Just because you can barely see them doesn’t mean the benches aren’t there. Morris dancers at Ripon Theatre Festival needed to take the weight off their feet from time to time, and their dresses and general Festival clutter seem to cover from view the benches they used pretty effectively.
For Jude’s Bench Challenge.
Ripon Theatre Festival this last weekend: and Saturday and Sunday brought street performances and spectacles all over town. Best of all was that despite the incessant rain and intermittent thunder we were threatened with, not a drop fell while we were all out and about enjoying ourselves (and performing too, in the case of choirs like mine). But. What a cheek! Hardly anyone was decked out in red! I’m relying on photos from previous years to plug the Red Gap.
For Becky’s #Simply Red.
It was Ripon’s third Theatre Festival last week, and the weekend was to be given over to the streets and the park for theatre-in-the-street. The first two festivals had been sunny, warm, and everything good the weather could offer. Last weekend’s forecast was unremittingly vile. Rain, wind, thunder … everything you don’t want. Ripon’s luck had run out.
Except it hadn’t. Apart from one short sharp shower in the middle of Sunday, the weather was – sunny, warm enough, and everything anyone could have wished for.
Come and have a stroll. We could join Struzzo the ostrich and Maxim as they wander round the park.
Kit and Caboodle told a good yarn from their laden mule- cart. It was nicely illustrated by a moving picture show, transcribed onto an apparently unending scroll of paper unfurling before our eyes. And with added paper puppets.
We could watch the swirling-skirted clog-dancers rhythmically and musically clickety clacking their clogs.
Or we could wait for a train with the Rhubarb Theatre and their Three Suitcases as they try to set off on holiday. We’d have a long wait. Ripon doesn’t have a station.
Oh, hang on! There’s plenty going on near the Market Square too…. such as Fireman Dave …
… I want to catch the Bachelors of Paradise …
… and Logy on Fire, who does astonishing feats of acrobatics and balance with batches of discarded cigar boxes …
And there’s so much more. I only managed to see Four Hundred Roses, whom I photographed here, as they wandered up Kirkgate between performances.
I wish you could have been actually – rather than virtually – there too. Maybe next year?
How to summarise 2022 in just a few photos? That’s what the Lens-Artist Challenge demands of us this week. What makes it so hard is that a memory is invested in every photo. My own favourite photos may demonstrate no particular skill, but can transport me – and not you – straight back to a treasured moment. Ah well, let’s give it a go, and see what I can find that we can all enjoy.
Let’s book-end the year with ordinary pleasures: Fountains Abbey in springtime, and in late autumn…
Let’s remember summer with – here – an extraordinary sight: Scar House Reservoir, almost unable to do its job of providing water.
Let’s have a look at happy moments: Ripon’s first Theatre Festival took to the streets, Masham’s annual Sheep Fair returned after a couple of years’ Covid-hiatus. And my family enjoys one of life’s simpler pleasures: curling up with a good book.
Memorable May: a fantastic few days in the Balkans: North Macedonia, Albania and Greece, to enjoy its wildlife. A very few photos stand in for the whole experience of this area, still in many ways rooted in its traditional past.
Shepherds on the move all day and every day. leading their sheep and goats in quest of pasturage.
… and not forgetting the stars of the show: peacocks at Lake Ohrid.
The header image shows Lake Prespa, and the island of Agios Achillios, where we spent a few days.
In Catalonia with The Barcelona Branch of the family, we had an unforgettable trip to what may be The World’s Best Museum, CosmoCaixa, Barcelona.
We’ll finish off with Christmas lights at Eltham Palace. It was so cold, no wonder my fingers slipped!
Have I really not taken a photograph since last Sunday? Apparently not. But my last snapshot is a good souvenir. It’s the final event in Ripon’s first Theatre Festival, and here we all are, all 500 of us, at Fountains Abbey, waiting for Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream played by the spirited and energetic Illyria to begin.
For Brian’s Last on the Card challenge, I’m only supposed you show my last photo, and without commentary at that, but why shouldn’t I give you a flavour of Saturday in the Market Square, with its bands, its jugglers, its stilt walkers, its slapstick entertainers?
My choir was part of the Fringe too, and sang a cappella at the bandstand in the Spa Gardens bright and early on the Saturday. But I couldn’t take a photo and sing too. You can take multi-tasking too far.
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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