Singing the Bible and Peter Simpson

Saturday took Liz to station as circle line not running - her session was on the Bible. I went to London Bridge to go to Southwark cathedral for the day "Singing the Bible" marking the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. Lovely to see Bernadette Farrell again and her workshop was excellent despite a certain man interrupting. (Later I saw him at the back of Westminster cathedral!) Canon Andrew Dunn the acting Dean gave a lovely welcoming prayer and we sang "Angel voices". Bernadette gave us the music for lots of good ideas. Nice to see Andrew Maries again but he did not give us the scores - good to be reminded of some fine songs by Christopher Walker and Bernadette and Marty Haugen. At lunch I helped on the RSCM book stall but I find Frances Novillo rather bossy! The afternoon workshop was a disaster! The leader a priest from Brixton said she can't sing but the 2 people she had asked lectured us on the community choirs they had formed. A lady said she was very disappointed and she wanted to be shown what they taught the choir so Stephen did this BUT there was little information on how to get the choir going and I certainly could not cope with people not coming to practise! We ended up singing "What shall I do with the drunken sailor" was was totally inappropriate! I did put lal this on my feedback form and the leader did speak to us in the Nave. No tea in the afterrnoon but a fine final service ending with "How shall we sing" to Coe Fen. To Vespers and Mass with Fr Michael Durand. We met Peter Simpson at Il Posto trattoria and had a delightful evening. I had duck with cherries and fried zucchini, boboffee pie and Irish coffee and some excellent white wine. Home around 11 p.m.