Monday, May 03, 2010

"Bach with Horns"

Nice to live in a place with its own Bach Society. Saturday night they presented "Bach with Horns" featuring Cantatas 40 and 89, the beautifully flowing violin concerto in A minor (BWV 1041) and the prelude and fugue in B minor on the organ (BWV 544). Attendance at St. Cuthbert's was not so large as the Mozart Requiem a few weeks ago but still pretty packed.

Yesterday we attended the candidates' debate in the Town Hall. From left to right across the stage they had the UKIP candidate, an earnest eurosceptic caver; an ENFJ social-working Green who came across as the clown candidate and the Tory Heathcoat-Amory who is apparently an amateur astronomer (Clare says that would be on his Scottish estate). Then we had the tribal, ranting, social-worker from Labour and finally the intelligent power-woman, Tessa with the unfortunate Green/CND backstory from the Liberals. The BNP guy was unavoidably detained.

The Town Hall was packed, I guess with several hundred people and there was much applauding and jeering although little new was said. I fell asleep about halfway through the 90 minutes.

Today we've booked lunch at the Rugantino Restaurant by the Cathedral. As we walked by this morning all the stalls and marquees were in place for the traditional May Fair on the Green so that's where we'll be this afternoon. [Update: Rugantino was absolutely delicious - we were in a little Italian bubble while we ate there. Service a tiny bit slow was the only quibble.]

Then it's back to Reading.