Busy social weekend
Jun. 27th, 2005 11:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
undyingkingOne of those weekends when things seem to cluster together, and you end up only spending an hour or so loafing around reading the paper (which is surely what weekends are supposed to be for).
Started on Friday eve with our monthly book group meeting. Rain started dead on 8, scuppering plans to have it in the garden... the book was Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, which opened up a pretty good discussion on pop science books in general, science teaching when we were at school, women in science careers, scientific ability and Asperger's, and a bit of wild-eyed cosmology to finish up with. As for the book itself, we all agreed that the best bits were the wry and / or bizarre anecdotes about the characters involved, with palaeontologist Richard Owen a particular favourite.
Saturday evening was the Oysterband, at the Caribbean Association. They're one of those curious bands that I've seen several times, but don't have any of their music. I guess I have the feeling that although it's excellent live, I wouldn't reall want to listen to it outside a gig atmosphere. Seems a bit harsh, but there you go...
Anyway, they game an excellent performance as ever, and as ever I marvelled at the tightness that comes from playing upwards of 25 years alongside each other. The Caribbean Association has a deeply poor acoustic, but here in Ipswich we have to take what we're given -- the nearest 'proper' venues are in Cambridge or Norwich. Also, it sells Dragon Stout, which is worth a bit of suffering for.
They were very proud to announce that they'd just come from headlining the Avalon Stage at Glasto on Friday, so were still extremely smelly. I didn't get in close enough to check this claim...
Then yesterday we went to the birthday barbecue of a friend out in the country towards Manningtree. Lovely relaxed afternoon, with much sneezing from us townies. There was a quite extraordinary range of food prefernces / allergies on show, ranging from simple vegetarianism, via the fairly standard lactose and gluten intolerances, to one unfortunate child who apparently was liable to start swelling up if you so much as breathed on her -- such that the hard-working chef had to use four different sets of BBQ eqpt to avoid driving anyone present into anaphylaxis.
Plus, news that our lovely neighbours are moving in a few weeks' time. They're being replaced by a woman who has three cats, so our two littl'uns are going to have a bit of a time of it I suspect. Maybe time to invest in a magnetic flap...
Started on Friday eve with our monthly book group meeting. Rain started dead on 8, scuppering plans to have it in the garden... the book was Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, which opened up a pretty good discussion on pop science books in general, science teaching when we were at school, women in science careers, scientific ability and Asperger's, and a bit of wild-eyed cosmology to finish up with. As for the book itself, we all agreed that the best bits were the wry and / or bizarre anecdotes about the characters involved, with palaeontologist Richard Owen a particular favourite.
Saturday evening was the Oysterband, at the Caribbean Association. They're one of those curious bands that I've seen several times, but don't have any of their music. I guess I have the feeling that although it's excellent live, I wouldn't reall want to listen to it outside a gig atmosphere. Seems a bit harsh, but there you go...
Anyway, they game an excellent performance as ever, and as ever I marvelled at the tightness that comes from playing upwards of 25 years alongside each other. The Caribbean Association has a deeply poor acoustic, but here in Ipswich we have to take what we're given -- the nearest 'proper' venues are in Cambridge or Norwich. Also, it sells Dragon Stout, which is worth a bit of suffering for.
They were very proud to announce that they'd just come from headlining the Avalon Stage at Glasto on Friday, so were still extremely smelly. I didn't get in close enough to check this claim...
Then yesterday we went to the birthday barbecue of a friend out in the country towards Manningtree. Lovely relaxed afternoon, with much sneezing from us townies. There was a quite extraordinary range of food prefernces / allergies on show, ranging from simple vegetarianism, via the fairly standard lactose and gluten intolerances, to one unfortunate child who apparently was liable to start swelling up if you so much as breathed on her -- such that the hard-working chef had to use four different sets of BBQ eqpt to avoid driving anyone present into anaphylaxis.
Plus, news that our lovely neighbours are moving in a few weeks' time. They're being replaced by a woman who has three cats, so our two littl'uns are going to have a bit of a time of it I suspect. Maybe time to invest in a magnetic flap...
