The Sun Has Got His hat On – Yey!

Well.

There was I, feeling so utterly uninspired yesterday that I turned off this computer without attempting a word of a blog and then, this-evening, again feeling somewhat dead between the ears and wanting to be out in my glorious and very-much-freer-of-weed-than-this-morning garden and not sitting in Troglodyte Dell (i.e. downstairs where the girls and this machine live in the dark, amongst the strewn clothing) when what should happen but that I read my e-mails to find they contain some wonderful messages of praise and encouragement for your bloggetteer. Thank you, my lovely Rudsambee buddies, but oh! what a guilt trip I am now on!! And also somewhat obliged to give you something to read. Yikes!

The eldest is playing repetitive music now which is going to get into my brain and make this task even harder dab-n-do-dab-n-dah.

That reminds me of Sebastian’s improvised warm-up on Wednesday [things can only get better] when he had us [this is the rhythm of the night] shoop-de-doing and ba-be-dabbing [everybody dance now (she can’t make up her mind)] all over the place. It was really quite impressive – he just made it up as he went along giving each few people something different to sing and it all went together and sounded very funky indeed. I don’t think I could do such a thing. Who am I kidding? I know I couldn’t. Clever boy.

So, what else did we do? Well, Ollie sent the lads off into the other room to work on our song about Clifford – whom, Robin reminded us, is actually a big red dog so that’s put paid to any hope of a straight face during performance. I don’t know how they got on but indications were of little progress – glum faces on return, mention of it not yet being a piece of music. It’s the girls’ turn next week. Bet we can do better (better at destroying any resemblance to a piece of music I mean, naturally).

While the chaps were off mugging poor old Cliff we girlies got to try a new piece of Tormis; companion to our Timid Girl on a Swing (the song, that is, not him) (am I making any sense? It’s probably sunstroke). (By the way she’s not at all timid – more like Fragonard’s lovely, swinging with no knickers on, but that’s beside the point). We did very well, I think. And it’s fun. And we’ll probably sing both pieces at St Giles in the summer so be there! (August 29th, Sunday, 6pm, FREE – no excuses)

Having performed our pretty good stab at whatever the new song’s called to the basses and tenors – who looked less than impressed, I must say but perhaps they were just sour-grape-ily jealous of our genius? – we had a go at Sfogava Con Le whoosit to see if we could remember it, which – somewhat surprisingly - I did; though it goes very low for the 2nd altos at one point and, it being a while since I’ve been required to sink to such depths (vocally at least) I found myself from time to time, larynx protesting at ill-usage, inadvertently yodelling in the quieter passages.

On to that pesky old flea of an Olde Frenchy type – Une Puce – which, if you remember from a previous blog, we are supposed to sing off-by-heart and the words of which are rather fond of wandering off to see what’s going on round the corner. Elaine, quite rightly pointed out that those lucky b*****s in Choir 1 (not her word/asterisks, she’s far too well bred) who are singing verses one and three had had considerably more practice than those of us who, as a bit of an afterthought, were landed with verse four, rarely sung and really rather difficult to learn for some reason. Maybe it is lack of practice but I rather suspect an ancient curse. We divided into our two groups and choir 2 got a good go at the evil verse four and maybe, just maybe, were a little better at it by the time we’d sung it through slow and fast and fast and slow and over and over again. I daresay we’ll all have forgotten verse two now but, hey, at least we’ll finish well which is all that matters in the end.

In the end. And this is it. xx