News from Nowhere

We spent the past two evenings at the Sage, at concerts linked to their 'Fiddles on Fire' weekend: two concerts, five bands, two opprtunities to meet friends and gossip over a picnic and a bottle of wine on the Sage's concourse.

( Warming up )

( The hard times of Old England )

( Not a misprint )

( The filling in the sandwich )

( Three giants from the North (we come in peace) )

Plus bonus fiddle: The Legacy of John Rae's Fiddle: A Cultural Journey between Orkney & the Arctic

We live surrounded by cardboard boxes; they provide much of our long-term storage, and mostly I am resigned to this, so much so that I don't notice it. But over the last week, the boxes have been on the move.

This is partly self-inflicted. I've been trying to clear space in the little attic room known as 'the dark room' (we have, in fact, used it as a dark room, although by the time we decided there was no point in reinstating its tiny skylight, film photography was very nearly over. There is still an enlarger in there, though, among the other clutter). It has become a convenient place to store the large cardboard boxes in which shiny new toys enter the house, (and which can't be discarded in case we need to return the toys whence they came), the rather smaller boxes which might be useful for packing things which have to be sent by post, and a proportion of the boxes full of books which were dislodged when we cleared the bedroom. The objects which arrived in the large boxes are now old enough that they will never need their boxes again, so these can be discarded; the number of potentially useful boxes now exceeds and possible demand; and the spare bedroom can take more books if it has to.

I am making progress here, but the result is a flow of cardboard boxes towards the front door (and thence ultimately the tip), where they have encountered the cardboard boxes containing this year's delivery of Rhône wine (which we buy from the Wine Society in bond, that is, before release, and receive before it is ready to drink). So I have been diverted by reshuffling the wine cellar, moving in the boxes that are drinking now, and so making space under the stairs for the new arrivals. I was a little shocked to discover three dozen bottles under the stairs that I had overlooked, and which should probably be consumed by 2014, but I think we'll manage. And that's all nicely tidied away now, so boxes can be moved into the hall with no fear of confusion.

Which leaves only the cardboard box in which my new computer arrived. A single box is not really significant, but transferring to a new computer is adding to my sense of things in flux. durham_rambler is very patiently reconstructing my life, program by program. I've switched the appearance back to Windows Classic (though I can't find the colour scheme I've used for so long, and have Windows beige instead of the spruce green I'm used to). We've found the drivers for the printer and the scanner, and found out where Windows had hidden all the website files so that Homesite couldn't find them. And it does seem to have cured the flakiness of my internet connection.

We also went down to Eaglescliff last night to hear Dave Swarbrick play at the Waiting Room - and had a very good evening, but the writing bit of my mind doesn't think that's as interesting as all the cardboard boxes.