Ten Years of the Hearth

Last night the Hearth celebrated its tenth anniversary — slightly late, actually, it should have been celebrated a couple of months ago, but never mind. For this, Pauline had decided to have a relaxed, sociable evening, most people brought some food and the pub provided some sandwiches, too. Martin came up with his harp and gave us twenty to thirty minutes of excellent music. It’s difficult to believe it is ten years. Seems like yesterday I met Pauline at the old PF moot (run by Bill then, in Times Square’s cosy wee snug). I recall the first few meetings of the Hearth in the Corn Exchange, Martin talking about magic, Pauline casting a circle... it was like old times last night, seeing Martin there, as well as Tim and Janet and some other old faces; and Potia and Ann turned up, too — first time they’ve made it since the moot moved south of the river. I had a thumping headache at the start of the evening, but it passed off — helped, perhaps, by the soothing harp music. Or possibly it was the bottles of wine we sank.

It was a pleasant evening, too, as far as weather went. We left off our jackets and just went in T-shirts & pocketed waistcoats — a good decision, we would have been much too warm with even a light jacket. It was even a pleasantly warm evening to walk home at midnight. Balmy.

First set of names (and £3 deposits) were taken for the Samhuinn party. At least this year, the venue should still be there when we get to Samhuinn. :)

Did he say...?

I’m pretty relaxed today, but the news channels are doing their best to irritate. News 24? What a joke. Cricket, cricket, cricket…

Apparently the “whole country” is celebrating — that must mean the whole of England, who may well be. As for Scotland, we’re also getting this relentless stream of shite hour after bloody hour. OK, they’ve won and won well — good on them. OK, they want to celebrate. Fair enough. Why can’t the English celebrate, though, without inflicting the coverage of the triumphal march, Blair’s desperate attempts to look cool by being photographed with sporting stars, and the wittering of witless commentators on the rest of us? Or is there nothing else happening today? I recall someone once saying that England’s winning of the World Cup in 1966 was the blackest day of his life — not, again, because they begrudged the footballers the victory, everyone agreed that that was a good team with some decent blokes in it, it was this unending stream of crowing drivel from the English media — which still goes on whenever it looks as though there is even the slimmest chance they might have a great victory again (thankfully, something that doesn’t seem too likely for the England team at the moment).

However… during the apology for news that the BBC has been transmitting, I did catch sight of some of the singing of God Save the Queen. One of the St. George’s Cross-bedecked guys belting it out in Trafalgar Square was clearly visible, and I inadvertently started to lip-read… and I am pretty sure he didn’t sing “long to reign over us”; in fact, what he sang instead of “reign” certainly began with a plosive and looked a lot like “piss”.

Slightly bemused by that.