Busy day

After a lovely evening catching up with old friends, Sam Smiths at £1.75 a pint and having a fabulous curry at the Kashmir plus the fire festival today was full-on at the Raise Your Banners Festival of Political Song.

Started my day taking part in a singing workshop which was okay but rather too many smart-arses trying to upstage the bloke who was running it. In this workshop I bumped into someone I used to be in the Bradford Women's Health Collective back in the 80s which was really lovely, had a mooch around the stalls and knitted my brows trying to work out what the hell some of them were on about. Lots of beautiful banners on display!

Afternoon: a 3 hour concert in Bradford Cathedral at which 15 choirs from around the country performed 2 or 3 songs each. This was the concert in which we in Sing with Pride were thinking about performing. The opening choir were Bradford Women Singers, just four women with amazing voices. Their closing song 'My Sisters are With Me' really made me think how lucky I am to have known so many wonderful, inspirational women and have had them as my friends. One of the singers, Mary, was someone else from my past and - again - when we spoke to each other it seemed like only yesterday. She told me that the daughter of one of our mutual friends has just completed her MA in Women's Studies and did her thesis on the history of the women's movement in Bradford! There was so much that went on, that I was part of, and to hear that this has been documented was incredible.

Evening: phone call from another chum who had heard I was in Bradford for the weekend and arrangements made to meet up after Rol and I went to an early evening concert with an amazing 4-woman group called 'Sisters Unlimited' singing powerful, moving, and sometimes funny songs. I could spit because I didn't remember to write down some of the lyrics and I can't find them on t'internet. There was one about what kind of world will we be leaving for future generations that went something like:

Seven generations hence
This is what we look to.
Seven generations hence
We need to bear in mind in all we do
Long view, big picture

Also appearing in that concert were a band called Seize the Day. This photo is a shot of Elizabeth, who plays fiddle (amongst many other instruments) and sings with them.

Head buzzing, toes tapping, off we skipped off for curry with my friend Elaine. Years ago I did the pregnancy test for her which was the first sign of the presence of Rory, her son who is now 23.