Rock Tour 2 - Crowborough

We met the following morning at a church in Horsham. Sue Messenger, the Crawley organiser, felt well enough to join us, and it was great to see her. After another round of happy birthday for Felicity, we drove the short distance to Crowborough - several cars unsuccessfully trying to find the 100 Acre wood and play pooh sticks.

The venue at Crowborough was All Saints Church, right on the green in the middle of the town/village. It is a pretty ordinary looking Anglican church on the outside, but inside you can see the benefits of £2million worth of work. The original structure has trippled in size, and the extension is beautiful, and very practical, giving plenty of rooms for the cast and choir to use. There is even underfloor heating...

This is the second time we have been able to visit Crowborough. Cliff and Julie Wootton and their family have long been friends of CMM, as regular visitors to our holiday weeks at Lee Abbey, and it has been great to have them on board both for Jail Break and for Rock. They were joined in their organisation by Mark and Cheryl Farnham - an excellent team. The choir had greatly increased in size from last time, under the excellent tuition of the director of music at All Saints - Duncan Fraser.

After our team meeting we had a bit of spare time before dinner, so a few of the team had a birthday party downstairs in the hall for Felicity. This included musical statues, bumps, chairs as well as a brilliant rendition of the hokey cokey.

After a wonderful shepherd's pie, we got down to rehearsing with the choir. The choir were all situated on stage right in an L shape - this meant that they were really able to hear each other well and the blend was excellent. The instrumentalists were stage left, and the cast and dancers were performing in front of some screens hiding the communion table, font and lectern.

The performance was almost completely sold out, which was brilliant. There was also tea and coffee served at the end, which was great, because it meant there was plenty of time to chat to those that had come to watch. This unfortunately meant a late night for Brenda and Barrie in the wardrobe department, as some of the costumes were returned pretty late.

Thanks so much once again to Cliff, Julie, Mark, Cheryl and Duncan. Also thanks to All Saints for having us again. We are really looking forward to coming again on June 13th at our Rock Roadshow.