Community

GIVING BACK

Harriet McKay, Marketing Manager, Sherborne School

Every member of Sherborne’s community is valued, and the School not only acknowledges School-wide news and achievements but also the personal challenges, successes and determination of its individuals. This is certainly the case of Antony Howard. Antony is employed by Amiri Construction Limited and operates the barrier gate next to the Sports Centre, off Acreman Street, ensuring members of our community are kept safe all day, every day. The Sports Centre is currently being remodelled and expanded and will be a hive of building activity until its re-launch in 2023.

When Antony has a spare moment, in between the demands of his day, he can be found making stunning wooden planters, made using the left-over pallets from the Sports Centre build. It came to light that these are being built and sold by Antony to raise money for a charity close to his heart.

On the 9th July 2019 Antony was cycling home when he was involved in a terrible accident, sustaining a serious bleed to the brain. He was taken to Yeovil Hospital where complications began and it was clear he would need further treatment and more significant medical expertise. After being transferred to Southmead Hospital, Bristol, Antony underwent a life-saving operation involving removing part of his skull, which was later re-grafted. He was then placed in their ICU department and received 1:1 care around the clock, remaining there for several weeks before being moved to Southmead’s neurological ward.

By October Antony was lucky enough to be given a place at the Dene Barton rehabilitation centre near Taunton. It was here they focused on physiotherapy, counselling and basic life skills. Antony loves playing his guitar and Dene Barton encouraged him to play and to take part in music therapy. He was able to return home for a night or a weekend at a time to see his family, until he was eventually able to return home on a permanent basis at the end of November 2019.

Antony and his family are incredibly thankful and indebted to the member of the public who found him on the day of his accident and to Southmead, for saving his life. As quoted by Antony’s daughter, Samantha ‘Dene Barton was such an important part of his journey and the care that both Southmead and Dene Barton provided not just for Dad but for our family was above and beyond. We truly could not have done this without them, as all of the staff provided care, kindness and compassion in the best way that the NHS does. They are all heroes and we can never thank them enough.’

Antony continues to make the wooden planters at Sherborne School. They come in a range of sizes and can be purchased with or without plants/liners. They cost between £5 - £25 and can be made to order. Just pop by to see Antony at the Sports Centre entrance to place your order – he would be delighted to see you. Amiri Construction Limited have also kindly said they would double any amount that Antony raises for the charity.

Antony and his family have raised £460 to date for the Neurology Department at Southmead Hospital through selling his planters and completing fun runs. They are planning further fundraising activities for both Southmead and the incredible Dene Barton rehabilitation centre.

EVERYTHING CHANGES YET NOTHING CHANGES

Mark Strachan BEM, Founder, Choir of the Earth

Fauré’s Requiem was premiered in 1888 and has been performed countless times across the world since then. I have the pleasure of singing in the choir for a performance at Sherborne Abbey on Wednesday 16th February conducted by John Jenkins, Musical Director of Sherborne Girls School.

The music has not changed since 1888 and I can imagine that it will still be performed regularly in another 100 years. The music is so lovely and is always the same. So, it seems that nothing has changed.

Yet, everything has changed. Back in 1888, you had to go to the cathedral or church to hear it and when it was over, there was no way of hearing it all again. You just had to wait until it came round again. Then along came the ‘phonograph’ and we could at last hear recordings. Then a 33rpm LP, then a cassette, then a CD and now Spotify. And we can now listen to many different recordings as many times as we like.

So, whilst the music remains exactly the same, the way we listen and enjoy music has changed beyond all recognition. And there is much more change to come.

When the pandemic hit us in March 2020, I started an online choir, thinking we would be joined by a few people from the Sherborne area. We decided to teach the entire Messiah online and, to our great surprise, 3,600 people from 35 countries joined us and we performed it online on 31st May 2020 with coverage on international news channels.

Since then, we have learned and performed the Mozart Requiem, Bach’s St. John Passion, Mahler’s Second Symphony, Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, The Beatles, ABBA, jazz pieces and Les Misérables. Oh and Fauré’s Requiem. Of course.

It works like this: the conductor teaches everyone at home using streaming technology, not Zoom. Zoom is wonderful but impossible to use for singers wanting to sing at the same time. We use streaming so that the conductor can be seen and heard clearly in thousands of homes at the same time. The music is taught in separate soprano, alto, tenor and bass 60-minute sessions over several weeks. At the end of this, we invite everyone to sing their own part into their mobile phone and email this to us. We then combine all the voices in the recording studio to create the ‘choir’. Finally, we play

back the result to the choir in a live-streamed concert.

The results are amazing. Nigel Short of the acclaimed choir Tenebrae, who taught us Thomas Tallis’ Spem in Alium with over 2,000 voices, said, ‘Professional choirs had better watch out.’

We have been asked for our music to be played at funerals, weddings and our version of Quanta Quanta was featured on Desert Island Discs.

Why sing from home? It’s true to say it’s not the same as a live concert in Sherborne Abbey. There are though many of us who are worried about the virus, or unable to attend rehearsals for personal reasons. There is no need to be on time and you can watch when you wish and as many times as you wish – you can even have a glass of wine or two during the rehearsal! We cover a lot more music – over 40 pieces of music in the last 18 months and we are one large choral family. And because we do everything from home, we can tackle music which would rarely be performed in Sherborne Abbey.

Take Mahler’s 8th Symphony. It needs huge orchestral forces, two choirs, seven soloists and a children’s choir. Now while the Abbey is large, I can see significant Health and Safety issues staging this music there. Yet we at Choir of the Earth are doing Mahler 8. With over 1,000 voices from over 35 countries, seven soloists, an entire orchestra and a children’s choir recorded in Mexico, we have learned every note from home and not one performer met another throughout the entire process.

One of our Presidents is Marina Mahler, the composer’s granddaughter, and she is so thrilled to see her grandfather’s music played in this new way by thousands of people from all over the world.

So, nothing has changed – and yet everything has changed. The music is still the same whilst the way we enjoy the music has changed beyond all recognition.

If Fauré was told that hundreds of people would flock to Sherborne Abbey on 16th February to hear his Requiem, he would be pleased and he would nod his head in satisfaction of another successful concert. If, however, you told him that thousands of people from all over the world would learn and record his Requiem to the highest standard and perform it together whilst never meeting, he would surely stare at you with a sense of disbelief and think you were a little mad.

We are told that the only constant in life is change. You have just read about the change coming to traditional choral singing.

choiroftheearth.com

___________________________________________ Wednesday 16th February 7.30pm Choral Society Concert – Fauré’s Requiem Sherborne Abbey. Tickets £15, £12 and £10, available from Sherborne School reception on 01935 812249 or email tickets@sherborne.org

OUR MAN IN WESTMINSTER

Chris Loder MP

It has been a long while since I have discussed Coronavirus in the Sherborne Times, but as a number of important ethical decisions have taken place, or are near, I’d like to share with you some insights from the decisions we make that cause much conversation and debate. My primary concern is to make sure that, as the representative of West Dorset, my voice and vote best reflect our needs and address the issues we face at a given time in rural Dorset.

At the end of last year we had three votes in Parliament concerning restrictions. Face masks in public places, mandatory vaccinations for NHS staff and vaccine ‘passports’. There will undoubtedly be more soon and of course, the Coronavirus Act 2020 has a two year ‘sunset’ clause which means it will expire on 23rd March 2022 and we will need to decide whether it should cease to have effect or whether it should be renewed. I would say 90% of the time when we talk about Covid, we are concerned with the direct health implications of the virus. It is a frustration of mine that the wider health and economic situation is not more widely shared, particularly with what the Government has to say about it.

I think we need to be careful of the emerging narrative of treating someone differently because they have not been vaccinated. I have been fully

Image: Len Copeland

vaccinated and I encourage everyone to be, but there are valid reasons why some people are not, or cannot be vaccinated, and as we busily go about determining someone else’s vaccination status and then form our own view on that person, we need to take care because it is the very beginning of a two-tier society emerging. What difference does it make to me if someone is not vaccinated? It is an important question to ask ourselves. There are quite a few people who have been in touch in recent times to say that they are worried that others in the supermarket or other spaces are not vaccinated, and I can sympathise with the concern that can cause. The vaccine offers very good levels of protection from catching the virus in those who have received it, and the more people who have the vaccine in a given population, the fewer places the virus has to go thus reducing the net spread. Given that 90.4%, 83% and 62% of people in the UK at the time of writing have had their first, second and third doses respectively, we are in a good position. The societal cost of indirectly forcing people into vaccination through passports outweighs, to my mind, the benefit of raising vaccine uptake by quasi-obligation. Doing so corrodes the long-held principle of informed consent in medicine, which is not a step I am willing to take in this scenario.

There was huge concern at the end of last year that Omicron would see our hospitals overwhelmed but that thankfully did not become a reality. This is mainly because most people have been sensible and taken responsibility for themselves, but also because the Omicron symptoms, in general, have been mild compared with other variants. Paradoxically, there is a bonus – and that is because Omicron is so transmissible, the Delta variant appears to have been driven down and our doctors and nurses are treating patients with much less aggressive symptoms.

The UK Health Security Agency published a report in December which showed in the week before Christmas there were around 8,000 people in hospital with Covid. However, only 29% were being treated primarily for Covid, which meant that 5,680 were there first and foremost for another reason. It is an important difference to fully understand when we hear statistics which might paint a contrasting picture.

After months of campaigning, the NHS re-opened the Yeatman’s MIU earlier last year, only for it to close again just after Christmas. The real difficulty we face with our hospitals here in Dorset at the moment is that there is a considerable number of staff off work – a similar challenge experienced within social care too. Locally, NHS staff pressures are considerable and so it is startling to see that possibly more than 30,000 people on the NHS and social care frontlines could quit or be dismissed by April 2022 on the basis of refusing vaccination. When you simultaneously see that some people in our community are waiting for five or so hours for an ambulance, requiring me to have to lobby behind the scenes for military support, and the Yeatman Hospital MIU has just closed again due to staff shortage, could I really in good conscience vote for a mandatory vaccination policy that could see over 30,000 frontline workers forced to leave their posts on top of the already pressing shortages and their impacts? The answer is no.

The Coronavirus Act is due for review – possibly renewal – later next month. I wonder if you have a view about that and if you do, please do share it with me at hello@chrisloder.co.uk

chrisloder.co.uk

Family Business:

An Intimate History of John Lewis & the Partnership A TALK WITH THE AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR VICTORIA GLENDINNING

Friday 25th February 7pm Digby Memorial Hall, Digby Road, Sherborne Tickets £9 members £10 non-members available via www.sherborneliterarysociety.com/events and Winstone’s Books