Where the Weekend Went

[desperance]

Saturday morning, I was good. I went to the Lit & Phil and wrote fifteen hundred words or so of the new novel, just to prove to myself that I can catch the voice of it (it's historical! I don't do historicals, they're too scary!). Then I met up with Mark & Helen & Michelle & Enfys for lunch, and went out to the coast for the weekend. It was the Mouth of the Tyne Festival, with lots of free music and street theatre & stuff: which was inevitably up-and-down in quality and interest, but fun to hang out at whatever. Mostly yesterday we did the syncopation thing, an uneven progress from bar to bar. I stayed over, and today was all kippers-and-bloody-mary-for-breakfast and blustery ferries over the river. South side of the river was a bit disappointing - not much happening, not many people - and I felt utterly deceived, because what they advertised as the Food Village turned out to be hog-roast and fish-and-chip vans. Which would be disappointing anyway, but when they're on the same patch of ground as the Asian aspect of the festival and there are Muslims running stalls and so forth, I think a hog-roast is insensitive to the point of being downright insulting.

So back to the proper north side of the river (I do like the ferry, I do), and we picnicked in the priory, and then I came home. Where Mac has been oddly pleased to see me, to the point of sitting on me lots, which is not a thing he does much; and I have mostly been reading a book about that branch of the nursing service that my heroine does not join. I need to know what she's turned away from, y'know? Tho' the book is beginning to annoy me: it has an agenda, it wants to Set the Record Straight and recover the stories of these neglected heroes. Which is fine, they were clearly an extraordinary generation; I'm just getting a little tired of having their bravery spelled out in seven-letter words that begin with b and end with y. The story is enough; it really doesn't need the emphasis.