Me again!

Back so soon? I hear you ask. Well, yes. Here I am, raring to go, only days after my last effort. Extraordinary.

Yesterday we sang new songs. Two of them. One of them was called I Remember Clifford. A really silly song title, don’t you think? It’s the name. Clifford. Apologies to any of you who bear that moniker but, well, it’s a silly name to write a song about. It was Sebastian’s idea to sing it and he’s German so we have to forgive him as it’s unlikely he realises quite how daft it sounds. Clifford was, apparently, a very fine trumpeter. Perhaps some of you know his work. I’m sure he is worthy of a whole song-book of praise but maybe the composer should simply have dedicated the music to him and kept his name out of the lyrics. Am I being unfair?

Anyway, we had a note-bashing session and duly bashed them completely senseless. Some work required, methinks. A great deal of work required. Jenny, naturally, had a purple-face episode or two (clashed ‘orribly with her orange jumper, let me tell you), so much so at one point that I was deeply concerned for her welfare. That point was when we had to sing ‘... for these who heard mm...’ - just for those of you who are wondering what sort of thing sets her off. Actually, almost anything can set her off. Actually, forget the ‘almost’.

Our other new piece is another Chinese song, Lake Wild-Goose – and, oh! so squeakily high for the sopranos (and after Ollie promised he wouldn’t give them anything of that nature, too. The boy wonder is shameless). When he suggested we sing ‘the goosey one’ Jenny said, with worried face, ‘but I haven’t got any Debussy’. Orange and purple still looked bad.

We only had to ‘la’ to this as Chinese is pretty much beyond us all – except for our new experts, John and Susan, who learned some for their recent visit to China and who assured us that it is written in Mandarin. Clever, eh? It is also translated into whatever they call it when Chinese is written in our alphabet but as these words never sound how they look it is advisable to leave well alone until someone who knows what’s what can get to us with the information required. Last time this was Ollie who had had instruction from an informed personage and had written it all out in his own version of phonetics so heaven only knows what we were singing about but it probably had nothing whatever to do with a Green Fir Forest. Perhaps this time we’ll be crooning about Peking Duck Pond. I do hope so.

So that was it. Lots of hard work (for those of us who showed up) but a good start.
We had a visitor in the extremely small shape of Anna-Lauren’s sister Skylar (who would fit very snugly in Luke’s pocket) here on a visit from America. She is, I understand, a very good musician indeed so I don’t know what she made of our caterwaulings but she was still smiling at the end of the evening so it would appear she is as brave and polite as she is musical.

I must away to ready myself for a supper date with my cousin and his wife (isn’t that what you’ve always wanted to know?). I have been gardening so it could take some time...