Dr Jin Ye demonstrates the sword form of Tai Chi

A full day for us yesterday began with Ann's visit to the hospice (she doesn't like to miss her massage sessions) followed by a trip for me  around various garden sellers to buy tomato grow-bags and other stuff for growing plants, including two courgette plants (which I didn't get round to growing myself) and a mini-cucumber.  Lunch and then we were booked onto the second Tai Chi demonstration and workshop at Mapplewell Village Hall led by Dr Jin Ye who is a direct descendant of the Wu family - she was amazing and my quickly snatched photos (we got lost and were a bit late) don't entirely do justice to an amazing performance.  We learnt some refinements to our style (at least I did) during the workshop session too.

Finally we were booked to see Patience Agbabi perform her poems at Barnsley Civic in the early evening.  She was absolutely stunning and I really enjoyed the performance, the rhythms, the stories, the variety of voices that she recreated within her poems.  Her latest collect is based on the Canterbury Tales - notes from her blog post tell us: 

Taking a cue from Chaucer’s band of pilgrims,  participants in Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group’s Refugee Tales Walk are midway through their 9-day walk on the North Downs Way from Dover to Crawley via Canterbury. Along the way, writers, musicians and other artists will share tales inspired by the migrants and refugees.

The Civic Gallery staff had created a wonderful cafe like environment for the seven paying members of her audience (plus the three who came with her) making ten of us in total.  Such a pity that more people hadn't known about the event, put on by `Northern Voices'.   You can hear her delivering her version of `The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales' here on You Tube.  If you are interested it's also well worth listening to `The Wife of Bafa' to see just how wonderful the varied voices are and see how well she performs them.   Our event was darker and more atmospheric (with candles on the tables) than thrones shown here.  A truly memorable evening and a wonderfully varied day of different cultural experiences.