April Fool's Day

I can affirm that this sign is not an April Fool. It’s been on the toilet door at The Allendale Forge Studios for some time.

Margret called after church this morning for a catch up.

After lunch, Mum and I went to Allendale to see an excellent exhibition of stained glass by local artist, Jenny Hammond. We were very impressed and loved the detail in her work. She uses etching and recreates her own interpretation of medieval glass, but often makes the central subject spill through the borders. (You have to see it.)

Then we drove to Hexham for a performance of The Messiah streamed from The Briston Old Vic. I thought we had just enough time to be in our seats in time. We cut it too fine. The stair lift chair was up and we were down. By the time it languidly traversed the stairs, down and then up again, the lights had gone off in the auditorium.

We know that Mum has little feeling in her feet, but walking in the dark, even on a flat floor, revealed just what it is like to have no proprioception. She relies on seeing her feet to know where they are. We struggled along to our seats, both thinking we would never make it, to discover that one seat was occupied. There were no free seats nearby. I was holding Mum up and had to ask the people to move. About 8 people all had to get up and shuffle along one.

Thankfully we recovered and were treated to the most amazing performance of The Messiah. It was partly staged. The choir, soloists and orchestra were beyond wonderful and the actor who played The Beloved was inspiring. He is Jamie Beddard who has cerebral palsy.

The words made much more sense when performed rather than being sung by soloists in evening dress. I realise that we don’t hear anything about Handel’s librettist, Charles Jennes, who had the idea for the Messiah and chose the Biblical texts that were used.

It turns out we were sitting next to an old colleague of mine, a local GP. He and his fiancée were two of the people in the wrong seats, because other people were in theirs!