Cambridge

[liv]

It's quite weird getting a lift to Cambridge, leaving work at 5 o'clock and finding myself in Cambridge three hours later, with no intervening hassle! It was almost as if I teleported from Stoke-on-Trent with its shabbiness and its rolling English countryside setting, to this alternate reality full of Mediaeval buildings and ludicrously young people in gowns and / or evening dress.

jack took me out to dinner at The Vaults, which was delightful. The food is very tasty and interesting, but making a meal out of little bits of tapas always ends up feeling expensive. Mind you I did have a big white Russian cocktail too!

After a quiet morning Saturday, we met up with simont and pseudomonas in the Carlton. The Carlton had slightly run out of the veggie option, but made up for it by giving us some nice cream cheese bites. And there was tea and good conversation about linguistics and musical typesetting and puzzles. jack went off to play Magic and the rest of us repaired to simont's place. We finished off by picking sloes as the sun was setting.

Then I met up with my parents for the multicultural early music concert. I was a little disappointed with it for several reasons, chiefly that their idea of music from the three Abrahamic traditions was stuff from Christian Europe about how exotically sexy Moorish women are for Islam, and Christian oratorios on Old Testament themes for Judaism.

I wasn't a big fan of Tubb as a singer; her range was ragged at the ends, and she didn't always project well although I must say the acoustics of Emmanuel United Reformed Church are very good, making an unamplified small chamber duo highly audible. To her credit, she was very theatrical and really got into the characters of the different songs she was portraying, but she seemed somehow like someone who would be more suited to Classical operatic choral stuff trying to do solo early music chamber work. They were best when sticking to very mainstream classical stuff, Monteverdi and Purcell and so on, but there are plenty of opportunities to hear Monteverdi and Purcell without paying £20 for the privilege. There was a bit of "why can't we all just get on" stuff about the religious conflict in the Middle East, which felt a bit cringey especially coupled with the fact that the church is full of posters about the evil Israelis evilly occupying Palestine, fairly standard stuff for lefty churches but a little uncomfortable all the same.

Oh well, it was nice to have an evening out with the parents and we had some good chats on the way home and while Mum was feeding me some extremely impressive leftovers for supper. Today Granny has been helping me with getting stuff together for the eventual move to my own place in Stoke-on-Trent, and Mum is cooking her usual Sunday lunch, which I will get to eat before meeting up with my nice colleague for the return trip.

Comments

[kerrypolka]

their idea of music from the three Abrahamic traditions was stuff from Christian Europe about how exotically sexy Moorish women are for Islam, and Christian oratorios on Old Testament themes for Judaism

>:( Not cool!

[nanaya]

Ooh, is The Vaults good on veggie then? May have to remember that for the next time we're visiting A's family.

The musical evening sounds rather disappointing. I think I might have been cringing at the hippy hand-wavey communalist bits too!

Do you find opposition to Israeli government policies to be linked to anti-Semitism/ignorance about Judaism, in your experience, or is it just an occasional unfortunate experience? I'm genuinely interested in this as I do wonder about it from time to time. Sounds like a bad combination, anyway.

[liv]

The reason The Vaults is good is because they're one of those places that is very sensitive to dietary needs and really know exactly what is in all their dishes. They can provide a separate veggie, coeliac or nut-free menu if asked. Combine that with the tapas style of building up a meal out of several small dishes, it makes for a very good place to take a large group of people with mixed dietary requirements. And just generally good food (as well as good cocktails, which I imagine might appeal to you!)

[nanaya]

Ooh, that sounds great! I must go, I think. Will make a note of it.

[liv]

Do you find opposition to Israeli government policies to be linked to anti-Semitism/ignorance about Judaism

That's a tough question, and my immediate instinct is to say "obviously not"! There are lots of perfectly good reasons to oppose the Israeli government, army etc, and nobody should be immune from criticism because of their ethnic background. I am sure that the people in that church simply made no mental connection between "teh ebul oppressive Israeli soldiers" and "my nice neighbour Yossi".

The problem is that criticizing "Zionism" or "Israel" can in fact be a codeword for criticizing Jews, among people who are antisemitic to start with. The Jewish community is understandably paranoid about this, and this leads to a situation where there is a perception that you can't "get away" with criticizing Israel because those "hypersensitive" Jews will accuse you of anti-semitism. Plus, there are some really unsavoury groups that have infiltrated disorganized and naive lefty organizations, such as the Socialist Workers.

So it's complicated, and I will get back to you on this but my time on the library computer is about to run out!