Each year hundreds of people queue day and night in the cold to experience the magic of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols in King's College Chapel. At the head of the queue this year is Tim Wotherspoon who lives in Cottenham and studied maths at Cambridge. He is spending five nights on a camp bed on the cobbles to ensure his seat on Christmas Eve.
Each year hundreds of people queue day and night in the cold to experience the magic of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols in King's College Chapel. At the head of the queue this year is Tim Wotherspoon who lives in Cottenham and studied maths at Cambridge. He is spending five nights on a camp bed on the cobbles to ensure his seat on Christmas Eve.
It’s as chilly and as uncomfortable as Occupy London. But the agenda is somewhat different and it will all be over on Christmas Eve when the first few notes of Once in Royal David’s City soar into the semi-darkness of one of the world’s most famous chapels. Each year up to 600 people queue for several days outside King’s College in Cambridge to hear the sublime music of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from seats inside its 440-year old chapel. The candle-lit service, first introduced in 1918, is relayed live by the BBC to millions all over the world.
Tim Wotherspoon was the first person to arrive this year, taking possession of a corner of damp cobbled space close to the great wooden doors of the college on King’s Parade. Tim lives in Cottenham, a village just north of Cambridge, and studied maths at Robinson College in the early 1980s. Having opted out of life in London, he is restoring a 17th century pub and is a councillor for South Cambridgeshire District Council.
When Tim cycled to Cambridge on Monday to unroll his sleeping bag, he was advised by the college porters that he was far too early. But he was determined to spend five nights at the head of the queue to ensure a place in his favourite spot inside the chapel. It will be his third time of attending the service, which is open to the public but cannot be booked. “I really hate Christmas – the tinsel, the glitter, Father Christmas, the reindeer and all that. For me Christmas is the service at King’s whether I’m here or listening on my radio. I’m a lapsed church-goer but I love the sense of tradition.”
Apart from his black hat, everything Tim has with him is colour-coded in shades of blue – right down to his tooth brush. “It’s a clue to my political beliefs but also a bit of fun,” he says. He is reading the New Cambridge Paragraph Bible with the Apocrypha (Cambridge University Press) to while away the hours and celebrate the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible.
“I’ve got as far as the Book of Joshua and it’s wonderful to be absorbing it in the medieval setting of Cambridge, feeling the daily rhythm of the city from the birds singing just before dawn though to the night sounds of the Corpus Christi clock ticking and the sign of the National Trust shop gently creaking. The Book of Numbers, which everyone says is so boring with all the x begat y business, has some passages I can only describe as mind-blowing. Take Chapter 6, verses 24-26: ‘The Lord bless thee, and keep thee: the Lord make his face shine upon thee: the Lord lift his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace’.”
At 7.30 pm on Wednesday Ian de Massini arrived to set up his green camp bed next to Tim’s blue one. Ian has attended the service at King’s every year bar one since 1977. He studied music at King’s and is a composer, choir director and pianist. A few years after graduating he returned to Cambridge and became a member of the Classic Buskers (formerly the Cambridge Buskers) who play all over the world. He is also director of the Cambridge Voices.
“Tim and I have worked out that the first time he came to the Nine Lessons and Carols in 1981 we were both Cambridge students and I was singing in the King’s College Choir. Like Tim, I dislike all the razzamatazz of Christmas – King’s is Christmas for me,” says Ian. “The queue has a life of its own – each year we catch up with each other’s lives and as people gather we start to sing carols to keep our spirits up. When the service begins, the stained glass windows are ablaze with light. As the sun goes down, the colour gradually drains from them and the candlelight takes over. It’s pure magic.”
On Thursday afternoon Tim and Ian were chatting to the trickle of people joining them with rugs and chairs. “There’s Charles from Texas, Thomas from Zurich, and Natalia from Carolina,” says Ian. “It’s great to see them all.” By Saturday mid-morning the queue will be lengthy and there will be mounting anxiety among latecomers about who will get into the chapel.
But it’s a highly civilised line, discreetly overseen by the King’s porters, and everyone gets a chance to slip away from their places to eat, wash and visit the nearest toilets. Groups from the queue take it in turns to go out for nourishing meals together during the long wait. “It’s a very special time of year for me,” says Ian. “I listen to Radio 3 on my headphones, talk to lots of friends, and just let my mind empty itself of all the usual clutter. Stepping out of the chapel after the service you feel a bit flat and empty. As all our friends and family know, there’s nothing else about Christmas that means as much.”
For more information on the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols on Saturday, including details of how to catch it on television and radio go to: https://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/events/chapel-services/nine-lessons.html
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