Fishy

We tottered down to the Quayside today (after an exhausting morning collecting parcels, mowing lawns, painting, glitter pens and sticking - you know, all that suburban nonsense that goes on at the weekend) to the Fish on the Tyne Weekend (part of Eat! NewcastleGateshead).

It was a diverting way to spend an hour in the sunshine - lots of stalls selling fish and any variation on fishy food (paella, fish and chips, pizza), a couple of salmon sculptures (I especially liked the scales - see left), two Cornish blokes doing a comedy fish routine (very, very funny, and guaranteed to horrify and amuse small children), and a tent full of cookery demonstrations.

We wandered about, ate a pot full of shrimps (the other half having spent his formative years on the beach in Whitby with a newspaper cone of the things), and wondered why the whole event was so relentlessly middle-class (us included). You couldn't move for small children in mini-Boden (it was almost as bad as the Alnwick Garden) - and the highlight of the afternoon was one very smartly dressed lady with a very posh voice bellowing "Asriel, Asriel, come back here..." into the distance as we looked on, mouths agape. You couldn't make it up.