We went to the Ceramics Biennial in Stoke-on-Trent, an event so aligned with my mother's interests that I felt somehow guilty for going without her.

The kids were unexpectedly interested in the exhibits which was nice but also a little nervewracking, as their exuberance in the presence of all that very fragile art seemed likely to end badly.

Luckily there was an interactive piece, an activity for kids to make a rammed earth brick ("Very thorough" said a nonplussed volunteer who was taken aback by how much B likes banging on things with sticks) and a "playscape" made out of said rammed earth which we were told "We're not actually allowed to call a playground" but that the kids were welcome to climb on. OK then! If they had their way, they probably would have stayed in the sand pit for the whole afternoon.

SoT's heyday was when Spode and Wedgewood were booming, and the gentrification machine is still working its way through all the factories and warehouses. There was a football game scheduled for later in the day, and there was a sign up on a pub door saying it was for HOME FANS ONLY and directing the away fans to a more hospitable alternative location.

But there's plenty going on. We spent so much time at the Biennial we didn't even make it to the main pottery museum in town. We saw the small Spode museum where an artist in residence was painting a portrait on a platter of a painter working in the factory in Indonesia where Spode is now made. So meta, as we used to say in 2003! There was a gift shop selling a lot of very reasonably priced vintage china, but if you've seen our house in Medford you know I cannot adding so much as a saucer, and it seemed a shame to buy anything for here that I'd get attached to. But I was tempted by some of the pieces made for airlines back in the day when we traveled like civilized people. There was a set of salad plates made for Nigeria Airways that will probably tug at me for a while. We also did not go to the Wedgwood factory which I'd visited with my mom when I was studying abroad in 2005. That facility is closed until January to "rebalance our inventory due to lower demand in some of our key markets", and apparently the outlet is not quite the bargain it once was. The relentless wheels of capitalism grind on, which could probably serve as the title for every post I'll make in the next year.