Coincidence and likely stories and other nonsense

Today is my younger sister's birthday. She was born on our mother's birthday. Doing so, she started a kind of family tradition, maintained through the next two generations so far. My daughter was born on her grandfather's birthday. And her daughter, my eldest granddaughter, was born on my son's birthday. This bit of nonsense has always pleased us in the family. We can go a step further; today is also the birthday of my daughter's almost-mother-in-law. So who else shares a birthday with my sister? Today's Guardian newspaper gives me an answer: among others (most of whom mean little to me), they name Paul Gascoigne, footballer, 50; Duncan Goodhew, swimmer, 60; Henry Kissinger, US statesman, 94 (almost as old as my mother would have been today if she were still alive); Jamie Oliver, chef, 42; and Siouxsie Sioux, singer, 60.

My daughter, ever the sentimentalist, put on Facebook this morning birthday greetings to her aunt (Patricia May), her almost-mother-in-law (Silvia Mei) and her late grandmother (Phyllis May), delighting in the coincidence of names, even if the spelling (May - Mei) varies. My daughter does love a bit of soppiness!

We have been delighting in the sunshine (except for a rainshower not long after midday, just as we got off a bus) up here in the North-East of England by taking a walk along the Banks of the Tyne to have a light lunch at the Staiths cafe. And we admired the "staiths" for which the cafe is named. What, you may ask are "staiths"? Here is an answer:
 
"Dunston Staiths, on the River Tyne, is believed to be the largest timber structure in Europe. It is a Grade II listed monument, appears on English Heritage's At Risk register and is owned by registered charity the Tyne and Wear Building Preservation Trust (TWBPT).
Opened in 1893 by the North East Railway Company, it was built to allow large quantities of coal arriving by rail from the Durham Coalfields to be loaded directly onto waiting colliers (or coal ships) ready for the onward journey to customers in London and abroad. At the coal industry's peak around 5.5 million tons of coal was moved this way each year.
As the coal industry declined during the latter part of last century so too did Dunston Staiths, eventually falling into serious disrepair. Some reprieve came from the National Garden Festival held in Gateshead in 1990, which saw extensive restoration work carried out with the Staiths taking a leading role as a key installation with performance space and an art gallery.
Sadly, the landmark structure's luck didn't hold. A serious fire in 2003 inflicted extensive damage putting the Staiths on English Heritage's At Risk register. Fortnately, TWBPT succeeded in raising the funds required to kick start the ongoing restoration which has seen it transformed into an exciting and sustainable visitor attraction."

I have some doubts about the " exciting and sustainable visitor" attraction bit of it as it did not look very visitable as far as I could see. Nonetheless, here and here are a couple of links to info about it. 

With lunch Phil has a glass of Blaydon Brick ale. This ale, we learned, is lovally brewed at the delightfully named Firebrick Breweries. The ale is so called because Blaydon Brick was the nickname of a "popular cloth-capped 19th century MP for Newcastle, Joseph Cowen Jnr. A son of Blaydon; he was a friend of Garibaldi, Mazzini, the working man, amd anyone at that time whose rights were repressed."

Isn't it amazing what you can learn rom a beer bottle. The beer itself is described as a "well-rounded golden ale; toffee and fresh hop on the nose; biscuity with some spice in the taste and very refreshing."

Clearly beer is subject to the same nonsense as wine when being described!

I wonder if it gets its "biscuity" taste from Joseph Cowen's friendship with Garibaldi.

Quite enough nonsense for one day!