Categories: uncategorized
Date: 15 February 2004 15:52:32
No choirpractice on Friday for it was the occasion of the annual Choir and Bellringers' Dinner. You wouldn't believe how many people can manage to attend this event compared to the usual Sunday or practice turnout! Old choristers hear of the planned date by bush telegraph and mysteriously return for the night, with several bellringers in tow whose faces don't look at all familiar..... but hey, we all have a great time, so the more the merrier. After a three-course meal and a daft speech from the vicar (I think he enjoys the chance to be far more risque than he can from the pulpit :D), there is the entertainment, this year provided by the ringers. A series of comical readings, sketches, songs, bells and instruments. And all of a sudden it is 11.30 and time to wend our way home.
This morning, everyone was still feeling strangely dozy although we all had Saturday to recover. I think the poor Choirmaster felt he had us all on a string of elastic as he tried to keep us all together and reduce the sponginess. Strangely, he refused to wear the large cardboard mock MBE we presented him with on Friday night, preferring to wait until HRH presented him with the real one. The anthem was intended to be 'the Heavens are Telling' by Haydn, but one of the trio was on his way back from an all-night youth jolly at Exeter Cathedral and would be in no fit state to stay fully awake, let alone sing. So we substituted it for Mozart's Ave Verum. The heavens can tell another time, probably in two weeks at the Civic Service.
After the service we stayed robed and returned to the choir stalls, to puzzled looks from the coffee drinkers. A new church guide book is to be produced and they needed an up-to-date photo of the choir. I don't know what it will look like - we had to pretend to sing, and look towards the camera and away from the conductor. It felt very false, but we shall have to see. Only two choristers were missing, it is so hard to get everyone together for a photograph - perhaps we should have had it taken on Friday night!