He died on Christmas Day and looking back it's really quite profound
I'd taken the Friday off before New Year's Eve and we once again appropriated N's work van to drive out through the fog to Suffolk, where twelve us of (mostly school-friends), plus four children, were spending a few nights in a converted barn somewhere near Southwold. It was a lovely place, albeit rather open plan, meaning that several of the sleeping areas weren't partitioned off from the main area by such niceties as walls or a door; it wasn't too bad, although did make the sound of plague-bearers coughing in the night and children playing table-football early in the morning more audible than usual.
We all had a meal and settled in the first night, then on New Year's Eve itself ventured into Southworld for some general wandering around of the beach, church and town before being joined by another couple for a pretty epic Murder Mystery Dinner in the evening. We went for that most traditional of English New Year's Day walks, tramping through unremarkable fields in the drizzle to a pub, then back again, hung out playing games (some of the kids had recently been gifted Keys to the Kingdom which I got dragged into several interminable games of) and tried to make a dent on our enormous stockpile of leftovers. We tried to get out early on the Bank Holiday Monday to experience the delights of Lowestoft, which sadly seemed entirely lacking in delights: my high hopes for the signs indicating a "Historic High Street" dashed when the most historic thing about it appeared to be a Wimpy. We said our goodbyes on the blustery sea-front and drove home.
Tuesday was officially the end of the lovely festive period with the drop-in back in full swing, although I had Aberrant in the evening, which was a welcome return. I was at the shelter on Wednesday, then was very excited the next day to be finally making it to DIY Space for London, a gloriously ramshackle venue on a surprisingly badly connected industrial estate in Bermondsey, to see Onsind, with cream_horn and M&E. Support came from very DIYish Megaflora and Swanning, a one-woman act who I really liked some of; I'd heard Onsind's name a lot from my compadres but never properly checked them out: turns out they played awesome queer, political, acoustic folk-punk and were cutely self-deprecating Northerners, a great discovery.
We all had a meal and settled in the first night, then on New Year's Eve itself ventured into Southworld for some general wandering around of the beach, church and town before being joined by another couple for a pretty epic Murder Mystery Dinner in the evening. We went for that most traditional of English New Year's Day walks, tramping through unremarkable fields in the drizzle to a pub, then back again, hung out playing games (some of the kids had recently been gifted Keys to the Kingdom which I got dragged into several interminable games of) and tried to make a dent on our enormous stockpile of leftovers. We tried to get out early on the Bank Holiday Monday to experience the delights of Lowestoft, which sadly seemed entirely lacking in delights: my high hopes for the signs indicating a "Historic High Street" dashed when the most historic thing about it appeared to be a Wimpy. We said our goodbyes on the blustery sea-front and drove home.
Tuesday was officially the end of the lovely festive period with the drop-in back in full swing, although I had Aberrant in the evening, which was a welcome return. I was at the shelter on Wednesday, then was very excited the next day to be finally making it to DIY Space for London, a gloriously ramshackle venue on a surprisingly badly connected industrial estate in Bermondsey, to see Onsind, with cream_horn and M&E. Support came from very DIYish Megaflora and Swanning, a one-woman act who I really liked some of; I'd heard Onsind's name a lot from my compadres but never properly checked them out: turns out they played awesome queer, political, acoustic folk-punk and were cutely self-deprecating Northerners, a great discovery.