Baker’s Beacon Blog – Week 28

Dear Parents,

In the vain hope of keeping our family holidays and experiences relevant for our increasingly ‘young adult’ sons, we have booked tickets for the Latitude Festival this summer. I have never been but my sister and her now grown up family say it’s great, so Brigid and I thought that with Patrick turning 18 in January, this might be one of our last opportunities.  As is now the case, we book these things and then inform the boys after as, given the choice, the answer would have almost certainly been “no thanks”. I have to say, their response was lukewarm at best but we’ve thrown some money at the ‘glamping’ element and talked up the various bands and unique atmosphere created by live music in general.  I think they are coming round to the idea…

We will see how it goes and they could have got in the mood by attending the ‘Beacon Musician of the Year’ concert with me on Tuesday night.  Kathryn, knowingly, had said to me earlier in the day that, “these boys will be amazing, just watch”, and she was absolutely right. A broad array of different musical types – classical, contemporary, rock, pop – and musical instruments – Sam’s drums, Johnny’s electric guitar, even Rory’s harp – showcased the incredibly impressive musical talent of our very best Beacon musicians. I could have awarded the prize to any of them but I was particularly delighted that Nicole Wilson, our expert judge from the Royal Academy of Music, adjudged Romy P, as the standout performance of the night. His rendition, playing and singing, of Coldplay’s ‘The Scientist’, along with a delicate and incredibly atmospheric piano piece ‘Distant Star in the Stillness’, was as good as it gets in my experience for a boy of this age in a prep school.  Great work and well done to all those that performed…who knows, maybe I’ll see you perform at Latitude Festival (with or without Patrick and Joseph) in the years to come…

Have a good weekend,

Nick

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