shewhomust | Boxing Day catch-up (Reply)

Since I last posted, I haven't had a chance to do more than dip into LJ; meanwhile my f-list have been scribbling away like mad. How does that happen? But today's a lazy day with no obligations (well, the new neighbours across the way were 'at home', but I'm snuffling and hooting my way through the third cold of the winter, so I cried off) and I'm now as caught up as I'm going to be. Briefly, then:

We went to London for the Bears' carol evening, which for me is the point at which Christmas begins. We arrived the day before, and accompanied the Bears to Islington Folk Club's Christmas party - much like any singers' night at the club, but with added pass-the-parcel and forfeits.

durham_rambler and I sloped off to do some last minute shopping: but it is typical of my shortcomings as a shopper that I should go out looking for last minute gifts, and return having bought two second-hand books and four quinces (mmm, quinces...). We also sat in on the musicians' jam session at Le Bon Croissant, where we ate bakewell tart and listened to an extraordinary variety of musicians jamming: the Boy Bear had brought his banjo, so I got to hear him playing cool jazz banjo and classical banjo. Fortified by music, we spent Sunday in Essex with

durham_rambler's family, and on Monday lunched with his niece in South London before going out in the evening for a curry with

valydiarosada, D., and

helenraven. And returned home on Tuesday having managed, rather against the odds, to visit a friend caught up in family matters, at her parents home, so that our route took us along unfamiliar routes: there are some very pretty villages in Rutland, it seems, and the adjacent part of Leicestershire is satisfyingly hilly. A pause in Melton Mowbray also enabled us to buy our Christmas slabs of Stilton (one white, one blue) four miles from the farm where the cheese was made.

Christmas Eve was a dinner party here:

desperance and three people who don't have LJs. One of our guests is coeliac, and it also seemed unfair to serve a massive roast on the eve of the annual roast marathon, so after some dithering I made a big shepherd's pie (is it still shepherd's pie if it's beef rather than lamb?). The day was a little frantic - early morning swim, shopping for vegetables, cooking and clearing tables - but I really enjoyed the actual entertaining, and resolved once more that next year I will do more clearing up and more entertaining. Well, maybe... Yesterday was the traditional bucks fizz and salmon sandwiches at S's in the morning, and we spent the afternoon with J., whose birthday it was, and who had indulged herself by cooking precisely her favourite sort of meal (beef stew). We even had birthday cake...

While we were in London, we learned of the death of Adrian Mitchell. I never meant to turn my journal into a round-up of obituaries, but it doesn't seem right to remain silent on this one. So here's the Guardian's obituary, and here's their subsequent publication of his 'remix' of his poem To Whom it May Concern - remix? really? Well, here he is reciting the real thing, the version that was part of the soundtrack of my '60s. In 2004 I saw him read again at the Durham Literature Festival, promoting both his latest book for children and the anthology of socialist poetry he had co-edited with Andy Croft, and clearly equally happy with both. He quoted a cool young audience member in Seattle who had asked him: