Another Friday Night Mellow Red Wine Experience

What is it about Fridays? Is it the release of the week's stress: that big sigh that eases us into the weekend. I've just watched a repeat of the second series of Phoenix Nights, the one with the family fun day to raise money for the relaunch of the Phoenix Club; and after belly laughing my way through all the jokes I missed the first time what do you suppose was the thing that sent me scurrying to YouTube to see if it was there? The Simon Park theme tune to the 1970s TV detective series Van Der Valk. Try describing the hit series set in Amsterdam to anyone under 30 and they just look at you bemused - the sort of look that goes with the 'dad's just done another embarrassing dad thing; humour him and the moment will pass...' my sons do.

Anyway, if you don't know what I'm talking about have a look at this 1973 Top Of The Pops Christmas Special:

There's Culture Up North Tha' Knows...Our Perfect Weekend

Grand opera and grand gardens – it could have been any of Europe’s cultural capitals; but it wasn’t, this was Yorkshire, England. Celebrating a significant birthday for Mrs C, we gambled on the English summer weather with tickets for an outdoor performance of La Boheme. After dropping bags at our B and B, Watergate Lodge, Knaresborough, we set out into a perfect summer afternoon and enjoyed the town’s riverside tranquillity before dressing to impress, picking up our picnic and heading to the hauntingly beautiful Cistercian ruins of Fountains Abbey.

Opera Brava are a small company who specialise in pared down performances; accompanied simply by a pianist they manage to distil the essence of grand opera into exquisite miniatures. Their performance was punctuated by Tawny Owl calls lending a fittingly sad note to Puccini’s tragic tale of love and loss in Bohemian Paris. Cynics say that plots like La Boheme have about as much depth as Coronation Street, their distant detergent relative; but as poor Mimi coughed her last tuberculous breath into the hankie held in her tiny frozen hand, assembled picnickers took an extra sip of Chardonnay to disperse the lumps appearing mysteriously in their throats.

The following morning, replete with culture and Peter Guest’s excellent Watergate Lodge breakfast, we headed to the RHS Gardens at Harlow Carr. These are gardener’s gardens where people won’t glance askance at you for talking about mulch or compost. There is a gorgeous floral array, a stunning kitchen garden, woodland walks and the national rhubarb collection - fabulous. We also benefit from the knowledge that the growing conditions are not dissimilar to our home patch: ‘if it grows at Harlow Carr, it will grow at home’, our motto.
Opera and gardening: not to everyone’s taste – but this was our weekend and we loved it.