News from Nowhere

Saturday was the Gala, the annual Big Meeting of the Durham Miners - and, these days, of anyone else who cares to attend. This year it was cold and grey and rainy, and our attendance was minimal: blame lack of stamina as much as the weather - or perhaps they go together, because it wasn't a day for taking a break, finding somewhere to sit and watching the procession go by... Instead we called in at Elvet Methodist church, open for coffee again after missing several years, and agreed that neither of us wanted to go much further. We did linger a little longer in Old Elvet, and then cut through to the river, crossing Baths Bridge and walking along the riverbanks. The procession was still crossing Elvet Bridge when we reached the Boathouse, and we could hear the bands all the way: the usual tunes (YMCA, Sweet Caroline) and some less usual (was that really Raglan Road?). I didn't hear Gresford at all, though.

Tomorrow we set off for a week's jaunt: driving across country and seeing people. No, of course I'm not ready. Bedtime now, though.

Mostly, I am very snooty about Bank Holidays. I can take time off when it suits me, so why should I welcome something that creates crowds and traffic jams? Yes I know: privilege. This weekend just gone, though, did feel like a Bank Holiday weekend (and today does feel like a Monday...)

On Saturday, we went to Amble for the Puffin Festival. We had had a lovely time there last year, but this year our timing was less good. We arrived just before one o' clock, and discovered we had just missed the Bared Toed dancing puffins I had liked so much; a poetry reading by Katrina Porteous, who is always worth hearing, was not until the following day. Despite this, I enjoyed wandering around the square in the sunshine, admiring the various stalls. I bought a supply of cards, and was very tempted by a framed print (an almost abstract image of dunlins, repeated across a dark blue background like light dappling on still water) but durham_rambler reminded me how many pictures we own but have not hung...



For the record, I did not have to bully durham_rambler into posing for this picture; he tires of browsing faster than I do, and announced that he was going to sit "over there," and that I should come and take his picture when I was ready. Mindful of how busy the Old Boat House had been last year, we ate at Radcliffe's Café Bar: a fun choice of beers, several of them Belgian, and I enjoyed sampling a raft of four - but next time I'd go back to the Boat House. A visit to the RNLI shop, and a volunteer to show us their boats - and then back to Spurreli's for ice cream. We didn't make it as far as the art centre, because it was due to close at four, but we did stroll along Queen Street, where several shop windows displayed drawings of puffins by the local primary school - sadly, the children had very obviously all copied the same image, and the serried ranks of puffins, all the same size, all the same pose, all faced left.

We got home to a note through the door from the students next door: they would be celebrating a birthday with a garden party on Sunday, starting at five o' clock (and here's a mobile number, please don't escalate this). The forecast was for rain, but they erected a gazebo and, as promised, partied with loud music, loud conversation and a certain amount of squealing until eleven o' clock on the dot. Or maybe ten past, but the eleven o' clock curfew is widely observed, which is good news. As it happend, our (adult, permanent) neighbours on the other side also erected a gazebo and entertained guests underneath it. This may have made me feel a bit surrounded, but dodn't add to the noise, and mercifully no-one tried to barbecue anything, so we were spared the olfactory evidence.

Perhaps it was the feeling that Sunday was simply something to be got through that made Monday feel like a long, sunny Sunday. The highlight was probably a comedy on the radio, which made it feel like those long-ago Sunday afternoons when my college room-mate and I would do our weekly bed-making together, and listen to The Navy Lark... The comedy this time was John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme: I'm always hesitant about recommending humour, but I would certainly say that if you like this sort of thing, then this is the sort of thing you wil like: gentle and mildly surreal, with a satisfying conclusion (and oh, look! they did one last year! How did I miss that?).

Meanwhile, we persevere with the weekend crossword...

There are people who schedule their holidays to allow themselves a day or so to prepare beforehand, and to recover afterwards: I am not one of those people. I plan the longest holiday we can fit in, which is why our departure is often rather breathless. On this occasion, our return has been busy too, and not because we intended it that way: we didn't actually go to the pub quiz on the evening of our return home...

It's an easy drive home from Kirkcudbright. We had planned a supermarket shop at Waitrose in Hexham, but as we were driving through Brampton we noticed it was market day:



so we stopped there instead. I bought vegetables (including English asparagus) and bread (a black wheat loaf from Warwick Bridge Corn Mill - and some of the flour, too!) from the market, and random supplies from the very grand farm shop on the corner of the square, and decided that would tide us over until I could place an Ocado order. So we came straight home...

First thing the following morning, durham_rambler had a hospital appointment for a scan. I'm very glad that his progress is being monitored, so although this timing wasn't ideal (and couldn't be changed without substantial delay) I am not complaining. And once it was over, we had a coffee date with - how shall I put this? Old friends? Someone we used to know and her no-longer-new-husband who we hadn't previously met? People who had remained on our Chrismas card list despite our not having met for oh, twenty or thirty years? Any combination of the above? Anyway, that had got in touch to say they were taking a short break in the area, and could we meet, and we had arranged to meet at our favourite farm shop on their way home. I won't say we bonded instantaneously, but it was all very agreeable, and I'd happily do it again. I wouldn't even insist on waiting another twenty years...

The next day, which was yesterday, durham_rambler spent the morning in an online meeting and then dashed out to the unveiling of a blue plaque at the site of Durham's ice rink: I had the sort of staying-home-and-getting-on-with-things day you need after you've been away.

Once you've unveiled one plaque, though, you can't stop, so today we both went to the presentation of the City of Durham Trust's Architectural Award: which sounds very grand, and was grand, but in a good, and very domestic way. The award went to an extension to a domestic house (I can't find anything on the Trust's website, but here's what the architect has to say about it): the lady who lives there had organised a magnificent buffet from the Claypath Deli (which is not somewhere we habitually go, but I should work on that) and we milled about admiring the extension and the way it integrates with the garden and its cathedral views, and had a couple of speeches and enjoyed ourselves generally.

We were just about to enter the Elm Tree last night when as passing couple asked us "Can you tell us the way to Owlgate?"

We couldn't (I wish we had an Owlgate!) but we directed them just round the corner to Allergate.

Later, the young man who joined the noisy table next to ours greeted us as old friends, and, when I obviously couldn't place him, explained "I'm the Broom House Farm butcher." Oh, of course. So, since I had been wondering whether the Farmers' Marhet would be going ahead on Easter Sunday, I asked whether we would see him there. Ah, he said, I was making the same mistake as he had: there was no conflict because April doesn't actually start until the folowing week.

I'm gkad I founf that out.

Two excursions this week, neither requiring any great degree of intrepidity, but each, in its way, feeling like an adventure.

On Tuesday we went to Newcastle for a Wine Society tasting. We don't do this often, but this one was particularly tempting, wines of the Languedoc Roussillon with representatives of the growers in attendance, and held at the Station Hotel, which made the journey as straightforward as it could be. I agreed that I could manage the walk up to the station on the way out, and durham_rambler agreed not to fuss about getting a taxi home from the station, and this worked pretty well. I coped with the walk and was no slower than I had anticipated (which was, admittedly, pretty slow) and with the amount of standing required throughout the evening (there were some chairs, but it was pretty crowded) and although there were no taxis to be had at the station, we managed to hail one before we reached the foot of Station Bank. And the wines were worth the effort.

( a beaker full of the warm South... )

The second excursion was around Durham, to entertain visitors: it is they, not we, who were intrepid, having taken the train from York into the blizzard:



( Third time lucky? )

So all in all, despite the day not having gone at all according to plan, I'd call it a success.

Two years ago, I posted about seeing Luke Jerram's Museum of the Moon in Durham Cathedral. Yesterday we went back to see his new piece, Gaia:



Things I never expected to hear myself ask about the Earth: "Is it bigger than the moon? Or just nearer?" According to the dedicated websites, both pieces are seven metres in diameter, so if the Earth looked larger, maybe it's because it hangs at the west end of the nave, and you look up and see it as soon as you enter the cathedral (well, as soon as you've navigated the cash desk). People were treating this as an invitation to photograph each other standing beneath the globe, arms outstretched and partly raised, holding up the Earth.

( I didn't do that; I did this instead. )

I asked durham_rambler "What did you think of it?" After a short pause, he answered "I'm glad to have seen it." Me too.

It's a beautiful bright morning, and I seem to have caught durham_rambler's cold: my head feels as of it has been stuffed with cotton wool (with added sneezing).

This rather takes the edge off the e-mail that arrived this morning, cancelling tomorrow's lunch date (because of emergency plumbing): that saves us atruggling with the decision of whether we ought to cry off (and yes, I think we ought).

Yesterday we visited the Botanic Gardens: I have never seen so many students there. Presumably it's the season: I don't think I've ever been there when the rhododendrons are in bloom, either. I'm not satisfied with any of the pictures I took of them, though - too much sunshine, I don't know how to handle it. This was the only picture I really liked:

It's been a funny, fragmented week - nothing major, but it seems to be taking all the running I can do to stay in the same place. So here's a hasty account of last Sunday, when - not for the first time - we went to the Bishop Auckland Food Festival. It might have been wiser to go on Saturday: stocks were runnibg low, there was no blue cheese to be had for love nor money and Lacey's had sold everything but a few pieces of their excellent brie. But I hadn't slept well on Friday night, and SaturdaY was dull and rainy, so Sunday is when we fancied an outing: and we enjoyed a bright sunny day (the forecast showers came just as we were leaving).

This is purely impressionistic, but I think there were fewer stalls than last year, and the crowds were less, too. As always, more sugar than anything else: artisan chocolate, elaborately iced and filled cakes, preserves (chutney rather than jam, for some reason) and rum seems to have overtaken gin as the spirit of choice. I bought very few of these things, but plenty of interesting conversation, and I learned a lot about rum production: it seems that id you import your rum at cask strength, and then temper it with Harrogate spring water, you can sell it as Yorkshire rum. You can't actually distil rum in the UK, as we don't grow sugar can, and beet sugar doesn't produce a palatable result.

Also enjoyed conversation with a couple of cheesemakers from Teesdale: they are based in Butterknowle, and we reminisced about the brewery. "The couple who live in their building - it's the old schoolhouse - are among our best customers..." They have a café, and we are planning a visit.

We lunched at Breaking Bread bakery, whose bread I know from Sedgefield farmers' market. Excellent wild garlic soup and bread, disappointing coffee and cake. And I enjoyed the entertainment:



There was a sequence of street performances, of which these alarmingly affable chefs were the only ones I photographed. Granny Turissmo zipped about on shopping trolleys, accompanied by loud music. But I wish I had seen more of the Human Hedges, who were retreating into the Town Hall just as I arrived: they were dotted with apples for the occasion, which I thought a properly appropriate touch. All of these entertainments were offered by twosomes, which made me wonder whether they were the different faces of one very versatile duo. If that is the case, the internet isn't letting on.

Coarse describes itself as a "tasting menu restaurant in Durham city centre" and we have been curious to try it since it opened in the autumn (press coverage here). So when J. suggested taking us out to lunch as a birthday treat (midway between durham_rambler's birthday and mine), that's where we suggested, and she very generously agreed.

It's in Reform Place, which sounds grander than it is: it's a little courtyard off the North Road (once a main shopping street, now in limbo while the bus station is being rebuilt). At the far end of the courtyard is the Head of Steam, a pub with a good reputation, in a building which was once the gardening department of Archibalds:



This picture doesn't really convey the enclosed nature of the space. It wouldn't have taken much effort to falsify it still further, by cropping out the edge of the dustbin - but a gaggle of dustbins do dominate the space, evidence of how all the premises above shops are being converted into student flats (not in itself a bad thing)...

( Food in words and pictures )

A shot of espresso fortified durham_rambler for the walk home, J and me for a tour of the North Road's charity shops, the perfect end to -

Well, look, here's the thing: I've been quite critical about the experience, but that doesn't mean I wasn't enjoying myself, it just means that being critical is aa majoe part of how I enjoy myself. I would certainly do it again. The food was good, but the entertainment was even better.