boybear

On Thursday we set off for our pre-Christmas visit to London. As ever, Christmas seems to have arrived before we are ready for it; and as ever, this is partly true. Certainly the calendar has reached the point where the Bears must decide whether, in order to hold the Carol Evening on a Sunday, it must fall either closer to Christmas than is reasonable, or earlier, and have opted for the latter. I think that's a good choice, but yes, definitely not ready.

We did Christmas shopping at the weekend. Not only did we go to the monthly Farmers' Market, we also attended the Christmas Fair on Palace Green. At the former we may have over-shopped for vegetables, because the vegetables are so good there; at the latter we picked up a few small gifts, but were disappointed in the hunt for cards. The local hospice had cards, and we bought the only remaining pack of the design we liked, and there were artists selling single cards, but that's ridiculous... On the way home from the Farmers' Market, we made an inspired detour to the Garden Centre, where we again cleaned them out of the design we liked (three more packs). This enabled us to send off all the overseas cards. Today durham_rambler went to the Oxfam shop alone, and brought home a selection of cards, none of which I hate but none of which I love - and we have spent more of today that I anticipated writing cards.

Yesterday evening we zoomed in to Jim Causley and Miranda Sykes' Midwinter concert, which was pleasantly seasonal. My favourite thing was their 'medieval mashup', but there was also an intriguing combination of Sydney Carter's Song of Truth with fragments of Down in Yon Forest (which is always one of my highlights at the Carol Evening).

Meanwhile, durham_rambler is out being festive - at an annual Parish event, to which I declined to accompany him. I have plenty to do here, thanks: including writing this, and making pizza for a late supper (you could regard it as gratuitous cooking, or you could call it appeasing the sourdough starter, which I will now freeze to await our return). More of a problem is that tonight's event has caused another meeting to be rescheduled to tomorrow, which really is inconvenient.

Oh, well. Onward!

Last Friday we went to our one and only event in the Books on Tyne Festival: On Sycamore Gap: Words of Music, Loss, Hope & Renewal with poet Kate Fox and musicians Staithe. Here's the listing on the festival website.

The starting point is the book Kate gave us when we saw her on Lindisfarne at midsummer, a collection of poems arising from the felling of the sycamore tree that used to grow on Hadrian's Wall. It's a nice little book: attractive production, abundant simple but pleasing illustrations by printmaker Cat Moore and, yes, I liked the poems too. I'm sceptical about the outpouring of emotion over the felling of the tree: it leaves a gap in our landscape, but how much of its fame comes from its (entirely fake) role in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves? I always wondered why a tree had been allowed to grow in the stonework of Hadrian's Wall: it couldn't be good for it, surely? But that's sycamores for you, turn your back for a moment and a tiny seedling has become a tree. I was reassured by Kate's explanation that she had been approached by the publisher, it would not have occurred to her to propose a book on the subject; and I enjoyed her appreciation of how important the tree was in how many ways, tempered by just enough distance. I appreciated her take on the tree's unexpected place in heritage marketing (in her poem on John Clayton, the antiquarian who may have planted the tree).

Here's a glowing review (by - oh, goodness, it's by Julie Ward; long story). It conveys much of what is good about the book, but its praise gives away some of my reservations - it's a perfect gift, apparently. (And I admit, it is).

Given the involvement of Staithe, I had expected a poetry reading with songs; and that's how the first half of the evening went (because, said Kate, "we are our own support act.") But the main event was constructed as a whole: Staithe's Nick Pierce, introducing it, told us it might provoke strong emotions, and this was all right (oh, dear!) but also invited us to save our applause until the end (which we mostly did). Staithe are a duo, new to me, but I realised that I had heard Bridie Jackson before with her band Bridie Jackson and the Arbour: not my music of choice, but it worked well as counterpoint to Kate's words (what was that thing that Nick Pierce was playing? The internet tells me he is a viola player: was it an electric viola?).

I enjoyed the performance, but I was not overcome by strong emotions. This may indicate hardness of heart on my part - but I note that the passage that provoked the entire audience to spontaneous applause was Kate's "Alan Bennett monologue" as one of her fellow attenders in the public gallery at the trial.