Beyond Selidor

Saturday was full of ice, Sunday was a day of rain. Thankfully, that aligned with our plans for the weekend — travelling into Cambridge for Mill Road winter fair on Saturday, sticking much closer to home on Sunday.

Yesterday was crisp and cold. We arrived in Cambridge around midday, and walked the length of Mill Road, pausing to eat oysters and prawn toast, loaded fries (Matthias) and fresh woodfired pizza (me), and drink cups of mulled wine with free mince pies. We bought panettone and cheese to take home, and bumped into lowercasename, his fiancée, and several of their friends while we were queueing in the cheese shop. It was so cold that every time we had to pause to queue up somewhere, my feet became numb and I could feel the ice seeping up through the ground into my shoes.

About five minutes before we got on the train to head into Cambridge, we were notified that a parcel Matthias had ordered had accidentally been delivered to our old rental place there, so although walking 45 minutes across town (and back again) had not been part of the plan, it wasn't as catastrophic as it might have been if we hadn't already been in Cambridge that day. As it was, the new tenants were home, we could pick up the parcel, and we had a mildly nostalgic time dropping by all the small local shops that were previously our regular haunts.

We finished things up with an early dinner at a north African restaurant, and headed home on an incredibly crowded train.

Today started with a walk through the rain to the pool, then yoga and reading, and a few hours at a wine tasting down the road. We stocked up on what we'll drink over the Christmas-New Year's week (during which time both of us are on holiday), based on our favourites at the wine tasting.

We then came home for tea and mince pies, and I finished my book (These Burning Stars, by Bethany Jacobs — a female-centric space opera filled with revenge, manipulation, twisty political machinations, and a fight for control of the resource necessary for speedy intergalactic travel), while the light left the sky, and the rain fell all around us.

I'll close off this post with two links relating to Shane MacGowan, whose death has left me uncharacteristically short of words — it's as if all my eloquence drained away at the prospect of that lyrical well running dry, and I find myself unable to convey what I want to say with any clarity. But these two articles — a series of reminiscences with Irish musical luminaries ('It’s ['Fairytale of New York's is] one the best songs ever written but Shane wrote songs better than that,'), and a gift link article about the process of writing 'Fairytale of New York' say a lot of what I'd want to say, if I could.