Mysteries

Sometimes it's all too much in one day.

After parting from our friends in York, Tony and I went to see the York Mystery Plays. In the Middle Ages the various town crafts and trades guilds performed the 'mysteries', which were episodes from the Bible performed on wagons. 'Mysteries' in this case refers, not to 'holy mysteries' but to the Guilds themselves, and different Guilds took responsibility for different Bible stories.

The Mysteries were revived in the twentieth century, and this year were performed in the ruins of St Mary's Abbey, using an adapted version of the medieval text. Production was done by the Theatre Royal and the extraodinary, exciting, inspiring Riding Lights Theatre Company. (We're very proud to be supporters of RLTC.) There was a cast of hundreds. Two of them were professional actors. The rest were all people from York taking part without pay, for the love of it.

The cast may not have been professional, but you wouldn't have known it. Brilliantly acted, staged, set, lit - the sound quality and all the organisation were spot on. A simple but towering set reached up to the heights of the abbey ruins. The seats are under a canopy, the stage isn't, and performances go on regardless.

One clever aspect of this was that the cast were all dressed in the style of the post-war years, a time of austerity and struggle. They had battered suitcases, hand-knitted cardigans, and ankle socks - all in contrast to the angels in the various colours of the rainbow. Adam and Eve in their innocence were portrayed by two children, and only appeared as adults when they'd eaten the apple. The Massacre of the Innocents and other scenes of oppression were terrifyingly modern. It was moving and inspiring, and visually glorious.

The children's afternoon yesterday was pretty glorious, too, largely because the weather was. Somebody lent us two paddling pools. Combined with warm water and washing up liquid, what more could anyone want? A lot of the water ended up outside of the pools instead of in, so we were using a white plastic bucket to top it up. At least, we were until somebody put a baby in the bucket. She LOVED it. And wonderful Jackie who runs the kitchen happily let us borrow whisks, bowls, a few teapots and anything else we wanted. She is a granny, and understands things like that.

Somewhere in all of this, with the sunshine, the happy mothers, and the children having the time of their lives, I think I head God splash.