Keeping Up Old Christmas

All Saints Church at Cwmbach is bitterly cold! I went with Brian, and we could tell the people who had been to evening performances there before, because they arrived shrouded with shawls and carrying blankets and seat cushions! There is heating - high up the wall so it warms the air in the roof space - and the church was lit by candles in jam jars for the performance itself. The singers had small lights clipped to their song books.
The occasion was the Village Quire (with Phil Smith) singing old carols and songs, interspersed with readings from local folklore, poetry and memoirs. In the first half, several of the readings covered the visit of the Green Knight to Arthur's Court from the medieval poem Gawain and the Green Knight (complete with grisly green head at the appropriate moment, with long red ribbons coming from the neck to signify the blood!) Quite by chance, I had been listening to a version of Gawain and the Green Knight that afternoon, narrated by Ian McKellan before he was a Sir (or Gandalf), so it was interesting to listen to a different translation, recited with such gusto.
There was mulled wine and fruit juice in the interval, and a mince pie each.
In the second half, several readings were taken from Cider with Rosie, when the boys of the church choir go carol singing.
I love hearing the Village Quire. It was a pity that there weren't any younger people there, though, because the songs are beautifully sung, a cappella (the only accompaniment was the occasional use of a drum), and the readings are by turns interesting and amusing. It was a really good night out.
They're a multi-talented lot, too. Two of the singers are a local baker in Hay and his wife, who also dance with Foxwhelp Morris, and they performed a rapper sword dance in the middle of the song Rainy, Haily, Windy Night - when the girl has been persuaded to let the soldier into her bedroom....
The bakery, round the back of the little parade of shops by the Drill Hall, is up for sale as a going concern at the moment. Brian is hoping that the secret recipes will be passed on, because he loves their bread! I do wonder whether even they have an oven big enough for the pie that was described in one of the readings, though, with all sorts of birds from pigeons to a turkey in it, along with game of all sorts, four pounds of butter and a bushel of flour for the pie crust! That was from The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, by a Lady, written in 1747 - and a bushel of flour is something around 50lbs in weight! (so roughly 25kg, for the metric users).
Having seen it before, we were delighted that Phil Smith's encore was his rendition of a bell-ringer's Christmas, in which the bell-ringer got more and more drunk as the festivities went on!

When we got back to Hay, we finished off the evening by visiting the Rose and Crown. Paul has The Creature from Jones the Brewer on the hand pump, which I tried at the Castle Tap the other week. He's been serving various beers by Jones the Brewer lately, along with the Woods that he usually has on.