Sociable

[liv]

lethargic_man and aviva_m came to visit for the weekend, which was a real treat.

I was at least reasonably organized and did most of the cooking for shabbat by Thursday evening. I find frum shabbat a little stressful, because I'm not used to it, but M&A were pretty tolerant of my foibles. So we went to shul, and all the students turned up and it was much more lively than usual, and greatly improved by lethargic_man helping out with the singing. And then we came home and had cholent and crumble and chatting.

There isn't a lot to do locally that wouldn't require either using transport or spending money, and indeed Saturday was rather a grey, damp day so it was quite pleasant to stay at home, taking our time over the morning service and some really good Torah discussion and a leisurely lunch. We went out for a little walk in the afternoon and got slightly rained on, and then we made havdalah and chatted some more, and ended up eating later than I'd really planned.

Given that the guests had to leave fairly soon after lunch, and most tourist attractions are either quite a way out of town or don't open until late-ish on Sunday, we were a bit at a loss for what to do on Sunday morning. In the end we decided on visiting the coal mine and museum at Apedale, as recommended by mathcathy and reasonably accessible by public transport. This turned out to be a great idea because the mine tour is absolutely fascinating.

The thing is, Apedale isn't just a mine-related theme park. It was a working mine until the dismantling of the mining industry in the 80s, and has been preserved much as it was. I've visited mines before, including gold mines in Australia, but nothing as vivid as this experience was. The guide was a retired miner who really spoke from personal experience, really made us imagine the discomforts and dangers of coal mining. I'd read about the dangers of poisonous or explosive gas, but this guide made me really scared of them (and incidentally pointed out that the reason all these dangers are named "damps" is because of the German word Dampf, meaning gas.) I was also struck by the incredibly scary methods of reaching the bottom of the mine, thousands of feet deep: either riding in a tightly crammed cage at 20mph, or sliding down a very, very steep slope, both of these in pitch darkness.

At one point her warned us that he was going to make some political remarks, and I thought, well, if anyone has the right to hate Thatcher it's an actual miner. Actually what he complained about was not that she broke the strikes and ended the industry, but that she "stereotyped" the mining community as "beer-swilling, wife-beating thugs who didn't want to work". He also mentioned that the Stoke mining community had voted against the strikes, but were forced to strike anyway by more radical Welsh miners who came over to picket them. He hinted that things got pretty nasty, being attacked from both sides by the miners and trade unionists who treated them as scabs, and by the police and army who treated them as strikers and political rebels.

Coming home was a series of disasters; we were on a tight schedule, because public transport is so infrequent on Sundays. The mine tour ended up running about 45 minutes late, because the previous tour included so many retired miners who asked loads of detailed questions. So we had to cover the mile or so to the bus stop really briskly in order to catch the bus an hour later than the one we'd aimed for. Unfortunately I hadn't read the timetable closely enough, and therefore didn't pick up that the bus routes diverged at the stop before the one we ran to. So we were a bit stranded; I (rather foolishly) decided that the fastest way to get home was going to be to walk a further mile and a half into the centre of Newcastle, where we could catch several possible buses the rest of the way home. Then in the general panic I managed to take a wrong turning and didn't realize it until it was a bit too late to turn back. Google maps on my phone came to the rescue, and I decided that it was probably quicker to walk home than to try to retrace our steps. So that ended up being not quite five miles, on foot, at an uncomfortably brisk pace. Despite being really stressful, it was strangely enjoyable; it was a gorgeous day, cool and incredibly sunny, and that (rather pathetic) amount of exercise is just about right to make me feel more good than bad. Once we got home I had to throw my friends straight into a taxi without any lunch, and at least they did manage to catch their train. There were lots of decisions I probably could have made better, but I was panicked about my original plan being thwarted and all my margin being eaten up.

Anyway, I'm planning a very brief flying visit to Cambridge this weekend, and after that it's heads down until Christmas I think, the term is about to get seriously busy.