FairTrade Fortnight and Metrical Psalmody in Stoke Newington

It's FairTrade Fortnight, which means lots of tasty, guilt-free chocolate floating around, among other things. Others have laid out, far better than I can, the reasons for buying FairTrade when possible, so I won't add much to that except to say that I don't buy tea, coffee or chocolate at all if they aren't FairTrade and I try to avoid non-FT sugar, cotton and bananas.

On Sunday, 13th March the London Gallery Quire will be leading music in a service at Manor Road United Reformed Church, 102 Manor Road, N16 5NU (map). The music is that which would have been sung, played, and heard in nonconformist chapels in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and it's well worth coming along to hear. I'll be playing the serpent and even singing a bit. There'll be a retiring collection in aid of the FairTrade Foundation and the Quire, and the service will be followed by a tasty "Fairtrade Supper". Visions of chocolate-dipped bananas are floating in my head, but I bet they can come up with some pretty good main courses too.

I still haven't constructed my new, improved serpent case so I think I might be stuck with buses, trains and the like for this one, rather than the snake on a bike method of instrument transport, but I'll see how I'm feeling on the day.