April 11th 2011

Monday April 11th
On Saturday we sang in the Castleford Choral Society’s Spring Concert. Kath is the secretary of the society for very many years and I have been the Patrons’ Secretary since 1997. I have resigned as I want to do something different for the choir. Kath and I also open up the church where we rehearse and I am responsible for putting out the chairs. Kath works very hard indeed for the society producing all the tickets and programmes and has had to take over as seating organiser from Colin who has been ill. She has also done the publicity in our local paper. The society has its own website: www.castlefordchoralsociety.co.uk. We rehearse each Wednesday evening in the United Reformed Church in Castleford. The programme we put on was a great mixture and the venue, Trinity Methodist Church Castleford, was packed. The soloist (Pam Waddingon Muse), trumpeter (Anthony Thompson) made the evening a success as did our accompanist, Claire Burden who played the organ. We had really good positive feedback. It is a hard day for me and Kath, particularly Kath. In the morning a small gang helps to erect the stage and put out the seats. In the early afternoon we have a dress rehearsal and this year the conductor was particularly grumpy. I decided to change how I treated the patrons in the interval. In previous years I had brought all sorts to eat and used a small back room. There was always loads of food wasted. This year I decided to have a table in the main interval hall and serve coffee and teas to the patrons. The society gave the church a contribution and they put out chocolate cakes and biscuits for the patrons. These went down particularly well. I mis-judged the time and effort it took to serve teas to 30 people and thank goodness Kath came along to help. I managed to talk briefly to some of our friends before the second half of the concert.
Someone in the audincewas given permission to video parts of the performance you can look at the itenms on youtube by searching for Castleford Choral SocietyI then helped putting away the chairs and dismantling the stage before going home. We always have some (quite a lot) red wine and cheese and biscuits after a concert. This year Kath had pate as she had given up cheese for lent.
On Sunday, after we had prepared two rooms for the decorators, we had a day of rest. While Kath was at church I went for a walk in Fryston. It was a beautiful day and the walk is next to the River Aire. In the afternoon we failed to park at the Pugneys Park because of the crowds and drove up to Emly Moor TV mast ( the highest freestanding structure in the UK). The views from up there were pretty good. A curry in the evening followed by Lewis.