A week of celebrations

[shewhomust]

We were thirteen at table

last Saturday, for dinner after the match with visiting cousins and family. The match itself was nothing to celebrate: Sunderland had lost, and had in any case played atrociously badly - I have no opinion on this, but note that the supposed fans very often judge it tobe the case. The party, in addition to ourselves, were three brothers (including a pair of twins), one wife and one partner, a daughter (and, I think, her partner), her daughter (in her first term at university) and boyfriend, a step-grandson - and one more: his girlfriend, possibly? The table sorted itself, as if Maxwell's demon had been at work, older generation at one end, younger at the other, so I never really sorted out all the young folk. We can't help being aware of those who are missing from the party, and that each time we all meet may be the last, but any family gathering which is not a funeral is cause for celebration.

Celebrating a Hatfield man

More or less by chance, and at the last minute, we spent Sunday afternoon at the Assembly Rooms with John Watterson, Paul Thompson and the songs of Jake Thackray. Part tribute act (Watterson has an ongoing existence as Fake Thackray, and his mimickry of Thackray's voice is at times uncomfortably good); part book launch (the pair have collaborated on a biography), part homecoming: I think of Jake Thackray as a Yorkshireman, and a French chansonnier, but it turns out he was also a Durham graduate, specifically a Hatfield man. There was to be a further, more conversational, event in the college bar the following evening, but I bought the book, durham_rambler bought the DVD and we decided that this was enough. It wasn't until we got home that we discovered that the DVD, a BBC compilation of Thackray's half-hour shows, also contained performances by guests, including Alax Glasgow - I'm looking forward to playing those.

Celebrating Georges Brassens

I probably travelled in the opposite direction to most people, because I discovered Jake Thackray through Georges Brassens, rather than vice versa (There's this man who is undertaking the impossible task of translating Brassens, and - gasp - doing it rather well!.) So this photo from Leclerc's autumn wine promotion seemed appropriate:

No, I didn't buy a bottle: I love the marketing, but who knows what the wine is like? The Leclerc catalogue doesn't say what region it comes from, what grape it's made from - it's a 'vin de France', which could mean anything...

Still active at 80

The City of Dur ham Trust celebrates its 80th birthday this year - which means it was founded in 1942, when you might have thought local residents would have other things on their minds. But a plan to build a huge power station just along the river from the cathedral sparked the creation of a Durham Preservation Society, and it's being going strong ever since. There have been various serious events to mark the anniversary, but Wednesday was the actual birthday, and a group of us got together over a glass of wine to gossip. The Mayor was there - he's a member -- wearing his chain of office, not for our benefit but because he had come straight from a gathering of the Showmen's Guild...

Other people's parties

A student party in one of the houses in the street that backs onto ours finally wound up about two o' clock this morning. Mostly I can sleep through the roar of their conversation, but the beat of the music gets into my bones. Several times I almost got up to phone the police, but it seemed to be abating - and then started again. Oh, well, a month or more into the term, and this was the first really bad one.