Tag: singing

Photo of Port of Bristol Sea Shanty Crew in front of a ship
Posted in Writing

Set Sail for St Mary’s

Posted on by Debbie Young

This week on my blog, I’m looking forward to a jolly local event at my parish church, St Mary’s Hawkesbury. The active community life in my home village of Hawkesbury Upton provides me with an endless supply of story ideas for my light-hearted, humorous fiction set in the Cotswolds.  

When Colin Dixon told me he’d booked the Port of Bristol Shanty Crew to sing at Church Farm House on Sunday 23rd July as part of the Friends of St Mary’s Summer Weekend, my first thought was, “But Hawkesbury is landlocked”.

My second thought was, “What exactly is a sea shanty anyway?”

Continue reading “Set Sail for St Mary’s” →

through the gate to St Mary's Tetbury by night
Posted in Events, Family, Personal life

Just Keep Singing

Posted on by Debbie Young

Tight writing deadlines in the last few months have meant I’ve got way behind on my blog – so please excuse me if I now have a quick catch-up to shoehorn in two articles I wrote for the Tetbury Advertiser in November and December, before I run out of 2022! This article was written for the November 2022 issue of the Tetbury Advertiser. I’ll post the December one tomorrow.

A recent free concert at St Mary’s, Tetbury by the St Cecilia’s Singers provided a lightning tour of four hundred years of Anglican choral music, from Tallis to Tavener. Listening to the music, I gazed up at the soaring windows and ceiling, remembering from school history lessons that Gothic architecture was designed to draw the eye heavenward. St Mary’s high box pews reminded me, as box pews always do, of earthly coffins. Memento mori all round, then.

Continue reading “Just Keep Singing” →