News from Nowhere

A week ago I posted that I was virtually ready for Christmas, barring one or two small tasks which should not present any problem: well, I think we can all guess how that went, can't we?

The last of the packages were in the post the day before the deadline, but at least one of them has not yet arrived (in London, admittedly, which is where services are most likely to be interrupted). Food shopping went to plan. Glasses frames were tried on, and a pair chosen: I am not in love with them, but they are fine - the hardest thing was deciding whether to have the pair that I liked better with a mask, or the ones that I liked better without. And, talking of shopping, we have bought a car - or rather, we have signed a contract on an electric car, when it becomes available in the spring (they are not currently building them fast enough to meet the demand). All durham_rambler wants for Christmas Easter...

We have sung a small but beautifully curated selection of carols from the Bears' repertoire; and more carols with the Melrose Quartet, not to mention a dozen 'name that tune' challenges from their ongoing 'one song to the tune of another' project (but in their case the one song is always Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer. This wasn't one they did at the concert, but it's a good indication of how it works:



An entire day went on visiting and being visited and virtually visiting (a Zoom call with S. who had cancelled her long-anticipated Christmas trip to Greece, and was remarkable philosophical about it). And I have cooked and washed up and cooked and washed up again, and done a little actual work in amidst it all. Reading the round-ups of the year's best television, we have watched all the wrong things: the Countdown finals, the University Challenge Christmas specials - oh, and I enjoyed re-watching Desperately Seeking Susan.

Any of these things could have been a post of its own: it's all good, but I don't know where the time goes. The point at which I thought yes, this is authentic Christmas was last night, on the sofa with a mug of instant coffee, watching Morecambe and Wise... This afternoon we hung up the Christmas cards, which is our token piece of Christmas decorating. And now it's time to do battle with the leftovers.

The last time we saw the Melrose Quartet, back in May 2019 (at the Sage, with the Bears - oh, happy days!) they were already working on Christmas material for a new show. We didn't catch that show last Christmas, and we wouldn't have caight it this year either, if their Live to Your Living gig had happened, as originally scheduled, in November. But the Quartet are couples with school-age children, so it was no big surprise that someone ended up self-isolating, and what we got on Sunday was a not-entirely Christmas show after all. A Covid compliant show, live from Sheffield's Yellow Arch studios, in which the band had reordered their usual on-stage positions to benefit from Jess Arrowsmith and Nancy Kerr being a bubble, while maintaining maximum distance between Richard Arriwsmith and James Fagan (&uot;we are no longer together," explains James). I don't know how this works, but I am fascinated by the details of how people negotiate what is possible; it adds to the illusion of being present at something live (no, not exactly an illusion, but not exactly not, either).

Also adding to the sense of actually being there, wherever 'there' might be, was the pleasure of spotting old friends. Starting with the person hosting the show for LTYLR, the one making the please turn off your mobile phones mute yourself announcements. I thought, isn't that Alex Cumming (the absent Teacup)? and then immediately, no, can't be - because he's in the States (yes, I know. Silly.) It was only when the band thanked him by name that I knew it had been him all along. The other encounter was more of a Zoom artefact: the transition from full screen on the performee to gallery view occasionally flashes through full screen on a random (I assume) participant, and as the main performance ended we got just a fleeting glimpse of two people with whom, if circumstances were not as they are, we would have been preparing to sing carils in London. So all that adds to the atmosphere of the concert.

The music was good, too. Some non-seasonal favourites (notably Santa Georgia and Dominion of the Sword) some Sheffield carols, plenty of Rudolph variations. And something completely new to me, John Kirkpatrick's Chariots: ,aybe not a carol, says Nancy, but certainly a Christmas song, "it's as if you were looking at a Christmas crib, and realised that one of the little figures was Rosa Luxemburg." Nothing wrong with that!

Barnard Castle's Butter Market, like every on-trend public building, is currently wearing scaffolding. The green net overskirt is a distinctive touch, and particularly otherworldly after dark, floodlit under an almost-full moon.

We were in Barnard Castle last night for a concert at the Witham. But first, a pre-concert dinner with friends: baked risotto and all the gossip, what could be nicer?

The Melrose Quartet are Nancy Kerr and James Fagin, whom we have seen a number of times in different permutations of personnel, plus Richard and Jess Arrowsmith, whom we have never seen before. I'd heard enough of the Quartet on record and radio to know I would enjoy the live performance, but not enough to know what shape the evening would take. Some of this and some of that, it turns out: some songs and some instrumentals; some traditional material, some they had written themselves and some by other people; a good balance altogether. Nancy Kerr is an outstanding songwriter, and I was delighted to hear her song Santa Georgia, which I had half heard once on the radio and been unable to identify:



One unscheduled treat: after the first song, there was a problem with the amplification - possibly the instruments weren't being picked up properly? - and while the sound engineer was doing technical heroics, the band stepped in front of the microphones and sang The Seeds of Love. It was wonderful. The hall is a decent size but not enormous, the acoustics are good, the quartet are a bunch of serious and accomplished singers who know what they are doing, it sounded great, and it felt so much more direct. Which may be entirely subjective, but I think the band felt it too, because when it came to the encore they stepped forward again and sang Come and I will sing you as they do here:



Is there something that makes some songs more suited to this treatment than others? I don't know. But more like this, please.