In a fit of madness, Rackaback have decided that we’ll Morris Dance a Mile for Sport Relief on Sunday 25th March 2012.
So we’ll be up at Sewerby Hall at Bridlington, in full rig – facepaint, sticks and bells. If you’re in the vicinity, come and laugh at us. And if you feel like donating a fiver, well that’d be ace.
I have a couple of posts I want to write, but haven’t got round to them yet.
But I did want to note something, to save me having to look it up elsewhere. I stopped smoking.
On 2nd November 2005 🙂
Just testing the iPhone WordPress app – thought I would show you the shoes I bought in Leeds yesterday. There is an actual Dr Martens shop there, and whilst in there I happened to remark that I wished they did a shoe in the shiny red patent. And they used to, and they had some stock. They were so helpful, it would have been rude not to buy them. Do I did.
Time ran away with us a bit last night, and before we knew where we were, it was time to leave for Morris practice before we’d managed to eat supper; and, of course, it was a night that not only could we not be late, we had to be early, as I had the hall keys. So we each consumed a mini pork pie on the run as we left, and decided to grab something on Princes Ave when we got home.
We have more eateries than you can shake a stick at at the top of our road – Malaysian, Morroccan, Chinese (although it looks as though the Giant Panda has shut down), Thai, Indian, Italian, another Indian, plus an assortment of cafe bars; of the top of my head, The Laundry, Garbutts, Mustard, Pave, Lounge, Fudge and a new one whose name I can’t remember*. Oh, and a chippy and a (very poor) kebab house. Â The latter keeps going until god knows when, but having tried it once, never again [shudder]. However, it seems that pretty much all of them stop taking orders at 9, which is a bit anti social when it’s 9.20 p.m. and I want something to eat. All except Da Gianni, who were happy to seat us.
Their menu, together with their Specials board, offered many different dishes, but almost all of them were in a “tomato and basil sauce”. Â As we feared, my salmon pasta and Pete’s Italian sausage pasta were pretty much identical except for the last minute addition of – yes, salmon and Italian sausage to the relevant plate; and, when the waiter brought the bowl of parmesan, he actually wouldn’t let me have some as it would “spoil the dish”. There was olive oil on the table, but no bread offered.
So, adequate but hardly inspiring – we shan’t bother again. Â Good Morris practice though – coming together nicely!
*Interestingly, while Googling for it, I came across restaurants.co.uk, whose Google entry claims “If it can’t be found on Restaurants.co.uk it’s not there”. Interestingly, they don’t find a single entry for our postcode, which seems a bit of a fail given the above 🙂
I didn’t get round to writing the post about our trip to Derbyshire at the end of January, because I was waiting for Pete to put his photos on Flickr, but he hasn’t, so I’ve stolen this one from his Facebook feed. That’s me on the far right bedecked in purple and yellow ribbons.
Anyway, so … off we all went to Freaks in the Peaks, a sort of travelling Morris collective/workshop; about ten of us from Rackaback went, in a sort of works outing, and we rented a pair of cottages in Eyam to accommodate us. We all drove down on the Friday afternoon – we got there first, in daylight, and I was glad we did, as big fat snowflakes fell from the sky in the early evening, and then the ice came, and it was bloody treacherous. But the cottages were snug and warm and so that was OK.  Pete and I stopped in Matlock Bridge on the way down, where the rain came down sideways and it was freezing, and the village was closed anyway due to winter, and then for a cream tea at Chatsworth, so we were well fed.
The Saturday morning was practising in the Mechanics Institute in Eyam, which was good fun, and I learned a couple of new dances. Then lunch, then dancing out firstly outside the Miners Arms, then up at the Craft place. I didn’t dance up there because it was on gravel, and my knees wouldn’t have liked it, but I did manage to get over my fear of not being picked for the netball team in the earlier part of the day. In the evening, most of us went and had a good meal at the Miners, then up to the Ceilidh for rest of the night, which was enormous fun. Much wine was consumed, many instruments were played, and some of us learned a dance called Lorenzo’s Butterfly which, had we been sober, we’d never have managed, given it involves hurling sticks through the air *and* catching them again. We performed it flawlessly, which just goes to show how much wine we’d had. The video at the bottom is not us 🙂
So that was it, really – we had toast and jam in the little tea room for Sunday breakfast, and packed up the cottage. Â Some Freakers were walking up the hills to the next village, but we decided we’d drive up there, and we had a nice walk for a couple of miles, although it was a tad on the chilly side. A lovely weekend, all told, and we will be doing the next Freaks in April in Tideswell in Derbyshire.
“Don’t be evil” used to be Google’s mantra, but clearly they don’t mean it, if indeed they ever did. Which I doubt.
Those of you with Google accounts will no doubt have got an e-mail by now (or you soon will have) entitled “Changes to Google’s Privacy Policy  and Terms of Service. It’s all couched in nice friendly language, but what it means is that basically, as far as Google are concerned, you have no privacy.
“Our new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, we may combine information you’ve provided from one service with information from other services. In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.”
As an example of how this pans out, you could read an e-mail in Gmail, then see a relevant ad pop up on, say, YouTube. Â The Reg explains it better than I can, but I find the whole thing really quite unpleasant, and a huge potential cause of difficulty on shared computers. I can remember when Google first launched, and how wonderful we all thought it. I don’t subscribe to the school of thought that everything on the net should be free – a service like Google’s search engine costs a fortune to run – but I was happy to display the ads in my browser. But now they’re like the Tesco of the internet – they want it all, and they’re not having it, not from me.
A couple of weeks ago, I changed my default search engine to Bing. It’s pretty good, and on the rare occasions it lets me down, I go over to Google. The nice thing about Bing is it shows me what I ask for, rather than what it thinks I would like to see to reinforce previous searches (unlike Google), which is why I switched to it. I discovered yesterday that their map service is at least the equal of Google’s. I have signed my accounts out of Google search, YouTube and Google+ (which I never used anyway, as I didn’t like what they were doing with it). I don’t use Picasa. I read my Gmail in Mailplane, a standalone OSX client which runs a standalone version of Webkit. Today I shall be seeing if I can find an alternative for Google Docs, which we use quite a lot here for collaboration. So, as far as possible, I’m opting out of their “unified service”.
I hope lots and lots more folk do something like this, to see if they can persuade the chaps at Mountain View that what they are trying to do is wrong. Google don’t own us, even if they’d like to.
Another month (almost) without a post! What an exciting life I lead …
Christmas was quiet, just as we like it. Although we don’t go overboard at all, we were left with a mountain of food, which we are slowly working through (details on Reactive Cooking). We went for a walk at Easington on Boxing Day, somewhere – astonishingly – we hadn’t been before. Nice beach, but the wind howled as it usually does on the East coast! We had a lovely New Year’s Eve, cooking dinner for friends, and then going round to another friends to see in 2012.
Then we went down to Norfolk to spend 24 hours with my daughter and her son, which was entirely splendid, and we built a Lego crane. I knitted him a Ron Weasley sweater – my first knitting in about 30 years! – and it only just fit; he is a Long boy. So I’m remaking it, but I ran out of wool, and Boyes didn’t have any more. Another (huge) ball arrived yesterday, so I can proceed.
We don’t buy Christmas presents for each other, instead we buy things for the house. This year it got a “Keep Calm and Drink Wine” sign, which is on the wall in the dining room; we feel it an excellent mantra. Also, an electric blanket (warmz! fab!), and a Truecall call screening device. We are plagued with spamming telephone calls here, and this has stopped them dead in their tracks. Highly recommended.
And now it’s January again. This time of year is a bit depressing, but we are off to the Peak District at the end of the month for a Morris dancing thing – there’s about ten of us going, so it should be fun.
Happy (belated) New Year, all!
Have I really not written anything since 17th November? I have been proper poorly, with a viral wossname that lasted about four weeks, and still has me coughing a bit even now. A dose of penicillin didn’t touch it, and in its wake it left two cancelled dentist appointments, one blood test (and the second cancelled by the surgery because the bloodsucker was ill), one Bill Bailey gig in Sheffield (sob), and half of Celtarabia up the road at Pave – had to come home. Still, on the mend now, finally. The latter are absolutely wonderful – if they come anywhere near you, go see them!
Not much else to relate, really. Went Morrising at Bridlington yesterday, but the weather was vile, and my bad knee is playing up in the cold, so I only did one dance. Then we were rained off. Bought the black boots in the same range as the red boots of fabulosity, as I seem to wear nothing else, and they are great for Morris dancing.
Mustrum went missing for ten days, and we thought he was gone for good, but he came home, praise $deityofchoice, thinner and clingy.
And that’s it, really. Very busy with work, Rackaback taking over social life :), looking forward to a good break over Christmas, then a works Morris outing to Derbyshire for a mass dance weekend in January.
Had a haircut this morning while Pete tinkered with my melodeon’s sticky buttons (she’s now named Aliss), then wandered down into Hull with Pete – wanted to return some stuff, see if Marks had any nice pasta bowls, etc.
Marks didn’t, Peacocks wouldn’t exchange as it was over 30 days (where did October go, please) and gave me a gift card, but I had a look in Schuh … They had some amazingly nice red boots, and Pete decided I should have them. So I did. Then we went and had coffee and a baguette in the Ferens Gallery cafe, Â mooched about some more vaguely looking for pasta bowls (our wonderful thick, deep ones are starting to crack round the edges, sob), bought some hair dye (for me), some lighters, some long matches, some compost bin liners, some mince pies and a tub of cream.
Now a cup of tea, a quick and easy supper, and Strictly. Tomorrow promises chores in exchange for a roast chickie!.
Oh yes – here they are.
Edited to add link to Boots of Fabulosity.
Rackaback continues to take over my life 🙂 This week, Pippa persuaded some of us to attend the FirstMondayOfTheMonth folk night at the Black Boy, an ancient pub in the old city in Hull. We had a good attendance from the side: Lynn and Lars (the latter seen above with his accordion), Debbie and her husband Eric (not a dancer, but general supporter) who kindly drove us there, Jamie, Pippa and Pete – who while not (yet) a dancer (but don’t think I’m not trying to persuade him), does most of the social stuff, and plays guitar on music nights.
It was huge fun, although I don’t believe I’ll ever be able to play the melodeon like that. Or possibly at all. Still, I vamped along where possible on my D whistle, wishing once again I had a low D. Pete complained bitterly that he didn’t have anything to bang; Pippa lent him an egg (green plastic with bits in for percussiveness), and he had a bash at Debbie’s bodhran, but he’ll need to take something next time – you need to join in to enjoy it properly., It really was a cracking night, and will be part of our diary every month now, I’m sure.
On the way home, two rather inebriated ladies appeared by the car just as we were about to pull off, and one actually opened the back door. It appeared she didn’t know how to roll her own spliff (!), and required assistance. We declined, and drove off into the night.
Weekend just gone was quiet, as we were both not very well. Indeed, Pete had retired hurt during my birthday music night last Thursday, and I picked it up the lurgy the next day. We cooked a lot for the freezer, I potted up some plants and bulbs, made bread, watched Toy Story (how come we never saw it before? – lovely) and generally slumped.