A normal weekend

It's been a busy summer, and this weekend will my last ordinary, stay-at-home, for at least a month. So, I decided to so some ordinary, stay-at-home type stuff. Friday night, we went to the first gig we'd attended for several months, seeing the Zen Hussies play at the Golden Lion. It's good to get into live music again, and even though they weren't the type of band I'd usually choose, they were great, playing a mixture of '40's swing and '80's ska. Punk jazz, perhaps?

Then on Saturday, I shopped and did stuff around the house. Clothes shopping, too: it's been months since I attempted that apart from knickers and T-shirts. The day was tiring and fun, just very satisfying in the way that overdue tasks were completed. I even managed to swim in the early evening.

Sunday was a Bristol day. This year, I'd missed most of the local festivals for one reason or another; the Balloon Fiesta, the Harbour Festival, Ashton Court had all passed me by. So Moonface & I cycled up to see the Kite Festival (Europe's largest) which for once had strong breezes to make it all worthwhile and to keep the skies busy. That was pleasantly relaxed, with enough visitors to keep the stallholders busy and to make people-watching fun while avoiding crushes and crowds. The show kites were there as usual, from a new fat white cherub 30 feet long, to a purple spider of a similar size,just showing off how fantastical kites can be now.

En route, we'd visited the Emmaus House garden which was open to the public for the day. It was a stunning setting, a huge beautifully-tended small estate in the middle of urban Clifton, overlooking the harbour and Hotwells, split into a series of different gardens ranging from a vegetable-patch surrounded by espaliered apples, to a Japanese-style Zen garden of stones, bamboo and water. In one corner, where the stables had been in previous centuries, the garden still retained the spring that had fed the house's private well.

So, by the time we hit home, we were tired and ready to slump. So we did.