Travelling to Glasgow

We're back. We drove up on Thursday and met up with our athame supplier, down for the Battle of Tewkesbury, and a friend of his, Mike, who is over from Holland. Mike makes bows, plus arrows, and we had a very interesting conversation about all this: it's a relatively big market. Mike is supplying bows to the Danish government (hundreds of them - either the Danes are really into archery or they're trying to get around UN WMD inspections....). Our athame supplier also makes arrows - he does the safety-headed ones for movies (Arthur, Alexander, etc). They're planning to come to Glastonbury at some point as Mike wants to branch out into horseback archery: he's off to Hungary soon to take lessons from some Magyar.

We met up at the Gupshill Manor, which is a very old pub not far from the original site of the battle.

On Friday, we drove up to Glasgow via the Lake District, Ambleside and Keswick: very stark and grand even at this time of year. We had lunch in a rather strange pub on one of the lakesides (on the menu board it said: 'Soup of the day is - Very Nice.') As Neil Williamson later remarked, the whole of the Lake District is like an unwritten Gormenghast novel - Pike Fell, etc. We stopped off at Castlerigg stone circle, which is most impressive - sited on a high plateau and surrounded by the sweep of the fells.

We reached Glasgow late in the afternoon and waited for Neil in a nice bar called the Liquid Ship (so called because the owners had something to do with Glasgow's restaurant The Ubiquitous Chip and kept getting mail addressed to the Liquid Ship - any sort of approximation having been deemed OK, presumably). I like Scots pubs because they all seem to serve tea as well as booze. It's a while since I've been to the West End, but we used to go regularly and I love Kelvinside and the Great Western Road. Good to see it again, and good to know that its reputation for great Indian restaurants is still justified. Later on, we went to a place called the Doublet, which I first went to years ago - it hasn't changed much. Why do all Glasgow pubs seem to have an Elvis impersonator? They don't sing. They just impersonate.

Witchfest

We got up about 7 on Saturday and drove along the Clyde to the venue, which was a series of arches underneath the station: it's a nightclub. The Witchfest crew were slightly freaked, as someone had found an unconscious man in the alley near the loading bay. He'd been badly beaten and AFAIK, is still in a coma. So when they got to the venue, they found a crime scene with police tape etc. Glasgow is a rough old city.

We had a dispute with the crew about displaying knives, which is understandable, but then the nightclub manager came round and said it was fine, as long as we issued people with a ticket rather than letting them wander around the event with an athame. I can see why everyone is nervous about this, but given that most of the blades are within the legal limit, I'm a bit sceptical about it really being a problem. If you're planning to stab someone, you're not going to buy a £180 athame to do it with: you'll pick up a flick-knife on the street.

The event kicked off about 10 and didn't let up - I think there were about 500-600 people, but it's hard to tell. We did very well financially and met a lot of very nice people - Scots witches are friendly and pleasant. Also, the venue did proper lunches, instead of the palate-cleaving damp sandwiches which mark Witchfest in Croydon. T had a fajita and I had linguine with mussels.

We loaded up fairly quickly, but it took longer than expected as the corridor had been turned into the changing room for the fashion show. Poor T had to stand with the boxes while a girl in a thong snapped her corset off and put on her 8 inch heels. He is still in a state of shock. At least, I think it's shock. He seemed to be smirking rather a lot.

Then we staggered back, knuckles dragging on the ground, and were revived with a Chinese take-away and a subsequent visit to the Saturday night writers' group. I caught up with Mr Duncan of VELLUM fame and it was good to see everyone. Scots pubs not only do tea. They do single malts. As one might expect.

Back down south

We left at Sunday lunchtime, having managed to locate and catch up with another old friend of mine who lives in Kelvinside, in one of those huge, rather stately old Glasgow tenements. The journey back passed damply but uneventfully, until we reached the outskirts of Birmingham when I looked in the mirror and saw blue flashing lights. Cue panic, dismay, protestations of being within the speed limit (which I was) and then the realisation that it was, indeed, our car that they were after and not some fleeing terrorist further down the M6.

What I'd failed to realise was that to the passing traffic cop, the Peugeot could not be more illegal if we'd hotwired it in front of a police station and driven it off in a squeal of tyres. It has no tax, due to an on-going bureaucratic dispute with the road tax folk, but also has no insurance either. Embarrassingly, we'd failed to notice this. Since it's T's car, he offered to speak to the police but no, they wanted 'the lady.'

So I had to get out of the car and sit in the squad car with a world-weary policeman and woman. There is little point in being either truculent or ingratiating, so I explained about the tax and said we'd just blown the insurance. I was not, I said, going to argue. 'You can argue a bit!' said Policeman. 'Don't take it lying down!'

They accepted the tax issue, but pointed out that they couldn't let us go off without insurance and were, in fact, legally obliged to impound the car. They clearly did not want to do this (endless hassle, and Policeman also wanted to watch the World Cup), so asked if I had insurance on another car. I do, so they radio'd the details of my own car into their system.

Then we had a conversation about: Ebay, what we were all doing later (the pub, in two cases. Policeman could not wait to get off shift. 'That's just sad,', said Policewoman), whether those of us who were married remembered our weddings, and what people did with their wedding dresses (Policewoman could not remember; Policeman's wife sold hers, within a year).

Finally my details came up and drew a complete blank. So we tried it again with my former address, since despite being told several times, I had a feeling that the insurance company hadn't bothered to update my details. Result! A fully comprehensive person and smiles all round. We were allowed to drive off and the West Midlands constabulary shot away into the traffic to apprehend someone with a filthy number plate, and one hopes, to get a glimpse of the football, though I suspect Policewoman went home to rummage through her wardrobe and work out what the hell she'd done with her frock.

I have to take my documents into a police station this week, otherwise we get prosecuted. 'Didn't we all laugh,' said Policeman, very dryly, as he let me out of the squad car.

After this, we detoured off the motorway at Tewkesbury, again, and had dinner at the Bell, which still has a chunk of Medievel mural on its dining room wall. Tewkesbury was still full of wenches in smocks, leftover from the weekend.

Adventures in cookery

(This is one for the cooks and the gardeners. Ignore if you don't give a toss).

Following an attempt last week to produce gooseberry jelly*, I've now done some more with the big, pale golden-green gooseberries that we've got in the garden right now. It seems to be setting but is a bit runny. If I can get some mackerel at the market tomorrow, I'm going to do a gooseberry sauce with it: this is a traditional southern English thing.

I also just picked a cucumber. We have tomatoes like little green bullets, but they're ripening; a lot of raspberries and blackcurrants, a magnificent eggplant which hasn't produced anything yet but is flowering, and beans, peas, chard, potatoes, and lettuces. Zucchini have flowered and there is a little one on the way.

Onions: hmmmm. Jury is out.

* Not that I'd ever admit to failure, but if anyone likes vaguely fruit-flavoured toffee and has a really big hammer, then email me. You get a free glass jar, which you'll be able to work out your tensions on by shattering it.

Dr Who trivia

Not only a new companion, but I see Catherine' am I bovvered??' Tate is on board for the Xmas special. Kudos to Catherine, who was quoted in the paper today as remarking 'I was hoping to sign up for the panto season at Wigan Rep, but I suppose this'll have to do.'