Season of mists...

[shewhomust]

durham_rambler and I both have colds: manifesting as a painfully sore throat, sudden fits of coughing, and the feeling that my head has been stuffed very dull of cotton wool. Also, in my case, interrupted sleep (for coughing) and a tendency to nod off at other times.

Naturally, this comes at a time when, after not having been to a concert for ages, we are embarking on a sequence of nights out. The first of these was yesterday, and it was the farewell performance of the New Rope String Band, which simplified things, because there was no way either of us was going to miss that! So we braved the fog, and the home game, and Hallowe'en, and went to the Tyne Theatre for the show.

Which was excellent - no surprise there! Lots of familiar routines, and some surprises too, some new since I last saw them and at least one thing which must have been devised for the night, since it involved a guest star (violinist Bradley Creswick, dubbed with a positively Morecambe and Wise type volley of deformations of his name) rising spookily from a coffin-like double bass case. The worst of the coughing was controlled with throat sweets and sips from the water flask, and if it annoyed our neighbours they didn't let on. The audience was as happily riotous as you'd expect. Despite this, I drifted away for parts of the second half, but mostly during video material which I'd seen before. I'm still glas I was there, even if at times it was only in body.

So that's that. The whole existence of the New Rope String Band has been a ten-year bonus, after Joe's death and the end of the Old Rope String Band, and it's been fun, and I wonder what the guys will do next?