This isn’t really related to music, but someone reading it may be able to help.
Every year I buy a calendar with photographs of British Cathedrals. The format has varied – perhaps they haven’t all been produced by the same publisher – but it’s often been called ‘Cathedrals and Greater Churches of Britain’. I like to buy it when singing in a Cathedral with a visiting choir, along with Christmas cards depicting the Cathedral, so I can support it.
This year I drew a blank. Neither of the Cathedrals I sang at in the summer (York and Chester) were selling such a calendar for 2006. When I went to Exeter in October I found a Cathedrals calendar on sale but it was illustrated with paintings and I really wanted photographs. Wells and Bath Abbey don’t sell it and I haven’t found one on sale over the internet.
So if anyone has seen such a calendar on sale, especially if there are still copies on sale now, I’d be interested to know! There’s a barren expanse of kitchen wall where it usually hangs.
We haven’t had one at LSM this year (SCD normally runs a poll between Cathedrals and Railways as a subject for the Choir Room calendar), but this year the choice was Railways or Rome (the latter predictably won).
But I will ask her whether she saw one on offer at any of the cathedrals she frequents, and keep an eye out around the remaining calendar stock of shops I’m in.
I posed this question on Yahoo’s lay-clerks email list, and I heard that various other cathedral-heads had tried and failed to get the calendar this year. So I conclude with some regret that there really isn’t a British Cathedrals calendar for 2006 with photos.
(18 Jan: I was proved wrong! A couple of other people told me Salmon have an ‘English Cathedrals’ calendar for 2006 with photos. I have ordered and received a copy via Amazon. ISBN: 1902842960)