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Is there not an appointed time to man upon earth?
Last Saturday saw me leaping out of bed (in Darlington) at a sufficiently early hour that I'd fed the cat, done random household jobs, had a shower, talked to the neighbours (and filched some home grown cherry tomatoes from them) and driven round to collect the uncle by about half nine. Him and his many instruments (forgive me, I knowingly transported a tenor banjo) having been safely stowed into the car we trundled off, stopping for a cup of coffee atop Birk Brow and rolling tidily into Whitby well before lunch.
The bracken eradication program which has been slowly fighting back on the North Yorkshire Moors for the last few years is really showing benefits now - heather is on the up again, and the glowing purple expanses I remember from childhood trips to Whitby is back. And, er, that was pretty much the only difference from our journey last year. Oh, and twelve months ago I accidentally left the cherry tomatoes in the fridge, too.
For I am, as I've reported before, very dull indeed when it comes to summer holidays. But I am happy in my dullness. Picture, if you will, arriving in a small town which is holding a big folk festival. Parking spaces are at a premium, narrow roads jam up as people unload trucksworths of luggage, instruments and dance kit, and newcomers drive around confusedly trying to find their B&B in a place where opposites sides of streets have different names. I double park my vehicle outisde my digs, and trot in.
You know the drill on arriving at a B&B: you find The Boss, spell your name three times, get them to agree you've booked a room, fill in a registration form, get shown to your room, be told endless details about when breakfast is served. The faffing takes ages.
The following exchange occurs as the B&B's proprietor appears:
Liz (she's called Liz, too): Hello, how are you ?
Me: Fine, thanks, but I'm double parked.
Liz. Ah, OK, where's the other one ?
Me: She'll be arriving this evening.
Liz: Fine, here's your keys. See you later.
The entire process takes around 15 seconds, I import my baggage into our usual room, and remove the car to a spot less offensive to traffic wardens. Of which I assume Whitby has at least one, although I've never seen such a person. Less than three hours after leaving the house I've arrived, unpacked, done some minor shopping and am ensconced in my parents' holiday flat eating cheese sandwiches.
Airline delays ? Stressful moments in strange towns where you don't speak the language ? Not for this dull holidaymaker.
Admittedly, holidaymakers don't usually find other guests knocking on the door and asking if they can have a hand carrying their luggage up the stairs. Or popping in for a cup of tea. Or greeting each other with enormous bearhugs and swapping news on the landings. In my B&B things are more restrained, but in my parents' flats its people who've known each other for upwards of twenty years (and a distressing number of them remember me turning up to the festival in a pram).
If you count 1976, where the festival closed on the Friday night, my parents travelled home, and I was born on the Tuesday, this is my thirtieth attendance at the Folk Week. I have been legally present at twenty-nine, and actively participated in well over twenty.
And I still managed to find new stuff to do. After all, I've never played in a public performance of a funeral anthem before. (Note "played" - I have sung in a performance of Mozart's Requiem, though not at Whitby).
<skippable historial interlude>During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, churches often didn't have the luxury of pipe organs. Instead, they had the church band. Anyone who's read any Thomas Hardy novels has probably met the concept of the church band - usually irascible and often inebriated - sawing and hacking their way through services. (And incidentally, anyone who hasn't read Hardy's Under the Greenwood Tree might want to take a look - it's entirely about the band, and is delightfully bucolic, pleasant and cheerful. It's almost enough to make you forgive him for Tess.)
The church band (and, optionally, choir) was usually stationed in a choir gallery above the church's West door - the West Gallery from which the style of music takes the name by which it is known today.
West Gallery hymns and anthems are usually pleasingly robust and solid. The bands and choirs were often undisciplined (or indeed unskilled), which led to the practice of every person singing whichever part they damn well felt like. Unlike today's composers, who will happily write the alto line last and fill it entirely with "G"s for bars on end, the West Gallery composers didn't have that option. The disgruntled altos would have just ignored it, and cheerfully sung the more interesting tenor line instead. The tenor line is, incidentally, almost always the tune in these anthems. The parts themselves are usually reasonably easy to sing, being light on awkward intervals and heavy on simple runs.</skippable historial interlude>
I bit the bullet, decided it was time my concertina was allowed out in public, and headed off to the daily West Gallery workshops. Packed in serried rows in the Yacht Club on the harbour, people arranged themselves approximately into parts, singers at the back, musicians at the front. We played through a few pieces in a fairly haphazard manner then settled down to the serious business of the week - a funeral anthem which, according to the guy running the show "isn't particularly slow but it is thoroughly miserable". Well, yes, the book of Job has never been a barrel of laughs.
The anthem is by a guy called William Knapp, and, apparently, was pretty likely what you'd have been buried to had you died between about 1750 and 1840. Maybe a chorus of My flesh is clothed with worms and clods of dust, my skin is broken and become loathsome was considered cheering at the graveside in those days.
I must admit, I was rather taken with it. And with many of the other pieces we looked at - the solid harmonies and chunky sounds produced by a band of concertinas, fiddles, a recorder or two and a cello form a tapestry of sound that is pleasingly real and believable. These, we were told, weren't really carols to sing in churches. They were carols to sing loudly when you were leavng the pub at one in the morning and fancied waking up the vicar on the way home. Anyone who's ever sung While Shepherds Watched... to the Ilkley Moor Baht 'At tune instead of the usual dreary beast will know what I mean.
Apart from that I danced, caught up with friends, took photos of the sea, danced rapper in a few pubs, ate cake and drank beer.
Still not bored with Whitby.
The bracken eradication program which has been slowly fighting back on the North Yorkshire Moors for the last few years is really showing benefits now - heather is on the up again, and the glowing purple expanses I remember from childhood trips to Whitby is back. And, er, that was pretty much the only difference from our journey last year. Oh, and twelve months ago I accidentally left the cherry tomatoes in the fridge, too.
For I am, as I've reported before, very dull indeed when it comes to summer holidays. But I am happy in my dullness. Picture, if you will, arriving in a small town which is holding a big folk festival. Parking spaces are at a premium, narrow roads jam up as people unload trucksworths of luggage, instruments and dance kit, and newcomers drive around confusedly trying to find their B&B in a place where opposites sides of streets have different names. I double park my vehicle outisde my digs, and trot in.
You know the drill on arriving at a B&B: you find The Boss, spell your name three times, get them to agree you've booked a room, fill in a registration form, get shown to your room, be told endless details about when breakfast is served. The faffing takes ages.
The following exchange occurs as the B&B's proprietor appears:
Liz (she's called Liz, too): Hello, how are you ?
Me: Fine, thanks, but I'm double parked.
Liz. Ah, OK, where's the other one ?
Me: She'll be arriving this evening.
Liz: Fine, here's your keys. See you later.
The entire process takes around 15 seconds, I import my baggage into our usual room, and remove the car to a spot less offensive to traffic wardens. Of which I assume Whitby has at least one, although I've never seen such a person. Less than three hours after leaving the house I've arrived, unpacked, done some minor shopping and am ensconced in my parents' holiday flat eating cheese sandwiches.
Airline delays ? Stressful moments in strange towns where you don't speak the language ? Not for this dull holidaymaker.
Admittedly, holidaymakers don't usually find other guests knocking on the door and asking if they can have a hand carrying their luggage up the stairs. Or popping in for a cup of tea. Or greeting each other with enormous bearhugs and swapping news on the landings. In my B&B things are more restrained, but in my parents' flats its people who've known each other for upwards of twenty years (and a distressing number of them remember me turning up to the festival in a pram).
If you count 1976, where the festival closed on the Friday night, my parents travelled home, and I was born on the Tuesday, this is my thirtieth attendance at the Folk Week. I have been legally present at twenty-nine, and actively participated in well over twenty.
And I still managed to find new stuff to do. After all, I've never played in a public performance of a funeral anthem before. (Note "played" - I have sung in a performance of Mozart's Requiem, though not at Whitby).
<skippable historial interlude>During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, churches often didn't have the luxury of pipe organs. Instead, they had the church band. Anyone who's read any Thomas Hardy novels has probably met the concept of the church band - usually irascible and often inebriated - sawing and hacking their way through services. (And incidentally, anyone who hasn't read Hardy's Under the Greenwood Tree might want to take a look - it's entirely about the band, and is delightfully bucolic, pleasant and cheerful. It's almost enough to make you forgive him for Tess.)
The church band (and, optionally, choir) was usually stationed in a choir gallery above the church's West door - the West Gallery from which the style of music takes the name by which it is known today.
West Gallery hymns and anthems are usually pleasingly robust and solid. The bands and choirs were often undisciplined (or indeed unskilled), which led to the practice of every person singing whichever part they damn well felt like. Unlike today's composers, who will happily write the alto line last and fill it entirely with "G"s for bars on end, the West Gallery composers didn't have that option. The disgruntled altos would have just ignored it, and cheerfully sung the more interesting tenor line instead. The tenor line is, incidentally, almost always the tune in these anthems. The parts themselves are usually reasonably easy to sing, being light on awkward intervals and heavy on simple runs.</skippable historial interlude>
I bit the bullet, decided it was time my concertina was allowed out in public, and headed off to the daily West Gallery workshops. Packed in serried rows in the Yacht Club on the harbour, people arranged themselves approximately into parts, singers at the back, musicians at the front. We played through a few pieces in a fairly haphazard manner then settled down to the serious business of the week - a funeral anthem which, according to the guy running the show "isn't particularly slow but it is thoroughly miserable". Well, yes, the book of Job has never been a barrel of laughs.
The anthem is by a guy called William Knapp, and, apparently, was pretty likely what you'd have been buried to had you died between about 1750 and 1840. Maybe a chorus of My flesh is clothed with worms and clods of dust, my skin is broken and become loathsome was considered cheering at the graveside in those days.
I must admit, I was rather taken with it. And with many of the other pieces we looked at - the solid harmonies and chunky sounds produced by a band of concertinas, fiddles, a recorder or two and a cello form a tapestry of sound that is pleasingly real and believable. These, we were told, weren't really carols to sing in churches. They were carols to sing loudly when you were leavng the pub at one in the morning and fancied waking up the vicar on the way home. Anyone who's ever sung While Shepherds Watched... to the Ilkley Moor Baht 'At tune instead of the usual dreary beast will know what I mean.
Apart from that I danced, caught up with friends, took photos of the sea, danced rapper in a few pubs, ate cake and drank beer.
Still not bored with Whitby.
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I like Whitby.
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