We've gone into culture overdrive for the end of summer and crammed our time with one event after another. Last Thursday we headed to London for another play at the National Theatre.
The cleverly titled Home I'm Darling is a fascinating tale of a young woman bringing her 50s obsession to life when redundancy forces her to spend more time at home. But is the idyllic life of housewifely duties, slippers by the fireside and dinner on the table, the utopia her husband wants? Katherine Parkinson is wonderful in the lead role of a very thought provoking and entertaining two hours.
On Saturday we returned to Yorkshire to near where we enjoyed a fabulous week in April. This time we stayed in Pickering at the excellent White Swan and had a very enjoyable two night break. We were in Yorkshire to see our favourites UB40 perform at Castle Howard and, as we enjoyed our visit to the stately pile so much in April, we decided to go and spend another day there. Here are a few photos from the beautiful gardens.
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| The dry summer meant a dry fountain. |
Castle Howard is brilliantly run. Everything is done so well be it the cafes (fast, friendly service and good food and drinks), the guides (polite and informed) or just the signage (clear and in good condition).
Little touches like the fresh floral displays in many of the rooms, add to the visit.
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| The house itself is fabulous. |
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| This 17thc Dutch tulip stand is my favourite piece. |
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| Owen Jones is in the news a lot at the moment. They've got a bust in the house |
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| I loved the work in this South American native hammock |
It was dry when we sat down for the concert in the evening but sadly the rain set in and we watched much of it from under an umbrella.
The queue for the bar was quite staggering. I was amazed that it stayed like this all the way through the concert with many of the audience preferring to stand in line for beer to watching the performances on stage.
UB40 were excellent as always with plenty of the old favourites mixed with a couple of new songs. Sadly a significant minority of the audience was the worse for wear (see my comments on the bar above) which spoilt the occasion a little at times.
We left Pickering on Monday and drove up to the caravan in St Andrews to visit the family.
Yesterday we went to the excellent Dundee Contemporary Arts to see an Indie film that's been very well received.
Hearts Beat Loud is a very sweet and inoffensive movie about a talented young woman who forms a band with her dad. It's a nice film with an upbeat message.
On Wednesday we caught the train from Leuchars to Edinburgh for a visit to the Edinburgh Fringe. We crammed in five shows in the day .
Edinburgh is simply buzzing during the festival and you could fill a day enjoying the outdoor shows being performed all over the place.
We caught five minutes of this Latino dancing.
And some Indian movers
There's plenty of good street food on offer and we enjoyed a hearty lunch between shows.
Our favourite show was this hilarious comedy sketch duo The Pin (Ben Ashenden and Alex Owen) performing their show Backstage. Such a clever, funny and likeable pair - I expect we'll be seeing alot of them in the future.
Universoul Circus was another wonderful show. Funny, colourful, skilful and highly entertaining.
Evo Graham's show Motion Sickness was a slick hour of stand up comedy. Evo was very funny but I felt that an hour stretched his material a little.
I loved Shaken Not Stirred a daft improvisation James Bond spoof which, performers Alexander Fox and Dom O'Keefe assured us differs every day. It was a lot of fun from another very likeable duo.
We also saw Will Hall's show Netflix And Will. This was extremely popular with the audience but nothing special for me.
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| Perhaps we should have seen this instead. |
In other news, the harvest is in and that means that the new detecting season has started. I've had a few hours on the stubble with a couple of interesting finds but nothing exciting yet.
Victorian shooting medal Hardy Collins Commandant
Medieval silver penny
Clothing fittings from medieval to post medieval
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