Two weeks at home
Aug. 30th, 2010 10:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustTwo weeks today since we returned from holiday, and I've hardly posted here: well, we've been busy. There was a surprising amount of work waiting for us: I thought that August was the quiet month, and that taking our holiday in August for once was a sensible thing to do, but it seems not. Our clients have been hard at work, and we came home to a backlog of things to do, and more coming in daily. This is good: it's good that business is brisk for our clients and therefore for us, and I'm happy to return to taking holidays at whatever random time of year appeals to us, and not feeling guilty about it. But I've been too busy to post about what I've been doing.
It hasn't all been work, either. In particular, there were a cluster of social dates around last weekend, all of them delightful in themselves, though I might have chosen not to have them all occur together, or around our first weekend home from holiday. On Thursday D. arrived, on his way north to visit his mother, and we had a pleasant evening drinking some of the wine and discussing some of the photos we had brought home from our trip, especially those parts of it that related to his birthday celebrations. We sent him on his way on Friday morning, and re-made the spare bed for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
helenraven, who had very kindly revised her schedule so she could visit Durham the weekend after we returned from holiday (rather than the weekend before, which wouldn't have been half as much fun for us).
She is the perfect guest, an excuse for eating and drinking and conversation, willing to entertain herself with reading material, or to suggest fun excursions. She encouraged us to visit Durham's Oriental Museum, which has many beautiful and interesting things (and has just acquired a typewriter (a Chinese typewriter!) and Sunderland's sculpture trail (on whichdesperance joined us, and talked us through his year as writer in residence on the sculpture project). She was perfect company for a Saturday morning shopping expedition to Durham market (and I wouldn't be surprised if it was her influence which somehow brought a suitcaseful of pulp SF to the bookstall, he's never had anything of the sort before, and I bought a handful of paperbacks with alarming covers, to encourage him to do it again). D. returned on Saturday evening, and we were all sociable, and left us on Sunday morning, after which we set off for a Sunday lunchtime gathering of a group of old friends (old friends of mine and durham_rambler's, that is, only some of whom helenraven had met before) which had to be that Sunday because it was the only date possible for all the different people involved); and we came home laden with mirabelles, because our hostess has a mirabelle tree, and this year has produced an astonishingly abundant harvest of plums of all varieties.
On Monday afternoon we had time to catch our breath, do a little work and start to grapple with mirabelle jam (I appear to have made jam which is firm enough to spread, but is not too sweet. This is a first). And on Tuesday we headed off to Whitby, to spend the day with the Bears, who were spending the week of the Folk Festival there. It was a beautiful summer day, the heather was purple on the moors and we spent most of the afternoon sitting in the sun in the park telling silly jokes. We stayed on for the evening's concert of American music, ending up with the New Deal String Band, and then drove home late at night, but it was worth it.
Since then, things have been a bit quieter. There was a visit to the Viz exhibition at the Lit & Phil, and a talk by Mel Gibson after (billed as a learned talk about comics and academia, it was actually a brilliant stand-up routine about 'how I managed to make a career out of loving comics'). And a visit to the dentist, but that was just a check-up. And a trip to Belsay Hall, the shell of a stately home which uses the building and gardens as a setting in which to display contemporary art around a different theme each year. This year's exhibition centres on pieces which played with scale - though this was maybe a secondary aspect of my two favourite pieces, Mariele Neudecker's giant window set within the Quarry Garden and Mat Collishaw's Garden of Unearthly Delights - no, I'm not going to explain that any further: go watch the video.
Which brings me up to date, and to the prospect of a week or so in which to settle down and do some serious work. And more outings too, I hope, but first, back to work!
It hasn't all been work, either. In particular, there were a cluster of social dates around last weekend, all of them delightful in themselves, though I might have chosen not to have them all occur together, or around our first weekend home from holiday. On Thursday D. arrived, on his way north to visit his mother, and we had a pleasant evening drinking some of the wine and discussing some of the photos we had brought home from our trip, especially those parts of it that related to his birthday celebrations. We sent him on his way on Friday morning, and re-made the spare bed for
helenraven, who had very kindly revised her schedule so she could visit Durham the weekend after we returned from holiday (rather than the weekend before, which wouldn't have been half as much fun for us). She is the perfect guest, an excuse for eating and drinking and conversation, willing to entertain herself with reading material, or to suggest fun excursions. She encouraged us to visit Durham's Oriental Museum, which has many beautiful and interesting things (and has just acquired a typewriter (a Chinese typewriter!) and Sunderland's sculpture trail (on which
desperance joined us, and talked us through his year as writer in residence on the sculpture project). She was perfect company for a Saturday morning shopping expedition to Durham market (and I wouldn't be surprised if it was her influence which somehow brought a suitcaseful of pulp SF to the bookstall, he's never had anything of the sort before, and I bought a handful of paperbacks with alarming covers, to encourage him to do it again). D. returned on Saturday evening, and we were all sociable, and left us on Sunday morning, after which we set off for a Sunday lunchtime gathering of a group of old friends (old friends of mine and durham_rambler's, that is, only some of whom helenraven had met before) which had to be that Sunday because it was the only date possible for all the different people involved); and we came home laden with mirabelles, because our hostess has a mirabelle tree, and this year has produced an astonishingly abundant harvest of plums of all varieties.On Monday afternoon we had time to catch our breath, do a little work and start to grapple with mirabelle jam (I appear to have made jam which is firm enough to spread, but is not too sweet. This is a first). And on Tuesday we headed off to Whitby, to spend the day with the Bears, who were spending the week of the Folk Festival there. It was a beautiful summer day, the heather was purple on the moors and we spent most of the afternoon sitting in the sun in the park telling silly jokes. We stayed on for the evening's concert of American music, ending up with the New Deal String Band, and then drove home late at night, but it was worth it.
Since then, things have been a bit quieter. There was a visit to the Viz exhibition at the Lit & Phil, and a talk by Mel Gibson after (billed as a learned talk about comics and academia, it was actually a brilliant stand-up routine about 'how I managed to make a career out of loving comics'). And a visit to the dentist, but that was just a check-up. And a trip to Belsay Hall, the shell of a stately home which uses the building and gardens as a setting in which to display contemporary art around a different theme each year. This year's exhibition centres on pieces which played with scale - though this was maybe a secondary aspect of my two favourite pieces, Mariele Neudecker's giant window set within the Quarry Garden and Mat Collishaw's Garden of Unearthly Delights - no, I'm not going to explain that any further: go watch the video.
Which brings me up to date, and to the prospect of a week or so in which to settle down and do some serious work. And more outings too, I hope, but first, back to work!
