1st July
Wedding Of The Day: Sylvia and Don. Most of The Bridge Singers hightailed it to Alnwick to stand in the street outside the registry office and give two of our own a surprise flash-mob performance of Can’t Help falling In Love With You.

2nd July
Movie of the day: A Man Called Ove. Writing this on the morning of 3rd, I’ve just come in from early morning weeding. Bloomin’ insects biting my head and fingers off. However, what I was really going to tell you about was this movie which we saw yesterday at the Tyneside Cinema. I think you should see it too. It made us chortle with its grumpy man.

3rd July
Language of the day: Maori. The Bridge Singers starting to learn E Papa. They’re loving it. We’ll be performing it at the Last Night Of The Proms concert in Alnwick in September. We’re going for the more sturdy approach of herbs, rather than the triple time version with sticks.

4th July
Weather of the day: Rain

5th July
Blue Flower bud of the day: this one. I don’t know what they are, but they were purchased as a bargain at the end of last summer, survived the winter in the greenhouse without any care or attention whatsoever, and now are thriving at the front of the broad bean bed.

6th July
Museum of the day, indeed the year: The Hepworth Wakefield. Well fancy that, I work for the Art Fund Museum Of the Year 2017.

7th July
England Captain of the day: Joe Root, captain of the England men’s cricket team. It’s his debut as captain this week. I’ve driven to Worksop through the Friday traffic in readiness for weekend Hepworthing. I’m now watching England play cricket quite well on the parental telly.

8th July
Sunshiney town of the day: Worksop, with family.

9th July
Art inspiration of the day: Five Metal Figures by Henry Moore – the subject of today’s Musical Sculptures Workshops at The Hepworth Wakefield.

10th July
Dering of the day: Factum Est Silentium. I love it. We rehearsed it tonight in readiness for our performance at Brinkburn Priory on Sunday afternoon. I was going to put a link to another choir singing it, but I’ll wait until we’ve done it and post a link then if we’re good enough

11th July
“Photo found lurking in the camera” of the day – Beethoven’s Für Elise on the stand with the sun at Feltonbury in June, being played at this moment by the excellent Victoria Robinson.

12th July
“Don’t Touch” of the day: Pierced Hemisphere by Barbara Hepworth. Shortly before this photo, Hilary and I watched a woman go directly up to it and stroke it. I see where she was coming from, but it says all over the place, not to do this!

13th July
Handwritten letter of the day:

May 30th 1876
Dear Sir,
Mr. Clark can meet you on Saturday morning; and as I should like to have word with you beforehand, perhaps we had better meet at your club at half past 10 a.m. and I will tell Mr. C that he can see you there at 11. We might afterwards go to Mr Clayton’s…I shall make our appointments for 2 o’C as I wish to go to London by the Scotch express that day. Unless I hear to the contrary by Friday’s post, I shall conclude that this arrangement suits you,
Truly Yours,
Thomas Ilderton
I shall go to Newcastle on Friday afternoon and stay at the Central.

I found this while continuing my research into Thomas Ilderton at the Northumberland Archives at Woodhorn Museum.

14th July
Phone boxes of the day: 2xK6 2xK2. Jamie’s in London and has been for four days – he hasn’t completely forgotten about me.

15th July
Gig-related tasks of the day – I’ve just been gathering together the glass orchestra accoutrements for tomorrow’s The Bridge Singers gig at 1.15pm in this stunning looking-and-sounding church. We’re singing our “resonant selection” including a couple of Factum Est Silentiums from the 1500s, Lotti’s Crucifixus, something Medieval, a claphappy spiritual, a sprinkling of Tallis, new to newish pieces by me and Gary and a couple of war memorial weepies. What a treat it will be for you and us.

16th July
Priory Of the Day: Brinkburn upstream on the River Coquet. The Bridge Singers performed here today including two of my pieces – The Lamb and Quiet Window.

17th July
Blog of the day: Shuna’s sister was inspired by my song Alison’s K6 telephone Box, and The Bridge Singers’ performances of it to go on a K6 hunt on Islay.
https://boncyclist.com/…/17/not-just-a-box-ticking-exercise/

18th July
Singalong of the day – there’s an end-of-term feel about The Bridge Singers at the moment. We tackled Inanay which we haven’t sung for over a year, but mostly, it was requests from the choir. I’ll be happy if we can achieve this level of blending and happy spirit when we sing it in September.

19th July
Orange-related song of the day: Tiny, Flickering Flame. In the quest for fruit-related choral music, I seem to find plenty quite close to home!

20th July
Video of the day: Sammy and Manu workshops at Wakefield Cathedral. It has been a bit of a slog with the editing. 12 workshops, with children playing different interlocking rhythms and melodies, and three plenary performances in a small chapter house room and a resonant cathedral nave, all at different speeds edited together in a rather scruffy way, but we get the idea of what happened!

21st July
Poll of the day – closed at midnight, for The Bridge Singers’ favourite pieces of the year. The results of the top 10 are:

1 Anerio: Factum Est Silentium.
2 Camm: The Lamb
3 Steward: Northumberland
4 Trad. USA: Your Silver Trumpet, Gabriel.
5= Simon and Garfunkel: 59th Street Bridge Song
5= Dering: Factum Est Silentium.
5= Tallis: If Ye Love Me.
8= Trad. South Africa: Aya Ngena
8= Lotti: Crucifixus
8= Trad. UK/Ireland: The Parting Glass

22nd July
Blue things on the beach of the day: Warkworth Beach. We haven’t been there for weeks. It was sometimes sunny and sometimes not. The photos are of: dune flower; bottle top; stealth runner (he crept up behind us without making a noise, and also his running was so walky that if we’d not been stopping to take pictures, we could have re-overtaken him); camera hissy-fit; family wreck; string boots; buoy rope; mussel shell; frayed ends; boot block; rope man; sky posers.

23rd July
Party of the day: The Bridge Singers’ end of year party, where we sang our top 5 songs, there were “turns”, a shared meal and much merriment. I received a pineapple – living, and these four had written a very, very humorous song about me.

24th July
Music hand-in extravaganza of the day: The Bridge Singers: all but eight pieces returned in readiness for a mass hand-out come September. Last rehearsal of the choral year, with requests and a go at Alison’s K6 Telephone Box and I Want A Banana working well as partner songs.

25th July
New blog of the day: The Manu and Sammy Friendship stories from my recent composing and singing and playing lots of instruments workshops at Wakefield Cathedral. The brief was to present a workshop that addressed boys maintaining friendships.

26th July
Review of the year of the day: The Bridge Singers’ Review of the Year with lots of photos and lots of audio clips and giving an excellent summary of what we’ve been up to – all collated together into this entertaining video which you can find at the bottom of this blog!

27th July
City Council of the day: Wakefield. These pictures are of my favourite sculpture: Barbara Hepworth’s Pierced Hemisphere. I went to the Hepworth Wakefield for a meeting yesterday during which we were given a bit of a tour by one of the curators. She told us that it was donated to Wakefield by Hepworth’s father in 1940. At the time in the city there was a big debate about whether art should be bothered with at all during the war, and they debated whether to close the city gallery for the duration. They decided not to, and visitor numbers were at their most numerous during those war years. There might be a lesson to be learned about the arts in times of austerity there.

28th July
National Collection of the day: Rhubarb. It’s at the wonderful Clumber Park Walled Garden. Dad and I came across it by accident. Result 🙂

29th July
Song Story of the day: Quiet Window.

30th July
Natural Phenomenon of the day: Over 100 seals at the far end of Ross Sands.

31st July
Three thrills of the day to end the month: chatting, cakes and mirth at the Running Fox with Claire; Moeen Ali nabs a hat-trick to clinch victory for England in the men’s cricket (not sure why this is orange, but there you go!); Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 live from the Proms on Radio 3 – exhilarating performance.