Sumer is icumen in - & what we’re up to now that it has
Sumer is icumen in, here from a medieval miscellany, C13¾
London, British Library, Harley MS 978, f11v
For this fabulous manuscript in general, see: https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Harley_MS_978
Many of you will recognize the phrase “sumer is icumen in”, but in case you don’t know where it comes from… it’s the earliest known notated musical round in English - dating in this incarnation (left) to the 1260s (you can hear a lovely rendition of it here).*
*[For those of you who are familiar with this choon, please be assured that we don’t hold with sharing schoolboy/Chaucerian “humour” here. We choose to think that uerteþ, as ascribed to the stag (if you know, you know…), is “cavorting”, rather than the more common (ahem) translation.
And if you’re getting flashbacks to a dim memory of something unpleasant in another sense, I apologize in advance for any nightmares related to The Wicker Man.]
Admittedly, my using this medieval treasure in an August post is a little late… but not quite as late as you may think…
Whereas to the modern eye, the title suggests that “summer is on its way”, it actually means “summer is come” - i.e. it’s here - so as long as I don’t dwell too much on what the specific bits of Nature are doing, I can stand by my choice, because weather notwithstanding, sumer is most definitely icumen in here at Wrightington Towers.
Since the end of term, Robert’s been refining our summer offerings of The Mongols and The Pre-Raphaelites (Why yes - how clever of you to ask… There is indeed still time to book for the latter! And you can, should, you wish, still join us for the last four sessions of the former ‘live’, with catch-up recordings of the first two!).*
*[Come on…. You’d have been surprised had I not said that, right…?!]
We’ve also been merrily deploying our respective research skills, in order to make our autumn offerings as fabulous as possible. We’re both very excited about how things are shaping up on that front!
We hope to be able to take a full week off between our tail-end-of-summer Short & Sweet - The Odyssey (yup - I’m being shameless again!) - and the start of autumn term proper.
In the meantime, we’ve had our first daytrip à deux since I-don’t-know-when (courtesy of my mother’s visit, when she was happy to Duffy-sit). We chose to take advantage of her goodwill to go to Pickering, where I was Robert’s “groupie” during his day school! Having only met some of the Pickering Posse for a few minutes way-back-when, it was very lovely for me to meet/see again these particular Denizens In Real Life.
When Robert’s been doing his solo research and prep, I’ve been taking advantage of the gaps in our calendar to participate in various courses and events - both online and In Real Life - in order to work out how to (a) make what we’re doing even better for you, O Denizens, and (b) find new Denizens.
We’d like, if we may, to ask for your help on (b).
More Denizens (Please)! For All Branches of Knowledge [see what I did there…?]
aka: Alexander Rodchenko, Books (Please)! In All Branches of Knowledge, 1924. Here from: https://www.theguardian.com/arts/gallery/2008/jan/31/art.photography
First, would you be willing, please, to help us to spread the Wright History “word” via a flyer or two?
Several of you have offered to print a poster/flyer on a notice board in your local library/arts centre/parish church notice board/community venue. We now have an A5 flyer which can be emailed, and we’d be really grateful were any of you willing and able to do that. If you are, please mail me for a copy of it and our heartfelt gratitude!
Secondly, I’m biting the social media bullet again. As some of you know, we dabbled with Facebook some time ago, but had to pull back because I had to focus on more immediately pressing things, and as all of our interactions were with people already on our mailing list, I knew that I was still getting all the necessary information to you all! But I now have time to Have Another Go at it and, hopefully, find some new people as well! I know that many of you avoid Facebook like the plague (and I totally understand that!), but for those of you who don’t… we’re here.
We’d be really grateful if you’d consider doing any of the following:
Please could you follow us, if you’re not already doing so?
If you have time and inclination, a brief review would be fabulous.
Similarly, if you know of any friends/groups who may be interested in what we do, it would be super if you’d recommend us to them.
I’m still working out how to get the Facebook gods to notice us and help us to spread the word, but each of these three things would help us to become a little bit more visible to them!
On a very different social media front, I’m also setting up a profile on LinkedIn. My suspicion is that very few who may be interested in our courses willingly frequent LinkedIn, but I’d love to be proven wrong! If you do still visit this forum, you’ll find us here. Do please give us a follow or make a connection!
I’m going to work on getting us all shiny and interesting on both media over the coming weeks, and any help you’re able to offer in making us look still more interesting would be most welcome.
I’m also about to plunge into the abyss of YouTube, but that’s a little further down the line. Watch this space for news on that…!
In the meantime, thank you in advance for any help you can give us on spreading the Wright History Word!
Finally, however your sumer is icumen in so far, we hope that you’re having a lovely one!