Archive for the ‘Events’ Category

Finland turns 100 this year. In celebration, events are taking place around the world. They’re called Illallinen taivaan alla or “Dinner under the sky”. Tiina organised a Leeds event which was a big success.

There was loads of Finnish food, including a selection of cake so big that I don’t think I managed to get around everything. Despite trying really hard.

Leeds Pride continues to get bigger every year. It used to be that you could rock up to The Headrow and have an entire traffic island to yourself to watch the parade go by. Now, as you can see, the crowds are much bigger.

We weren’t clear if we were supporting Pride, or insensitively flaunting our heterosexuality by waving a baby around…

Craig’s Pride-themed tuba was very impressive, but I didn’t manage to get a good photo…

As you can see, I spared no expense in making the picture for my blog post. I think it was worth the time, though. It is not every day that you turn 453. Of course, he hasn’t, because he is dead. But the thought still counts.

I would also like to offer a birthday shout-out to Michael, who I believe turns 23 today. He has a bit of catching up to do there.

At the end of December, I attend the Leeds Schools’ Carol Concert to support my mum, who was singing in the adult choir. They did not get much of a look-in: they were given a few songs, but most of the songs were sung by the children. This was a shame because the adults were much better, but apparently, parents felt it should be all about the children for some reason.

We took Venla, who let out one perfect cry just at the end of a song, leading the entire hall to go up in laughter. I think we have a future performer in the making.

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.