What do four things make?

[shewhomust]

• The cinema at the Gala theatre doesn't often show the interesting documentaries I read about in the reviews: but they weren't going to miss Daniel Draper's The Big Meeting. I enjoyed it, and there's a lot of good stuff in it, but I can't review it; it'd be like reviewing your friend's family album: "Oh, look, there's so-and-so; where was this picture taken? that's not a very flattering one of so-one-so; my, he's in a lot of the pictures, isn't he?" The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw liked it (and gave it four stars), but his favourite bit was art historian Robert McManners talking about mining art, which is all good stuff but not about the Gala. Which I think is what I just said...



• Robert McManners was - of course - filmed in the Mining Art Gallery in Bishop Auckland. We were there ourselves on Thursday, to hear poetry and publishing co-operative Vane Women reading their poems inspired by a recent exhibition at the Gallery, on the theme of Women at the Coal Face. We'd expected it to be a rather downbeat event, as we'd heard last week of the death of founder member of the group (and one of my favourite poets) Joanna Boulter. What we learned, though, was that although Joanna had been diagnosed with dementia, she had emerged from this, and had lately been writing again, and there id hope of another book. She is still missed, but the evening was more cheerful than I had expected.



• A recent trio of BBC programmes, with the unpromising title Raiders of the Lost Past brought together three archaeological discoveries on the eve of the Second World War. We have watched the first two (of three) and I am not convinced that the coincidence of date is significant, but programme one was worth watching, just for the loving close-ups of the Sutton Hoo treasure. (It is probably not the fault of presenter Janina Ramirez that the camera loves her, and lingers on her gazing raptly at each item, with the focus shifting between the watcher and the watched.) It was Lucy Mangan's review of episode two which alerted me to the series, and my knowledge of its subject matter barely amounts to that picture looks familiar. It is, apparently, the oldest piece of figurative art ever discovered, lovingly reconstructed from smithereens. Which is interesting, but the (not quite so old, but no so as you'd notice) horse from the Vogelherd cave is visually more appealing. The cave is now part of a UNESCO World Heritage site, but the little horse is in the museum in Tübingen (which caught my eye because Tübingen is twinned with Durham).



• The dilemma of the restaurant critic: Zoe Williams struggles to describe food that is just tasty:
  

  It's not an angel dancing on your tongue; it didn't crack open your understanding of what a vegetable should be, or its meaning in the universe; it wasn't like an explosion, or an epiphany; it didn't have the deep, resonating familiarity that brought you so close to the quiddity of a steak that you felt as if you could speak cow just by eating it. It's just tasty - or quite tasty.

  
  I don't even want my food to be an explosion, or an epiphany, or an angel dancing on your tongue - tasty is what I'm looking for (and good company and a glass of wine).