...and five more:

[shewhomust]

• Driving in to Newcastle for Ann Cleeves' book launch on Tuesday, we were delayed by heavy traffic in Gateshead - a mixture, I think, of people avoiding the roadworks on the motorway, and people going to bonfire parties. But we had plenty of time, as we crawled down the hill to the Tyne, to admire the fireworks somewhere in Newcastle.



• The party was for Thin Air, Ann's latest Shetland book, which I had enjoyed reading on the flight from Edinburgh to Boston. There was Shetland fiddle music, too, from Catherine Geldard, who loaned her surname to the book's child ghost - and since the story begins at a wedding on Unst, she played us the Unst Wedding March. It's very mournful; I can't imagine marching to it. (This is a bit different to what Catherine played solo, but I'm enjoying listening to it, anyway).



• Afterwards, we went for a pizza at The Herb Garden, a hip, high-design (there's a full-size statue of a horse in the foorway) restaurant in one of the railway arches in the Westgate Road. "Last time I was here," said durham_rambler, "I got my exhaust fixed." Pizza was good, though.



• When I read about Mark Thomas's play Cuckooed at the Edinburgh Festival, I thought it sounded worth seeing, and I thought it sounded like something that could very easily be toured around small venues. Right on both counts: last night it was in Durham, and an interesting and thought-provoking evening (with a 20-minute standup set, which we were invited to regard as the support act). We looked around the theatre, convinced that some of our old political contacts must be present, but didn't meet anyone we knew until the interval, when we discovered that the Graphic Novels Reading Group was out in force.



• From The Guardian of twenty-odd years ago, the incomparable Nancy Banks-Smith describes Ricardo Belmont: "He is craggily good-looking... open-necked denim shirt... shining teeth hung from ear to ear like pillow slips on a washing line... all that."

Comments

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

Once again you've made my morning, watch out; I may come to regard you as one does a Kelloggs product http://vintage-ads.livejournal.com/5563892.html to start the day, almost too invigorating for one's good!
The idea, of marching into any Registrar's Office or Church or worse to "Monstrosity" aka the Unst Wedding March made me shudder but that was nothing yet til I read about shining teeth hung from ear to ear like pillow slips on a washing line... it's so brilliant a description I am openly jealous, having only my good old Mollberg Speak to fall back upon, myself. I also hope, your pizza did not have an aftertaste of petrol but having just gone through today's vintage_ads it would not surprise me as I am sure, that horse did not surprise you. After all, only what one can expect from a trendy eating place; I hope it was obligingly taxidermied, too and now I'll even look up the link;)

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I hadn't met vintage_ads before - that is quite addictive!

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

I guess, that's what addicts do: pass it on! It's one of my fav. communities, very active and amazingly hilarious, also the moderator must be one of the most sympathetic ever, I freely admit this heavy indulgence of mine and won't stop as long as they don't. Excellent cultural info!