January 23rd 2012

Choral Evensong

There are some advantages to being a ‘chorister parent’ and one of these is the opportunity to sit in the Quire during choral evensong.   There is always that little frisson of excitement, as well as anxiety, that one’s son is going to sing a solo; he rarely has time to let you know in advance that he is to do so.  It is also interesting to watch the subtle exchanges between the choristers; the smile of encouragement when one of their friends is just about to sing his first solo; the subsequent grin of congratulation when it has been completed successfully; the furrow of brow when a chorister looks up to see the director of music glaring in his direction after a short period of inattention; the nod of concern when a barely appreciable error by a ‘senior’ heralds the spectre of a breaking voice and the end of an all too short chorister career.  These expressions are mirrored, although are often less well-disguised, on the faces of the chorister parents.

Choral Evensong is a wonderfully relaxing service to attend and it gives me enormous pleasure to listen to the choir; here is an example of the 'Nunc Dimittis' sung to music composed by Basil Harwood.

January 15th 2012

A very belated Happy New Year!

It is almost time to wind down the Just Giving site with a final total of about £27,500 for Help for Heroes when Gift Aid is taken into consideration. We are pretty pleased with how everything has gone over the past year and I do not feel that we seriously thought that we would be able to raise anything like that amount when we first started putting everything together in November 2010.

The run-up to Christmas was largely occupied by University applications and interviews and it is now time to get my head down to work in the run-up to A levels so my blog entries are going to be few and far between. My dad seems to enjoy putting things on the site and I am sure that he will continue to do so (I have asked him to try and not say anything too embarrassing). His latest entry is an 'article' in the 'Went the Day Well?' section called 'Tarifa 2011' and, if you want to see a video showing how elderly (sorry Dad) men behave when away from their families, you should have a look. Incidentally, the music by LMFAO which accompanies part of the video was my suggestion.

Going out to the theatre in London is incredibly expensive; I read a recent article in a newspaper saying that one will often pay £1 per minute to see a show. If you want a cheaper alternative you should go down to Covent Garden to watch some of the street performers; they are almost invariably excellent and richly deserve all the donations that they receive from on-lookers. The photographs today are of one such performer on Christmas Eve whose 30 minute performance was worth every penny of '£1 per minute' from each of his audience but which, I am sure, achieved considerably less!