today I went to buxton. buxton is called the 'cultural capital of the peaks', mainly, as far as I can tell, because it has buildings that aren't pubs. an art gallery, a small university and historic spa-related structures, to be exact. also a market. and pubs. but the highlight of my day, and the focus of my energies this evening, is the opera house.


buxton has an opera house. and every summer, this opera house houses the biggest gilbert and sullivan festival in the united kingdom. it is a very exciting thing for a bishop to find herself so close to such a wealth of gilbert and sullivan, because a bishop who doesn't love this sort of thing is no more a bishop than is a bishop who doesn't love rogers and hammerstein. these things are encoded into my DNA.


when the bishop cousins find themselves in the same city, which tends to be saint john, and under the same roof, which tends to be our grandparents', the nine of us troop down to the basement and work our way through one or more of the pirates of penzance, oklahoma, the mikado, the king and I, etc., with a bit of my fair lady thrown in for variety. at the age of seven, I had seen south pacific as least as many times as I'd seen cinderella, I believed that kevin kline was a real pirate king and I ranked 'the lord high executioner' right up there with 'under the sea' on my list of very favouritest songs (along with the queen of the night aria, but that's another story).


now I have tickets to see the mikado in mid-august. the mikado with irish actors - ought to be interesting! have I mentioned how much I love living in england?