Oundle Festival

Leave for a whole week – bliss!!  The weather is very wearing though – June had the highest rainfall on record and July seems to be the month of floods and cloud!  The water meadows have come into their own and look like a major lake, and friends with river frontages are keeping a close eye on the levels!

Meanwhile Dad has had his cataract operations and seems to be good from it, Mum is, as always, stuck in her chair.   Any suggestions from Will tend to be dismissed as they can’t be bothered so we just have to let it be.

Girls very busy on their way to Edinburgh and the Fringe – Call Me promises to be fun – looking forward to our week up there…

Oundle Festival is proving to be good yet again, in fact this is the first year under the new director and the programme seems even more varied than before.  Darius Brubeck was wonderful jazz on Friday, Monday we had Kit and James (Kit Hesketh-Harvey) – wonderfully clever, rude and so funny plus a wonderful singer to boot.  Yesterday we had a day at Boughton House with a tour and a concert (lute and viol).  Looking forward to the folk, world music and orchestra for the rest of the week.

If the rain holds off we shall go and photograph some more old railway stations for Will’s new book, otherwise catching up with washing, ironing an dreading is the order of the day.

 

Oundle Festival week

It has been a lovely week – full of music and reading, so today is a chance to gear up for work tomorrow whilst still enjoying the holiday!

I have been to see Giovanni Guzzo (violin – fantastic), the Spooky Men’s Chorale (very different and fun), T G Collective (Django type jazz, lovely!) and the highlight was the Kathryn Tickell Band - northumbrian folk as it’s very best.  Vespers in the Chapel was lovely – flickering candlelight and lots of choral and organ scholars singing divinely!  Will took part in the singing of the final Eucharist at Fotheringhay and certainly the rehearsals for that sounded great (I was sitting outside reading whilst listening!)

I got some reading done, though not necessarily as much as I had thought, and definitely not the books I had originally planned!  Wonder why a lot of life is like that?  Mary Hoffman’s David is the fictional story of the guy who may have posed for the Michelangelo statue and the turbulent times it was made in Florence.  A superb read as always in Mary’s books – well researched, well written and completely compelling.  Meanwhile Lia’s Guide to Winning the Lottery by Keren David is a completely different read to David – modern 16-year-old girl and the issues and problems she contends with when she wins the lottery – including friendship, bullying, sex, family, guilt, suicide, binge drinking and jealousy.  That makes it sound very heavy but the delight of this is the light touch and the page turning ease of reading this thought-provoking book.  Now well into a charity shop purchase by Kate Atkinson – literary detectives are always fun…

So – finish the week with a superb win for Lewis Hamilton at the German Grand Prix and we have a good weekend ready for work tomorrow.