Catching up
Jul. 17th, 2017 10:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livSo I went away for a few days, and also did lots and lots of reading, and now I'm blocked on posting to DW until I've caught up with talking about both those things. That's not sensible, so I'll try for a small postcard-type entry.
Most importantly, congratulations to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
illusive_shelle and her newly-minted husband! The wedding which formed the excuse for a small summer holiday for me and jack was absolutely perfect and amazing.
Came back to Cambridge via London mid-week where I was able to have dinner withcjwatson who was working in town. And then jack had a city day in Norwich and a beach day in Great Yarmouth and a wedding day in a ridiculously pretty village vaguely in the area of St Neots. And in between we stayed in a cottage in the Norfolk Broads, with a cornfield on one side and a potato field on the other and endless endless sky.
Our city day it was really stormy so we mostly stayed indoors in the castle; there's easily a whole day worth of things do and learn there, it's one of the best local museums I know. We discovered that there is actually still an active guild of stonemasons based in the city, with a continuous chain of masters and apprentices going back to the 11th century. We met their newest apprentice starting out on his seven-year course of study, and the clerk of the guild who enthused about the history. The castle also has military history and a fairly amazing Victorian style nature studies museum with taxidermy and curios, and an art gallery of people who paint the endless sky and fields, and teapots and modern art and some pretty great first millennium local history and a whole bunch of other stuff we didn't have time for. Also tasty lunch at 42 King Street and tasty dinner (which we almost weren't hungry enough for) at Wild Thyme.
And our beach day it was gloriously sunny. Great Yarmouth is really the archetype of slightly gone-to-seed English seafront town, with funfairs and fast food and also golden sand and not having to go very far to get to a place where you can sit on your own on a sand dune and look out across the North Sea.
Wedding was just glorious, really. It was in one of those manor house wedding venues, and mostly a chance for all the couple's family and friends to get together in a lovely space, with all kinds of entertainments available for children and geeks. The ceremony part involved walking a labyrinth while a celebrant said some words that were not quite a blessing, definitely secular, and yet solemn. All brides are beautiful butillusive_shelle was positively regal. Also she and husband did a fantastic job of hosting and introducing people to eachother and making sure their guests enjoyed themselves, even while in the middle of getting married. jack and I don't know many of the couple's friends, but we had a great time and felt very much included. The wedding favours were a Lego kit that could be made into a sweet dispensing machine; I had a great time building it with ghoti_mhic_uait and the littles afterwards.
This weekend was much more in the way of down time, I went to shul, and had some time withcjwatson (partly couple time, partly playing games with the children) and some time with jack (mostly talking and a little bit of playing Wii games).
I have lots of reading I want to talk about, partly because I've been trying to get through at least some of the Hugo material, and partly because of going on a short vacation, and partly because I had a horrendous 11 hour train journey at the start of not quite having time to post. I'll talk more about that hopefully soon, and go back to the music meme and so on. I am reading, as usual, just a bit behind with posting.
Most importantly, congratulations to
illusive_shelle and her newly-minted husband! The wedding which formed the excuse for a small summer holiday for me and jack was absolutely perfect and amazing.Came back to Cambridge via London mid-week where I was able to have dinner with
cjwatson who was working in town. And then jack had a city day in Norwich and a beach day in Great Yarmouth and a wedding day in a ridiculously pretty village vaguely in the area of St Neots. And in between we stayed in a cottage in the Norfolk Broads, with a cornfield on one side and a potato field on the other and endless endless sky. Our city day it was really stormy so we mostly stayed indoors in the castle; there's easily a whole day worth of things do and learn there, it's one of the best local museums I know. We discovered that there is actually still an active guild of stonemasons based in the city, with a continuous chain of masters and apprentices going back to the 11th century. We met their newest apprentice starting out on his seven-year course of study, and the clerk of the guild who enthused about the history. The castle also has military history and a fairly amazing Victorian style nature studies museum with taxidermy and curios, and an art gallery of people who paint the endless sky and fields, and teapots and modern art and some pretty great first millennium local history and a whole bunch of other stuff we didn't have time for. Also tasty lunch at 42 King Street and tasty dinner (which we almost weren't hungry enough for) at Wild Thyme.
And our beach day it was gloriously sunny. Great Yarmouth is really the archetype of slightly gone-to-seed English seafront town, with funfairs and fast food and also golden sand and not having to go very far to get to a place where you can sit on your own on a sand dune and look out across the North Sea.
Wedding was just glorious, really. It was in one of those manor house wedding venues, and mostly a chance for all the couple's family and friends to get together in a lovely space, with all kinds of entertainments available for children and geeks. The ceremony part involved walking a labyrinth while a celebrant said some words that were not quite a blessing, definitely secular, and yet solemn. All brides are beautiful but
illusive_shelle was positively regal. Also she and husband did a fantastic job of hosting and introducing people to eachother and making sure their guests enjoyed themselves, even while in the middle of getting married. jack and I don't know many of the couple's friends, but we had a great time and felt very much included. The wedding favours were a Lego kit that could be made into a sweet dispensing machine; I had a great time building it with ghoti_mhic_uait and the littles afterwards. This weekend was much more in the way of down time, I went to shul, and had some time with
cjwatson (partly couple time, partly playing games with the children) and some time with jack (mostly talking and a little bit of playing Wii games).I have lots of reading I want to talk about, partly because I've been trying to get through at least some of the Hugo material, and partly because of going on a short vacation, and partly because I had a horrendous 11 hour train journey at the start of not quite having time to post. I'll talk more about that hopefully soon, and go back to the music meme and so on. I am reading, as usual, just a bit behind with posting.
