Archive for the ‘Events’ Category

The annual West Yorkshire Humanist’s summer social has been running since long before my time. For the past two years, we have been running a picnic at Kirkstall Abbey. Last year, we also added a Winter Social, to fill in the gap left by the Atheist Society’s Winter Solstice meals.

This year we had ten people attend, including plenty of old faces, and some new faces too.

The venue was the Lawnswood Arms, as it was last year. The food was fine. It is a family-friendly and affordable pub, with mains priced around £7-10, so you got what you paid for: the food turned up edible and hot, with is all you really need when you have good company.

The 2016 pride parade was pretty standard. There were lots of people marching, it took about 30-40 minutes for the whole parade to pass. A few floats, but these were almost all corporate buses. Lots of people marching against the Tories this year, and I don’t think the Tories themselves turned up at all.

The biggest change this year was the amount of people watching. Typically there are only a few people on The Headrow and you can pretty much have a traffic island or road-side bench to yourself. This year there were people lining the whole way and it was difficult to get a spot.

For New Year’s Eve 2015 we ditched our traditional party format in favour of a murder mystery dinner party. This came with its pros and cons.

On the downside, the logistics of getting everyone round the table complicated matters. We have more friends that would fit round, so I had to omit some people from the invite list. A few people were ill at the last minute, so this further complicated the situation. On the plus side though between the murder mystery and the food, people seemed to be entertained throughout the evening.

The murder mystery itself has lots of room for improvement. The dialogue could probably be condensed into bigger sections, as it was a bit start and stop. That would avoid it breaking into conversation unless there was a length chunky of stuff to do. Once I have cleaned up the typos I will post it on here for other people to look through.

The food went well. We only got through nine of the 11 courses I had planned. Everything went smoothly and it did not feel like much of a rush. Whether that was because I was able to do a lot of the work before, or whether it was because everything was broken down into separate courses rather than one big-bang service, I am not sure. I suspect it is a combination of the two.

We had plenty of left-overs:

Our dinner the day after consisted of smoked-salmon on maneesh, meatballs, breaded fish, gammon and Yorkshires. A mixed grill of left-overs.

Lunch was taken care of by our usual trip for recovery steak. We opted for Miller & Carter because you can always get a table and the food is pretty good. The price of your steak includes chips, salad and sauce, which makes it good value.

To end the year West Yorkshire Humanists held a social at the Lawnswood Arms.

For the December event at Sunday Assembly Leeds, Dermot led an assembly on “traditions”.

For this year’s Humanist winter social, we had a meal at the Lawnswood Arms.

Thank you to those who celebrated our Leeds wedding with us! The photos are back and here are a few of our favourites.

Last month we made our fourth annual pilgrimage up to St. Lukes in Headingley for Finnish Christmas Carols. Turn out was higher than ever with almost every seat in the small chapel being taken. Possibly due to the recently started Finnish language school based in Headingley.

After, we piled into the church house for food and conversation. Alas we did not win the raffle for the ginger bread house. Better luck next year…

In September we headed over to Blackpool for the Monster Raving Loony party conference. I had never been to Blackpool before so I was curious to see what it was like. The answer was slow-going. It took us four hours to get from Leeds to the hotel. it is nice to see a British seaside town thriving though.

The conference was held at Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Who ID’ed both Elina and I, twice. The barmaid asked for our ID, which by sheer luck Elina had on her, and spent ages mulling over whether she could accept a Finnish ID card. Then, just after that, the bouncer came round and checked our ID too.

However, he does win some points because when he found out Elina was from Finland he said he had been to Helsinki. Which is actually in Finland. So many people respond to the news by saying “I’ve been to Sweden”. We couldn’t give a shit if you have been to Sweden, stop saying it!

The party had organised an open top tour bus so we paraded round the town while Howling shouted into a megaphone from the front of the bus.

We got some touristy things in while we were there. We wandered around the piers, all of which had 5 star health ratings. I will be honest, I’m suspicious. We visited the biggest Wetherspoons I had ever seen, across three fours with a lift in the middle. We did the sea life centre and played the free round of pirate mini golf you get with it.

We went for a walk down the sea front, which wasn’t mega-interesting. However, where else can you randomly come across a line or daleks?

Every time we got to a Loony party conference, which is now a sample size of two, someone is advertising discount weddings.

What I found annoying about Blackpool is how backward it is though. I can accept that not everywhere has Uber, though it is annoying. However, no where took credit cards. I am not even talking about street vendors (though a lot of street vendors in Leeds do take credit cards now, and all of them do in Helsinki), but even the restaurant we had dinner in did not take credit cards! Really frustrating.

These look like the creatures out of The Dark Crystal.

That sign at the back read “chairs”.

Why not alpacas?