Well... the weather outside is frightful!

Alderney Harbour looking more like an Arctic Harbour 

Safe to say, it's been an unusual start to the 2018 Guernsey Eisteddfod! Due to 'The Beast from the East', and Storm Emma, Guernsey was bombarded with snow which lead to school closures and massive disruption to travel. For the first time in my memory, the opening day of the festival was postponed, with the afternoon session being moved to Monday morning, and the evening sessions classes being split across the rest of the week. This isn't the first time that snow has caused disruption to the Guernsey Eisteddfod - in 2013, the Drama section was badly affected by a huge blizzard which swept through the islands that year, which lead to the cancellation of two days of the festival. Thankfully, because this years snow days have hit at the start of the festival, the music section committee have managed to come up with a few solutions which mean that the classes and performances can go ahead on different days and times.

Mike appears to be singing in the snow instead
of the rain for a change!

However it's not just the festival schedule that's been affected: many groups have had their rehearsals disrupted by the adverse weather conditions - dangerous icy roads have made it unsafe for choirs to get together to rehearse, for students to get to their music lessons (I actually did a Facetime singing lesson for a student), and in the case of my choir The Accidentals, our musical director (my mother!) got stuck in the island of Alderney, which has been hit even worse by the snow storm, after flying over to rehearse Alderney Voices on Monday. It's also unlikely one of our basses will get back from the UK, as he's studying in Edinburgh. We managed to scrape together a rehearsal on Wednesday night between the snow days, but I sense that other groups might not have been so lucky. Hopefully the disruptive weather hasn't caused too much damage, and not too many people to decide to pull out of performing over the next few days.

If all goes according to the plan, hopefully the Music Eisteddfod 2018 will kick off with the morning session on Friday 2nd March - if in doubt, I urge everyone to check out the Guernsey Eisteddfod Facebook Page for the most up to date information, particularly if any of your classes (or your child's) were cancelled due to the weather.

Wrap up warm everyone, and see you when we finally start!