New Year's irresolutions
Jan. 3rd, 2014 11:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustI know better than to make resolutions about the coming year. Even so, things that fall around the turn of the year seem loaded with significance: the last this, the first that... With the help of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
valydiarosada and D., who have as usual been helping us see in the New Year, we managed some suitably agreeable firsts and lasts.
On New Year's Eve we went to Sunderland, for a short walk on Roker beach:
The day was bright, but the wind was biting, and when we had walked as far as the pier and admired the new flower beds and seating we were ready to return to the Glass Museum, feeling we had earned our lunch.
The low winter sun shone red-gold on the river, and we ventured out and as far as the Red House, then moved on to the museum's temporary exhibition. The promotional material around the museum had not particularly appealed to me, but I found Jeffrey Sarmiento's work in 'Constructions' unexpectedly involving:
Beautiful Flaws is an oval enclosure constructed to hold found panes of greenhouse glass, screenprinted with a spiderweb of fine lines, each at the desired height and distance from the next. At first view, the wood and metal framework looks like the main part of the work, but as you walk round the glass draws your eye, and the patterns shift as the relation between the panels changes. The photographs on the artist's website convey this better than my pedestrian attempt. A series of works illustrated the construction of an encyclopaedia from pages of glass printed with coloured text an pictures, assembled first into volumes, then into a single block. Along one side of the room a doll's house model of a long low shed carries a length of rope through and out of the gallery through ahole in the glass wall - a scale model of a disused ropeworks started during the artist's residency in Bergen.
Back home, I pot-roasted a joint of venison for a special New Year's Eve dinner - not something I've done before, but a success, at least from the cook's point of view: simple, carved beautifully, tasted good. And we stayed up and saw the New Year in - not a first, but certainly the first in some years, more often I slope off to bed early.
We lured Gail out by promising her fish and chips for lunch, and at D.'s suggestion we headed for the Harbour View in Seaton Sluice. He'd been thinking of it as a fish and chip shop, which it is, but there is also a restaurant section: nothing grand, but generous portions of first-rate fish and chips, light batter and sweet, fresh haddock perfectly cooked (with curry sauce available if you preferred it to mushy peas - which I do).
We strolled round the harbour to see the sights: the Cut, and Rocky Island, and caught sight of Nepture rising above the wall of the King's Head. Then a cry from Gail: "Oh, come and look at this, this is really spooky!"
It was only as we crossed the footbridge onto the 'island' that we saw below us, down in the cut itself, the figure of a girl on a swing, in a dainty Kate Greenaway style frock made of scallop shells (watched by a barely visible puffin). Both of these presiding spirits turn out to be recent works by local artist Tom Newstead.
But by now D. was ready - and waiting - for an ice cream, so we came home via Cullercoats: there was no room in the icecream parlour, so we took our icecreams across the road and stared some more at the (mine was hazelnut praline and blackcurrant with kirsch: delicious).
So that's one year ended pleasantly, and the next well begun.
valydiarosada and D., who have as usual been helping us see in the New Year, we managed some suitably agreeable firsts and lasts.On New Year's Eve we went to Sunderland, for a short walk on Roker beach:
The day was bright, but the wind was biting, and when we had walked as far as the pier and admired the new flower beds and seating we were ready to return to the Glass Museum, feeling we had earned our lunch.
The low winter sun shone red-gold on the river, and we ventured out and as far as the Red House, then moved on to the museum's temporary exhibition. The promotional material around the museum had not particularly appealed to me, but I found Jeffrey Sarmiento's work in 'Constructions' unexpectedly involving:
Beautiful Flaws is an oval enclosure constructed to hold found panes of greenhouse glass, screenprinted with a spiderweb of fine lines, each at the desired height and distance from the next. At first view, the wood and metal framework looks like the main part of the work, but as you walk round the glass draws your eye, and the patterns shift as the relation between the panels changes. The photographs on the artist's website convey this better than my pedestrian attempt. A series of works illustrated the construction of an encyclopaedia from pages of glass printed with coloured text an pictures, assembled first into volumes, then into a single block. Along one side of the room a doll's house model of a long low shed carries a length of rope through and out of the gallery through ahole in the glass wall - a scale model of a disused ropeworks started during the artist's residency in Bergen.
Back home, I pot-roasted a joint of venison for a special New Year's Eve dinner - not something I've done before, but a success, at least from the cook's point of view: simple, carved beautifully, tasted good. And we stayed up and saw the New Year in - not a first, but certainly the first in some years, more often I slope off to bed early.
We lured Gail out by promising her fish and chips for lunch, and at D.'s suggestion we headed for the Harbour View in Seaton Sluice. He'd been thinking of it as a fish and chip shop, which it is, but there is also a restaurant section: nothing grand, but generous portions of first-rate fish and chips, light batter and sweet, fresh haddock perfectly cooked (with curry sauce available if you preferred it to mushy peas - which I do).
We strolled round the harbour to see the sights: the Cut, and Rocky Island, and caught sight of Nepture rising above the wall of the King's Head. Then a cry from Gail: "Oh, come and look at this, this is really spooky!"
It was only as we crossed the footbridge onto the 'island' that we saw below us, down in the cut itself, the figure of a girl on a swing, in a dainty Kate Greenaway style frock made of scallop shells (watched by a barely visible puffin). Both of these presiding spirits turn out to be recent works by local artist Tom Newstead.
But by now D. was ready - and waiting - for an ice cream, so we came home via Cullercoats: there was no room in the icecream parlour, so we took our icecreams across the road and stared some more at the (mine was hazelnut praline and blackcurrant with kirsch: delicious).
So that's one year ended pleasantly, and the next well begun.
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no subject
Date: 2014-01-04 01:26 am (UTC)(Also I used to bicker with them about their recipe for tartare sauce, but a man must seek his pleasure where he may.)
no subject
Date: 2014-01-04 01:04 pm (UTC)The Harbour View is a more than adequate replacement. You'd do well to take your own tartare sauce; theirs comes in sachets - they are all about the fish and chips.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-04 04:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-04 01:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-04 05:45 pm (UTC)