Another Barnaby Festival Big Weekend has come and gone with some superb events large and small, some fabulous exhibitions (many still running), another mighty carnival, comedy, culture in huge quantities, and just about everything you could wish for except the sunshine (again).

The weather, varying from dull to grim, did its best to sour proceedings and once again failed. Thankfully the carnival parade was spared the worst and got round in the dry with just a stiff breeze to contend with. So it was smiley faces all round, with once again Ben Jackson, of RoughTwist, painted green and hatching from an egg, being one of the highlights.

Ben’s appearance in the parade, playing guitar in various bizarre settings and painted in a different colour, could become a tradition for the event. Last year a red Devil, this year a green pterodactyl, next year ??? We will have to wait and see.

Ben and the rest of RoughTwist kicked off Barnaby proceedings at the Cabin on Friday night with an excellent show for a hyper and excited crowd obviously well up for a great Barnaby weekend.

Saturday was packed with activity with the carnival and performances in the square from Sunlighter, Institute of Broken Sound and many others. The Kings School Brass band provided the soundtrack to the street banquet.  

There were performances of exceptional quality at Snowgoose Live on Saturday night from Lucas D and the Groove Ghetto, Brazilliant, and Konkoma Maximum Love Garden Orchestra.

The night was danced away by a very happy bunch of people to rhythms originating from all over the world. Afro-latin, Brazilian Samba nad New Orleans jazz-funk. Superb stuff throughout the whole night.

The Sunday weather was horrible and I suspect a lot of the open air action will have been badly affected. There was, however, an interesting series of classical cello performances of six different J S Bach cello concertos, across three venues, by world class cellist Li Lu. Caught the middle one, beautiful.

Then came the big finale at Christ Church, when Peter Hook, formerly of Joy Division/New Order finally got to play in Macclesfield, this time with The Light.

Sold out in the blink of an eye, it was always going to be special. the links to Macclesfield alone, both triumphant and tragic guaranteed that this was likely to be an emotional event for a lot of people, particularly when Hooky announced that the show was to comprise the entire first two albums by Joy Division. This steals a march on his autumn tour when Peter Hook and the Light will tour this show throughout the UK.

A large Turbosound pa system guaranteed everyone was going home with tinnitus but, hey, so what, this was possibly a once-in-a-lifetime thing and there was some serious moshing to be done.

It was very special, it frankly couldn’t fail.

What of the venue? Christ Church. This is a tricky one. Apart from its serious lack of infrastructure, (cured with a large and sensible extension) a three-phase power supply (cured with a wad of cash and an electrician) the main problem is that it is a church.

Whoever now has control over its future will at some point have to bite the bullet and gut the building of its fixtures.

If it is not going to be used as a place of worship any more (given) why does it need pews? Pews are a relic of the past that were designed to be uncomfortable and have no function whatever in an arts venue other than to keep people out.

It is always sad to take away a piece of historical furniture, but if its retention means the ultimate death of the building and the non-existence of it as an arts venue then, sure as eggs, the whole thing, lock, stock, barrel, bricks and pews will end up in the demolition yard.

At the end of the day it is not a Chippendale interior, it is functional and ordinary and should be extracted and sold off to finance some of the refurbishment.

What a great Barnaby weekend.