It has been raining a lot recently. I mean, a lot. On
days when the rain never stops living on a river estuary loses some of its appeal. All I can
see is water in every direction – water in the river, water on the ground,
water in the sky. Water dripping off my sleeves in the library and making the books soggy.
Water making the garden path so slippy that I skidded when fetching the
wheely-bin back in and would have fallen if the bin hadn’t acted as a handy
zimmer-frame.
I have started taking climate change more seriously
recently, partly because there seems to be no doubt that the winters are warmer
and wetter than they were when I was a child. There is something to be said for
having less snow, but constant rain is not much fun either. It is a commonplace
on days like this to joke that perhaps we should be building an ark. So when I
came across this picture while sorting out my old photos, I thought, Hmm ...
Maybe there is some useful knowledge to be gleaned from this.
The photo shows a performance of the Benjamin Britten opera Noah’s Flood, or rather, Noye’s Fludde, staged in St Michael’s church,
Alnwick, in the late 1960s, starring the great bass-baritone Owen Brannigan as
Noah and your correspondent as a mouse. That’s me at the far right of the front
row, with the plaits. All the other mice have kept their masks in the correct
position and are behaving in a suitably mouse-like fashion, while I seem to
have tilted mine back, the better to stare at the audience. I remember that I
was sulking about not being cast as one of the cool animals. Everybody wanted
to be a giraffe or an elephant, who had impressive papier-mache heads and not
just a rubbish mask. You may also have noticed that there are more than two
mice. Basically, any member of the Sunday School who hadn’t succeeded in being
cast as a decent two-by-two animal was pacified by being allowed to be a mouse.
This was justified on the grounds that any bodged-up wooden ship would have
been full of mice anyway without needing to march them aboard in pairs. We had
to scurry up the aisle of the church at the back end of the procession into the
ark, squeaking 'Eek eek!' Darling, the
indignity of it all.
Apart from my papier-mache envy, the only thing I can now
recall about this performance is how much my arms ached. The conclusion of the
first half of the show was a stirring rendition by the entire cast, mice
included, of Eternal Father, Strong to Save, a hymn traditionally sung by
seafarers and those who love them that implores God to protect ‘those in peril
on the sea’. To add to the dramatic effect we all had to hold out our hands in
an attitude of supplication for the entire hymn. Mr Brannigan was naturally a
consummate professional and stood rock steady throughout, but some of the
animals were distinctly wobbly well before the end.
In addition to his career in classical music, Owen Brannigan
became well known for his recordings of traditional folk songs from
Northumberland and Tyneside. We used to have one of them in the house when I
was a child. I really must try to track them down in digital form. I only discovered recently that Owen Brannigan was born in Annitsford, then a small
village in the south of Northumberland but now incorporated into Cramlington
New Town, and sang in the church choir there as a boy. A dear friend of mine who died much too young
is buried in the churchyard at Annitsford. It always makes me happy to find
such connections in my life.
