I'm not a great fan of yarn bombing, but look at this.....

 

 

I thought a day by day, hour by hour description of the Gaskell Society Conference, with which my mega trip south finished about 10 days ago would tire the patience of readers, so decided to do a few 'highlights', illustrated by some of  the photos that I took.

 

 

Elizabeth Gaskell wrote a novel called Sylvia's Lovers (not one of her best in my opinion, but other views are available) set in Whitby and its environs, hence the choice of venue. We were based at a place called Cober Hill, which is situated in a small village called Cloughton, near Scarborough, and we had two 'trips out' one to Scarborough and one to Whitby.

 

The Scarborough outing include a visit to Woodend, the one time home of the Sitwell family, now a gallery space and inside the gallery we found this bike.

 

 

 

It was part of a larger project connected to the opening stages of the Tour de France in 2014 which, for some reason I never quite fathomed, took place in Yorkshire. The various elements on the bike are supposed to represent Scarborough, which is why they include a seagull and a puffin.

 

 

 

I know very little about the Sitwell family, apart from the names Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell, the latter of which I'm still not sure how to pronounce, and the fact that Edith wrote the words to a piece called Façade (William Walton wrote the music)  which is doubtless interesting if you're a Professor of the Social History of Music and is otherwise  tedious beyond belief.

 

 

Interestingly though, we had had a talk on the family on the Friday night at which the (male) speaker declared that the Sitwell parents were 'rather odd, and in the mother the oddness was bordering on insanity'.  I do get very annoyed with men who, without any formal qualifications in psychiatry or psychology take it upon themselves to diagnose women as mad. It is sadly common.

 

Anyway, enjoy the bike!