Of Poetry and Music

The ‘Brontë Bus’

The bus service is not good on Sundays so the first bus to Haworth today was 12:15. I was going back there for the first annual poetry festival. It certainly had some teething problems with directions to the three venues and it was poorly attended but it was wonderful to hear poets read their new poems about the Brontës. One imagined that

Inside Charlotte’s school room

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Charlotte had a laptop and Madame Heger had unfriended her on Facebook! Ok, you have to know something about their lives to get it. Some of the poetry was a bit esoteric for my liking but it was lovely to be able to sit in the schoolroom that Patrick Brontë had built for Charlotte to teach in. It’s always been locked up on past visits. I bought a bacon and

sausage butty to take away, and went to sit in the cemetery to have my lunch. The main street, very steep with cobbled was packed with visitors so the cemetery with the cawing rooks was nice and quiet. After lunch I went across to the other venue, the  Baptist chapel to hear some more lively poetry reading.

I had promised myself a bit of souvenir shopping this afternoon so I wandered all the way down the street and eventually found a park that led to the Worth Valley railway which we let the girls go on unescorted when they were little. We drove and met them at the other end. I watched a steam train go by, bought my first 99 of the trip and took the bus back to Hebden Bridge. The journey overt’t tops is remarkable – as are the bus stops in the middle of nowhere. The round into Hebden in winding and VERY narrow, so the bus is just a little

The Oxenhope straw race

zippy bus, but even so it almost touches both walls in places. On the way up we came to a standstill because the road was closed for the Oxenhope straw race where people dressed in crazy costumes race with bales of hay strapped to their backs. Glad I the photo op.

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The bus ride to Haworth

As I got off the bus a crazy saxophone band was playing  in the square. Just another music event from the festival!  I just had time to make a quick meal before heading out to the last event of the Hebden Bridge Arts festival. Tonight it was the turn of the Commoners Choir performing in the town hall. They are a politically active mixed chorus who often sing outside in places like Ilkley Moor. They were very good and I was disappointed to find that

Commoners Choir

the program was only 45 minutes. There was no program so I’ll have to find out where they are from, and perhaps something about the songs and composers. A day later – they’re from Leeds. They formed a year ago and here is their Donald Trump Song which they sang the English version of – the Boris Johnson song! Brilliant:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ko85iRRkITY