It's been a busy and fairly varied few days. Thursday evening, we went round to see
Friday evening was our dose of culture for the
On Saturday we met up with our German friends again for the BBC's Proms in the Park concert in Hyde Park. The idea is that there are separate concerts around the country and that all of them link up for the last twenty minutes or so of the main Last Night Of The Proms. We reached Hyde Park in time to spend about 20 minutes trying to get into the concert area (well, okay, 20,000 people, fair enough). The promised rainstorms failed to materialise except for a very brief shower, but it was extremely windy (which, when you're sitting on the ground for most of the evening, makes for windborne grit in places you'd prefer not to have it; eyes, hair, butter...)
The concert itself was fairly varied in terms of content as well as quality. Bjorn Again were excellent. Evelyn Glennie started off well but suffered from a poor choice of final piece. I'm sure the rather quiet and contemplative stuff would have gone down a storm in a proper concert hall, but on a windy evening in front of a very large audience, most of whom were not sitting paying quiet attention but were chatting to their friends, it wasn't really working. The cute Mexican tenor whose name I have forgotten was very good. The Corrs are unfortunately Not My Thing.
I'd've liked to hook up with the Albert Hall feed a bit earlier so that we could have heard all of Sousa's Liberty Bell; we came in just at the end of it and then sang/hummed/clapped our way through Pomp & Circumstance #1, Fantasia on British Sea Songs, and Jerusalem (and the National Anthem; two verses rather than one, shock, horror). I wasn't entirely sure what our accompanying Germans would make of the flag-waving insanity but they seemed to enjoy it ;)
And then... Sunday! (which will be detailed shortly)