You Don't Live Like I Do

Hwaetsapp

2025-11-23T00:12:10Z

Tonight, me and cosmolinguist drove over into Wales to visit Park in The Past for a performance of Beowulf. This was in the dirt-floored Earth House, a large building of wood with wool thatch and a fire in the middle. Guests sat at long wooden tables on a mixture of wooden benches and plastic chairs.

"Oswald the Great" told the story in English, from memory, and adapted it a little to the environment, including pointing out how Hrothgar's mead hall in the story didn't have an illuminated fire exit sign. There was a good amount of audience participation, including chanting Beowulf's name when he appears in the story, and some mild heckling, not least from the "high table" of staff reenactor blokes who were cast by the bard as Hrothgar, his wife ("with fulsome beard") and two advisors.

The story highlighted Beowulf getting naked to fight Grendel, and we assumed we were getting the monsterfucking version. Especially when Grendel's mother straddles Beowulf on the ground and starts choking him... but no, it remained mostly PG rated.

There was a bar in the hall, and we had some flavoured mead - elderflower for me, and chestnut for E. The story was told in three acts with breaks between featuring music performances from a talented mother-daughter folk duo. During one of the breaks, I grabbed a very tasty boar burger. It's a shame there wasn't any vegetarian hot food, but E survived with crisps and peanuts.

All in all we had a great time, cuddled up listening to the story, thumping tables and clapping to the music. The drive back through thick mist was fine, fuelled by Radio 1 dance music, and now we are knackered and in bed.

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Stornoway Road Trip 2025: The Journey Up

2025-10-07T23:47:56Z

Recently, I went away with mother_bones and cosmolinguist to Scotland. This is a roughly annual trip to see V's son L who lives up there. He works in a hotel in Stornoway, and can only get time off out of season, so we usually go up in mid to late September after most of the cruise ships have stopped. Between the last ferry sailing from Ullapool to the island being about 5pm, the 8-10 hour journey and V's difficulty with mornings, it takes us two days to get up there and two days to get back.

On the way up, we planned to stop off in Stirling, in a hostel which had a room for 3 adults. We got stuck in a very long tailback after a lorry had shed its load, so I can now say that I've had a nap in the fast lane of the M6. This meant we got to Stirling later than planned, and had takeout delivered to our hostel. E and I went to explore the town, making our way up to the castle despite the late hour, enjoying the dark hilly streets. We stopped off for a pint in The Portcullis at the castle, and spotted the looming silhouette of the Star Pyramid which deserves a future look.

The morning after, we drove out of Stirling past The National Wallace Monument but didn't stop there. After a couple of hours driving we broke for lunch at the Ralia Cafe, a traditional haunt for us. I took a photo of E standing by the metal Highland Cow statue outside. I picked up a leaflet for the Highland Folk Museum in the next town, just off our route, and we stopped for a while to inspect a number of rebuilt and recreated buildings in a field, including a traditional Hebridean blackhouse. Weirdly, we ran into some Mancunians who recognised me and E from the Queer Kiki drinks on Thursday which we've only attended twice!

We hit our big snag as we were on the road between Inverness and Ullapool - the evening ferry was cancelled with about an hour's notice. This left us stranded with nowhere to sleep, along with a few hundred other people. We tried phoning around hotels and B&Bs in Ullapool itself but everywhere was booked out. Eventually I found a hotel in Strathpeffer, almost as far back as Inverness, where we could stay for the night. We grabbed fish and chips and a pint in Ullapool, then doubled back for an hour's driving before collapsing in bed...

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Norora Borealis

2023-11-26T23:15:20Z

Last night was a delightfully pointless road trip with cosmolinguist.

Just as I was having a pre-dinner nap, I heard about the Aurora Borealis being particularly strong and visible across the UK that night. Aware of the full moon, I cross referenced a map of stargazing sites with the cloud coverage map to try and find somewhere cloud-free, and came up with Malham in the Yorkshire Dales, a Dark Skies Discovery Site.

We jumped in the car and drove there fuelled by Radio 1 dance anthems and talking nonsense at each other as per usual. By the time we arrived, so had a light cloud cover. That was enough for the full moon to drown out the sky, so there was no chance of seeing the aurora. Plus it turns out the site is south-facing.

We did see a lovely moon halo, but so did mother_bones back home while walking Gary! After a while faffing around in the literally freezing car park, we headed home. Despite failing to see the aurora, the journey was more important than the destination and it was good to get E out of the house for a while and spend some time together.

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