… that was yesterday, and being still awake at 05:30, it’s no surprise whatever that I had something of a late start this morning.

And the … errr …. 11:30 start meant that the day was over before it had really begun.

I had to be at Marianne’s at 13:00 to set up the stage for this show that started at 16:00. so there was no time to do anything else.

Setting up of the equipment didn’t take all that long and after the sound check we settled back to listen the music.

We were being treated to a concert of Haydn’s Die sieben letzten Worte unseres Erlösers am Kreuze – “The_Seven_Last_Words_of_Christ” – with three violins and a ‘cello.

As you know, it’s not my type of music but even I can recognise quality when I hear it.

I would rather have a different kind of music as you know, but as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … around here, you have to take whatever entertainment that is offered, wherever, and whenever you can find it.

The musicians were extremely professional and very well-rehearsed. They certainly gave the music a good haydn. The packed crowd in the church certainly appreciated the performance too.

It all made for an extremely enjoyable afternoon, I have to say

With having set up the sound quite quickly, it gave me a god opportunity to have a look around the church.

Of course I’ve been here before, but I’ve never had much of an opportunity to go for a good prowl around.

And I’m glad that I did, because for a modern church (built in 1888 which is new for around here), it is surprisingly interesting and there’s a lot to see.

The thing that you’ll notice about this church is that it is not aligned in the more-traditional east-west direction. And there’s a reason for this.

This isn’t the original site of the church – that can be found across the square near where the steps down to the old market place are.

The church that was there was disaffected, like all churches were, during the French Revolution. It was used as a store for saltpetre.

Saltpetre is however extremely corrosive and during a survey of the structural stability of the church some years later, they discovered that the saltpetre had eaten away all of the structure of the church and it was totally unsafe.

Not only had the church to be demolished immediately, they couldn’t rebuilt on the same site. The site where the church might be found today was the only empty plot of land in the centre of the town, and so they had to build the church around the plot, not the other way around.

Even more interesting was the fact that it was the feast of St Bravy

He was an abbott on the 8th Century and is the patron saint of the church. And with it being his feast day, his skull, one of the relics of the church, was actually on display for all to see.

This led to one of these fascinating conversations that only ever happen once in a lifetime
Marianne – “it’s a very small skull, don’t you think?”
Our hero – “it’s probably the skull of St Bravy when he was a small child”.

Radio rehearsing came next with Liz, and a lovely stuffed courgette meal later, back here to carry on working.

Printing out the notes for tomorrow produced nothing at all and as I’m too tired right now to do anything about it, I changed the font colour to blue and now I have blue notes. I’ll have to look at this black ink cartridge when I feel more like it.

Right now I need to sort out some music for our radio programmes tomorrow if I can manage to stay awake, and then I’ll be off to bed.

I just hope that I remember to wake up.