Ten days of Christmas

In theory, I adhere to the principle that Christmas begins on Christmas Day (though certain preliminaries are permitted on Christmas Eve, and help to set the mood) and runs for twelve days. New Year falls within the festive season, but is not really part of it, coming from a different system of measuring time and the world. Celebration does not end until Twelfth Night - and if we are partying on Twelfth Night, I graciously give myself permission not to take down the decorations until the following day.

This year, though, we have had such a busy Advent, and so full of distinctly seasonal treats, that it's barely Boxing Day and I'm ready for a break. It has all been good, and better than good, and now it's time for few quiet days with no particular plans.

( Ten days ago: the carol evening )

( Six days ago: Phantoms at the Phil )

More to follow - but it's time for lunch.

Winter Solstice: Fire, Frost and Nineweaving

The unexpected treat of the winter was an e-mail from nineweaving, asking if durham_rambler and I might by any chance be planning to go to the Waterson:Carthy concert at the Sage? We might indeed: and if we hadn't already been considering it, this would have been enough to start us doing so. With the result that on Thursday - the winter solstice, and how appropriate is that? - we lined up on Durham station, scrutinising the people alighting from the train, and guessed right straight off. On Friday morning, Durham decorated itself in the first heavy crystalline frost of the winter, and we took nineweaving to the cathedral (the scenic route, via the allotments and the Count's House. In the afternoon we went into Newcastle, and desperance gave us the tour of the Lit & Phil - on on, via the Vampire Rabbit and the site of Thomas Bewick's workshop, along the Quayside, strung with lights in the night, to the Sage. The concert came at the end of a tour revisiting the seasonal round of the Watersons' 1964 album Frost and Fire, and it had an "end of term" feel to it. There was a great crowd on stage: as well as Norma Waterson, and Martin and Eliza Carthy, and Tim van Eyken (previously unknown to me, and a great voice), there were singers Devil's Interval and a clutch of musicians, joined from time to time by dancers, or disguising themselves for the mummers' play - the whole played in by the recorded voice of Mike Waterson. Never a dull moment, and if the sheer scale of the entertainment rather diluted its intensity (to my taste, at least), the party mood was infectious, and it was enormous fun. But in between all of these entertainments flowed a torrent of conversation, and that was wonderful: we talked of music and libraries and places, of stories and ethnomycology and families, and sculpture and LJ and friends - and why the sea is boiling hot, and whether pigs have wings. We made respectable inroads into the 50 years of conversation we haven't had yet, and I can't wait to pick up and do it again.