A weekend packed with good things.
Sep. 11th, 2006 08:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustThe main event of the weekend was Val and Kelly's wedding, which was as wonderful as we knew it would be: but we also managed to pack a surprising amount of activity around it. So...
Saturday morning was odd jobs: washing sheets and stabbing a pound of damsons (you're supposed to prick them with a pin, but I was in a kitchen, the knife was to hand and the pins weren't) and rolling them in sugar, so that they'd be ready for me to add gin on our return. And we've booked a holiday - two weeks in Romania, end of this month, beginning of next. Many more details to follow...
Which was all very useful and constructive, but meant that we were later than we had intended setting off to collect![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
desperance, and had also overlooked that it was a home match, which adds fifty per cent to our journey time. With the result that desperance was pacing and scowling and glancing at watches and lurking behind the front door by the time we arrived. Then on to samarcand's, to deliver a laptop with which he hoped to detect his wi-fi, and find out why it wasn't reaching his study (a cosy nook in the coal hole, I believe...).
And then on to our destination. The town was en fête, festooned with balloons and banners and shiny streamers - half of which read "Congratulations Val and Kelly" and the other half, "Support the Lifeboats". We were not quite the first guests to arrive at the party: which is to say that whendesperance and I left durham_rambler taking a shower, and set off for the hall, we met Ian Rankin and his family coming back, because no-one was there yet. So we sloped off to the pub, and by the time we went back to the hall there was a children's party in full swing, complete with two radiant brides in co-ordinated Indian outfits, and face painting, and balloon sculpting, and champagne for the adults and flasks of tea and coffee for them as wanted...
Later the party moved upstairs, and there was eating and drinking and old friends and new ones (how often do you get to ask a new aquaintance: "Lauren, are you by any chance a Tart?"). There were balloons, and party poppers, and a champagne fountain - a wonderful piece of decadence, which scents the air with champagne, and adds to the party the fizz it removes from the wine (fortunately there were plenty of helpful staff with well-chilled bottles to refresh our glasses). There was dancing, and a ceilidh band (but this being a Scottish wedding, no caller, which made stripping the willow quite a challenge). There was going out to look at the moon rising above the sea, and there was talking and in no time at all it was midnight, and the frustration of saying goodnight to the people we hadn't caught up with yet... (I don't have many photos, because I'm not good at snatched portraits, or at flash either, but there are a few memories here).
Back to the pub, where the bedrooms all have the names of sea-birds:durham_rambler and I were in Sandpiper, desperance in Fulmar (probably not a reference to his habit of defending his nest from intruders by spitting out a foul-smelling oil). And I had kippers for Sunday breakfast.
We walked up the coast as far as Boulmer. There's a Northumberland Coast Path, but it's very much a linear walk: if you want to get back to your starting point, some of the route will be less interesting. Nonetheless, we saw a crowd of lapwings on the Aln estuary, and a heron further up the river. We had a drink in the pub at Boulmer - oh, and the pub had a number of poems and photographs on display, and I was rather taken with a poem called Boulmer Tractors, no author given: if anyone knows anything about it, do tell. Then back down the coast to our starting point, where we refreshed ourselves with crab sandwiches.
Which should have been the end of the excursion, but it turned out thatsamarcand and family were at the Marina, where his mother and stepfather had just brought their new boat, and we agreed to meet them there to collect our laptop. The "new boat" is not a modern glass fibre craft, but an old gaff ketch which they plan to renovate (I didn't take any pictures, but scroll down this page for a picture of my aunt and uncle on their ketch, the Veng, long ago) With the exception of the figurehead - a curiously inset Goth lady, with black hair and bare white breasts, who we think may be a vampire - it's lovely thing, and it was a delight to visit and admire, an unexpected treat, the cherry on the top of the weekend.
Saturday morning was odd jobs: washing sheets and stabbing a pound of damsons (you're supposed to prick them with a pin, but I was in a kitchen, the knife was to hand and the pins weren't) and rolling them in sugar, so that they'd be ready for me to add gin on our return. And we've booked a holiday - two weeks in Romania, end of this month, beginning of next. Many more details to follow...
Which was all very useful and constructive, but meant that we were later than we had intended setting off to collect
desperance, and had also overlooked that it was a home match, which adds fifty per cent to our journey time. With the result that desperance was pacing and scowling and glancing at watches and lurking behind the front door by the time we arrived. Then on to samarcand's, to deliver a laptop with which he hoped to detect his wi-fi, and find out why it wasn't reaching his study (a cosy nook in the coal hole, I believe...).And then on to our destination. The town was en fête, festooned with balloons and banners and shiny streamers - half of which read "Congratulations Val and Kelly" and the other half, "Support the Lifeboats". We were not quite the first guests to arrive at the party: which is to say that when
desperance and I left durham_rambler taking a shower, and set off for the hall, we met Ian Rankin and his family coming back, because no-one was there yet. So we sloped off to the pub, and by the time we went back to the hall there was a children's party in full swing, complete with two radiant brides in co-ordinated Indian outfits, and face painting, and balloon sculpting, and champagne for the adults and flasks of tea and coffee for them as wanted...Later the party moved upstairs, and there was eating and drinking and old friends and new ones (how often do you get to ask a new aquaintance: "Lauren, are you by any chance a Tart?"). There were balloons, and party poppers, and a champagne fountain - a wonderful piece of decadence, which scents the air with champagne, and adds to the party the fizz it removes from the wine (fortunately there were plenty of helpful staff with well-chilled bottles to refresh our glasses). There was dancing, and a ceilidh band (but this being a Scottish wedding, no caller, which made stripping the willow quite a challenge). There was going out to look at the moon rising above the sea, and there was talking and in no time at all it was midnight, and the frustration of saying goodnight to the people we hadn't caught up with yet... (I don't have many photos, because I'm not good at snatched portraits, or at flash either, but there are a few memories here).
Back to the pub, where the bedrooms all have the names of sea-birds:
durham_rambler and I were in Sandpiper, desperance in Fulmar (probably not a reference to his habit of defending his nest from intruders by spitting out a foul-smelling oil). And I had kippers for Sunday breakfast.We walked up the coast as far as Boulmer. There's a Northumberland Coast Path, but it's very much a linear walk: if you want to get back to your starting point, some of the route will be less interesting. Nonetheless, we saw a crowd of lapwings on the Aln estuary, and a heron further up the river. We had a drink in the pub at Boulmer - oh, and the pub had a number of poems and photographs on display, and I was rather taken with a poem called Boulmer Tractors, no author given: if anyone knows anything about it, do tell. Then back down the coast to our starting point, where we refreshed ourselves with crab sandwiches.
Which should have been the end of the excursion, but it turned out that
samarcand and family were at the Marina, where his mother and stepfather had just brought their new boat, and we agreed to meet them there to collect our laptop. The "new boat" is not a modern glass fibre craft, but an old gaff ketch which they plan to renovate (I didn't take any pictures, but scroll down this page for a picture of my aunt and uncle on their ketch, the Veng, long ago) With the exception of the figurehead - a curiously inset Goth lady, with black hair and bare white breasts, who we think may be a vampire - it's lovely thing, and it was a delight to visit and admire, an unexpected treat, the cherry on the top of the weekend.
