Fish book / book festival / [fish]
Oct. 16th, 2025 01:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustIt was desperance who first told me about Graeme Rigby's Work in Prepetual Progress, a book about herring. This must have been before he emigrated, so a decade ago, and it was a long-term project then. Now at last Rigby's Encyclopaedia of the Herring has been completed and published, and last week we went to a launch party at the Lit & Phil, and enjoyed many beautiful herring facts (from prehistory to the Radio Ballads), and some herring snacks.
We only went to one event at Durham Book Festival, but it was a good one: Ann Cleeves and Steph McGovern in conversation, chaired by Vic Watson - not that they needed chairing. Two good, interesting speakers, who have become friends in real life, just wind them up and let them go.
We would have liked to stop by after the event, to thank Ann for organising tickets for us - but the signing queue was (the usher estimated) forty minutes long, and led into a closed space which we could not enter. So instead we headed across the river to Veeno for a late lunch. We both wanted to try the deal (which I can't now find on their website) of a glass of orange wine and some fishy nibbles ('dark tuna', whatever that may be, and anchovies). I haven't tried orange wine before, despite it being so fashionable, and was glad of the chance to order a single glass. The staff were keen to warn us that it's a 'marmite' thing, which we would either love or hate: in fact I was underwhelmed. I found it thin, lacking fruit but also lacking anything else in its place, dry though not particularly acid. I'd order the fish again, but with white wine.
Last night's pub quiz took me looping back to the starting point of this post, with the question: what kind of fish are referred to as 'silver darlings'?
desperance who first told me about Graeme Rigby's Work in Prepetual Progress, a book about herring. This must have been before he emigrated, so a decade ago, and it was a long-term project then. Now at last Rigby's Encyclopaedia of the Herring has been completed and published, and last week we went to a launch party at the Lit & Phil, and enjoyed many beautiful herring facts (from prehistory to the Radio Ballads), and some herring snacks.We only went to one event at Durham Book Festival, but it was a good one: Ann Cleeves and Steph McGovern in conversation, chaired by Vic Watson - not that they needed chairing. Two good, interesting speakers, who have become friends in real life, just wind them up and let them go.
We would have liked to stop by after the event, to thank Ann for organising tickets for us - but the signing queue was (the usher estimated) forty minutes long, and led into a closed space which we could not enter. So instead we headed across the river to Veeno for a late lunch. We both wanted to try the deal (which I can't now find on their website) of a glass of orange wine and some fishy nibbles ('dark tuna', whatever that may be, and anchovies). I haven't tried orange wine before, despite it being so fashionable, and was glad of the chance to order a single glass. The staff were keen to warn us that it's a 'marmite' thing, which we would either love or hate: in fact I was underwhelmed. I found it thin, lacking fruit but also lacking anything else in its place, dry though not particularly acid. I'd order the fish again, but with white wine.
Last night's pub quiz took me looping back to the starting point of this post, with the question: what kind of fish are referred to as 'silver darlings'?
