Happy Holidays!
- Philip Beevers
- Dec 14, 2019
- 2 min read
Well, faithful reader, the holiday season is well and truly upon us. It's Christmas, and it shows. Houses are sprouting lights and front garden displays, shops are getting spruced up, and the weather is... well... not like the kind of Christmas we're used to.
Anyway, last weekend we had a couple of holiday appointments to attend. Firstly, Helen was performing in the holiday concert of the Mid-Peninsula Recorder Orchestra. You know, I don't think I've ever seen a recorder orchestra perform before, and let me tell you, it's an experience. It's... piercing is perhaps the best adjective I can find. The MPRO is about 30 people in total, playing recorders of all sizes, from the sopranino right down to the contrabass. There's even a few crumhorns that guest on a few pieces, and they're backed up by viola de gamba and chamber organ or harpsichord. Yes folks, these people take their early music surprisingly seriously. This was a concert comprised almost entirely of music written before the city of Palo Alto was even founded.
We both enjoyed the concert a lot, for entirely different reasons. But that wasn't the end of the holiday-themed fun: that evening, we headed off to Mountain View for some fun with the Caltrain Holiday Train!
Something that keeps happening on our US adventure so far is that Helen drags me out to an event I think I'll dislike, and it ends up being a lot of fun. That's the pattern that the holiday train slotted into.
As we waited at the station, charity helpers handed out light sticks:
Before long, the station area filled up with parents and children, and we heard the sound of the train approaching. This was really well done - the train processed slowly up the platform, with a happy elf driving, and lots of festive lights on the front and the side:
Once the train had pulled into the station, the flatbed wagon became a stage for a charity choir and brass band to serenade us, whilst snow machines sprayed foamy snow over the assembled masses, and Santa and others wandered up and down providing selfie opportunities.
Before long it was time for the train to move on down the line; it stops for about 20 minutes at some of the larger stops on the route. So we said goodbye to Santa, the train pulled out in its usual fanfare of horns, and we were left to wander off and get some dinner in Mountain View.
This was just good, silly fun. As the dude behind me had it, "That's a different Santa!". Interestingly, we both felt that it wasn't really cold enough for Christmas, and it was funny to see the foamy snow in the air with the temperature around 14 or 15 degrees centigrade.
We're flying back to the UK again next week - stay tuned for more Christmas experiences!
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