Allo Allo and The Messiah

Last week started the Christmas season off for Mr P and myself. We both love going to local amateur theatre productions and our favourite is one in the village of Kibworth. Kibworth Theatre Company were performing Kibworth Allo Allo. Now it maybe you've never heard of this play - well it was a wonderful tv series. There were actually 85 episodes of Allo Allo.

Here is Renee the owner of the café in the play. Apparently he grew a moustache for the performance.

Here he is complete with moustache and with his wife Edith.

The seating area for the audience was set out as if we were customers in Renee's café.

It was a great evening, so funny and a great start to the Christmas celebrations.

Saturday was the day of the performance of Handels Messiah by the Leicester Bach Choir, whom I sing with. The afternoon was the rehearsal with the orchestra and soloists Katie Trethewey, Cathy Bell, Julian Forbes and James Oldfield.

Our conductor is Richard Laing and he is just so talented. I have no idea how he begins to conduct the choir, orchestra and soloists at the same time. The Bach Choir is very fortunate to have him. The Messiah is a long piece of music and by the time we finished the performance I was absolutely exhausted, but very happy - it had been a magical experience. It was great when the audience stood up for the Hallelujah Chorus. In fact the church was completely full - it had been a sell out. Wonderful, wonderful evening. If you like singing then I can really recommend joining a choir.