Brian

I 'met' Brian in a Zoom meeting last night, called by the organiser of the RPS East Midlands and Central Region to discuss contributions to a book on the peri-urban environment. The Town Planner in the meeting advised us to think of peri-urban as Urban Fringe.

Brian lives in Belton which is the next village along from Shepshed. While Shepshed is in the Charnwood Borough, Belton is in Northwest Leicestershire, which has different development issues from Charnwood.

We met for real this morning at Meet n Eat, Shepshed, at lunchtime. Naturally we discussed our photographic backgrounds and reached an agreement about how we could cooperate on the project, although that really came down to my deciding to document the boundaries of new housing estates in Shepshed while Brian thought he might examine the huge new distribution centre being built at East Midlands Gateway. 

I told him about similar construction to the southwest of Coalville. We can exchange photos via WhatApp if need be.

Len picked me up after my chat with Brian and we drove into Loughborough to see Aziz. I noticed that the branch of Hays Travel in the marketplace had closed. Hays took over business from Thomas Cook Holidays when Thomas Cook collapsed but then John Hays died suddenly and his wife had had to carry on on her own. The website is still online so the company must have had to close offices as a result of diminished business during the pandemic. It's sad.

This evening saw the fourth masterclass with the Huddersfield Choral Society. Each of the four classes so far have featured eminent choral conductors. Today we had Simon Halsey talking and leading us on selected movement from the Brahms Requiem. He has even staged it in Germany calling it the Human Requiem and leading choir, audience and accompanist through a large factory space. He urges his singers to sing in the original language, which is what the Leicester Bach Choir does anyway, AND to LEARN all the music by heart.

The Brahms Requiem is notable for not featuring any religious text.