Cantate sans filet

Today was the big day: the cantate sans filet in Caunes abbey. The rehearsal started at 5 pm, with the performance at 6:30. It was good fun -- less stressful than some well-rehearsed concerts I've sung in. And the audience seemed to enjoy it, both the performance and the rehearsal. Even if our conductor liked talking so much that there didn't seem to be much time left over to perfect our trills :) I think I didn't explain before that this performance was a small part of Michel Brun's project to perform all of Bach's 200 or so cantatas over a period of 25 years -- after 6 years he's covered around 46 of them.

What he was saying was probably interesting -- he is both very knowledgeable and enthusiastic -- but I couldn't hear most of it because I was sitting behind the organist (with the big hair in the centre of this photo). In order to actually see him when singing, we had to stand on pews, which was slightly alarming.

After the concert, I had the challenge of finding J, a blogger who lives in Caunes whom I'd found online recently but hadn't met in real life. After only one false start I successfully identified her and we headed off to the local bar for a drink and something to eat. It was a lovely evening, and the terrace of the bar was crowded with people drinking, eating and chatting. Very civilised -- it made me wish the bar in our village hadn't closed down, although when it was open it was so gloomy that in common with the rest of the population we hardly ever went there. It was lovely to meet J, and we had a nice chat about this, that and the other before I headed home, with the bonus of a lovely sunset on the way.

I do have a spare blip, but not of the sunset; when I walked up to the pool this morning (22 lengths; pool to myself), the clouds were just glorious, mackerel streaks converging across the sky. On any other day I'd have blipped this, but it seemed a shame not to blip the main event of the day.