You Don't Live Like I Do

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.

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.