Un chose lumiere de rotation

This evening Kerry, Amy, Evan, and I went to the switching on of the Huddersfield Christmas lights. Or rather we didn’t, as we weren’t able to get out of the door in time to catch the ceremony. I’d forgotten just how much having a baby that needs feeding every couple of hours can mess with your scheduling. As soon as that distinctive “give me milk now” cry kicks in you can just about kiss the next half hour or so goodbye. Not even the plant from The Little Shop of Horrors has a more commanding “FEED ME!”

We did manage to see the main event however, a performance by Transe Express – a group of artists who describe their show as follows:

Imagine trestle stages in the middle of a crowd, weak from curiosity. Perched on their stages, embryos of the bell, the Maudits parade, each in his own universe. They tempt, by means of their exploits, to make their obsession tangible: time passes, each interval marked by the toll of the bell… till the moment of happiness when the Maudits come together and lift, slowly into the airs to join eternity, the space of an instant.

Yes. They are French.

It started off rather slowly with a load of mimes hanging off ropes ringing bells and occasionally shouting incoherently. You could almost hear the crowd mentally composing strong letters to the local paper about the waste of taxpayers money. Things got a bit more interesting when they all clambered onto a giant chandelier and were hoisted 200 feet into the air. The whole thing was fairly good, although a little pretentious. It was also rather sinister, which I’m not sure is the most Christmassy of atmospheres to create, but still.

By far the most exciting part of the evening for Amy was the purchase of a very nifty little spinny lighty thing; basically a mini-fan with LED’s attached to its blades. She did manage to get her hair caught in it, needing to be extracted by a subtle combination of a surgeon’s precision and brute force, but even that wasn’t enough to dull the shine of its appeal. At one point she turned round and looked up at us with hope in her eyes; “Can I take this home with me when we’ve finished Mummy and Daddy?” she asked. The look on her face when we told her she could was worth sitting through a hundred French mime artists for.