December falls on Wetherby

I know there is every likelihood this will sound like a BBC weather report but it does and has snowed in Yorkshire this year.  We have been spending quite a few party nights with people we know and have come to know over recent times but these are just parties where we sit around and have fun so you don't need to read endless reports of them. The weather however is something special this year, Nice dry snow and sun and cold and it has been quite cheery.  Lots of fun watching the locals be totally confused about how to do anything in the snow.  I can't for the life of me understand why they are not used to it.  We have no trouble.

These joyous things don't last and as I write this on December 29 we have reverted to the usual cold damp English winter with bare winter grass and some patches of fog and everyone is much more used to this..   This was our back yard after the November fall.

And this our road into Wetherby during a fall

In town during the same fall

Our favourite summer table at the Red Lion Pub garden in town.

Some late hanging apples in the high street.

just below the bridge before the freeze

the sun hots our back yard

A visit to the Garden Gate pub in Hunslet Leeds.  A spectacular listed turn of the 1900's pub

All the rooms were like this, a real time capsule

the lights in Leeds included for some reason two shot lambs hung sadly in the main drag.

Oh, and the fast flowing River Wharfe froze.

quite a lot of froze.

Gail had challenges getting home from work some days but always made it.  Yay the mighty mini.

Some Wetherby graffiti written in the frozen fog.

And this months furry critter shot fr the fans of fur.  This is Gail's semi-tame tree rat.

Other than that December saw us have a lovely xmas at home.  We had friends share xmas eve and boxing night, are planing a new years eve party closer to Leeds with colleagues of Gail's and then it's off to Egypt. More on that at the end of next month,

For now

HAVE A GREAT 2011!

leeds market, wetherby snow, manchester party and stuff.

 This month has been a  bit cold and quiet to be honest.  There have been moments of bike riding, very few and very short,  But we can turn corners, we can change gears, we just have very little distance.

 We did travel down to Limini Coffee in Doncaster for the launch of their new offices and training facility. Greg has become interested in an opportunity relating to coffee and is getting wonderful help from Youri, Howard and Sam.  Sam is i this picture with Glen, a kiwi who writes and runs a coffee forum in London .  Coffee people are lovely folk.  Greg also met a PWC guy who is helping him with his pitch and may help more, who knows.  It was a lovely night,we got to play latte art, learned more about coffee and had a really good night.

Leeds, every year it seems, although I had heard this year it wouldn't, hosts a german christmas market in Millennium square. 

It is a fantastic version of what can be a rather ordinary thing we are told.  There are little shops selling chocolate marshmallows of huge size, nuts of all sorts, cheese, sausages, mulled wine, bierkeller, garlic bread, pickled fish, it goes on and on, and there are rides and trinkets and christmas decorations, candles, but I did say it goes on and on.  There are even dodgem cars.   Speaking of which. Gail's work do for xmas was held in Manchester, I had another invite to go to another party so I remained in Leeds.  At the party Gail went to there was a MonteCarlo show and meal.  I hear tell it was a fantastic night with interesting entertainment and DODGEMS.   I have seen photos of Gail having the best of times but as the camera was not doing it's thing that night unfortunately the record is on others facebook pages and this is the best one of Gail and Jon racing I can copy to blog,  thanks to Karen D. for sending me the original.

 Back home of course it snowed, but you may know it snows here.  This shot from our front door showing the grit truck spreading salt and grit on our road.  Heaviest November falls in 17 years say the experts, locals say we are in  for a lot more if it is like this so early.  There are signs, birds, trees and hedgerow animals do things predicting a bad winter the locals tell us about.  I can't recall all the tales but we have been hearing things like, a big plum crop on the autumn hedges equals a long cold winter, we picked lots of plums this year for example so it must be true. Or its our fault.

There has been other things happening other than snow. I went to Barwick-on-Elmet historical meeting one night because they were honouring the links the old Leeds Savages had with the town.  A hundred years ago, almost, the original Savages took over a small house there for weekends in the country and proceeded to create a frisson and elicit activity in the quiet town leading to some notorious adventures being captured in print and paint.  About seven of us current Leeds Savages went and did some readings of our work and displayed some paintings and one even did an impromptu performance piece.  The assorted historians were most appreciative and showed us original Savage works in journal, sketch and oil paint form dating back to the art deco, nouveau and arts and crafts era..  Many of those artists were recognised and famous in their time and are now.  Some travelled to Australia no less, and I was informed of this many times on the night.

Being commonwealth citizens means we are not welcome to stay in the UK and we have been making enquiries to see if we can extend our stay here.  Our time here is up in 2012 but if Oz had fought on the other side in the world wars we would be welcomed as EU friends for as long as we liked.  As it stands it looks like us Aussies have to pull something out of the hat if we want to stay.  We are looking into that too.

There have been other things like looking at auctions, re-financing our house here, and general mucking about little towns and village pubs but as I said, November has been a quiet month blog-wise if not sorting out life wise.

I probably won't update before xmas, so do have a very merry xmas!

ON A BIKE !!

And she turns corners, stops, gets on and off and can change gears.  It may be a sad admission but this is the most exciting thing that we have ever done outside with our clothes on.
As a first blog entry for a month this will take some beating.

October - The Muse, Leeds savages

This is a little paragraph or two to close off this month.  No photos for you to look at as Gail's work took us out of the travelling around game but life went on. 
We dropped into the Muse bar in Wetherby, http://www.markettowntaverns.co.uk/muse.asp?Tavern=Muse&Section=Main it has recently become our favourite pub out of the 12 that are within a walk from our front door.  The reason for this is that they have a very good wine cellar, at least 5 hand-pulled and well stored ale choices and their food is consistantly good every time we have visited.  Staff are competent too.  But I mention this visit because they were updating their web page last time we visited and the photographer was taking candid shots.  Gail , being her animated self , was snapped and asked to sign a waiver saying she would allow the pub to use her photo.  We presume she is going to be the face of Wetherby now, can't wait for the new web page.
The end of October also saw me being asked to lead the fortnightly pub meetings of our disparate Leeds writing group, part of the Leeds Savages http://www.leedssavage.com/ .  This is no onerous task as little formality is involved past that of ensuring breaks are called frequently enough to ensure the writers' drinks remain filled and smokes can be sucked.  
As part of that group's activities we are to publish an annual book.  There is a selection and problem solving committee in place to do that and I was subsequently asked to be part of that too which I think will be rather an interesting exercise.  The quality of the product coming from the sketchers and writers in the group is endlessly amazing. 
Only other thing worth mentioning is Gail has arranged a couple of weeks off early in 2011 and despite my lack of enthusiasm is arranging a week or so to cruise the Nile.  That's in Egypt. Sort of Arabian-Africa. At least it will be warm.  I am trying to ensure we go on a smaller boat that has lots of star ratings.  My web based searches hint at questionable quality and age of boats down Aswan way so I am hoping we can find one that is up to my ridiculously high standards.  I have whispered at opting for another destination but am advised that as Egypt/Nile has such a large sized un-ticked box on the "Things Gail HAS to do List" it is not worth my while even thinking about anywhere else this time.  So we are really looking forward to it.  I apologise in advance for all the pictures that we will bring back and the subsequent length of the Egypt blog entry.

Leeds by the Sea

Some blokes who call themselves http://www.testspaceleeds.com/ run various events where they provide spaces in the city for "events" . 

Leeds by the sea was one we went to this Saturday night.   It was in the deteriorated but slowly recovering remains of Templeworks in Marshall Street Leeds www.templeworksleeds.com .

The events  started on arrival by being offered the opportunity to buy a bottle or two of French wine, which we did, and playing some games of chance.      You will see here the dice and the small shot glasses.  6 glasses, one roll of the dice.  I rolled 3 which won me a shot glass full of coloured water. Gail rolled 6 which won her a shot of neat bacardi, made light blue with a drop of food colour.  

On we went to the Roulette, I threw a 33, won a nice looking puff pastry savoury treat.  It was stuffed with deadly chilli seed paste, near killed me.  Gail threw 28 and got a lovely seafood cracker with prawns, a delightful sauce and mouth popping delicious salmon roe. I detected a trend n the events but persisted. Next was a short stroll to the adapted coconut shy. 

 Gail threw three balls and won a cup cake, I missed everything and won nothing.   I didn't want to play any more.

So we sat and had our first bottle of Cuvee de Richard 2009 wine and shared Gail's cupcake while......

The room filled up.  No heating in Temple works yet so coats inside was the attire du mode.

A meter-high knickerbocker glory was expertly prepared and presented to the group for later consumption, together with two large rock candy tubes with the text "Suck my Rock" &  "Leeds by the Sea" embedded on each end...

 Which was of great interest to the folk as we queued to get our fish and chips from the "Fish&" people who cook their fish in various flavoured batters.

There was a bit of time to muck about while waiting for the fish to cook, and a friendly Indian Mango Ice Cream man giving away frozen Mango delicacies on sticks. 









 Eventually we returned to our table to enjoy our fish and it was cooked in a wonderful Lemon batter, quite nice, and the chips were excellent.  Rather pleased we didn't get the raspberry batter....

 And similarly pleased we didn't say yes to the invitation to eat as much Jelly as we liked....
We had thought there would be a trap to that. 
We were right. 
The lass second in from this end won the competition and got to take home a candy rock.  It wasn't real candy rock.  It was real Jelly.

As we had missed out on the jelly we took advantage of the Knickerbocker Glory being shovelled out and accepted two huge plates containing, cream, cupcakes, wafers, M&Ms strawberries, peach slices, jelly, and so much other stuff we couldn't get through it nor catalogue it.

For the during/after dinner entertainment there was some interpretive dance, with fairy floss or cotton candy if you prefer, as the muse.  I still don't get interpretive dance.  Really, I just don't.  Sort of pole dancing without the pole as near as I can figure it.  Pretty girls I suppose.  Attracted lots of photos.

Anyway it went on, and on, and on, and eventually, as the so called music being forced through the speakers was a bit , well,  not to our taste, we left .

Would I do it again? 
If there was a band, then without doubt yes. 
I mean,  where else are we going to get this fun sort of thing I ask you?


Other than in  Wetherby, every October,  perhaps..  But .....
we do like Leeds.

Leeds LIGHT NIGHT and Wetherby LIVE, 2 much 4 1 weekend

Thankfully we took the camera out with us this weekend.  You wouldn't believe the time we have had if there wasn't proof. 

I had thought October was the slow month over here, the Autumn winds blowing, temperatures falling and the leaves changing colour.  I thought perhaps for this blog there would be some nice orangey yellowy pics of trees by babbling brooks in the Dales. I could talk about the crisp days and views, you know the usual "isn't it beautiful, wouldn't you love to be here with us to see it all", that sort of crud. 

Well blow that. 

We've been having too much fun.

LEEDS

http://www.lightnightleeds.co.uk/ is the web site and Light Night is a national culture promotion event happening thingy which happened for Leeds on Friday night.

I had heard of this Leeds Light night thing through the week and despite feeling a bit lazy we dragged ourselves off the couch and headed off into Leeds.  I could try and put the night from then into some context but rather I'll let the snaps give a clue .     

This first one is disadvantaged by the flash. It is a rat maze, hence the rat noses, and was dark, hence the torches,  a space put together by the Leeds StoryHunters telling tales of rat kings and boys and legend of events in the Dark Arches which Leeds is built on over the River Aire. Most scary

To get our nerves together after that we went to the City Inn Skylounge ,which overlooks the city, for a wine and an accidental chat to some inebriated but friendly and happy Leeds executive types.  Actually we were looking for a quiet space to decide which of the 107 Light events on that night we were going to see.  Happily there was a performance event down on the first floor.   

It was the White Rabbit Meeting Group.  They were meeting every half hour discussing things like why there had been nothing done since last meeting etc.  We joined the queue and decided to go to the next meeting.

The actual meeting was late to start, the chairman, see high chair at top of table, had wandered off somewhere.  Steve was a bit concerned but being the professional ran the meeting .  There was music and blocks and crayons and lots of discussion about the role of restaurants, hominids, I think, and some points were discussed but no one knew what they were.



Dahlia took the minutes which by and large were very artistic but made little sense, a clear representation of the meeting's events.

 Leaving the meeting, during which Gail and I had decided what to do next, we headed back through the Dark Arches over the river Aire, sorry the River Styx, where we had to pay the ferry keeper or Orion or someone, with our future souls

This was a shame really as our next scheduled visit was to a city centre church where an angel had landed and was being used as a shadow sculpture for the night.  Could have used some soul for that I guess.

Not far around the corner, in the middle of Briggate, that's the shopping main drag, we spotted a gypsy caravan selling tea coffee and cupcakes.  And drying her smalls.

Had to buy a couple of cakes as they were gypsylicious but they did put sparkles all over our mouths and hands so we were quite festive faced for the rest of the night.

Which was perhaps just as well because we would otherwise have felt a bit plain talking to the bloke from Urban Harvest. 
He and a tribe of his mates were wheeling a barrow full of hedgerow harvested  apples, pears and heaps of stuff through the city crowds.  The fruit was sweet and ripe and wonderful. Not that pretty, but as fresh as tomorrow. He and his mates are trying to get local towns and villages to utilise the natural food resources from the streets and as you know from our springtime blog entry Gail and I are now keen hedge-browsers for plumbs and berries so we had a good old chat and exchanged top sites for seasonal picking.  God, we sound naff don't we?  Anyway we were just killing time until the interpretive retail dance was scheduled.

There were a crew of about 8 dancers who pretended to be mannequins and dressers and shop clerks who took over HarveyNichols department store and did a performance which we followed through women's, men's and shoe departments. 

 

With the best will in the world I couldn't get into this routine except for the very last bit where they did actually do something that was co-ordinated and looked like a bit of coreography.  Leaving hurredly we strolled up an arcade that had been turned into a cardboard gramophone display.  We strolled the line and Gail fell in love with one but being a good citizen left it there for others to enjoy.  If we had have paid attention to the handbook for the night we could have seen they were all there to be taken home if you liked them.....  sort of donated distributed art if you will. 

 Leeds is as you may know a University city.  I just had to put in these girls who were part of some strange three-legged race through the city, there were about 50 of them , all as cute as, all in singlets and shorts and sox, many not that committed to the three legged idea but all out for a jolly good time.

All through Leeds there are wonderful sculptures in bronze, this one is Reclining Woman by Henry Moore, a Yorkshire lad.  Anyway, it's getting cold so the good people of the Leeds crafts society decided it was time the less well clad sculptures got winter woolies knitted for them.  So many of the bronze sculptures we saw that night sported some wrapping or other.  There are others below but there were many more.  I liked the Bikinis on all the female bronzes in city square.

In front of the Town Hall lots of things were happenning.  These guys were taking part in a stand up stationary roller coaster ride.  What you ask? 
Well you see there is a box you stand on, the bloke turns on a huge fan to blow your hair, you pretend to scream, his mate takes a photo, tells you you are group number 126 and you go home and download the image off his web site.  Despite what you might think it was a whole heap of fun and people were queueing and laughing for ages!
Idea came to him one night in a pub.  He couldn't believe how popular it was.  Expect to see one in a park near you soon.

 While looking for something to eat I bumped into a bird who was taller than me.

But I didn't stay around her for long because we found a carpet party setting up. A what you ask?  A couple of guys and gals carry a roll of carpet around, roll it out and set up a disc player, hand out party hats and invite people to have a party.  We were in for that, so secured a corner bit of carpet.

Things started to get out of hand after the chocolate cake was bought out and cut up, with a paper plate folded over, health and safety prevented a knife on the street we were told. (Ha!)  The crowd was building and all were quite keen to get a slice, Gail and I were hungry though so we secured a large handfull of scrumptious crumbs and icing.  Had to eat it quick though because Rolf Harris was singing Tie Me Kangaroo down sport at volume through the MP3 and a Pass-the-Parcel game was well underway and we didn't want to miss the lollipops and cuppa chups.

As parties go it was a short one, before we knew it the cake was gone, Rolf had stopped for the last time, the 20 layers of the parcel had been  unwrapped, the major prize,a frisbee and two sweeties was won, the hostess was kissing everyone good bye and the host thanking us for coming.  The next carpet was going to roll out and be a Rave party, We decided we would have dinner.  It was 11pm after all and Brown's cafe was going to stop serving soon.
,

WETHERBY

http://www.wetherbyfestival.co.uk/ hardly speaks volumes for the weekend's events so my summation below of Saturday's events back home in Wetherby will be much more tailored to our experience.

Gail managed to ascertain there was a Barbershop group and also a womens choir singing in town on a rolling basis through various pubs.  I listened to the barbershop lads do a set in the 3Pub.  Gail went on to spend the morning being a groupie to them while I went to Sheffield for some hopefully beneficial advice relating to a business idea I had.  It turns out we both had a good time but Gail didn't take any other photos and I had no camera but I've already put one business meeting in this blog entry so that's enough.

Later that night, still as part of Wetherby Live we went with David and Carolyn (neighbours) to what was later described as a secret gig.  Secret because it was reached by walking through the gravestones and beneath the St James church deep underground in the crypt. Two bands and three comics made the absolute most of the cramped location.  We are old hands having been to a gig there before.  It only happens once a year though.  Well worth the wait.
The bloke on the left with the guitar is Dexter Dexterous and the fuzzy ones are the Fingersmiths.

You can look them up on myspace but I can tell you the sound they make live is far better than their recorded files there.  This is one tight and entertaining group.  I do like good brass and these guys and the gal were every bit as strong as the guitar and bass, all carried by a solid and intuitive drummer.  I may have heard better but it's been a long time if I have.  We all enjoyed their far too short set a lot, despite a early and persistent interruption by their aparrently regular support act, technical difficulties.

Dexter was also a dab hand at the reverb boosted acoustic which he used to bring funk into the 21st century.







Now on to the Devils Jukebox.  What can I say, these Harmonium playing ukulele backed washtub based folk were the reason we booked the tickets because we saw them last year here.  They did the same set, a bit raunchier and comedic this time and still fantastically entertaining.  They also have a myspace site and again their live performances are far more OTT and sound acres better.

There is no need for me to say any more about this act as I blogged it last year but these photos set the mood a bit better.  I relented from taking the full frontal nudity picture for which I am sure you are grateful.

The three comics had a set between the bands and , despite the fear that they may have been cringeworthy, far from it, they were crisp funny and topical,  the audience was very sharp and gave as good as they received which added to the whole.  

And that's it for this week but next week we are going to Leeds on the Beach, Test Space Kitchen at Temple Works ..... no I have no real idea what that is going to be either until we go, can't wait.