Easter in London

Like last year, this year I found myself again celebrating Easter in London - although this time without Mum unfortunately.

Because the Easter weekend this year fell very early (and apparently won't be this early again for another 150 years or so), it meant that the weekend was actually separate from the school holidays. That therefore meant that not so many people from church would be away for the weekend, so the decision was made to put all the music groups on. As I conduct the kid's band, and they were to perform on the Sunday, I therefore was unable to go away for the weekend.

So I decided, alongside with a few others from the church (Ira, Jean and Tom) to go attend the Good Friday service at St Paul's Cathedral. We got the train together from Sutton early on Friday morning because I was afraid there would be quite a queue for the service, but unlike last year at Westminster Abbey, there was not. The service itself though was very good, the music lovely (although I thought the boys lacked a bit of oomph, to be fair). They sang Allegri's Miserere, one of my favourites, and it was just beautiful. In that environment, the acoustic has an 11 second delay if you are underneath the Dome, as we were, so the sounds just meshed together like a woven tapestry and enveloped us. Just gorgeous.

Afterwards we went for a bit of lunch and a nice long chat, before we headed off on our separate ways. I would have to say, you wouldn't have known it was Good Friday though - all the shops open, the streets, shops, cafes and restaurants all packed to the brim full of people - Oxford St as busy as it ever is. I couldn't believe it...how times have changed... I had even managed to book myself a training session at the Apple Store as part of my personal "One to One" service that I took out when I bought my Mac.

But before this, on the way to my training, I had made arrangements to meet up with Agnieszka for a coffee at Piccadilly Circus - and while I was waiting there for her I encountered Regent Hall Salvation Army Band and Songsters, giving their annual open air service for Easter outside Lillywhites. That's when I realised that in some circles, times haven't changed at all... At North Brisbane SA, or even Sutton SA, the concept of an open air service at any time of the year is now completely absurd, let alone an open air where everyone is out in full uniform singing "Onward Christian Soldiers" or some such. I don't really know how I feel about this, as on the one hand I do think its time for the Salvation Army to move forward, but then part of me gets a bit nostalgic for those 'good old days' - especially when I think back to dawn services (as much as we moaned about them) on Easter Sunday, or Anzac Day marches and the like. In a way it's really quite sad to lose all of that, but as society changes, unless the Salvation Army reinvents itself and becomes relevant to today, there may not be a Salvation Army in the future...

It was really quite strange to watch the old open air 'formula' running - some of us remember how it was - you had the band over on one side, caps on (but off for the prayer), standing in proper band formation, the a couple of lady songsters off to the left in their own little group, the dodgy PA that cut out every other word whilst the CO and the Cadet gave a totally staged and totally predictable 'testimony interview' (with the band yawning or talking to each other behind them). I had such mixed emotions about it all, on the one hand delight to see an open air again, and on the other hand a real sense of complete and utter irrelevance to society. About the most amusing thing about the whole thing was when halfway through some band rendition of "O Sacred Head Once Wounded" (or something similar) the heavens absolutely opened up, hail came pinging down hard on all of us, and within 30 seconds the band had wrapped it all up on the 2nd verse, gotten into formation, double tapped on the bass drum and promptly about-faced out of there! And of course, the minute they did, the rain and hail stopped - this is England after all...

(the video was taken on my mobile phone so the quality is pretty rubbish, sorry).

The rest of the weekend was fairly uneventful, few errands to run on Saturday and then on Sunday my little kids played in the morning meeting. Because they only know a few notes, we did a simple little arrangement of 'Were you there', with the Senior Band taking over the last verse and helping us out. But that had it's comedy moments too - not at the actual performance, but 3 days before...

You see, I had actually done the arrangement of the piece on my lovely Mac using Sibelius, and had spent some time at school on Thursday afternoon doing a few refinements in preparation for the rehearsal that evening. I don't have a printer at home so all the printing was done at school before I raced down to the hall for the rehearsal. Rehearsal came, went, and was good - and then I got chatting afterwards and promptly forgot to pack up all the music. It wasn't until 11pm that night when I went to play through the arrangement on Sibelius again (just before I went to bed) that I realised I had accidentally deleted it (how?! I don't know!), and then realised that all the printed music was still sitting on the chairs in the hall - and the chances of it being there still on Sunday were extremely slim. What to do? So, I raced down to the Hall in my pajamas (the hall is only a few minutes away from where I'm living), got into the main building with my key - but the main hall was locked and I couldn't get in! I tried every door, but to no avail. As I was pondering my plight (now 11.30 or so pm), standing in the main foyer, a car pulled up, headlights flash in - and I am caught like a kangaroo in the beam! Fortunately it was the minister's daughter, taking advantage of the free parking at the church. Alas, she had no key to the main hall, but was able to make arrangements with her dad for me to get the music the next day... what a relief! Just what she made of me standing there in my blundies and PJ's though, I'll never know... nor do I want to...