We went to Bath on Saturday evening with our old friends Ian & Maria. Sad to say that we had a rather disappointing meal in the Bistro Papilion. The food was ok, no more no less, but truly miserly portions left a rather bad taste in the mouth, if you’ll pardon the pun. I’ve known Ian for almost as long as I have been alive, back to pre school days in fact. Back at their house Ian delighted Orynthia by producing an old school photo of us, taken when we were about 8 or 9 I guess. I was wearing a rather fetching skiing jumper, which Orynthia loved. I guess the winters must have been colder back then after all.

On Sunday afternoon, we went to a house warming party. Now the gathering and people were all lovely, but for me the highlight of the day were the bizarre noises emanating from the just behind the garden wall! Let me explain, the house is located virtually next door to the stadium that Bristol rugby club and some other football team use. On Sunday afternoon Bristol were taking on Leicester, in what turned out to be a very keenly contested rugby match. So as we were sitting in the back garden our conversations, would suddenly be taken over by the noise of about 6,000 people getting quite excited. Whereas football crowds tend to have general noise and then a sudden roar as the ball is smacked into the net, the nature of the excitement in rugby is the long build up towards the final crescendo, as the crowd cheer their man or team on the 40 yard push to the line. This all leads to a strange sort of elongated growling noise, in place of the short, sharp, shout that I have been used to being part of at football matches. It was all rather strange and I must confess I found most enjoyable.

After the party, we went off to see The Divine Comedy in action, supported by Ben Folds. Here was another chance to study differing styles of showing appreciation by making noise. I’m not sure if Ben Folds had bought many Americans along with him, but it was really noticeable that his fans (and there were many) did a whole lot of whopping and hollering. Whilst the Divine Comedy audience, were much more in the fevered but polite applause, school of approval.