News reaches us from Walsall of snowfall earlier this week. While we have learned from hard experience never to be surprised by anything that comes out of Walsall, here nonetheless is proof that there was at least one clear, calm evening in these parts this benighted spring. Still cold enough to freeze the sweetbreads off a fibreglass pig, though.
Another press release, and once again we're very happy to post it, partly because DECO - with their national radio airplay and regular 500+ audiences – currently have a good claim to be Lichfield's most successful home-grown band; and partly because we can confirm that their programme for next Saturday’s gig at the Cathedral is every bit as delightful as they say it is. All but one of the usual reasons why you should attend still apply. And as for the individual who commented, last time we recommended a DECO concert, that "I didn't realise they were so sexy" - well, now you have absolutely no excuse. In any sense.
Darwin Ensemble’s Spring Collection
Lichfield’s very own Darwin Ensemble Chamber Orchestra returns to the Cathedral on Saturday 12 May, with a tuneful programme to put a spring in the step of the city’s music lovers.
“There’s always a buzz at any concert by the Darwin Ensemble Chamber Orchestra…”
(Tamworth Herald)
DECO will begin the evening with an elegant celebratory flourish in the shape of the Third Suite of Handel’s Water Music. Written for a concert on the Thames and first performed on a barge in the river, it’s the perfect subtle nod in the direction of this Diamond Jubliee year and its floating pageant in June.
Whilst legend has it that the flute was far from Mozart’s favourite instrument, his Flute Concerto No. 1 is full of all the charm and grace associated with both the composer and the instrument. In the hands of DECO’s guest artist Lisa Nelson, renowned internationally as a soloist, chamber musician and teacher, it’s sure to sparkle at the heart of this concert.
Conductor Philip Scriven will then treat the audience to Schubert’s Fifth Symphony – said to have been the young composer’s own tribute to Mozart. It’s the perfect opportunity for DECO’s players to bring out all its energy, beauty and inherent optimism, in the inspiring surroundings of Lichfield Cathedral.
“DECO delivered thrill after spine-tingling thrill.” (Tamworth Herald)
After the rave reviews and enthusiastic audience responses DECO has attracted at every performance, this is guaranteed to be another unforgettable evening’s music-making.
The Spring Collection, Saturday 12 May at 7.30pm in Lichfield Cathedral
To book tickets: visit Lichfield Cathedral Bookshop, 9 The Close, Lichfield WS13 7LD in person, call 01543 306150 or email bookshop@lichfield-cathedral.org.
Prices: £15 adults; £12 concessions (OAPs & students); £5 children (reserved numbered seats in the nave) / £12 adults; £10 concessions; £4 children (unreserved seats in the side aisles)
...but instead, while researching something quite unrelated, we stumbled on this rather nice guide to our 'hood by a gentleman of the cloth and - it would appear - former Lichfield Mercury staffer. Some of you may even know him (we don't, but he seems a good sort).
He says it all better than we ever could. Not sure how we missed it so far, but it's a lovely read and just the thing for a bank holiday weekend. And of course, the brilliant thing about the brave new world of online citizen journalism - like what we is pioneer's of - is that it's possible to discharge all your writing and reporting responsibilities with a single hyperlink, like so. Meanwhile, dear Reverend Cornerford, if you're in the George and Dragon in the near future, we owe you a pint. Ask Ross to point you in our direction.
Exciting times - an email from the Festival arrives. "I would be most grateful if you were able to include this in your publication or media in the next seven days" runs the message. Well, we like the Festival and we're always happy to oblige. Savour the flava, fellow-Beaconeers! Did they say Ute Lemper? We're pretty sure they said Ute Lemper. Read on...
Spectacular Festival Finale in store
No Fit State’s Barricade. Coming to the Lichfield Festival in July
This year’s Lichfield Festival is going to close in a new and extraordinary way with a performance of Barricade, an amazing mix of aerial and acrobatic acts, pyrotechnics, comedy chases and breathtaking fireshow finale from the innovative contemporary circus company No Fit State. The festival will open with Anthem, an Olympic-themed concert featuring Lichfield schoolchildren and the Lichfield Festival’s community choir.
In between there is a concert of English classical favourites performed by Sir Mark Elder and the Halle, a family orchestral concert featuring the Orchestra of the Music Makers from Singapore with an illustrator drawing live during the performance.
Other highlights among the 100 plus events over 12 days include concerts by folk-rock band Bellowhead and German chanteuse Ute Lemper in Lichfield Cathedral, a Big Read appearance by Radio 5 Live film critic Mark Kermode, a Little Read appearance by former Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen, and comedy gigs by Phill Jupitus and Miles Jupp.
This year’s Lichfield Lecture is to be given by Sir Jonathan Miller, the brilliant humorist, doctor, and opera director, and there is an extensive series of daytime author talks at the George Hotel, including John Julius Norwich talking about the history of England, A C Grayling on a secular bible and Dan Cruikshank on country houses.
Comic theatre comes in the form of the Reduced Shakespeare Company, who take on this year’s Olympic theme with The Complete World Of Sports (Abridged), and LipService return with a Sherlock Holmes spoof called Move Over Moriarty.
The 2012 Lichfield Festival runs from Wednesday 4 to Sunday 15 July and packs over 100 events in to those 12 days. Booking opens on Tuesday 8 May and Festival Guides are now available. Information: 01543 306270 Festival Box office: 01543 412121 www.lichfieldfestival.org
If, over these last few weeks, we’d received a penny for every time some non-Lichfeldian had asked us “so what exactly IS Lichfield’s connection to the Titanic?”, we’d have enough to put down a deposit on a packet of mini-Cheddars. No reader of this blog will need any further explanation of Lichfield’s role in everyone’s favourite maritime tragedy: after all, how many other landlocked cathedral cities have a miniature replica of the Atlantic Ocean in the town centre?
Anna Seward’s celebrated 18th century campaign to have Minster Pool remodelled in the exact form of the North Atlantic pays dividends to this day. (According to Beresford’s History of the Diocese of Lichfield, the sluice behind Chapter’s Tea Shop represents Greenland. The duck nesting-platform that originally represented the Faroes was removed by civic engineers in the mid-19th century). And as night fell on the centenary of the Titanic’s sinking, it looked appropriately bleak and chilly. There was even some wreckage floating on the surface; the resident ducks were investigating, like feathery, sentient versions of the Carpathia.
No, we on Beacon Street are firmly convinced of Lichfield's place at the very heart of the Titanic story. Southampton, Liverpool, Belfast, Hanley and other such pretenders can just get behind us and join the queue. So on Saturday 14th April we hurried to join the crowds gathering around Captain Smith’s statue in Museum Gardens.
The Rugeley Sea Cadets looked very much the part, as did the emergency flare, fired into the darkening sky soon after 8.30pm.
This was a little earlier than the Titanic’s regrettable mishap; but of course, Lichfield City Council organises things rather more carefully than White Star Line. “Hope you liked the firework display” commented a gilet-clad cove with a microphone. A minute’s silence followed, before a solitary violinist struck up with Nearer My God to Thee – best known as the theme music to the film The Poseidon Adventure.
Enter the Rugeley Sea Cadets, impeccably turned out and looking very much the part. The idea, we understood, was that they’d solemnly place 1500 candles around the base of Captain Smith’s statue. Somewhere in the planning stage, the candles had been – perfectly sensibly – changed to battery operated LED tealights. Actual candles wouldn’t have stood much chance in the damp, icy blasts that were now sweeping across the park from the arctic wastes of Leomansley. “I’m freezing to death” commented one lady in the crowd. Kathleen Scott – the sculptor of the statue, and widow of Scott of the Antarctic – would surely have sympathised.
The cadets marched smartly back and forth, collecting and placing the tealights, manfully embodying the Captain’s final words: “Be British”. From the silence, a voice was heard: “Ooh, look, kids, it’s your uncle Colin”. Uncle Colin gamely lifted a tealight to his face, illuminating his features from below to sinister effect. And the one-man-band played on: by now, segueing deftly into the very song played by the band on the Titanic in those final, terrifying moments: My Heart Will Go On. A mood of solemn reverence descended, as the assembled company remembered Leonardo de Caprio’s ultimate sacrifice.
By now it was really quite dark, and it was becoming apparent that whereas one LED tealight alone gives a passable imitation of a flickering candle; 300 of them, in one place, actually start blinking in unison. In the twilight, Captain Smith appeared to be bathed in the flashing orange glare of a motorway hazard warning sign. If only they’d had motorway hazard warning signs on the Titanic that fatal night. It could all have been so different.
It was also increasingly clear that – 40 minutes in, and with barely a quarter of the pedestal be-tealighted – we were in for the long haul. The candle-placing was a poetic gesture, the cadets were unflinching in their duty, and the violinist played on heroically as temperatures plummeted. We can only hope that he was wearing fingerless gloves. But it was hard to avoid the faint (and doubtless deeply unfair) suspicion that no-one had actually sat down and worked out how long, exactly, the ceremonial placing of 1500 LED tealights would take.
It seemed we weren’t alone. All around, the darkness was filled with people crying out in despair and, weakened by cold, finally slipping away into the freezing depths of the Lichfield night. At around 9.40pm, and with (at a rough count) 600 candles still to go, we too abandoned the unequal struggle and retreated to the George and Dragon for a stiff whisky. On ice.
Membership has its privileges.
Anyhow, here's a more cheerful sight: these spring visitors to Beacon Street were spotted earlier today heading down Anson Avenue, across Beacon Street, and heading down Beaconfields towards the Park; possibly with a view to doing whatever it is that the young and lovestruck get up to of a spring evening in the Beacon Park Playground Rocket.
In the spring time, the only pretty ring time
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding
Sweet lovers love the spring
as the Poet has it. And indeed, when lust-crazed waterfowl start waddling into central Lichfield, it's always a sign that the season is on the turn. In recent days the web-footed sex-pests have been spotted as far afield as the Cathedral Close, the bus station, and on one occasion, attempting to force an entrance to the Antiques Centre. Yet, gifted as they are with the power of flight, who can blame them for choosing to pursue their courtship on the picturesque streets of Staffordshire's Premier Heritage City? It was good enough for Anna Seward.
Naturally, we wish them all the best. That said, Delia has some excellent suggestions on what we might do with these cheeky little fellas in the event of them suffering - heaven forbid - a minor traffic accident.
We've been asked several times over recent days for particulars of the shocking (though mercifully not, apparently, fatal) car accident that occurred in the early hours of Friday morning at the corner of Gaia Lane and Beacon Street. We're rather ashamed to say that we can't furnish any. Despite living less than 25 yards from the location of the crash and despite the emergency services involved including (by some accounts) some 20+ police, firemen and ambulance crew, the simple fact is that we slept through the entire thing. Indeed, the first we knew of it was when we saw the site of the accident, the following evening.
What with the recent drama in the Cathedral Close, it comes as a genuine relief to us to learn that local icon Trevor Pig is alive and well - we'd truly feared that, as the smoke cleared, it'd be bacon sandwiches all round. But no, happily he's back - and fronting the Lichfield Festival's latest promotional campaign. The aim, apparently, is to persuade Lichfield residents to get into the Festival spirit by applying the characteristic Festival stripes to as many surfaces as possible. Ideas suggested include:
- Designing a window display
- Knitting a woolly leg warmer big enough to cover a tree trunk, lamppost or rubbish bin
- Baking a striped cake or creating a multi-coloured sandwich
- Covering a car in stripes or planting a rainbow of flowers in a garden
Full story here. We support Trevor and the Festival in all their enterprises and will in due course be looking for a way to apply the Festival's understated colour scheme to our own corner of Staffordshire's Premier Heritage City. "A woolly leg warmer big enough to cover a tree trunk" should be just the job for the corner of Beaconfields.
A quick word of caution, though, to any Beacon Street residents thinking of painting their properties in tasteful stripes of orange, violet, emerald, navy blue and puce. A previous occupant of our own Grade 2 listed residence took it upon himself to express his undying love for Coventry City soccer club by painting all the exterior woodwork in a vibrant shade of turquoise. Let's just say that on a listed building in a conservation area, that didn't play too well with the planning authorities. Words were had. Orders were served. Asses were - in the parlance of our transatlantic cousins - kicked. A hasty coat of Dulux Outdoor White was quickly and sloppily applied. However, after squinting for some time at the Festval logo, it becomes clear that in amidst the lemon yellows and lime greens there are quite a few tasteful stripes of the Hanoverian blue, Brunswick green and Anhalt-Zerbst burgundy variety - perfectly suitable for Beacon Street residents who want to rise to the Festival's challenge. So go wild, folks! Our neighbours at Beacon Mews appear to have made a start alreaady. Just - as befits what is officially now the nicest City in the UK - let's keep it all in the best possible taste.
A spray of crocuses in the garden and the appearance of the first Sunday morning lager cans of the year in the gutter outside our house tell us that Spring is on her way, and nature on Beacon Street is awakening from its long winter slumber. But of course, if we hadn't already guessed that, the events of last Tuesday - Shrove Tuesday - should have made it abundantly clear. Finding ourselves with a rare moment of relative freedom, we headed down to Bore Street to check out the Shrovetide action.
It was gratifying to see that, despite Lichfield now (we're told) being a "ghost town", a reasonably big crowd of folk found time on a grey Tuesday afternoon in February to assemble in the city centre and watch people in silly costumes running about with frying pans. The spirit which saw the Loyal and Ancient City through no fewer than three Civil War sieges and the new Minster Pool railings remains unbroken.
Even the folk at Barclays took time out of oppressing the masses, bringing down the global economy etc to enjoy the fun.
And fun it was. The competitors seemed largely to comprise local college students - sensibly dressed given the unseasonal nippiness - and teams of local solicitors in fancy dress. But a bracing spirit of seriousness about the competition animated them all, and quite properly. As the Town Crier reminded us, the Shrovetide pancake races are one of our most dignified and ancient civic traditions, dating back to 1978.
The City Fathers certainly seemed to approve.
Of course, no major occasion in Lichfield is complete without a man in a tricorn hat shouting into a microphone.
The races were followed by the presentation of the ceremonial Golden Frying Pan - apparently a gift to the city from Charles II at the Restoration, and today kept in the civic treasury - never, we were assured, permitted to leave the bounds of the former city walls. To the left, the equipment used in the races themselves. We inspected the pancakes in person, and can testify both to their authenticity and their edibility.
Then, of course, photographs, and scenes which - to the untrained eye - seemed to suggest a more family-friendly 21st century remake of "Confessions of a Town Crier".
A thoroughly splendid time was had by all - as those who read Thursday's Mercury will already know. The crowds, led by the Mayor, dispersed towards the Market Square, there to enjoy the coloured lights and dizzying thrills of the Shrovetide Fair. Imagine the opening scenes of Stravinsky's "Petrushka" relocated to Trumpton and accompanied by burger vans. You get the picture. Bore Street once again belonged to estate agents and teashops, with only a few poignant remnants amidst the tumbleweed bearing mute, farinaceous witness to the revels we'd enjoyed just an hour before. Sic transit...
