Green Mist
8 April

On Sunday afternoon, I was driving up the A6 along the Wye valley from Bakewell to Buxton when I suddenly became aware of the green mist.

It's that time of year when the buds on the trees burst but aren't yet into leaf. And it creates a tangible green mist over the landscape.

I'd spent the weekend at a Quaker Conference in a place called Swanwick. I'd attended sessions on Quaker Prison Ministry, the Peace Tax and Inter-faith work. I'd listened to talks about Quaker Peace and Social Witness work at the United Nations. I'd talked with a number of Friends about themselves and their work.

And it had been a good time.

The title of the conference had been Why do we do what we do? I'd heard a number of different things within that title. I'd heard What is our motivation?; I'd heard What is the reason behind our methodology (and what makes it special)?; and I'd heard a cry of despair as in What are we doing all this for?. In the event, the weekend was mostly taken up with the easier task of exploring just what we do.

And that's quite a lot.

And one of the things that became quite apparent is that Quakers are very bad at telling each other about the work that they do let alone telling the rest of the world. It's as though, being afraid of boasting, they move to the opposite end of the spectrum and refuse to discuss their work at all. Maybe they need a code of Quaker marketing practice.

Only one talk really addressed some of my expectations and that was given by Rachel Barker, a young Friend working in the UN in Geneva. She underlined some of the reasons behind the methodology, creating a quiet, non-judgemental space for people of differing opinions to talk without risk. She also underlined some of the frustrations of working inside systems, the feeling of enormous effort for very modest gains.

Another feature of the weekend was the number of people attending who had only recently come to Quakers. Apparently, this had been a positive suggestion by the organising committee and it certainly affected the tone of the conference in a very positive way.

Whilst I was off Quaking, Ross too was about his business at his parents'. He was being fitted for his suit for his sister's wedding in July which we shall both be attending. And he was picking up jobs like creating the seating plans for the wedding breakfast.

His dad and his brother, Sam, came to collect him on the Friday evening. Sam has grown up substantially since I last saw him over a year ago. He now bears a passing facial resemblance to Gael García Bernal of Bad Education fame. Someone, though not me, will take advantage of that at some point.

The week at work had its ups and downs. There is still no news as to what work we shall be doing as Ambition:IT comes to an end. There is still no official confirmation of the fact that Nacro are pulling out at the end of the month. On Tuesday, I engineered someone's departure. It was for the best; they should never have been on the Project in the first place and were never going to get a job in IT. On Thursday, I sat in on two meetings which sacked people from the project and organised another three where I gave people final warnings. Such is the lot of the co-ordinator.

In a tailpiece to the week, I headed off into town after work for a Thursday night performance of Alban Berg's Wozzeck given by Welsh National Opera. Wozzeck is not an easy piece of listening by any means. Unlike my favourite nineteenth century works, it is not something which you slip onto the CD player and allow to play away in the background - but then neither are the works of Benjamin Britten and Leos Janácek which I love so well.

I've previously attended two other performances; January 1984 with the Royal Opera under Christoph von Dohnányi (with the likes of Anja Silja, José van Dam, Donald McIntyre and James King among the singers) and May 1993 with Opera North under Paul Daniel in a production by Deborah Walker given in English. I'll come clean straight away and say that either of those two performances were better than the one I saw last night.

What went wrong? Well, it was a mistake to give the piece in the original German. The audience spent most of the time intent on catching the quick fire dialogue from the surtitles. When they broke down briefly, then level of attention in the theatre went up dramatically. It was also a mistake to present the work in a surrealist manner. Deborah Warner's production was sparingly realist in its intent and was much more heart-rending. Richard Jones went for a clever approach which simply detracted from what the audience was hearing.

The cast probably did their best, Christopher Purves clocked up another good performance in the title rôle, and Anthony Negus kept the musical side of things under control but I really couldn't have cared less.