We started this week off in style with a long lazy Sunday lunch with Allison and David, longstanding friends from Atlanta. The Big Green Egg, resplendent in its new table, had its first use, with a very nice large piece of steak.
Sunday was the end of any pretence at good weather. During this week, it rained every day. Two and a quarter inches of precipitation (nearly three times the historic average). There were a few breaks, enabling a little more planting to be done. And on Friday, we combined a couple of errands to visit the nearest cinema to see “Woman in Gold” – a very moving true story about the famous Klimt painting. Thoroughly recommended.
The big event for this week was the concert down in Atlanta starring Mary Fahl, one of my all-time top favourite singer songwriters. Lisa booked front row seats for us as my surprise Christmas present. It is in a small venue in Duluth, so we are made an outing of it, staying overnight Saturday in a nearby hotel.
We went down to Duluth on Saturday afternoon. It is a historic little town (=city in US parlance) which was once in agricultural land north of Atlanta. Over the years, suburban Atlanta has sprawled outwards, and now Duluth, with its town hall, railway line and old houses is surrounded by modern shopping malls and subdivisions. We ate at the Park Cafe, a house built around 1910, which has retained the individual rooms as separate dining areas. A cosy atmosphere with (overpriced) paintings from a local gallery decorating the walls. The food was outstanding, and the portions (almost uncomfortably) large.
The concert was in the Red Clay Music Foundry, a small old cinema which has been converted into a music venue. Seating maybe 150, it is a really intimate venue – we had great seats on the front row. Two hours of great music performed by Mary Fahl, all solo and accompanied only by her guitar. Her comments introducing individual songs were both very revealing of how much of her own life goes into the songs she writes, and influences ranging from Moorish Spain, Luciano Pavarotti and Edith Piaf. I was able to buy a legitimate copy of her CD of “Dark Side of the Moon” (Pink Floyd fans will recognise that name) which she autographed for me after the show. A really wonderful evening.