After breakfast I drove to St German's to celebrate Mass with four others then returned to collect Clare and set off for Kenilworth at eleven thirty. The roads weren't too busy, and we arrived at two for a giant bowl of creamy vegetable soup, perfect for a winter's day. Then Kath drove us right into Birmingham city centre, to hunt for a car park within easy reach of the Town Hall, where this evening's Carnival Band was going to take place. For a while it was a game of 'hunt the car park' with so many diversions and closures, as road layouts are being revised yet again, aiming to force people out of cars on to public transport. Many central streets are already pedestrianised, and at this time of year given over to a German style Christmas Market four times the size of the one in Cardiff city centre.
Once Kath had found the right car park, we were only five minutes walk from the Town Hall, but a chilly downpour of rain began as we left car park cover and then continued a drizzle for nearly an hour. Kath and Clare vanished through the stage door, leaving me to fend for myself until the front of house doors opened two hours later. I sheltered under building overhangs for a while and then walked the length of the Market which stretched down New Street as far as St Martin's in the Bullring, everywhere brightly lit with festive decorations, and whilst St Martin's was externally lit up and decorated, no light shone from within the church itself, in stark contrast to the neighbouring shopping centre, just like St John's City Parish Church in Cardiff. A social anthropologist would be forgiven for thinking that the message being conveyed here is 'church gone out of business'.
People arriving for the concert without covid passes were being given a lateral flow test in the lobby. I did mine in any case before leaving this morning, and showed evidence of this plus my covid pass when presenting my duplicate ticket. Therein lies a story.
Clare had given me a paper ticket too big to fit into my wallet many moons ago, so it got pinned to the notice board along with all the NHS appointment letters, and thereafter forgotten by me. Paper tickets for things booked on line are a rarity these days, so much is now done digitally. So it was only after we arrived in Brum that I realised. Quick witted as ever, Clare rang Sarah our neighbour and asked her to use her duplicate key to retrieve the ticket, photograph it, and email me the picture. This also gave me the seat number. Furnished with this information, I was able to go to the box office and ask if they could accept the digital evidence of being a ticket holder. They did better than that, issuing me a duplicate.
After the rehearsal we went for a drink and a snack in a New Street coffee house before taking our seats. The concert hall was a third full, Kath reckoned. The Carnival Band Community Choir sang four carols in the middle of the second half and returned for an encore at the end. This year Maddy Prior sang with the band, and all performed superbly a wide range of British and European carols and songs with their array of folk instruments, including two kinds of bagpipe, shawms, clarinet, cittern, guitar, fiddle, drums and double bass played with a bow and producing a fat sound. Some songs had satirical contemporary verse updates about abolishing Christmas, then and now, and a Health and Safety vetted Nativity. Such great fun. We got back to Kenilworth at eleven and then had sandwiches and a drink of wine before bed, exhausted at half past midnight. Quite a demanding day, but worthwhile good festal fun anyway.
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