Better keep your fingers double-crossed

[dolorosa_12]

My weekend started (on Friday evening) meeting Matthias at his workplace in Keir Starmer's constituency, moving on for dinner and a concert (on which more later) in Jeremy Corbyn's constituency, then sleeping overnight in a hotel in Diane Abbott's constituency: the peak north London experience.

Dinner was a bunch of Malaysian starters at the always excellent sambalshiok, but we weren't able to linger, because we had to head down the road to a tiny (but cavernously ceilinged) venue for the gig. Uncharacteristically, we were there for the support acts — nnhmn_ and minuitmachine — and hadn't even heard of the main event, rebekawarrior. The former are female-fronted dark electro acts, the later a dark electro dj (and by the time we got to her set, I was astonished that I'd never heard of her), we danced our delighted, exhausted hearts out, and a fabulous time was had by all. We made our way into the night, and back to our hotel via the overground, and collapsed into sleep.

Saturday dawned cold and cloudy, and I was able at last to try the pastries at pophamsbakery for breakfast — a patisserie I've long been following on social media — and was pleased to discover that they lived up to the hype. We finished our 36 hours in London up with a visit to the British Library, to see their exhibition on Black British music (from Tudor times to the present), which I highly recommend. It's always a bit tricky to do a physical exhibition on a topic that relies so heavily on aural experiences, but they did a good job of telling this complex story. It would have been great if there had been a way to accompany the exhibition with a multipart documentary, just so that the music could have told more of its own story in sound, but I enjoyed things all the same.

After the exhibition, and a quick lunch, we headed back to Ely on the train, and had a lazy Saturday afternoon and evening at home.

Today has also been fairly lazy (apart from both of us doing a bunch of household chores) — slow cooking, slow yoga, lying around reading (Elusive, the second book in Genevieve Cogman's published self-insert Scarlet Pimpernel vampire AU trilogy, which was as swashbuckling good fun as the previous book, with the same reluctance to examine the inherent flaws of the source material's premise while adopting a smugly self-congratulatory assumption of having done so), and restoring energy before the advent of the next working week. I'm severely behind on Dreamwidth, but I'm going to do my best to catch up on my reading page before I go to bed tonight.

I hope everyone's had lovely weekends.

Comments

[chestnut_pod]

Your weekends always seem so full of adventure!

[dolorosa_12]

This is hilarious to me, because I'm such a homebody, and if I had my way, I'd spend every weekend in the same cosy little routine: gym classes and farmers' market on Saturday morning, swimming on Sunday morning, interspersed with reading, chores and TV and trips out for takeaway coffee. But every time I do stuff outside this routine, I enjoy myself immensely ... and then need at least a day to recover!

[gingicat]

That sounds lovely!

What would you recommend as someone to listen to for dark electro? We have a household iCloud+ subscription, so I can access most things.

[dolorosa_12]

Definitely the bands/dj that I already mentioned in the post. On top of that, I'd recommend the bands Promenade Cinema, Rue Oberkampf, and the singer Rein.

[blackcatofmisery]

Your outings sound so lovely. It's too dang hot here to do anything; I can't even stand being out of the basement.

=^..^=~

[dolorosa_12]

Apart from one sunny week, it's been a really cold summer in the UK, which isn't great for the vegetables and tomatoes I'm trying to grow, but is excellent for being out and about. Sorry to hear about your own unpleasant weather, it sounds awful!

[blackcatofmisery]

For me, that weather sounds much better, but for the plants and crops, it's also bad. Some of the temperatures we're reaching are beyond what plants can tolerate. If there could be a nice in-between, that'd be great~

[corvidology]

What a lovely way to spend a weekend!

[dolorosa_12]

It was excellent!

[trepkos]

how do you say "nnhmn_"?

[dolorosa_12]

The _ symbol isn’t part of the name — they just have it in their Instagram handle. The name is pronounced liked ‘nonhuman’ (which is what their name spells, if you take the vowels out).

[trepkos]

Aah ... thanks! I wondered what it meant!

[kore]

"the same reluctance to examine the inherent flaws of the source material's premise while adopting a smugly self-congratulatory assumption of having done so"

Ooh, that zinger applies to SO MANY retellings. So many.

[dolorosa_12]

I know, right? Current American YA in particular.

[svgurl]

The bakery looks really good! It's nice when something lives up to the expectations. Sounds like an overall fun weekend in general! :)

[dolorosa_12]

The bakery — and the whole weekend — were indeed excellent!