Some years ago a friend asked me to go to a carol service with her. Her daughter worked for the Drug and Alcohol Dependency Unit (I think that was its name) and they organised a Christmas carol service every year to raise funds for their organisation. Neither my friend nor I are church-goers, or even believers for that matter, but we both enjoy a good singsong and love traditional carols. Besides, the service was being held at St Ann’s church in the centre of Manchester, a surprisingly beautiful little church set at one end of the equally delightful St Ann’s Square. What more could you ask for?
And so a new tradition was born. Every year we would meet for something to eat in central Manchester and off we would go to sing our hearts out and contribute to helping people with problems. When her daughter moved on to other things, joining the police, and the unit she had worked for changed its nature and activities, we found other carol services to attend, sometimes at Manchester cathedral, another interesting building for anyone who fancies visiting Manchester.
(In fact, Manchester is full of interesting buildings: St Ann’s Church is a grade 1 listed building, and then there is the cathedral with some very fine stained glass depicting scenes from World War II bombings, Chetham’s school of music opens its library to visitors, the John Ryland’s library is definitely worth a visit, the town hall is magnificent and there is the lovely round central library. That’s without mentioning museums and art galleries!)
So we had our own Christmas tradition. And then along came Covid! And everything came to a grinding halt!
So this year we decided to resurrect our old tradition and my friend Dee got us tickets for a carol concert at the Bridgewater Hall, a concert recommended to her by friends from the Growing Old Disgracefully group.
We went for dinner at an Italian restaurant very close to the Bridgewater Hall. (My friend broke her toe a few weeks ago and is still wearing a protective surgical boot so she can’t walk far. The walk from the tram stop to,the restaurant and from the restaurant to the venue was not too much for her.) The food was fine but a medium glass of Pinot Grigio cost us a shocking £9.45 each. English restaurant prices with the added boost of city centre prices!! The waitress did recommend that we should buy a whole bottle for £27, who h would give us at least two glasses each, but we really didn’t want to down a whole bottle between two of us in the space of an hour and a half! Anyway, we enjoyed the food … and the glass of wine was fine!
Installed eventually in our seats at the Bridgewater Hall, we were invited (instructed?) to stand for God Save the King. Dee and I were the only ones who remained seated and did not sing. I suppose there may have been others but we couldn’t see them for all the loyal royalists standing around us. The conductor of the choir and musicians joked about everyone getting their pronouns and possessive adjectives wrong (all those hims and hers) as for most people it was probably the first time they had sung the national anthem that way. Dee and I reminisced about our youth when you had to rush out of the cinema at the end of a film to avoid singing God Save the Queen.
Greater Manchester Police trumpeters played fanfares, some fine percussionists and a fine organ player, the Hospitals Choir (I think) performed beautifully and from time to time we got to join in. We sang a complicated version of The Twelve Days of Christmas with different bits of the audience, the choir and the musicians singing different bits. Two Greater Manchester primary school choirs performed for us, two groups of children having an experience to talk about in future years! A good time was had by all … but on the whole we agreed that we preferred carol services in churches or cathedrals. You can’t have everything and, faute de mieux, there was this event at the Bridgewater.
And then we caught the tram home. During our journey we got into conversation with a gentleman who told us he thought we were two beautiful French women. It was our coloured berets that did it - not a deliberate choice to match; we just happened both to choose berets as the appropriate headgear for a December evening. And the gentleman wasn’t even flirting. He was with his wife. Dee and I must simply be too stylish!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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