York Youth Mysteries, the chorister and Emma returns

1. In town today I worked as a steward for the York Youth Mysteries event. I was given a ghastly and deffo uncool fluorescent yellow hi-viz T shirt. I have put a difficult image of it here on my blog...not because it was a beautiful thing, but just in the cause of openness...My post was in Memorial Gardens below the Royal York Hotel which is beside the station. I walked down there with my partner steward holding a placard and feeling very conspicuous. The York Youth Mysteries was a series of performances, plays, singing, dance, installations etc put together by various Youth Theatre and Arts groups. Its a revisionary and youthful perspective on the traditional Mysteries which have been performed here for hundreds of years. The play I was stewarding was The Song of Solomon performed by actors from the Upstage Centre Youth Theatre and directed by Dan Bye. It began with Sheba and Ruth talking about Solomon in the gardens, the actors moved off toward the hotel, still talking in character, with the audience walking along with them. When the group arrived at the hotel, which is grand in a gentle sort of way, the play carries on through the reception (random guests looking alarmed/bemused by this strange interaction) and up the grand staircase to Room 101. We followed the actors into the luxurious hotel suite which looks as if it has seen a night of passion, clothes and empty bottles of drink lying about and a dishevelled bed. The view from the window is of the Minster towers. Solomon emerges from the bathroom in his dressing gown surprised that Sheba is there with her friend and angry with her and is followed by his ghost brother. The four actors end the piece by singing "Hallelujah", the Leonard Cohen song but in the style of Jeff Buckley version. I moistened. In one performance a woman actually shed tears...I have to say I was blown too.

2. In the course of my duties I met some really interesting people. I handed out leaflets and talked to passers by about the event in general. A young man turned up, an actor but not part of this particular event, there to see a performance. We got talking, it seemed he had a photographic memory and was preparing to play the part of Capulet in a new production of Romeo and Juliet in two weeks time, but was yet to learn his lines...He had the most winning smile. It turned out that he had just finished the last of his GCSE's yesterday (so he was disarmingly young but didn't seem that way) and that he had been a chorister at the Minster along with the bloke who played Solomon in the play. The young man was charming and articulate and friendly in a genuinely encouraging manner. I wish him very well and this man is definitely on the list of The Real Human Beings.

3. The best beautiful thing today was the return (thanks to a heroic effort by Allan to collect her by car today) of our favourite, youngest daughter Emma from her final first year term at Oxford. She look as so often she does, radiant and fabulous. We will have the next week together to sort out her stuff, do the washing and ironing and prepare for her next adventure which is to be in Barcelona. It is a treat and a whirlwind experience having her home again. The dust in her room has accumulated and settled, just as she seems to like it. I have resisted the cleaning fairy in me, which anyone who knows me will agree is a feat of some unusual measure. We had a lovely supper at the Indian Lounge (its officially developed into a habit) and then home to lounge around and watch more Dexter from the DVD I borrowed from the library this week. I fell asleep predictably in the slightest Cobra-fueled haze and all was well with the world.