )

( Sunday )

( Monday )

Quite often, when I phone my parents, there's some sort of breathless scramble at their end as they turn off whatever music they're listening to. I nearly always have music on when I'm at home, and my parents do too... I always assumed that was just what people did, but apparently not.

When I was little, there was always music on in our house. One corner of my parents' dining room was given over to the record cupboard (an MFI job when I was little, now a far superior dark wood cabinet) and it was full... classical concerti, and the occasional Buddy Holly disc, but mostly folk music. Lots of it was bought direct from the artist in folk clubs up and down the north-east - my Dad tells me that when I was little I thought that was the only way you could buy records. He may be winding me up. He does that.

One of the records that reminds me strongly of my childhood is an album called Ring of Iron, recorded by a local group called the Teesside Fettlers. They were one of those rolling concerns that kept going through multiple line-up changes (oh, and still are, apparently). One of the stalwart (and, I think, founder) members was a guy called Ron Angel. On lots of the tracks you can hear him playing the whistle or the fife, the counterpoint dancing happily over the melody.

( Ron Angel )

Those of you who have seen my rapper team's Facebook updates will already know the punchline to this story: we had to pull out of the competition at the weekend.

( Some bad news )

( So we went to spectate, instead )

( And I had a lovely Sunday lunch )

Last weekend, I was scooped up by chrestomancy in his large, purry car and delivered to ebee's house, where there was a Tentacle party. Involving full English, cake, boardgames, more cake, more boardgames and, of course, tentacles.

( Cakes )

( Games )

And then it was just waiting until all members of our travelling party were done with their games (and blimey, can Arkham take a long time when there are people trying not only to defeat the Great Old Ones but unravel and combine their conflicting sets of house rules).

And hurrah! What a jolly nice day out. I should spend a day eating cake, drinking tea and wine, and playing board games more often :-)

Whew, it's been busy round these parts. And I have things to report upon, and no coherent strategy for doing so.

In my usual capacity as a cultural vacuum, who only goes to the theatre when prodded, I was booked to go to The Globe with snow_leopard to see Blue Stockings. In the event, she couldn't make it, so I bravely went along anyway (realising that beyond the title, and beyond it being something Snow_Leopard recommended), I knew nothing about it.

Anyway, it turned out to be a very enjoyable play about the female students at Girton College, Cambridge at the end of the nineteenth century. They were battling to be admitted as full members of the university, and to be permitted to actually take degrees.

The Globe does odd things to people, I think. The standing-space of the yard where people mill around, eating hog roast and cracking nuts, lends itself well to the sort of raucous participation that we're all led to believe Shakespeare's audiences expected as a matter of course. So when the play opened with a speech explaining why women were completely unfit to be scholars, the speaker found himself boo'd and hiss'd like a pantomime villain. I like it. Theatre should be more raucous and participatory.

Last weekend was the annual weekend away with a bunch of university friends, where we rent a "cottage" big enough to sleep 20+ and eat too much. My weekend was slightly confused by my having to run away all day Saturday and inflict rapper dancing on the good people of Shrewsbury, but apart from that it was lovely to catch up with people and meet the new crop of offspring that's arrived since last year.

The logistics of trying to do a fry-up for nearly thirty people remain complex, but with long practice and two kitchens we've got it down. The pressing problem this year seemed to be how to arrange the toast... separating white and brown? That's toast apartheid, that is. Alternating slices? Well, that might look like integration but really it's just another form of racism. Arranging it in the order it came out of the toaster? Why do you think toast ageism is any better? The debate raged fiercely and was eventually won by a small (and hitherto unsuspected) cell of white toast supremacists...