Christmas means our carol concert

Christmas and our carol concert are approaching rapidly.
This will be the 12th year for the concert which was launched in 1997 with three aims: to thank our readers for their support during the year with a free event, to have a seasonal celebration and to bring people into Wells Cathedral who rarely enjoy such a wonderful building.
Organising the concert begins in January when I meet our musical director, Ray Willis, to discuss how the last one went and plan the next.
Then we choose the local charity we will support.Last year it was Children’s World, this time St Margaret’s Somerset Hospice.
Schools tell us if they would like to send choirs, I invite representatives from different aspects of mid-Somerset life to read lessons, tickets and programmes are printed, and we look forward to a heart-warming evening in the run-up to Christmas.
The cathedral staff are always most helpful and within a week of this year's event I will book the cathedral for a December Thursday next year.
Naively I thought, back in 1997, that we would fill the cathedral without a hire charge as we are raising money for charity through the concert. But that was before I learned about the Church of England’s stretched finances.So we pay the cathedral about £600 a year, which is at the bottom end of their pricing structure.
We are more than happy to write this cheque and make a small contribution towards the enormous cost of maintaining this extraordinary and iconic building.
Philip Welch