Summer Moved On

October has brought an Indian Summer. It's been an eventful few months. Buying a house is one of the most stressful things I have ever done. But now we have a forever home that, although it looks as if it has been decorated by an army of grannies wielding anaglypta, wallpaper borders and purple paint, and despite the fact that it is going to take a lot of effort and probably quite a lot of saving to get it to look how we want it to, is starting to feel like ours. And we have a garden.
Between the solicitor wrangling, sorting and throwing away, packing, furniture buying, unpacking, cleaning and other necessary evils that come with finding a forever home, we also threw in a hectic schedule of weekends away, gigs, day trips. The highlight of which was End of the Road Festival. The whole experience was almost like some glorious dream! After days of rain I was starting to dread the idea of 4 nights camping but we were blessed with almost constant sunshine. We had rain during a few nights when we were tucked up in sleeping bags but the only time I got wet was for ten minutes during Iron & Wine (he was playing The Trapeze Swinger at the time so it could’ve rained frogs and I wouldn’t have cared!) and when I voluntarily stuck my head under the tap instead of queuing for showers!!

We saw some amazing sets – the Mountain Goats & Wilco lived up to all my expectations; the Unthanks played gorgeous traditional Northumberland folk, and threw in some clog dancing; Caribou kept me dancing until the early hours; Joe Pug, Deer Tick, Phosphorescent, Wintersleep, Caitlin Rose, the Low Anthem, Modest Mouse all wonderful! Dylan Le Blanc is a great young singer-songwriter (I'm ordering his album really soon), he played a secret set at 1am in the morning then I caught him again opening the main stage on the last day. The Felice Brothers were rowdy and great fun and really got the crowd going and singing along. I think that the Mountain Goats and Iron & Wine were my highlights though; we were right at the front singing along for both and they are both such intense and mesmorising performers. But apart from all the music there was so many other things going on! We sampled local cider & played mini croquet (unfortunately girls were soundly beaten by boys but I am so buying a set to challenge Hugh to a rematch in the garden!) I tried reflexology, there was a tea bus, a library in the woods, a twinkly woodland path lit with fairy lights, giant board games, a circus skills tent, storytelling, a dance floor complete with disco ball hanging from a tree branch, and also a sitting room complete with out of tune piano and armchairs (random bands would stop by and play a little set there!)

So we will definitely be going again next year, I think it's going to become an annual tradition. Unfortunately as with all festivals I couldn’t see everyone I wanted to, but I did have the opportunity to catch a couple of the bands I missed a couple of days later. I went to see Joe Pug again at a dear little venue in the rafters of a pub and he was playing with Horse Feathers and the Mountains & the Trees. I’m really glad I made the effort to go along, Joe is always great to watch so I was happy to see him play again, & the other two were both fantastic. I got chatting to Jon Janes from the Mountains & The Trees in between sets, he is from Newfoundland and is a really lovely and interesting guy. Turned out we’d been standing really near to each other during Iron & Wine’s set at the festival.

The other highlight was three wonderful Josh Ritter shows. He & the Royal City Band put on a great show as always, and also threw in a couple of unexpected curveballs - a gorgeous and haunting 'Remnant' acapella at the front of the stage, the hilarious new song 'Sir Galahad' and a storming rendition of 'Once in a Lifetime' during Harrisburg. I also got to visit Oxford for the first time, and got a brief taste of student life, staying in the halls at Jesus College. I climbed up the Carfax tower for the best view of the dreaming spires and pictured Lyra and Pan clambering over the rooftops and skipping around the chimney pots.



Hugh and I also managed to grab the odd bit of time together, spending a day walking over the Roaches in the Dark Peak and delving into the crannies of Lud's Church. We need days like this at the moment, to remind ourselves of why we decided to buy a house together, and to make sure we don't forget what we love about one another.

Meet me at Mary's Place

Wow this year is flying by a little too quickly for my liking. I haven't done too well at capturing all the things that have been happening. I went to Germany (with a quick foray into the Netherlands). I went to Ireland. Both times I hung out with people that I met by chance on another trip and I'm so happy to be able to call them my friends. We found a house to buy, and we're so close now to actually owning it. Then my life will be Decorating. And possibly Destroying Walls and Building New Ones. Oh and Gardening! I'm so excited at the prospect of a garden of our very own.

Hugh and I also managed a very brief trip together, to Dorset to see his dad & stepmum (and Ollie the dog); while we were with them we took in a walk along Chesil Beach and a wander around Portland & Weymouth Harbour.


Then we had a few days by ourselves to unwind in Lyme Regis, which is one of my favourite places in England, a little town clinging to the very edge of the coast with steep winding roads leading down to the sea. We had beautiful weather, it was lovely to bask in the sunshine (did end up with a very red nose and cheeks after foolishly forgetting to take sun block out with me around Weymouth) but it did mean that everywhere was pretty crowded.

We walked far enough along the beaches to leave the masses behind though and only encountered one family while we explored the ammonite graveyard. We had an interesting morning at the museum but I was hoping the exhibition about their local heroine, Mary Anning would be bigger. I wanted to know more about her life other than the bare facts - I suppose I hoped they might have letters that she wrote, or that others wrote about her, smaller specimens that she found, things like that. She was remarkable and deserves to be celebrated. However the museum are currently fundraising for a new wing that will be named for her. We did stop off at the Church as we walked back up the hill to our bed and breakfast one evening, we found her grave, that she shares with her brother, Joseph. The upwelling of emotion I felt took me by surprise; maybe I'm just soft hearted, but it was like seeing a friend's name engraved there. We popped in to see the stained glass window dedicated to her, not only for her contribution to science, but for her faith, her kindness and generosity of spirit.

We are going back to see the town and the Jurassic Coast at its dramatic stormy best, at the end of the year and beginning of the next one. The local 'celebrity geologist' will take us fossil hunting. Who knows, maybe we'll find another of Mary's crocodillies.

This is just to tell you....

The weekend before last, whilst in London, I managed to do two things that I've wanted to for a while.

The first was to visit the Natural History Museum, to see the very first complete Ichthysaur, that was discovered by Mary Anning in Lyme Regis when she was a young girl. Mary Anning has been a hero of mine since I read about her when I was a girl of 10 or 11. At roughly the same age as me at the time she was supporting her family by discovering and selling fossil specimens, or 'curiosities', and during her life made some of the most important discoveries that contributed to knowledge of what life on earth was like millions of years ago.

She was a woman before her time; nowadays she would have become a renowned professor in her field. In the 1800's she was regarded by the published 'experts' around her as just a woman, and one from a poor, uneducated background - Even though they relied on her knowledge to find them new specimens, published her detailed drawings in their papers, and used her ideas to propose new theories, she received little or no recognition for her talent until long after her death. Her story sparked my interest in palaeontology, and whilst it is only a leisurely interest for me now, rather than an academic one as it almost was, it was still an incredible thrill to see with my own eyes the monsters from the deep that she uncovered.

The other thing was to finally hear Anais Mitchell play live, a singer of unique, beautiful, thought provoking songs, well stories really. She has been touring with Erin McKeown, who happens to be another of my favourite kick-ass girl singer songwriters! What an amazing evening!Anais & Erin treated a packed Luminaire to wonderful solo performances plus played a number together, their voices blending and complementing each others gorgeously. We heard some of Erin's new ones from 'Hundreds of Lions' (awesome album) plus a taster of what's to come from Anais & Co's 'Hadestown' recording ('Co' being Ani Di Franco, Greg Brown, Bon Iver - I cannot wait to hear this record!) After telling us how their ideas for a suitable cover version were lost on each other (Erin wanted a hip hop number, Anais some 80's classic) they gave us a rousing rendition of a gospel song to finish up a fabulous and fun evening.
One of my favourite of Anais' songs is 'I wear your dress', a song written for her grandmother about a dress she made that was passed down to her.

'This is just to tell you that I wear your dress sometimes'

It is a song that has been in my head a lot lately, in fact since I was given a ring that I can remember my Gran wearing. I've been wearing it every day and thinking of her, trying to remember her with smiles and laughter as she would want me to. It's difficult at the moment, there are so many emotions still swirling around and the happy memories are still wrestling with the bad ones. The topmost feeling is still just, I miss her, and I wish I could have said goodbye properly. I hope that wherever she is now she is happy, and at peace, I hope that she knows that we did our best, I hope that she forgives us. I hope that there is somewhere where we'll be able to meet again one day.

'With the liberty you've given,
Like the clothing you've outgrown,
To your granddaughter'


My gran was a sergeant in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, the women's branch of the British Army during World War II. She contributed to a cause bigger than women my age have needed to. Anais' song is also a story about the changing roles of women, and how much opportunity and freedom we now have thanks to the efforts of generations before us. We shouldn't waste this, nor forget the women before us who got us here. There are still collective things to fight for, causes that put our tiny, individual lives into perspective. I may only be one person making small steps and contributing a tiny amount, but if everyone got behind a cause that really mattered to them, whether it be conservation, raising money for cancer research or for those struggling in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, well maybe it could be 'like the falling of small stones that start an avalanche', maybe we could make some change happen, and in 40, 50 years, our generation will be remembered for the good that it did.