Today has turned into an almost non-stop social round. Not entirely non-stop, or I wouldn't be typing this. It all started months ago with the music society's annual lecture, to be delivered this year by an eminent musicologist on the relationship between buildings and music. Ever keen and diligent I wrote the date into my diary, Friday 11th December. Some time later but luckily before we'd had the season's brochure printed, our speaker got back in touch to say that with vast apologies he couldn't manage the date since he'd agreed to speak at a conference in Madrid and wouldn't be back in time. I can see that a conference of fellow academics in beautiful Spain would trump a lecture to an amateur arts group in rural Suffolk, and so the date was shifted to the previous week, and from Friday to Thursday because the venue was already booked for Friday evening.
Despite the change of date being discussed in my presence several times, the fact that I needed to change it in my diary somehow eluded me, and so I happily accepted a friend's invitation to her Christmas carol service. Then I saw in the programme at the last concert that the date of the lecture was Thursday 3rd December and realised with a sinking feeling that I already knew that and had arranged to do something else. Personal invitations from friends trump club lectures, so I made my apologies in advance that I was going to miss the talk.
Then I saw my friend last week and as we were parting I confirmed that I'd see her next week for the carol service, and she said that she'd give me a lift and hoped I'd stay for lunch. Ah, lunch. I'd assumed that the carol service would be in the evening because that's when carol services always are, but I was mistaken, this one was at eleven followed by lunch in the village hall. Better and better, I could go to the carols and the lecture. I emailed the good news to the music society Chairman and asked whether I should bring nibbles.
The carol service was held at Stratford St Mary, a very pretty village with a handsome knapped flint church which suffers badly from traffic noise due to being about fifty yards from the A12, though as the Systems Administrator pointed out it would be considerably worse if the main road still ran through the village. Poor St Mary's had its lead stolen recently, and the organ which was supposed to have been fixed is not yet right, but jammed on one note at the end of In the Bleak Midwinter and we had to sing the rest of the carols with the piano. And it was very cold, but one knows to expect that with rural churches, and I'd made a point of wearing a nice coat on the grounds that I wouldn't be taking it off during the service.
It is difficult trying to dress up when you live in the country. I love an excuse to put on something tidier than my gardening clothes, but the reality is that half the time I go out I'll end up keeping my coat on. Parking will probably be somewhere unlit so I can't see whether I'm about to step into a puddle, or else on muddy grass. All the clothes I wear at home are covered in cat fur from Our Ginger, which has stuck to the seats of my car and thence transfers itself to my tidy going out clothes, and my friend's car is covered in dog hair from Lucy the acorn eating dalmation. In our heads we might believe that style does not end just because you have passed fifty, but the outside observer would mainly see ladies in sensible shoes, wrapped up well against the cold and speckled with animal hairs.
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