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Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Colin and Max
As I'll be conducting the Finnish premiere of Maxwell Davies' Antarctic Symphony in March, this article from the Sunday Times (14.1.7) about the Master of the Queen's Music is timely and relevant to this blog. Max and his partner, Colin Parkinson, had been preparing for their civil ceremony on Sanday, the Orkney island where they live. The resulting PR catastrophe from Orkney Island Council has been outlined below in this article by Anna Burnside, just one of the numerous reports recently on this story in Britain's national press.
You can also find a copy of the coverage from "Orkney Today" which you can save to desktop here as a pdf file.
Colin and Max are close friends of mine, and in my own considerable experience of Orkney, the majority of people are very welcoming to everyone. However, as the article reveals, whether some individuals up there running the show are capable of accepting their most famous resident's partnership ought to be called into question.
No ceremony
and no fanfare
by Anna Burnside
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Colin Parkinson regret to announce that they won't be married at Sanday, Orkney
According to a rain-stained notice pinned to the gate, Sanday Light Railway is closed for the winter. As of Wednesday, this most northerly manned railway in the UK and the place where Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, the Master of the Queen's music, and Colin Parkinson, his longtime companion, hoped to hold their civil partnership ceremony, is closed for good.
Sanday's registrar, the former Hell's Angel and steam train enthusiast Charlie Ridley, resigned last week. The nearest registrar is now in Kirkwall, Orkney's capital, and the railway and the Brief Encounters tearoom are for sale.
We peer through the window of the tearoom. Nobody is in. "He must have gone out with the dog," says Parkinson. "He is packing up and going south. This has been the end for him."
"This" is the extraordinary saga of the couple's desire for a civil partnership ceremony on the island where they have lived for six years. What they discussed over a pot of tea was a delightfully bonkers ceremony with a miniature steam train, a specially composed piece of music and the sun setting over the North Sound as a backdrop. What they have ended up with is a sour wrangle that has left Sanday without a registrar, Orkney with a reputation for homophobia and the islands' most famous citizen making plans to get married elsewhere.
At home in Burness, Parkinson and Davies light a fire and brew a pot of lapsang souchong. They are weary of the fuss and phone calls their situation has generated, but unwilling to let it go.
Davies, 72, has an orchestral piece to write for the Purcell School of Music and needs to get back across the courtyard to his study. I suspect Parkinson, 20 years his lover's junior, would rather be building the greenhouse.
It all began in October when Davies opened the newly extended railway and Ridley had just become Sanday's registrar. "We were having tea and I said wouldn't it be lovely to do a civil partnership here," recalls Davies. "What a wonderful chance to use the railway and the tearoom, put a show on for the locals and invite people from the musical world.
"Charlie was all for it. Nobody told him he couldn't do these ceremonies. We all assumed you could just do it. Then we found out it was not so."
It transpired Ridley had not taken the course that would qualify him to perform civil partnerships. But before that came to light, Orkney Islands council came up with an extraordinary string of objections to a civil ceremony in the tearoom.
First, the ceremony must be in his sitting room. When Ridley questioned this, the council official told him: "You do realise this is quite a serious occasion. Peter Maxwell Davies might choose unsuitable music. And what's more, he might bring the dog."
Davies reports this bizarre slur with remarkably good grace, and continues: "Charlie added that we want to arrive in the train. That didn't go down well. I'm sure it's purely coincidental, but the council then threw lots of rules at him about having to pay lots more for entertainment tax and demanding he removed certain bits of track because they were dangerous. They were so cruel to Charlie. The insensitivity is mind boggling."
"The whole attitude of the council, in questioning my musical taste, did make me wonder if they didn't want to do a same-sex ceremony. But there has been one civil partnership in Kirkwall already so I thought no, this can't be homophobia, this is stupidity."
In a statement Orkney Islands Council insisted that reason that the ceremony could not go ahead was simply down to Ridley not being fully qualified. "The Sanday registrar is not authorised to carry out civil partnership ceremonies," a spokesman said.
The couple's decision to postpone their ceremony came the day after peers voted down attempts to quash new rules giving homosexual people rights against discrimination. During a debate in the House of Lords, Lord Mackay of Clashfern said the rules would leave Christian bed-and-breakfast owners open to legal action if they did not allow same-sex couples to share a room.
It's not a problem that Davies and Parkinson have encountered. They are quick to point out that in every corner of their lives they are welcomed as a couple. The mayor of Florence included Parkinson in the celebrations for Davies's 70th birthday. When he was given the freedom of Salford, the mayor insisted Parkinson join his procession.
As master of the Queen's music, Davies attends meetings at Buckingham Palace and is invited to private and state occasions. Parkinson is always included. "The Queen has set a wonderful example in treating Colin and me with total courtesy," says Davies. "The Queen is always happy to talk to Colin." Davies smiles broadly and Parkinson nods his agreement. "I understand it's usually about gardening."
Parkinson and Davies have waited a long time to be together. They first met in 1982 on another of Orkney's outlying islands. Davies had been living on Hoy for 12 years. Parkinson moved there with his wife and two young children. "I was going to build a guesthouse and then leave her with two children and a guesthouse to run. Max (Davies) tried to save our marriage."
He was ultimately unsuccessful - they divorced in 1998 - but the two men lost touch when Parkinson moved south. Then Davies was invited to Christ Church College, Canterbury, where Parkinson was working as a maintenance man. Davies's relationship was over, Parkinson was miserable and they agreed to spend Christmas in Sanday.
"I got off the plane, hired a minibus and pulled into the driveway on Christmas Eve," recalls Parkinson. "And here's this idiot standing there with a bottle of champagne and two glasses."
"We knew years ago, years and years ago," says Davies, "but nothing could happen. You can't break up a marriage."
Parkinson's former wife now has a girlfriend and is planning a civil partnership of her own. Their two children, now aged 30 and 32, will see their father tie the knot with Davies. Also on the putative guest list are the Northumbrian piper Kathryn Tickell and clarinettist Dimitri Ashkenazy. The word in the bar of the Kettletoft Hotel is that Elton John and David Furnish were also in line for an invitation, as was Annie Lennox. But no offerings of alternative registrars flown in from Kirkwall will now convince the couple to reconsider a Sanday ceremony. The composer of Orkney Wedding, With Sunrise is considering holding his wedding in Salford, Greater Manchester.
The ironies of their situation are not lost on the couple. It has reminded Davies of the dark days of his youth when homosexuality was illegal. "This whole episode has made me very cognisant of my status as a second-class citizen," he said. "If I had a sex change, there would be no problem and it would not have raised an eyebrow.
"Yesterday, Charlie had to deal with the death of an elderly gentleman on the island. Well, if he had to deal with my death as a gay person, would he have to go on a special course to be able to register my death? This nonsense about him having to have a special course to conduct this ceremony is just about as ludicrous as having to go on a special course to sign my death certificate."
Parkinson, however, does not see the hail splattering on the window. His focus is on the rainbow that will emerge as soon as the clouds lift.
"One good thing might well come out of this," he says. "Max could write a short comic opera set in the council chambers of Orkney Islands council. You've got the master of the Queen's music, a model railway, a registrar who rides a Harley-Davidson and cows looking in over the fence. You couldn't make it up."
07:50 Posted in Music | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: Maxwell Davies