Alice in Wonderland first time on stage

Reading

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. ....Want to play? Copy this into your post. Look at the list and put an "👍" after those you have read.

This will be an interesting one:

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen x👍
2 The Lord of the Rings -JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte x👍xxx
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee x👍
6 The Bible x👍
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte x👍
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell x👍
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens x👍
11 Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy x👍
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare x👍
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier x👍xx
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien x👍xx
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulkner
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger x👍
19 The Time Traveler's Wife-Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot x👍
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald x👍
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens x👍
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy x👍x
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams 👍
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky x👍
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck x👍x
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll x👍
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame x👍
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy x👍
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens x👍
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen x👍
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen x👍
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini x👍
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres 👍
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne - x👍
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell x👍
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins x👍
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery 👍
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy x👍
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding x👍
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan 👍x
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons x👍
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen x👍
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth x👍x
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens x👍
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley x👍
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck x👍
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas x
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy x👍
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding x👍
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville x👍x
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens x👍
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett 👍
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson x👍
75 Ulysses - James Joyce x👍
76 The Inferno - Dante x👍x
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome x👍
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray x👍
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens x👍
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker x
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro x👍
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert x👍
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle x👍x
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid BLYTON
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad x👍x
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery x👍
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams x👍
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute x👍
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas x👍
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare👍 x
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl x👍

100 Gaudy Night - Dorothy Sayers

My generation read Noddy, Famous Five, Secret Seven, Biggles, Rider Haggard, Colonel Fawcett, Pattern of islands, Jock of the Bushveld, They seek a country, Cry the beloved country.Why isn't Nelson Mandela on this list?  Many of these now seen as colonialist and racist.

Chorus chairmen

I found some Philharmonia year books from the 70s. Interesting the comments from Chorus chairmen which put a certain spin on what really happened!

April 1999 CMQ

Happiest and saddest

Hopefully it is obvious that I have had a very happy life! Out of so many great days our wedding day has to be the happiest closely followed by other weddings especially Louise and Tom and Dennis and Ann Marie.  The births of the children especially Bruce. Our 3 grandsons and I recall many happy days playing with them and especially steam train rides! Reunions - arriving in Hobart and Ann and Paul's wedding, Sydney, Mark and Sarah's wedding. Music has been such a joy. So many wonderful Chorus concerts especially Fidelio in Orange, Giulini concerts. Playing the organ so many times and the sense of achievement when all went well. Singing "If with all your hearts" and "We'll gather lilacs" and the concerts both here and in Australia. Holidays and travel - Iguazu falls, Okavango and seeing the leopard and her cub, the Sea of Galilee, Lindisfarne, Victoria Falls, Alaska, the lists just goes on and on! Great ceremonies especially ordinations of so many. And perhaps more importantly the quiet communion and the silence. The amazing experiences of Mt Sinai and the church of the Holy sepulchre. Catenians have given much pleasure especially the provincial weekend on the Isle of Wight and getting motions passed at Liverpool conference. Sad that Norwood circle closed but life goes on. It looks like Dulwich circle will also close.
Saddest day must be Mum and Dad's funeral, the funeral of Liz's Dad, saying goodbye is hard. The day I left Johannesburg, the departures from Hobart and Sydney. Leaving Addiscombe was very sad. The end of Heythrop. Some funerals have been sad. The loss of a friend like David Barrett is hard.
I have often been moved to tears especially by opera e.g. Madam Butterfly and films e,g, The Alamo and theatre e,g, Othello at the Globe. This is a good thing - tears help a lot.
Some of the happy occasions have been bitter sweet.
I suppose it is when God seems closest and Love takes over. Love is expressed in a hug or a smile. a whole world can be there in a single moment. Julian of Norwich speaks of the whole world in a hazelnut. Always be thankful.
This time of lockdown is so strange. All the usual things have gone to be replaced by a programme of services on the screen and operas on screen. I have cleared out so much paper from the past - so many organ recitals and services. I have kept programmes from  exciting events like the Olympics and Paralympics in London but I have to ask "Why keep this and not that?". Perhaps it is to do with memory. Some things I have found I cannot recall at all, others remain vivid.
What am I missing? Hugs from the family, conversations, singing together, playing the organ, above all Eucharist. I confess the second part of Mass seems remote at the moment. St John's holds a special place in my heart. Who knows how long we will be at home ? It could be months before it is safe to return to "normal". Our great National institutions like the Royal Opera House, Royal Academy and the Globe are under threat. The many art galleries I have visited have given me so much pleasure. And zoos and wild life parks are always happy places for me especially Whipsnade and Taronga. Monasteries I really like are Belmont and Worth. York Minster has to be the "gates of heaven". Westminster cathedral always gives a thrill! We will be back! 

John Michael East RIP

Rather naughtily John Ainslie claimed to have written this. I collected the material! 

Last night of the Proms

Music and Liturgy article

Ordination in Kerala 2012

Belmont Abbey pilgrimage

At Douai 2009 and Pluscarden 2010 Panel of Monastic musicians

14 Nov 2009 we manned a stall for SSG at Towards Advent 

Part 2 from Music and Liturgy is missing

Concerts

Liza Connell and Richard Wiegold sang Lyric Opera at a house in Queen's Gate 

2004 Berlin and Leipzig

Battersea Park library reopens

Library staff at Battersea Park

Wisdom Uzor

2009

 Library contacts

 Archbishop Vincent Nicholls enthroned

St Andrew Coulsdon harvest flower festival 10th October

James Macmillan was very friendly when we sang his St John Passion in King's Cambridge

Greece 2006

 With Allen Morris and Martin Foster

Jan Latham-Koenig Faure requiem abandoned when so many insects came up from the lake!

The chorus were promoting their own concerts using the funds accumulated from many recordings

2005

Lockdown

One good thing from these months in lockdown has been writing this story. I have cleared out a  lot of old papers and the next task is to go through the music scores, cassettes, videos, CDs and books! Dreams have been very vivid often about the library and past events. I have been attending Sylvan Road death cafe since it started and learnt a lot from it. The thought of dying alone is awful and that is what is happening to so many at this time. I would want a priest to come and hear my last confession (I admit to not going to confession as much as I should!) and the last rites. Communion has been such a part of my life and it is so sad not to receive at this time. But I am reluctant to go back to church until it really is safe and there is a vaccine, much as I miss the people and the music making. The cathedral has been very disappointing in not keeping in touch. Only Christina White of the friends on Facebook and some of the servers families on email have contacted us despite messages sent. Caterham has a weekly zoom and emails from Susan but there has been nothing about my contract. The Mass is on You tube on Sundays. St John's have been great with phone calls from Fr John, messages from Daniel and Tom, a weekly zoom on Sundays, Masses on You tube and zoom (one of those so far) and the weekly quiet time zoom on Tuesdays.  Richard has sent email suggestions of music to listen to and Adrian has been in touch on email. Catenians are reluctant to zoom but I hope to "attend" Beckenham on Monday.
I have prepared for my funeral and provided a list of people to contact. It is in the metal box in the study. Ideally I would stay at home as long as possible but if I had to go into a care home so be it. St Christopher's Hospice is a wonderful place and the care there cannot be matched so that would be ideal. Be happy that I am at last at home with God and meeting again Mum and Dad and all my friends and family. I hope to be brave at the end and not cry too much at saying goodbye. Love is the most important thing! Be kind and smile.
I can see that my world would become much smaller as it did for Mum and Dad but there is still so much to live for and enjoy! Operas, theatre, Shakespeare, books, praying, playing the piano and singing, painting, enjoying the garden, reading - plenty to keep me occupied. Above all the family on zoom or the phone. 

Catenians

I have now uploaded all of Bill Beach's history of Norwood Circle up to 1985 plus old photos and cuttings. It is at Norwood Catenians blogspot and Norwood Catenians Facebook page. 

Mum and Dad

The organist librarian has a post about the double funeral which I regard as a major turning point in my life. I became head of the family. It was most fortunate that Bruce asked me to go to the funeral. Mum had insisted that we should not go and remember the happy times. I sang at the Prom of The Bells and the conductor Jurowski encouraged me to sing as he said the work was so suitable. We saw Mum 3 times." Your Dad has all the answers now, you will have to cope, this place Gordon is super, I won't need my paper tomorrow".The latter was very odd. Dad had made full preparations but we had not expected that the choir would want to be paid! However we carried out Dad's wishes. I played at the crematorium which meant that I only saw people very briefly but Ann stayed at CCSL. The undertaker started to take Mum out too early. It was supposed to be during Dad's march played by Peter Jewkes. In a way it was so Mum. "He's had his say I'm off to make the lunch!" Ann presented me with a 60th birthday album. 

How many years at the organ?

• I started the piano aged 12 (1958) and the organ at 17(1963). I was assistant at St Mark's Yeoville  from 1963. In 1972 I did play in some places on my travels - Jerusalem, Istanbul, Naples, Copenhagen. I recall some weddings at Our Lady of the Angels, Bayswater but it was not till we got to St Chad's South Norwood that I started again from 1975 and that was occasionally. I started at St Margaret's in 1981 and at Addiscombe in 1985 and I was there until 2004. Then 10 years at St Andrew Coulsdon to 2014. A period freelance then 3 years at St Michael Beckenham to 2017 and now 3 years at St John Caterham. So 57 - 2 = 55! I have been in choirs since age 7 so 73 - 7 = 66! 38 of those years I was in the Philharmonia Chorus. 

Oxford 2008

The most ambitious 10th May 2008. Greyfriars with John Brennan. St Peter's college with Roger Allen, Balliol college with Owain Williams and We did not play the hall organ. Holywell !music room and Wadham college with Katharine Pardee. Ashmolean! st John's college with Max Barley. Lincoln college with Jonathan Turner and We saw the Wesley room. Jesus College. Evensong at magdalen College. 7 organs and 2 more not played! The booklet is well illustrated!

In Spring 2008 Cardinal's lectures Faith and life in Britain. Rowan Williams and William Hague were outstanding. Thomas Wilson and Oliver Brett were the organists. I have a copy of the question I asked Rowan Williams. "the Westminster cathedral interfaith group recently did an "understanding Islam" course. Do you think that spirituality rather than doctrine would be a good p lace for dialogue to start with other faiths? " the answer friendship first and look for the light on each other's eyes. A great answer.

Cambridge 2007

May 12 2007. Tim Harper helped. 2 organs at Great St Mary's with Sam Hayes. Joseph Fort at Emmanuel college. King's college console with Oliver Brett. Martin Hall enjoyed pointing out things he had not been told! Greg Drott at Pembroke college then Sarah MacDonald at Selwyn. Jamal Sutton at Sidney Sussex. Then evensong at King 's and John's.

6 organs and 1 more not played
In June we sang Fidelio at the Shedonian theatre Oxford and I stayed with Helene la Rue.
11 Nov the chorus took part in A world requiem by John Foulds
at the Albert hall. Madeleine Lovell is listed as our chorus master and it was our 50th anniversary. Unfortunately the BBC stopped broadcasting our concerts after this on the grounds that some did not know the music! 9 October we took part in the reopening of the Royal Festival hall attended by the Queen.

2007 Christmas letter Louise and Tom married Bruce graduated 

Verdi at Westminster cathedral conducted by Riccardo Muti

The Westminster cathedral interfaith group visited this