News from Nowhere

You can't go back, they say, and sometimes when you return somewhere you have loved in the past, you wonder why you thought it was so special. This is our third visit to Kirkcudbright, and it continues to be wonderful. An example: I introduced my post about our previous visit with a picture of a postbox topper which I thought exemplified Kirkcudbright's ease with itself as an art town. Setting off yesterday morning, slightly smug that I knew where I was heading, I wondered - not whether it would still be there (these things are transient) but whether it would have been replaced. It has indeed:



and I love the replacement just as much, if not better.

A good start to a good day. We wandered around the town, doing things for the second time at least, and finding new things to enjoy in them. The display in Greengate Close grows ever more eccentric; a FLOCK of clay birds (memo to self: other flocks are available) were migrating through the garden of Broughton House; and the Kirkudbright Galleries have tweaked their display of local artists, which seems to have more Jessie M. King than previously.

All these things require illustration, and photographs were taken, but are not yet ready for posting. Instead, one last story. A fellow visitor to that display of local artists Said "I know you." Pause, and then: "You're durham_rambler. I'm Pete - friend of ..." Oh, yes. Photographer. "I'm a poet, now -" (So he is.) And so is his partner (not the wife we remember, then) - who then appears and oh, yes, we know you, too.

This last adventure seemed to end the day on a perfect balance of the remembered and the unexpected. We went to the Co-op and bought sandwiches for our tea, and spent the evening in our hotel watching The Celebrity Traitors.

October has been a busy month (and there's a post in progress about that) and more to come. But I have been clinging to a half-made plan, that October was when we would take ourselves to France; I have been trying to protect some free time mid-month, without actually doing anything to make the trip happen. Eventually I accepted the truth, just at the point where an e-mail arrived from the Selkirk Arms, with one of their periodic offers. So we are spending a few days in Kirkudbright.



We have a suite (bedroom, sitting room, each with its own bathroom) which makes the extra flight of stairs worth the climb. Also a view from the window. Was the sky really that grey? Not quite, though who knows what tomorrow will bring...

The Bank of England has announced the results of its poll to choose wildlife to feature on a future series of banknotes: the winners are the barn owl, buff-tailed bumblebee, hedgehog and puffin.

Money with puffins on it, that's something to look forward to.

The poll is rigged, of course: the bank knows better than to give the public a free hand. The choice was between six selected options in each of three categories. The highest vote in each was approved: barn owl (birds), hedgehog (mammals) and buff-tailed bumblebee (amphibians, insects and fish). The bumblebee was massively more popular than anything else in that category - or indeed anything else in the poll (are we a nation of bee-lovers, or did the bee just run a better campaign?), which left a gap where marine wildlife ought to be, and the puffin was chosen to represent coastal habitats. You could think of it as an honorary fish, and indeed I sometimes do.

As for when we will see these new banknotes, the bank says only "It will be a number of years..." I wonder which species is more endangered, the puffin or the banknote?

My mind insists that spells and hope are among the implements with which the snark should be hunted. In this, my mind is mistaken:

"You may seek it with thimbles - and seek it with care;
You may hunt it with forks and hope;
You may threaten its life with a railway-share;
You may charm it with smiles and soap - "

No snarks, then, will be captured by the three excursions of a busy week. It's probably just as well.

( Dominion of spells )

( Days of Hope )

( Lo! An Amazon! )

On Saturday morning we went our separate ways: boybear headed into town for a songwriting workshop with Pete Atkin (from which he came back well pleased); everyone else went to hear Alistair Anderson talking about his Lindisfarne Gospel composition which he and his band would be playing in the cathedral that evening. This was originally commissioned in 2013 when the Gospels were brought to Durham for an exhibition; there was muttering locally that Durham was their proper home and they should stay here. The Holy Island Partnership felt that the actual island where they were created should not be overooked, and commissioned Alistair Anderson to write a piece to celebrate the book's creation. Now, the formerly-Hartlepool Folk Festival had commissioned him to write a further movement, to celebrate the Festival's homecoming to Durham by expressing the arrival of the monks and their treasured gospels at their new home. I thought this was tactless, a reversal of the original message; and I wonder whether Alistair was a little uneasy, because he emphasised, both in words and in the music, both the dangers of the journey and the subsequent Harrowing of the North by William the Conqueror. Interesting context, fascinating to hear Alistair talking about the process of composition, a delight to watch his contortions as he demonstrated how the music entwined in the same way as the knotwoek of the Gospels' illuminated carpet pages.

GirlBear stayed where she was for a workshop on East Anglian tunes, while durham_rambler and I headed upstairs to the Pitmen's Parliament for something billed as z 'High Spen [Blue Diamonds rapper team] Centenary Celebration'. Could they possibly propose to fit a rapper team onto that stage? The blurb just promised Phil Heaton, author of a history of rapper dancing, chatting with Ricky Forster, grandson of Fred Forster, founder of the High Spen team. Unfortunately, they didn't seem to be using the amplification, so I caught only tantalising fragments: was he really saying that the influx of Irish mineworkers had been a decisive influence on an existing dance tradition? And that display - or was it competitive? - dancing was a way for miners to supplement their incomes in winder when (really?) the pits were closed because the sea was too rough to transport the coal to southern customers? I can't be sure. But there was dancing. These are the Kingsmen:



We regrouped for lunch from the catering vans. This was a mistake. One of them was not yet open (at midday) and the vegetable curry was a sort of dhal, both too wet and too spicy to eat as a picnic. We should have gone into town to see what we could find there, especially as our next set was in town: I therefore saw neither the Amber films retrospective nor the talk about Cable Street and the Bryant & May strike, which were at Redhills. I was sorry to miss there, but didn't regret opting for uilleann piper Seb Stone at the Academy.

I'd have been happy to stay at the Academy to hear Macdara Yeates again, but I was outvoted in favour of a more leisurely dinner at Pizza Hut. We tend not to patronise their Durham branch, having had poor experiences there, but time has passed and this was perfectly acceptable, though noisy. I enjoyed my salade niçoise, despite it being unlike any other salade niçoise I had ever met (cucumber! no tomatoes!). The little sticky figd served with mascarpone and the coffee of your choice (espresso) were a treat, though.

The showpiece event of the festival (and feel free to read a certain ambivalence into that description) was Homecoming at the cathedral: three separate sets, Bold as Brass bringing together the Wilsons and Easington Colliery brass band, the Alistair Anderson band playing his new extended Lindisfarne Gospel, and the festival headline act, the Sharon Shannon Trio. I was relaxed about the length of the queue: the cathedral is big, and the sightlines inside are not designed for this sort of performance, so there was no chance of good visibility however early we got in. But as time passed, the queue lengthened and the evening grew colder, we grew impatient: whatever they were doing inside, could we not sit in the pews while they did it? Well, be careful what you wish for; those pews were the most uncomfortable seating I have suffered in a long time, not so much because they are hard but because a bar for kneelers restricts the leg room. Despite all this, I enjoyed the Wilsons with added brass (the band solos not so much; there was something muddy about the sound). I found the Lindisfarne Gospel dull: I'd rather hear Alistair Anderson talk about it than listen to the thing itself. By now I had had enough, and would happily have gone home: others wanted to hear Sharon Shannon, so we stayed. I admired her virtuosity, but I didn't much enjoy her music.

tl:dr; version - as usual, I enjoyed the quirky incidental events more than the grand gala.

The Hartlepool Folk Festival, which we have attended for several years, has for a variety of reasons transferred to Durham, and moved forward a couple of weeks in the process. Which may help explain a certain sense of dislocation in my previous bulletin; or maybe it's just my natural state. Anyway, I did not regret spending my Thursday evening with Mark Thomas. He did two sets, the first a familiar narrative of his adventures in testing anti-demonstration law with ever more surreal challenges. Then, after a break for us all to do our duty and support the bar, he returned with a ramble through 'my life these days' which includes hearing aids (worn with pride) and caring for his old mother. An evening of humanity and anger, the perfect prequel to a folk festival.

Friday started early with a (tedious but routine) eye appointment, but at least that meant we had an early start on the day. The Bears' train was cancelled, which paradoxically means their tickets were valid on any train, and they arrived slightly earlier than planned. So we were in good time to collect our festival passes and then make our way into the Pitmen's Parliament to be welcomed to the festival by the Wilsons. From the day we first learned that this year's festival would be in Durham - no, before that, the first time I came to a show here and thought about this space as somewhere singing might happen - I've been hoping to hear these voices raised in this oak-panelled assembly room at the heart of the old Miners' Hall, and how right I was. It was everything I had hoped, the perfect start to the festival.

Redhills is a wonderful venue, and you wouldn't pass up the chance to use it: but it is a little way from other venues in the city centre, and even with a shuttle bus provided, switching locations between performances was anything but seamless. This, as I had anticipated, was one of disadvantages of the move to Durham, and we ran into it from the very start. Do you stay for the whole of the Wilsons, or do you nip out halfway through, to get to the Academy for Pete Atkin in conversation? durham_rambler opted for Pete Atkin; the rest of us joined him as soon as we could, and walked into a conversation about his work in radio of which I would have liked to hear more.

After which, lunchtime: we decamped to the Turkish restaurant, whose baba ganoush I particularly recommend. Back at the Academy, in search of Macdara Yeates (whose presentation about Luke Kelly I had enjoyed last year), we discovered that Pete Atkin's relatively niche status had misled us about the ease of movement between gigs: the legal capacity of the Academy venue meant that they were likely to be operating on a one-in-one-out basis. I never actually failed to get into anything, but I spent more time waiting in the street than I would have liked. Macdara Yeates was worth it, though, a beautifully varied set: I wasn't tempted to buy a CD, but I'd go and see him perform any time.

The evening's big concert was back at Redhills: three acts and an interval with entertainment. Tom McConville was a disappointment: having heard him before I'd been looking forward to some red-hot fiddle playing, but on this occasion he leaned into the strain of Irish song which is too sentimental for my taste (and yes, I would absolutely include Richard Thompson's Beeswing in that description). I had heard Belinda O'Hooley before, playing with Heidi Tidow, and liked her better than I had expected (which isn't saying much); she is currently collaborating with Jackie Oates, and they were enormously endearing, but I have nothing to say about their music. After this we were ushered outside to be entertained by Mr Fox: "Spectacular and eerie, Mister Fox are a troupe who perform dances with burning torches in the dead o...[sic]" says their website, and there were certainly robed figures, and flames, but not being twelve feet tall, that's about all I can tell you. Oh, and there were drums.

If this sounds as if I was getting a bit grouchy, I can't deny it. Also it was by now very nearly bedtime. If the final band of the day had not been Leveret, I would have been agitating to go home to bed - but I did want to hear Leveret. So it is praise indeed to say that they ere worth staying up for: I may not have been entirely awake the whole time, but the music that washed over me was wonderful. This was the first gig of their "all request" tour: the audience were invited to post requests in a box, and the band took turns to pull out a slip and announce what they would play next. That's an impressive stunt. I liked this piece, which is called Bagpipers:

In Newcastle yesterday for my reading group - and to do a few errands while I was there. No theme, no excitement: but I took some pictures, anyway.

Leaving the metro via the basement of Fenwicks' department store:



All decked out in red and green, more noticeable because most of the shelves are still bare, but the shiny baubles and Christmas themed decorations are already appearing. I know I said the season had changed, but this is ridiculous.

I delivered my package to the post office with no worse experience than a long queue. Mixed success with the shopping: there were no anchovies to be had, not even for ready money, but I not only found the fancy liquorice I had seen advertised. And amid all the fancy chocolate coated multi-coloured varieties, the one flavour whose price was drastically reduced was the plain salted (why am I not surprised?).

The Pilgrim Pole sculptures / lighting / street furniture that I noticed before are more clearly aligned:



I think they must have cleared away some of the fencing. I still think they are designed to be illuminated, and the season has not yet changed enough that I've seen that (did I fail to notice it on my way home, are is that not happening yet).

There's a new exhibition in the library, of paintings of extinct birds by local artist David Hardy. And yes, there is a great auk:



The reading group was fun, too. An afternoon well spent.

I didn't intend to go full-on harvest festival. But we had errands in town, so we went to the market, and there were damsons. I love damsons. Back home, durham_rambler took the kitchen compost bin down the garden, and came back with a box of blackberries and the news that the elder saplings which we had failed to uproot were also bearing ripe berries.

The first thing I did, of course, was take a photograph - which, since I have still not mastered DW's image management system, and don't want to delay this post until I have, you'll need to click the thumbnail to see thanks to the wisdom of athenais you can see below:



In all this abundance, the damsons were what I had chosen, so I dealt with them first. I stewed them down to a thick compote. In theory you can stew the fruits whole, and then skim off the stones, but I have never succeeded in doing this: there are always stones hiding in whatever I cook with the result. So I sat down with a sharp knife and stoned each little plum individually, which is laborious but worth it: the result is a tub of dark, intense stewed fruit which went straight into the freezer.

durham_rambler went out for a pint of milk; I told him that if he saw any cooking apples, they would go very well with the blackberries. He came back with some granny smiths, but I stewed them anyway, and was surprised how well that worked. We had some for our dinner, and there are more in the freezer.

Time to engage with the elderberries. Stripping them from the clusters was more time consuming than I anticipated, and there were more green ones in the mix than I'd hoped (but if you wait for them to be perfectly ripe, the birds will strip the entire crop). Poach in a very little sugar and water, to produce a lot of syrup with berries in it. I mixed some of this with plums to make a crumble, and froze the rest in small quantities, because elderberries are a seasoning rather than a fruit to eat for itself.

Then I took a step back and realised that although I thought I had made good use of all these black fruits, there was still ne more in the vegetable rack: because an aubergine is also a black fruit. It went into a pasta bake, with tomatoes and feta, and it was very good.

I set off for the farmers' market yesterday morning wondering what new fruits the season would offer: but no. it's all over. The season has changed, and summer's greengrocers have handed the stall over to the winter veg farmers - who have had a difficult season. But they grow the best carrots, so it's not all bad news.

I am in the process of claiming a pension which is left over from a long-ago employer, and I have just spent 50 minutes on the phone to a very helpful representative of the insurance company: progress has been made.

To set up this phone call, I had to call them and spend the usual time on hold; we then fixed a date a week off, and I was asked to set a password for the call. I thought this was odd, but I picked a password (you may be able to guess what it was). This morning's call began with the caller identifying herself and asking me for the password. "No," I said, "You called me, from a number I don't recognise. You give me the password." She quibbled a bit about this, but in the end she did - and then I gave her some information to establish who I was.

The upshot is that she will send me more information, both by post and by e-mail. The e-mail will be both encrypted and passworded, because my address is not on their whitelist. This wouldn't be necessary, she said, if I could give them, say, a hotmail or a gmail address. Wait a minute, hotmail? You'd send personal information to a hotmail address but not to my own domain? I could have given my gmail address - when my personal data would be entrusted to the cloud, and I'm probably a bit old-fashioned about this - but we'll go with plan A, which is that in the name of security they will send two e-mails to the same address, and I will use one of them to unlock the other.

None of this makes sense to me.