Songs and snowfall

A little more snow this morning, and fine one flake at a time snow fell most of the day. I sealed myself indoors working again on Skelton Yawngrave and other bits and pieces.

In the evening yomped across town to Kemptown to St Mary's church for the World Aids Day concert, where I met Lorraine. Vast high roofed church I'd not been in before, which was surprisingly warm inside. It featured The Brighton Gay Men's Chorus, Hullabaloo, which Lorraine used to sing with and was chatting to lots of its members, and Rainbow Chorus, which is Matt's choir. Also was a lovely soprano called Red Gray, accompanied by Fingers Capra plus Qukulele a lively singing and ukulele band.

Fascinating to see the different styles of the conductors, and choirs. Kirsty has a lovely and highly expressive way of leading her choir. The young conductor of the Gay Men's Chorus very fluid in his movements and a twinkling personality, and Matt, talking to the audience in an assured manner, was clearly the maestro.

Extra frisson added for me of course as the Rainbow Chorus were singing Found for the first time. Nice to see my name in the programme. The Rainbows were on fine form and stormed through their early numbers, but still are not entirely comfortable with the middle section of our piece. Matt's music is as ever really beautiful, and when it came together it was stunning, and I felt proud of my part in the piece. It is a funny business as I said the other day, sitting alone in your study and stringing together some words, and then some time later having them sung by many voices to a well attended audience.

The event of course made me think of Tim and Rosa my friends lost to Aids in the 90s, and the event was to benefit The Sussex Beacon, where Tim stayed sometimes towards the end of his life.

Out of the Church to discover it had been snowing enthusiastically. One or two cars sliding around, but as Lorraine and I walked down St James's Street there were outbreaks of snowballing and fun. At one point a man on a retro bicycle went past wearing a top hat and everything suddenly felt very Victorian. Lorraine and I then walked through town, with people skidding about delightedly, and improvising slides on the hilly roads. Eventually arrived at the Evening Star and met Fingers and Richard Gibson and a nice man called Steve for a late beer and intensive chatting, before going home to a naughty late night nip of sloe gin.

Below Matt and the Raibow Chorus just about to start a song, Red Gray, Fingers with Red Gray, Brighton Street scenes and the end of my Twitten.