A topical night out

This morning I celebrated the Eucharist again at St Catherine's. but didn't have a wound clinic visit, as I'm reducing frequency to three per week at least until the next operation. I went yesterday and was given a good stock of relevant medical supplies to see us through at home into next week. This seems reasonable, given that we coped from Friday to Monday without any cause for concern. Help and advice is never far away given the nursing team helpline anyway.

In the evening we walked over to the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama for a production of Benjamin Britten's opera 'Albert Herring' by students. A comedy, written in 1947 set in deepest East  Sussex it satires traditional rural village conventions and customs, and the emerging gap between generations of inhabitants with different expectations. In a way, it looks forward a decade to the rise of the idea of the teenager, and the revolution of the Swinging Sixties. 

It was brilliantly performed by its eight singers, and an interesting stage set design involving several large packing crates from which props for the four acts were extracted, or were unfolded to become props themselves.

At the start of the second half, I noticed a EU flag stuck to the side of one packing case, close to where a line of Union Flag bunting was draped. A curious juxtaposition I thought, given that setting was 25 years before the EU came into being. Then a rather smart but sinister lady fixer, one of the cast of singers, came on stage, spotted the EU flag and took it down conspicuously, causing a ripple of laughter in the audience. A little joke that's all maybe? But not quite. Instead of the final curtain, a large Union Flag was unfurled above the stage, bearing the legend 'Taking back control' one of the most hackneyed brexit slogans in the midst of present chaos. Then it made sense.

Mischievously anachronistic though the EU and Union flag incidents were, the storyline was about the efforts of the young to forge a path in life on their own terms, and the efforts of their elders and those who think they know better to regain control over them - just like brexit. So, it was a modern comment to accompany the tale told. So it became a  topical night out, in the light of the decisions being taken in Parliament this week.