It is 31 December 1999, the eve of the new Millennium.
All over the world, computers are about to freeze, unable to cope with a date that has the figure 2 at the front. In just a few hours time, planes will come tumbling from the skies as their systems pack up, at a loss to calibrate what a new Millennium means.
And in humdrum Coventry, some lunatic has come up with the idea of celebrating this moment with a tightrope walk between two medieval spires.
Join us this New Year’s Eve as we take you back to that bizarre and unforgettable evening, twenty years ago, in the company of some of the people behind that lunatic idea.
It’s happening in Coventry Cathedral this December 31 (a Tuesday) and it begins at 5pm with a Q and A session ‘Where were you 31.12.99?’. We’ll follow that with the first screening in two decades of the films made of the tightrope walk and the celebrations that night by Coventry’s marvellous Talking Birds theatre company, set to music specially commissioned for the event and played on the Cathedral’s organ.
The whole event should be done by 6.45pm, leaving you plenty of time to get to the New Year’s Eve event of your own choosing.
It’s FREE too, although it might be wise to secure a ticket from Talking Birds website and bring a little dosh to make a donation to the Cathedral’s work towards peace and reconciliation.
As a member of the original team, yours truly will be there, trying desperately to drag from his dodgy memory some detail about what happened, in case he gets asked what he was doing on that night.
Join him and tell your friends to come too.
Peter Walters, CovSoc Committee Member
