I’m starting to have thoughts about the next festival – just as well, really! Christmas, Julian Calendar style, falls on Monday 7 January and after the New Style festive lull this date is coming up all too fast.
I’ve been wanting to experiment with the webcam equipment in the church since the project started, and Trevor’s suggestion that we go there at night for a sort of Christmas Eve vigil next Sunday evening seemed like just the right idea at the right time. So, hopefully the webcam will have an airing at last, although I won’t have the technology to beam the images live from Wood Dalling church.
It’s been important to me to avoid any Christmas cliches in preparing for the festival – after all, everyone knows that quite a few of our current traditions were being practised in medieval times and that many of those are actually pagan in origin, being a celebration of the return of the sun at the midwinter solstice.
While I’m very interested in all of this, I need to step sideways and find a slightly different ‘take’ on the festival. I’m thinking of focussing on the weird heads in the church, that always make me think of woodland spirits, satyrs and fauns, rather than on the human portraits/inscriptions I’ve been so involved with during previous festivals. Not sure yet how they’ll be interpreted, though.
It sometimes feels a ridiculous scheme: a residency with a self-imposed structure that leaves me feeling pressurised to come up with well-resolved concepts and a reasonable amount of work that seems worth publishing – as well as a heap of ideas for future development – twelve times during the course of a single year!!
But on the plus side – after taking far longer to ferment out than the instructions promised – the Festial Ale is ready to drink, and it’s very good indeed!
