Pride and Puffins

[shewhomust]

There's nothing like the Council withdrawing support for an event to tempt me to attend: but we didn't go to Pride last Sunday, instead we went to Amble for the Puffin Festival.

A sunny (if blowy) day at the seaside, with a small, puffin-themed fetival, what could be nicer? There may have been fewer stalls in the square than in previous years, but on the other hand we made better use of our time, catching both a poetry reading and an art exhibition. I also enjoyed chatting to the landscape photographer who has one of the little tourist shops (about light, and graduated lenses, and suchlike).

The poetry came from Katrina Porteous, reading in the micro-pub on the square: I liked Coastal erosion, which begins:

First to go is the footpath, smoking fireweed, the hawthorn
Reddening along the Grassy Banks, then the railway line
The end terraces, blackened memorials -

but moves on to consider erosion in a less literal sense. The art exhibition, a single room in the local art centre at the far end of Queen Street, was 36 Views of Coquet Island, which began as a lockdown collaboration - in fact, here it is! - allowing the widest ranging interpretation of its theme: music, photography, embroidery, a recollection of 36 Years of Roseate Tern Management...

Walking the length of Queen Street twice (there and back) also gave us a chance to admire the colourful puffins in the shop windows, contributed by the local primary schools. This, though commendable, is usually a bit repetitive, each child in the entire class producing, to the best of their ability, a copy of the same model. This year, though, each window had a selection of variations on the theme, and some of them were very creatively coloured:

The message was bad news, though. We had achieved our wider exploration of the festival by skipping lunch, and now we were ready for a sandwich and a sit-down. But, festival or no festival, it was Sunday afternoon and the shops were closed. Eventually we found ourselves back at the harbour, where Lilly's Landing provided us with perfectly good coffee and a total absence of any food that wasn't cake. Which was diappointing, but I was still well pleased with my day out.

Comments

[athenais]

I sometimes remember the oppression of Sundays during my younger days where nothing was open and you had to wait out the day with whatever you had to eat or entertain yourself at home. Here in the future, Sunday being a day of rest for everyone (particularly the shops) is gone, but in smaller towns I'm sure it is still broadly true.

[shewhomust]

Yes, I'm old enough to remember when it was a legal obligation (and a mid-week afternoon as well)! Now it depends more whether the shop thinks it will get enough business to be worth opening - but it's not unusual for independent shops to decide not to open.