Seven years
Nov. 25th, 2021 09:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livWhen I got together with OSOs 7 years ago, I didn't really anticipate that it would be a long-term relationship with seventh anniversaries. And I particularly didn't anticipate that there would be a pandemic and having our anniversary in November would be so inconvenient, since most indoor activities are high-risk. Anyway, we managed to scrape together some kind of celebration.
cjwatson and I had a staying indoors being cosy together date – we timed it for a span when jack had gone to visit his mum. So we had nice meals together, some of which I cooked, plus we ordered in sushi for a anniversary treat. And we played board games, including the one I found for an anniversary present: Glen More II Chronicles.
We really enjoyed the game; it fixes several minor balancing issues from the original Glen More, but keeps the stuff that's cool and original about the earlier version. It comes with 8 mini-expansions, called Chronicles, which we didn't break out on the first few plays; the base game has one novel mechanic in terms of historic characters who give minor one-off bonuses separate to the expanding your tile layout to get resources. I also really like how German it is, because German stereotypes of Scotland are much less noxious than English or American ones.
We also watched Sophocles' Antigone via the National Theatre's pandemic-appropriate streaming service. It has Christopher Eccleston as Creon and Jodie Whittaker as Antigone; I can't find the dates now but I think it was originally staged before Whittaker was a big name TV star. It's a Greek tragedy so not conventional romantic date material but we really appreciated it; the acting, not just from the leads, but throughout, is really great. It's a near-modern dress production, set in a 1960s military encampment. The first half felt quite modern and psychological, enhanced by Don Taylor's translation making not very subtle 20th century political references. The second half went much further in spotlighting the alienness of the Classical Greek context. There was something of the numinous in Tiresias' prophecy, interpreted by Jamie Ballard who really made him seem possessed.
For my anniversary withghoti_mhic_uait we wanted to go on a train, which she had been avoiding throughout the pandemic. So she suggested the North Norfolk heritage railway, which was a brilliant plan. We got lucky with the weather; Ghoti drove us to the Norfolk coast in torrential rain, the tail end of a really severe storm that passed over the midlands. But just as we reached Sheringham the sun came out and the rest of the day was just beautiful. We ate chips and looked at the sea, and hurried to the station to catch a heritage diesel which just about connected with the last steam train-pulled journey back from Holt. Well, we had two minutes and there's no actual rail crossing, you have to go round the end of the line, but thankfully they waited the steam service for us. Then we caught another diesel back to Holt, watching the sun set over the North Sea, and the lights coming on, and the humans getting into costume for their Halloween special that evening.
It was the most perfect day really. Between the driving and the beach and the train we saw oystercatchers and roe deer and an owl and pheasants and a buzzard and a brief glimpse of a badger running across the road on the way home. And between riding lots of trains we ate icecream and then we tried to get pancakes for dinner except that there was too much plague to eat in and the diner was being all eco and didn't give us any cutlery, so we had to eat American style pancakes with icecream and whipped cream and syrup and toppings with our fingers sitting in the car.
I gaveghoti_mhic_uait a gorgeous drop spindle made of a type of wood I'd never heard of, spalted beech, combining the anniversary themes of wool and copper (well, the second is a bit of a stretch, but it might have been a copper beech). And she gave me Llama Land, which is just brilliant, it's a tile-laying game but you can stack pentominoes on top of each other, creating terraces for the llama meeples to roam on. Very well thought out, it's very much informed by the recent few years of game design; if you like tile games at all I thoroughly recommend it. And cjwatson gave me Copper country, an American take on a Eurogame which is about a very specific historical period in a very specific place, 1840s Michigan. The art is amazing, but the game arrived a bit late so we haven't had a chance to play it yet.
The slightly less positive thing is that we carefully scoped out eateries that have outside seating, with covered, heated spaces but with open sides. But it seems that a lot of these places gave up once we reached November, and either stopped doing outdoor dining at all, or added walls to their gazebos / marquees etc making them effectively indoor spaces. So forcjwatson's birthday a week after the anniversaries, we had booked a table in a "tipi" (yes, I know) but when we turned up it wasn't ventilated. So we ended up having his birthday meal outdoors, which was really a bit cold to be pleasant by then. Basically it's fine by me if we don't have any more meals out until the weather gets warmer and the case rate gets lower, but it's a bit disappointing.
For my mother's birthday which is also early November, she hosted all the siblings at hers, including the foster-kid who lived with them for a while a few years ago while waiting for asylum paperwork. It was exactly two years since we got the whole of my family of origin together, for my mother's birthday in 2019. And we were all away or busy over Christmas that year so we didn't visit home, not realizing we were a few weeks from being cut off for the next several years. I would have preferred to have the visit outdoors, but not all my relatives could cope with a garden lunch in November, so we ended up indoors. I tested negative before and after the visit, so I think we got away with it. But yes, that was my first non-bubble indoor social event in 600 days. And I don't really have much vision of if-when that will feel like a normal thing we can just do again.
cjwatson and I had a staying indoors being cosy together date – we timed it for a span when jack had gone to visit his mum. So we had nice meals together, some of which I cooked, plus we ordered in sushi for a anniversary treat. And we played board games, including the one I found for an anniversary present: Glen More II Chronicles.We really enjoyed the game; it fixes several minor balancing issues from the original Glen More, but keeps the stuff that's cool and original about the earlier version. It comes with 8 mini-expansions, called Chronicles, which we didn't break out on the first few plays; the base game has one novel mechanic in terms of historic characters who give minor one-off bonuses separate to the expanding your tile layout to get resources. I also really like how German it is, because German stereotypes of Scotland are much less noxious than English or American ones.
We also watched Sophocles' Antigone via the National Theatre's pandemic-appropriate streaming service. It has Christopher Eccleston as Creon and Jodie Whittaker as Antigone; I can't find the dates now but I think it was originally staged before Whittaker was a big name TV star. It's a Greek tragedy so not conventional romantic date material but we really appreciated it; the acting, not just from the leads, but throughout, is really great. It's a near-modern dress production, set in a 1960s military encampment. The first half felt quite modern and psychological, enhanced by Don Taylor's translation making not very subtle 20th century political references. The second half went much further in spotlighting the alienness of the Classical Greek context. There was something of the numinous in Tiresias' prophecy, interpreted by Jamie Ballard who really made him seem possessed.
For my anniversary with
ghoti_mhic_uait we wanted to go on a train, which she had been avoiding throughout the pandemic. So she suggested the North Norfolk heritage railway, which was a brilliant plan. We got lucky with the weather; Ghoti drove us to the Norfolk coast in torrential rain, the tail end of a really severe storm that passed over the midlands. But just as we reached Sheringham the sun came out and the rest of the day was just beautiful. We ate chips and looked at the sea, and hurried to the station to catch a heritage diesel which just about connected with the last steam train-pulled journey back from Holt. Well, we had two minutes and there's no actual rail crossing, you have to go round the end of the line, but thankfully they waited the steam service for us. Then we caught another diesel back to Holt, watching the sun set over the North Sea, and the lights coming on, and the humans getting into costume for their Halloween special that evening. It was the most perfect day really. Between the driving and the beach and the train we saw oystercatchers and roe deer and an owl and pheasants and a buzzard and a brief glimpse of a badger running across the road on the way home. And between riding lots of trains we ate icecream and then we tried to get pancakes for dinner except that there was too much plague to eat in and the diner was being all eco and didn't give us any cutlery, so we had to eat American style pancakes with icecream and whipped cream and syrup and toppings with our fingers sitting in the car.
I gave
ghoti_mhic_uait a gorgeous drop spindle made of a type of wood I'd never heard of, spalted beech, combining the anniversary themes of wool and copper (well, the second is a bit of a stretch, but it might have been a copper beech). And she gave me Llama Land, which is just brilliant, it's a tile-laying game but you can stack pentominoes on top of each other, creating terraces for the llama meeples to roam on. Very well thought out, it's very much informed by the recent few years of game design; if you like tile games at all I thoroughly recommend it. And cjwatson gave me Copper country, an American take on a Eurogame which is about a very specific historical period in a very specific place, 1840s Michigan. The art is amazing, but the game arrived a bit late so we haven't had a chance to play it yet.The slightly less positive thing is that we carefully scoped out eateries that have outside seating, with covered, heated spaces but with open sides. But it seems that a lot of these places gave up once we reached November, and either stopped doing outdoor dining at all, or added walls to their gazebos / marquees etc making them effectively indoor spaces. So for
cjwatson's birthday a week after the anniversaries, we had booked a table in a "tipi" (yes, I know) but when we turned up it wasn't ventilated. So we ended up having his birthday meal outdoors, which was really a bit cold to be pleasant by then. Basically it's fine by me if we don't have any more meals out until the weather gets warmer and the case rate gets lower, but it's a bit disappointing.For my mother's birthday which is also early November, she hosted all the siblings at hers, including the foster-kid who lived with them for a while a few years ago while waiting for asylum paperwork. It was exactly two years since we got the whole of my family of origin together, for my mother's birthday in 2019. And we were all away or busy over Christmas that year so we didn't visit home, not realizing we were a few weeks from being cut off for the next several years. I would have preferred to have the visit outdoors, but not all my relatives could cope with a garden lunch in November, so we ended up indoors. I tested negative before and after the visit, so I think we got away with it. But yes, that was my first non-bubble indoor social event in 600 days. And I don't really have much vision of if-when that will feel like a normal thing we can just do again.
