Friday, October 03, 2014

A week in a flash


Each  year for about the last twelve my uncle (that's him in the red striped shirt in the family photo) has held a weekend celebration, usually timed to coincide with the Patrons' Concert by the Dunvant Male Voice Choir (of which he is a patron). Family and friends from all over the place come along to one or more of the events and this year there was an especially good turn-out as my uncle said it will be the last he'll organise. It's his 90th birthday next year so we're hosting a party for that instead.

So it began on the Friday night with a meal at Norton House Hotel, followed on the Saturday by the concert. We don't go to the concert but I'm rather sad we didn't go along for the after-concert champagne and shepherd's pie supper. Ken, the prof, seen in the photo with me played the piano to accompany a sing-along that lasted until gone 1 in the morning. 

It's no wonder there were some tired-looking people at the Sunday lunch party! By the time the photo was taken we'd eaten and drunk and everyone had perked up.

Ken's grandson went to Eton and his grand-daughter is in Charterhouse so it was a bit of cultural change for me on Monday when I went to Cookie's funeral. You may remember I wrote about Cookie a few posts ago and Sean asked me to read that during the short service. Let's just say it wasn't your average funeral but nobody came to blows. Quite

And today we've been on a cruise up the river Tawe on the community boat, Copper Jack. The gentleman giving the commentary was very informative about the old industrial history of the river. Very little remains of what was known as Copperopolis but in its heyday Swansea produced 90% of the world's copper. The television screens on board the specially-designed boat showed images of how it used to look with about 50 tall chimney stacks pumping out all sorts of vile fumes. 

Amongst other things the copper was shaped into manillas - like the one in the photo - which were used as currency by slave traders.



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