O Taste and See. the Queens' 90th Birthday Holy Trinity Southport and Liverpool Cathedral

I left the Floral Hall , without the cake I had expected, to attend a special service at Holy Trinity to mark the Queens birthday and to welcome the new Archdeacon Pete Spiers. In common with many other  places there was a rendition of Happy Birthday which morphed into the National Anthem in a special arrangement by Thomas Hewitt Jones. The choir also sang one of the anthems specially composed for the coronation by Ralph Vaughan Williams, O taste and see. Many of my readers will know one of the choristers who sang at the original performance in 1953 Generations of choristers have followed him (including me) and the young lad who sang this morning was very good.

In the afternoon I was at the Cathedral for the formal celebrations. Once again we were treated to music written for coronations including O Taste and See. The combined choir of the Liverpool Philharmonic  and the Cathedral also gave us Zadock the Priest, Walton Te Deum, Parry's I was Glad and an anthem written by Byrd for the first Queen Elizabeth.



Mayors and Lord Mayors in their red robes turned up from near and far. Google tell me that the collective noun for Mayors is a magnificence of mayors. I think that is a little pompous and self aggrandising and it is good to deflate such thoughts unless they take hold and people start believing the sycophants that are attracted to folk they (often falsely) believe are important. I think I prefer a junket of mayors. In the robing room before the service I found myself with the Bishop of Liverpool
and was delighted to discover that he shared by view that we had to guard ourselves against such temptation. I later discovered that the other person in the room was Bishop Susan Goff an Assisting Bishop in Liverpool from Virginia. It is greatly to be welcome that she and others are leading the way smashing the stain glass ceiling that has for too long excluded women from senior positions in the Church

The backs of the Bishops et al as the waited for the service to begin

After the service it was good to bump into so many people from the borough. There were people who sing with the Phil choir including Greta Morphet and the folk from Age Concern Crosby whose strawberry Afternoon Tea I am to attend soon. The young man in the top left of the photo was recently in 42nd Street and was one of the very impressive tap dancers.