The wandering organist

Well, not quite, in fact that headline contains about as much truth as a tabloid red-top article. The badge However, the Bishop of Portsmouth did - in effect - cancel the Choral Evensong planned for Pentecost at the Church of the Holy Spirit, Southsea, by scheduling the presentation of the first ever St Thomas Awards in Portsmouth Diocese on the evening of Pentecost at 6pm. My friend, Philip Drew, was one of the first 12 to receive one of these, and over 30 people from his church went along to see him receive it. Post-service, just before the bun-fight Very pleased that Philip should have this, well-deserved. Not eating, talking! Choral evensong resumes on 5th June with Walford Davies' Chant Service setting.

The lack of the fine organ in Finedon was the only regret. It was lovely. Path from gate to the North Door . A fine day, lovely weather, and up to 23 C. Only days ago it was 8 C. The organ behaved itself, as did the electricity supply, and a nice, very ordinary parish eucharist was celebrated. The only thing of note was that a bee landed on Revd Bucqué and seems to try to have some fun with the wireless microphone she was wearing. Nothing else to report. Just have a couple of photographs. I am so lucky to live so close to such lovely countryside. View of Lych gate towards the Downs Tree in blossom

It's 6:40pm and I've taken my pullover off, it still smells of the incense at this morning's service. Feast of Title fo r St James' North Lancing , so they pushed the (incense) boat out. Heaven knows how the choir sang, they were disappearing behind the cloud of holiness at the high altar. One of the choir had his surplice on back-to-front. And the organ greeted me in its usual way, when I switched it on, with a careful "parp" from 8' C on the Swell Cromorne. One day it will just carry on, not just the little 1-second musical fart. Looking in the tuning book, the chest is inaccessible for maintenance so when notes stick on, the tuner just slips something under the pipe to stop it sounding. But the thurifer certainly made sure we were in the odour of sanctity today. The bipolar cherry tree was in blossom again. Someone stuck a twig from a different tree into a crack, so it now produces blossoms of two colours. Rather nice. Photograph copyright (c) ...

Just back from playing for the funeral of a friend, John Casemore, whom I knew for nearly 30 years. Nice service, but coming home just about every precipitation you can imagine has happened. Now it's heavy snow. It's not settling, of course, since it's well over freezing, but I hope it's not a comment on the Boëllmann Toccata, requested for the voluntary. A 6-rank extension organ in two separate swell-boxes, one of the ranks is an unexpected full-compass Tierce. I must get the current specification onto NPOR. I'll miss him, I used to go over and we'd play CDs one Saturday every so often. A compassionate and caring human, worn down by Parkinson's over the years. Bon voyage, John. May there be organs in Heaven for us all.

Friday's post brought the first bill from the new managing agents of the flats where I live. Paying half-yearly, I was expecting it to be about £900-1,000 as there is a lot of work which the previous managing agents just didn't do, we've a lot of catching up to do. I had enough saved, but not much extra. How does this relate to holidays, I hear you ask? Well, the bill was just under £500, which means that I have the money to go with Cantores Vagantes to Derby Cathedral for a week in August. (BTW, not the Estonian one, the one run by Philip Drew.) I like that church, the organ is a classic Compton rebuild of a Hill (with a little tinkering since)  http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=N02750  with a lovely little 2-manual by Cousins in the Retro-Choir (that doesn't mean a choir which looks or sings in a 1950s way)  http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=N05294  which is used for weekday services. A small specification, but every stop counts. It needed a little ...

I played at a church which has featured here before, which again I will not identify. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa maxima est, but I was away last weekend (in BSE) and preparing for that occupied my thoughts in the Octave of Easter. Thus I didn't bother the Director of Music to let me have the music for today until 7am on Wednesday morning. (I switch off of an evening, especially after a heavy day to work.) When it arrived, with a chilly reproof for not asking before if I needed it before, it was photographs (not scans) of copies from a phone, which had (undetected) stripped out half of the stuff I needed, probably because of the size of each one. These sent by the DoM at gone 10pm on Thursday night.  It was only today that I pointed this out, having had that chilly email already I didn't want to bother the DoM because it seemed that the DoM thought that these were all I needed. It was then that the DoM phone was checked and corroborated my story. I mean, there's sca...

The week after Easter is often called "Low" Sunday. A sermon I heard once (in Parkend church) wondered if it referred to the number in the congregation, and surmised that those seen on Easter Day and then not again til Christmas were having Holy Car-munion (ouch) at home, washing their Fords and Vauxhalls. For those involved with Cantores Vagantes, it's the weekend jaunt to some cathedral or other to sing the weekend services. Some hundreds of miles and to the north-east of London is the town of St Edmundsbury, now usuallly referred to as Bury St Edmunds. I was last there in 2010 on my 51st birthday, which is another story altogether, and the cathedral had scaffolding up in the chancel whilst they installed the new Harrison & Harrison organ  (rather than pinch their excellent photo, I thought a link better). I didn't think then I would be playing it for three services. Whilst waiting for the choir to assemble, I took a quick pic of the east window from ...