After going to the Michaelmas Fair in Bishops Castle last night, we decided to do some work today, but we needed some shopping and headed back to BC this afternoon. Needless to say, we stayed rather longer than expected. First we watched the end of a show of a company of jugglers. Then we could hear drumming up the hill and went to watch Siyaya, a band from Zimbabwe. They were amazing. Great music and incredibly energetic dancing. I was most impressed by the fact that they could do incredible footwork whilst keeping their upper bodies completely still.

As we walked down the hill there was Morris dancing. We’re usually quite scathing about this, but they really put their heart and soul into it. Next we saw Savage Skills, a freestyle bike stunt team. They did leaps and jumps; bouncing around their colleague; crushing cans from a great height; high jumps and finally pin-point precision jumps with only one wheel.

All the museums were open today and we went into the house on stilts and Geoff was right, well worth a visit. Eventually, we did go back home to do more work and had I known what news I was going to get on my return, I would have bought a bottle of bubbly at the supermarket. The keynote speaker I was hoping for has confirmed. Harlan Lane is going to be taking part in the SDP conference. When I first started working with deaf people in 1992, his book ‘When the Mind Hears’ was the first one I bought about deafness and deaf history, and it is still a seminal work on the topic. He is still at the forefront of his field and I’m very excited about his presentation and his discussion at the conference.

See photos of today.

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