Filey yesterday

Lunch at the White Lodge Hotel and a sunny walk through the gardens, along the sea front, and around the town.

53 Years Married

....also Ruth's 51st birthday.

For the first time ever we have bought each other the same anniversary card.

First to chapel and then out to Filey for fresh air and food.

Sacred Hearts

Ruth brought me this to read when she visited recently. It is an interesting read following my recent stay with contemporary sisters at their Birmingham convent.

SACRED HEARTS by Sarah Dunant

1570 in the Italian city of Ferrara, and the convent of Santa Caterina is filled with noble women who are married to Christ because they cannot find husbands on the outside. Enter 16 year old Serafina, howling with rage and hormones and determined to escape. Her arrival disrupts the harmony and stability of the convent, as overseen by Madonna Chiara, an abbess as fluent in politics as she is in prayer. She assigns the novice into the care of Suora Zuana, the scholarly nun who runs the dispensary and treats all manner of sickness, from pestilence and melancholy to self-inflicted wounds. As an unlikely relationship builds between the two women, others figures stand watching and waiting; most notably theå novice mistress, Suora Umiliana, a crusader for God and ever stricter piety and the mysterious, decrepit Suora Magdalena, incarcerated in her cell with a history of ecstasy and visions.

Walled in

A masterfully created tale of convent life in 16th-century Italy has Donna Leon captivated (Donna Leon in Guardian)

Reading Sarah Dunant's latest novel, set in the Italian Renaissance, one is forced to wonder whether Orwell might have had cloistered life in mind when he created the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Sacred Hearts takes place inside the Benedictine cloister of Santa Caterina, in 16th-century Ferrara, among women who have internalised the law that all must be done "for the good of the convent". This is a world in which "the very purpose of convent life is to iron out the sense of the individual", and the abbess believes it is proper "to hate one's own will".

Thus the cards are stacked against the strong-willed new novice, Serafina, who finds herself, at 16, enclosed within the walls of the convent, where there are "no rutting, drunken husbands poking at tired or pious wives". Serafina, who leaves behind the man she loves, realises there will also be no husband, no passion, and no children. She brings as part of her dowry an extraordinary vocal talent, which will be put to use in divine worship and during the less frequent occasions when the convent fishes for gifts and donations by entertaining its richest patrons with vocal and theatrical spectacles.

Serafina is there against her will, and it is this will that must be stamped out until she is brought to acceptance of the fact that "He loves me". She is befriended by Suora Zuana, the intelligent and compassionate nun in charge of the infirmary, herself once an unwilling novice; and opposed by Suora Chiara, the wilful and clever abbess, an adroit strategist who is attempting to preserve the convent's faintly permissive autonomy in the midst of the reformist tempest launched by the Council of Trent.

Dunant convincingly presents Serafina's body and will as the field upon which this larger battle will be fought. Through the twists and turns of events, the reader is never allowed to forget the importance of this one girl's destiny, nor is the sense of suspense ever allowed to slacken. Will she escape back into a world where pleasure is not viewed as a sin?

Though a modern reader will see how easily something like the stigmata in the novel might be faked, it never occurs to Suora Zuana to think about just how creepy it is, nor to question the basis of her essentially misogynist world. Suora Zuana's description of fasting reads like a modern treatise on anorexia, yet she remains true to her times by seeing it as a manifestation, however excessive, of religious rigour. It is also made abundantly clear that this world, limiting and confining as it is, presents the women in it with the chance of freedom from the restraints of the wider society.

Dunant endows her characters with a humanity that captures the concern, not just the interest, of the reader. They want and suffer, laugh and cry, just as we do and mostly for the same reasons. Yet they remain women of their own time, endowed with their peculiar sympathies and prejudices. Sacred Hearts masterfully creates a world and that smaller place within it which attempts to offer sanctuary, rather than mere imprisonment, to the women inside its walls.

Sun, Sand, and Sea at Scarborough

Lovely sunny day today here in Scarborough. Pity daughter and husband didn't make it. They turned round and went back to Bradford after long traffic delays near York. Of course, number of half term trippers to the sea and sun probably also would be involved.

Crash causes delays near York

R

MOTORISTS endured rush hour chaos on the A64 on the outskirts of York today, after two vehicles collided.

The accident happened at about 8.20am outside the Tanglewood Restaurant, between Towthorpe Moor Lane and Hopgrove roundabout on the York Outer Ring Road. It involved a blue Ford Galaxy and a blue Renault Megane. One went into the back of the other. Neither woman driver was reported to be seriously injured.

The crash led to long queues building up on the York Outer Ring Road between Hopgrove and Grimston Bar roundabouts and the A64 heading into York from Malton

76 Trombones

It is my 76th birthday today:

Meredith Willson Lyrics (Music Man)

76 Trombones Lyrics

Seventy six trombones led the big parade
With a hundred and ten cornets close at hand.
They were followed by rows and rows of the finest virtuosos,
the cream of ev'ry famous band.

Seventy six trombones caught the morning sun,
With a hundred and ten cornets right behind.
There were more than a thousand reeds springing up like weeds,
there were horns of ev'ry shape and kind.

There were copper bottom tympani in horse platoons,
thundering, thundering, all along the way.
Double bell euphoniums and big bassoons,
each bassoon having his big fat say.
There were fifty mounted cannon in the battery,
Thundering, thundering, louder than before.
Clarinets of eve'ry size and trumpeters who'd improvise
a full octave higher than the score.

Seventy six trombones led the big parade,
when the order to march rang out loud and clear.
Starting off with a big bang bong on a Chinese gong,
by a big bang bonger at the rear.

Seventy six trombones hit the counter point,
while a hundred and ten cornets played the air.
Then I modestly took my place as the one and only bass,
and I oompahed up and down the square.

In Her Majesty's Footsteps

The Queen came to Scarborough last Thursday and opened the new Yorkshire Welcome Open Air Theatre. Today we went to take a look on a birthday eve visit.

Cynthia

Artificial Life Created - called Cynthia

Scientists in the US have succeeded in developing the first synthetic living cell.

The researchers constructed a bacterium's "genetic software" and transplanted it into a host cell.

The resulting microbe then looked and behaved like the species "dictated" by the synthetic DNA.

The advance, published in Science, has been hailed as a scientific landmark, but critics say there are dangers posed by synthetic organisms.

The researchers hope eventually to design bacterial cells that will produce medicines and fuels and even absorb greenhouse gases.

The team was led by Dr Craig Venter of the J Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) in Maryland and California.

Fathers can be mothers

THIS Sunday is Mothering Sunday, not Mother’s Day, says Bob Greig, the founder of a campaigning group, OnlyDads. Mr Greig, a former church worker who started the group two years ago to support single fathers, believes that in calling the day “Mother’s Day” something vital has been lost. “Mothering Sunday is always a difficult time of year, because, if you are a single dad, you have had a catastrophe,” he said. It was “very hard for dads, and for children who just have dads to care for them. But we do mothering, we do nurturing. “The Church has let Mothering Sunday slip. The concept of mother ing has been lost and has been replaced with the person of ‘Mum’. The focus has moved from nurturing to a named individual.” On his website, Mr Greig said that his two young daughters received mothering from “a range of other sources: grandmas, aunties, teachers, friends, and neighbours . . . as well as from Dad. We are convinced going back to ‘Mothering Sunday’ will allow society to reflect and appreciate the wider role of ‘mothering’ that can be missed if we just concentrate on ‘mothers’.”

Postscript to York

WHILE stonemasons such as Deb Hughes at York Minster have been carving new pieces of stone as part of the res tora tion, there has been a large number of interesting pieces of old stone to be dis­posed of. So an auction was held, with individual lots ranging from complex tracery panels, finials, and pin nacles to smaller stones with simpler masonry details. Each piece had with it a certificate of auth entifica tion.

They proved popular: people bought them as stand-alone garden features, or to en hance a pond or rockery, or even as a base for a table lamp. When the auction was held in the Minster School grounds, 184 lots were sold, raising more than £20,000 towards the restora tion fund.

It was so successful that the Minster hopes to hold a similar auction next year.

Birthday photos

Our Hotel, inside and out.

Hole in the Wall pub for supper first night and then to the theatre.

Birthday visit to Minster opposite hotel for Eucharist - Canon Pearson, ex S Wilfred Harrogate, celebrant.

Joined by family for museum visit and early bird dinner at Russels.

Cynthia is 75 today

Cynthia is 75 today. After Holy Communion at the Minster we are joined by family members at our hotel before a visit to the Castle Museum followed by early bird dinner.

YORK MINSTER

The Third Sunday of Lent

HOLY COMMUNION (Book of Common Prayer)

The Order of Service may be found on page 294 of the Book of Common Prayer. The collect and readings are those given for the Third Sunday of Lent, page 133.

The Collect

We beseech thee, Almighty God, look upon the hearty desires of thy humble servants, and stretch forth the right hand of thy Majesty, to be our defence against all our enemies; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Wednesday 10 March

07.30 Matins and Holy Communion (Zouche Chapel)

12.30 Holy Communion, BCP, (St John’s Chapel)

17.15 Evensong sung by the Minster Choir (Quire)

19.30 University of York Concert (Nave)

York Castle Museum

York Castle Museum is one of Britain's leading museums of everyday life. It shows how people used to live by displaying thousands of household objects and by recreating rooms, shops, streets - and even prison cells.

It is best known for its recreated Victorian street, Kirkgate, which combines real shop fittings and stock with modern sound and light effects, to evoke an atmosphere of Victorian Britain.

The street was named after the museum's founder, Dr John L. Kirk, a North Yorkshire country doctor who collected everyday objects and wanted to keep them safe for future generations.

The museum's room settings include a Victorian parlour, an 1850s Moorland cottage, Jacobean and Georgian dining rooms, a 1940s kitchen and a 1950s front room.

Our grooviest gallery, The Sixties, explores the music, fashion and everyday life of this exciting decade.

Elsewhere are displays of historic toys, fashion, armour, weapons, tools, printing presses, cooking utensils, farming equipment and much more.

The museum's past as two prison buildings is explored in York Castle Prison, where visitors come face to face with ex-prisoners including highwayman Dick Turpin, who was hanged in 1739 for horse stealing.

Conditions in the overcrowded prison were harsh and brutal and the real stories of the prisoners and staff are told in sometimes gruesome detail.

Turpin spent his last six months in the Debtors' Prison, which was built in 1701-5, and today houses half of the museum's displays. The other half of the museum was originally the Female Prison, built in 1780-83.

The museum, which opened in 1938, was named after the former York Castle, which stood on the site.

Russells Of Coppergate
26 Coppergate
York
YO1 9NR
01904 644330

Relax in our spacious ground floor restaurant and
enjoy morning coffee, lunch or dinner,
whilst watching the world go by in the Historic City of York.

York visit

Today we are off to York for two nights at Dean Court Hotel and will be going to York Theatre Royal this evening. See tomorrow's blog for reason:

Dean Court Hotel

An unsurpassed setting-in the very shadow of York Minster...

• A 4 star 37-roomed contemporary boutique-style hotel in York city centre
• All major attractions and shops within just a few minutes walk
• D.C.H - the Restaurant, with Minster views and a 2 AA Rosette award
• THE COURT Cafe-Bistro & Bar - a more relaxed setting

York Theatre Royal

08 - 09 March 2010

Defending the Caveman

Written by Rob Becker
Directed by Cathy Farr

Direct from London’s West End, Defending The Caveman- Winner of the Olivier award for Best Entertainment in 2000 - is set to storm the UK once again!

The longest running solo play in Broadway history is now a worldwide hit. Why do men and women misunderstand each other? The truth of course, can be traced back to the Caveman. This hilariously funny but horribly truthful show affectionately brings the basic differences between men and women brilliantly up to date.

Starring much-loved actor, comedian and TV personality Mark Little – aka Neighbours’ legendary Joe Mangel. “Absolutely brilliant! Should be seen by anyone who wants to understand the opposite sex” John Gray, author of Men are from Mars,
Women are from Venus

New Year in Bradford

Arrived Wednesday 30th December and departed Saturday 2nd January.

A Happy and Prosperous New Year to you all.

A Year of Change -politically it's possible, personally it's up to you.

Thank heaven for little girls

"Thank Heaven for Little Girls"

by Learner and Lowe for the film "Gigi"

Each time I see a little girl
of 5 or 6 or 7
I can't resist a joyous urge to smile and say,
"thank heaven for little girls
For little girls, get bigger, every day
thank heaven for little girls
they grow up in the most delightful way
those little eyes so helpless and the appealing
one day we will flash and send you crashing through the ceiling
thank heaven for little girls
thank heaven for them all
no matter where, no matter who
without them, what would little boys do
thank heaven, thank heaven, thank heaven for little girls

those little eyes, so helpless, and appealing
one day will flash and send you crashing through the ceiling
thank heaven for little girls
thank heaven for them all
no matter where, no matter who
without them, what would little boys do
thank heaven,
thank heaven,
thank heaven for little girls
thank heaven for little girls

Celebrating marriage and family

This weekend we thank God for 52 years of marriage and for our daughter's 5oth birthday by putting flowers in chapel and decorating our home. After all it has been a joint venture!

Year of birth and death

(I was born in 1934)

In 1934, three towering figures in British music died: Frederick Delius, Edward Elgar and Gustav Holst. This weekend the Proms mark the 75th anniversary with several concerts, of which BBC2 has chosen to air what looks like the pick of the bunch. It brings together three pieces that hum with a sense of place, starting with Elgar's Overture: Cockaigne, a portrait of Edwardian London via a string of musical snapshots, the themes of which come together in a typically stirring climax. By contrast, Delius's The Song of the High Hills uses a wordless chorus to evoke a summer night in the mountains of Norway. The second half of the concert is given over to Holst's The Planets, which, as one of the most beloved works of the last century, needs little introduction. Sir Charles Mackerras conducts the BBC Philharmonic for what should be a rousing night.

BBC Proms 2009: 1934

Saturday 25 July
8:00pm - 9:50pm
BBC2

Community Theatre

(The monks of Monk Bretton founded the church in my home village of Royston in 1234)

By Michael Hickling in Yorkshire Post Magazine

A former Barnsley miner will reveal that Britain's got talent with his biblical epic performed by the community. Watch a preview in the stunning setting of Monk Bretton Priory.

A call comes in on John Kelly's mobile phone. It's Judas Iscariot.

"Yes Judas?" The conversation continues for a minute of two. "Okay, right Judas, thanks Judas, bye."

It's not clear if all the members of John Kelly's cast stay in character when they get in touch with him. Maybe God (to be played as a disembodied voice by Patrick Stewart) will ring in a moment? Probably not. Doesn't He usually communicate by other means, through a clap of thunder or something?

We are sitting in the bar of John Kelly's tiny theatre in Barnsley. The one-time miner created it by taking out a second mortgage on his house, and all that his investment bought at the time was a wreck of a building. With ingenuity it was transformed into a little gem called the Lamproom which survived for a decade without a penny of public funding.

It's now in it's 10th anniversary year and John Kelly is moving from this small, but perfectly-formed auditorium onto a broader stage. He's directing his own outdoor community version of a medieval Mystery Plays cycle in an arena at the ruins of the 13th century Monk Bretton Priory.

The total number in the cast and crew is nearly 200 – bigger than a capacity Lamproom audience of 187– and will play to 500 people a night for 12 nights.

There are no mysteries in the Mystery Plays. The name comes from the way each craft, or "mystery", in a town undertook to adapt and perform a Bible story to be part of a linked narrative from Creation to Last Judgement.

It was an enterprise which did not justify the ways of God to Man so much as bring them vividly to life by capturing the imagination of the unlettered.

Ordinary people were embedded in Catholic ritual, so instinctively responded to this extension of religion as theatre. These home-spun takes on familiar stories probably had an impact like today's Hollywood blockbusters. Audiences throughout the country turned out anticipating shock and awe and that's what they they seem to have got, with a bit of low humour thrown in.

We're not entirely sure, since most of their scripts were lost after the plays were banned. Four survive, mainly intact, including the York cycle of plays and the Wakefield cycle which were unearthed last century in Lancashire. A modern taste for them was re-discovered when York revived their cycle in 1951 as part of the Festival of Britain.

John has spent years studying them to create his English Mystery Plays which, he says, is 80 per cent new writing. "They can be very long and exceedingly tedious. I've condensed the greatest moments to about two hours, 15 minutes." He got the idea for a narrator he calls Bogoak from the Coventry Cycle and found Toby Stephen, a comedian and presenter on Radio Sheffield, to play the part.

John has also brought in Morris dancing, longsword dancing, medieval music and jesters for what he thinks is the only outdoor play of this sort taking place this summer in western Europe.

He is not one for received opinion where Bible stories are concerned. "I've got great sympathy for Judas from a theatrical point of view. Why does the poor chap have to spend his eternal life in the fires of Hell just because he's the one who had to move the storyline along?"

His show has a couple of interesting star names attached to it, apart from Patrick Stewart. Notes in the programme about the history of Mystery Plays are contributed by dangerous Becky Granger, the chavvy barmaid of the Rovers Return in Coronation Street. Her theme is that there's a theatrical void between Sophocles and Shakespeare and the Mystery Plays fill it.

In real life, Becky is John's elder daughter, Katherine Kelly, recently crowned best actress in the British National soap Awards.

The other name to leap out is Grace Kelly. This is not another ghostly-voice arrangement but a corporeal presence in the shape of John's younger daughter, who plays Eve. Grace Kelly, 19, is off to
Los Angeles to study acting when the show ends.

Her father's fascination with the medieval goes back 30 years. A school party from Worsborough High School went to York for the Mystery Plays which in those days were mounted every three years in the Museum Gardens against the backdrop of the ruins of St Mary's Abbey.

It impressed one of the school's teachers so much she devised her own. The vicar of St Mary's church in Worsborough moved some of the gravestones to make a little acting area and a local outdoor dramatic tradition was born. Later, John, then aged 33, was invited to play Jesus and he went on to direct or produce at Worsborough, bringing in semi- professional actors to bolster the amateur cast.

Three years ago, Barnsley Council asked John if he would attempt something grander in this vein with his own acting set-up, the Barnsley Secret Theatre Company. They promised a proper budget. He said no. "They sat me down and I said no again. In fact I said it three times. They didn't understand the vastness of it.

"Then we got to go and take a look at Monk Bretton Priory. It's funny, I used to live in Grimethorpe and passed it on the way to work and never really noticed it. But after that look around I was absolutely stunned. That did me. It had production values written all over it. That's the genesis."

As to his own beginnings, they are pretty unusual for the founder of a theatre and an acting dynasty. John left his Catholic comprehensive in Featherstone at the age of 15 with no qualifications. He put that right when he signed up to be a miner at Monkton Colliery and worked so hard he was crowned Yorkshire apprentice of the year for 1966. That gave him a leg-up to train as an electrician, but a long-term life underground was not to be.

Despatched on his motorbike to deliver a parcel for a fellow miner in a mental hospital, his eyes were opened to the fact that men could do this work. Within a day he had switched jobs and made a lifetime career out of psychiatric nursing instead.

The Lamproom came about after he headed a trust aiming to bring back theatre to Barnsley's Edwardian Theatre Royal. The way was blocked and John spotted in the pages of the local paper another building for sale. It's on a prominent position overlooking Barnsley and began life in 1792 as a chapel or meeting house. By the 1990s it required a giant step of the imagination to see any potential there.

A hammer and chisel were required to get inside and snow lay in a 30-foot drift against a wall. Windows were smashed and the only recent visitors had been flocks of pigeons and druggies whose detritus was scattered around. All the wiring had been stripped.

The make-do-and mend approach to turn things round blended cheek with adaptability.

Today, the auditorium's stepped flooring was once boarding belonging to a supermarket. "It was around the new Sainsbury's in Wakefield. I asked if I could have it when they were finished with it." The stage is constructed from pallets for which the Redfearn National Glass Company had no further use. A joiner put in the bar for nothing.

Trust volunteers brought their own special skills and the trust purchased the theatre from John for the same price he paid. He is now a trustee and has just been made president. As a figurehead, he will have more time to expand his writing horizons.

This autumn the Lamproom is putting on a trilogy of plays he wrote some time ago set in the Sixties. He won't be there to see them. In September he is off to Los Angeles for six months to find out more about how they write for television.

"I've got some writing pals over there who work for some of the big network comedy shows. The writers are in teams and it's amazing seeing at first hand how the shows come together. I'll be doing some writing on my own there. But I'm 58, maybe a bit too old to make it in television."

For the amateurs who come to have a go in the Mystery Plays, it's often a never-to-be-forgotten experience.

"A chap of six foot three and 18 stone came towards me in Barnsley market," says John. "He was all tattoos and bulging muscles. I went to step aside but he said, 'Remember me? I were a wave in 1983. I'd never done anything like that in me life. I never did again. Me mam's still got the photos on the mantlepiece'."

John's job, once a production is underway, is to think on his feet. "One night I counted 10 disciples. I asked the others about the missing two and they said, 'they've gone to a Queen concert'. I thought the audience were going to notice this when we got to the Last Supper and in the interval found two people in the audience to make up the dozen."

Another year, when John had a main part, his car broke down on the motorway as he drove to a performance.

He jumped out and ran across fields to the nearest house, calling out to a man in the garden: "Good evening, I'm Noah!" The man he was hailing turned out to be Arthur Scargill, who obliged by giving Noah a lift so he was just in time to catch the Ark.

English Mystery Plays, June 29 to July 11, Monk Bretton Priory, tickets 01226 321741