Friday began with tales of plasters in salads and ended with Amanda Palmer surfing the entire length and width of the audience. Yes, we have finally had our sit-down with the Department of Agriculture and we are now able to go into The Cookery to make sweets!. And sell them! Hurrah! However, it’ll probably take a month or so to get up to speed; especially since we’re going to Chicago this weekend.

I was worried about the meeting - afraid that we’d be shut down for some reason before we even started, but no; the inspector was very friendly, eager to help and full of useful information about the area, and even on ideas on whom to sell to!

With Fallout Durham finished for the day, I headed off to the wild tundra of Carrboro to go see Amanda Palmer. She’s had a bit of a bad week on the Internet over her call for volunteer musicians to come and play with her onstage on her tour (they’re allowed to sell their wares at the merch table, but there’s no explicit payment despite having to be at least semi-professional and take part in rehearsals), so I wondered if she’d address that, and also wondered just what was going to be part of the show.

Unfortunately, the answer to that was “how does just about every musical tick that you hate and loathe with the power of a million suns?” One of the support acts decided that they were going to do 80s yacht rock with a super-cool ironic pose, whilst another duo played duel saxophone covers of 80s hits. With one of them wearing a big hair wig.

There is simply not enough napalm on this Earth to deal with them properly. I’m guessing I wasn’t quite in the mood for the ironic whimsy and oh-so-serious art of the evening (seriously, stopping the concert mid-way through to read out depressing things that happened in your bedrooms? How about playing another song instead?), though the set-piece where Palmer crowdsurfed with a huge skirt covering most of the crowd was pretty impressive. However that was undercut by a rather unnecessary talk where did indeed address the volunteer drama in a rather dismissive tone, and when she announced that the Cradle had no curfew for the night, we took it as a sign that we should leave. Via Cookout, of course!

Saturday started with the celebration of The Cookery’s new Front Room. They’ve been working on it for months, but I hadn’t quite realised the scale of the project. The new space is pretty amazing, with a 1920s feel to it and a good sense of space. There’s talk of pop-up restaurants and all sorts of things happening there soon.

But! I didn’t stay long, because I had another event on - a walk around modernist houses in Duke Forest. Yes. Organised by Triangle Modernist Houses - enough of them around to form a club! And events where five hundred people turn up just to look around houses! That aren’t even for sale! (Okay, one was, but the others were mostly lived in) Whilst they weren’t brutalist masterpieces, they were all straight out of Grand Designs in a wouldn’t-it-be-amazing-to-live-here-oh-wait-i’m-not-that-rich way. A few hours were spent swooning over deer, curved buildings with a bridge to get to the front door, plus one of the longest bookcases I’ve ever seen in a house. I would consider it a challenge.

After all that, Sunday turned out to be a lot more restful; I turned the kitchen into a test lab once again, making caramels and a hideous Cheerwine & white chocolate mixture that was determined to taste like biting into make-up. It really was that bad, sadly. Still, through in some ironing and planning for the upcoming Chicago trip, plus a trip to IP3 in Chapel Hill for Kyle’s birthday, and the day soon slipped away. Back to work, at least for the next four days.