Easter week

The weather looked decidedly un-Easterlike, so I stocked up with heart-warming provisions!

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As I waited for the bus up to Heptonstall on Easter Sunday morning I found myself in a hail storm. Now, I WAS expecting to sing “All hail the power of Jesu’s name” at the Easter service but I didn’t expect him to be taking this literally. As I tried to send a text I found that my phone auto completes Jesu to Jedi. ohm what a gay day!

Easter Sunday in Heptonstall involves a short service at the Methodist octagonal chapel, a parade of parishoners along the steep cobbled streets to the church of St Michael’s. With temperature below freezing and a mixture of hail and sleet falling from the heavens only one brave soul was dressed in Easter togs and an Easter bonnet to crown it!

What I woke up to on Easter Sunday. White Christmas I’m all for. A white Easter? No thanks.

Easter Monday is the Hebden Bridge duck race. Only the bravest of souls ventured out for this event. It’s a fund raiser done by the Rotary club.

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It involves 10,000, yes, ten thousand plastic ducks being thrown over one bridge and fished out at the next bridge. The purchaser of the winning duck got a vacation for 2. Ducks are a £1 each.

A net across the river stops the ducks from wandering downstream and polluting the river. But this means that volunteers have to wade in, shovel them up into buckets and take them up the ladder.

Meanwhile the Hebden Bridge Brass Band played – and the local geese got very disoriented.

Since my regular Tuesday events weren’t taking place because of Easter week I took the opportunity to revisit Bradford Cathedral and work on one of  the tapestries that will adorn the altar when they’re completed. I did some work on them in the summer. I also checked out the new rooftop restaurant  in the South Asian Arts organisation – great place full of interesting art, photography and poetry. Last time I was there I met Delius!

A day out in Leeds to see Art – the play with Nigel Havers  (Man child) and Stephen Tompkinson (Brassed Off). Most movies and TV I watched in the US were English. I didn’t have actors I wanted to see live. In any case they’d probably in New York or LA and the tickets would be just too expensive anyway. So today I got to see two of my favourite all-time actors together. The Grand Theatre in Leeds really IS grand – a step back into Victoriana. It was built in 1878 as a backlash to the craze for music halls which let the tone of the city down! Not sure what Beethoven was doing there.