Off We Go Again!

Well, hellooooooh! Happy New Year to you (all) – slightly belated I know but heartfelt all the same, I assure you. Did you (all) have lovely festive season(s)? Mine was a little weird to tell the truth but my presents were good (both those I gave and those I received) and that’s what matters, eh? Chris went to Ollie’s for Christmas but it must have been rubbish because his festive highlight, apparently, was watching a group of straight men drinking cherry Lambrini, or some such aberration, on New Year’s Eve. Our Boy Wonder was a little put-out at hearing this, as you can imagine. But really, what can you expect from a rainbow-haired troll who wears shorts in the middle of winter? (Longish shorts, you’ll be delighted to hear. The thought of him in short-shorts is enough to have a body being carted off by the white-coated ones).

I should probably have started back with the blogging a week ago when we had our first meeting but I didn’t and, as I have determined not to employ the overused s...y word at all if I can help it, I have to inform you that I am not s...y at all, so there. I had far too much to think about and complain about and worry about (new kitchen: don’t do it if you want to remain sane and even marginally pleasant to be around) to be bothering with telling you of our start-of-year discussions concerning what 2011 holds - and may hold - in store for Rudsambee. In short, we may go on an exchange-type, concert trip to Poland in either May or September and host the Polish choir in June; we may go and sing in London in May if we’re not going to Poland; we may sing in Rosslyn at Christmas if they’ll have us; we may go to Cranshaws at some point in the year to earn the money they gave us two years ago for a concert we couldn’t get to through the snow; we will sing in St Giles in both August and December and the National Gallery in April. We may – horror of horrors – lose our Boy Wonder after he finishes his Masters later this year and will therefore have to start thinking about how we recruit a new Director. This topic caused lively discussion with no absolute decision made as to how we might go about it but several ideas, including putting out a request for interested parties on the university Music Dept website. Ol reckons this would yield a fair amount of interest and that we could replace him in the twitching of a baton. Never! I think that kidnap and coercion will be necessary. We have to do something. After all he’s too young to appreciate his potential predicament - namely, whatever would he do without us!?

Anne is preparing to give up being administrator-extraordinaire; believe it or not we had an expression of interest in the post from Heather – hurrah for newbies!! She thinks that, with a little off-loading of extraneous duties, she will manage the job without too much difficulty and as some of those extraneous duties can be off-loaded fairly easily (as long as no one suggests I take on any of them!!) it looks as if we may have a replacement for irreplaceable Anne. Though Heather will have to go it some (oh, what a delightfully ugly expression that is!) to fill the post as brilliantly as the perfectly-pitched person who has always seemed so indispensable.

Along with Anne will go our Treasurer, Dick, but Susan has offered to take on this role. We are hoping that her lack of understanding of the words "household accounts" (they mean nothing to me, either) and her willingness to shred a cheque for several thousand pounds at the behest of her husband will not impact upon her performance as keeper of the Rudsambee books.

Enough, enough. Since all this we have had a proper rehearsal and I have to leave room to tell you something of Wednesday evening’s activities. We tried to re-establish small group but the group was so small that we were unable to make much of a start. Once a few extra folk arrived we sang through that old favourite Star of the County Down and eventually (if you were me) sort-of remembered how it was supposed to go. It may be that we have to find some pieces with fewer splits if there are only going to be a handful of us arriving at 7.15 but Ollie seems keen to do something and I am too. Somehow it’s easier to leave the house earlier than to sit down for a bit, get comfy and then have to haul myself up and off to Morningside for 7.45. Jenny is going to find it difficult to be there on time which will be a bit of a disaster if we need ff Alto2s because I can only do ff if it’s on the right note. Still we’ll see how it goes and if you come to a concert and there’s a small group piece and you see me going puce you’ll know that I’m trying to sing loudly all by myself and struggling badly without me buddy-slash-partner-in-crime.

When it got to rehearsal proper we started with Desh and played at being Indian instruments again. Joy. Love it. Can’t sing it but love it all the same! Actually, there’s fast and tricky bits which get my eyes all crossed, my tongue all twisted and my brain badly whisked but apart from that it’s fine.

We then started work on a new Eric Whitacre (yum) piece called – with consummate simplicity - Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine. That’ll take up some room on a programme. And the song is much longer than the title – 13 double-sided pages! That’ll take up some time in a concert. Ollie sent the girls off with Anne to work on a very short section which took an age to get the hang of! Once we’d made some headway we moved on to the bit where Leo gets up the nerve to take off and as this involves lots of ‘la’-ing on one note for the Alto2s, all Jenny and I have to do is to remember (how) to count. All the way up to thirteen. Hmm. I think everyone else is being much more complicated while we 'la' but I was counting too hard to notice. I did notice, however, that this will be stunning once we know what we’re doing.

After getting back together again to sing what we’d learned (!) we moved on to reprising Hide and Seek, an Imogen Heap song we performed on several occasions a while ago with some success, so much so that we recorded it! Of course, our new members have not sung this before and I have no idea what they made of it as it is a little strange and the words make no sense at all but it is fun to sing and one of one of my daughter’s friends said it was her favourite piece when we sang it in St Giles a year or two ago and she being young and therefore, presumably, knowing what’s what this has to be viewed as encouraging, doesn’t it? This is also a long song – 16 dsps – and with Desh at 7.5 it looks as if our lord and master is attempting to arrange the shortest full-length Rudsambee concert in history. Three songs and almost a full programme already!!!

There then. Blog numero 1 done and dusted (unlike my kitchen). Time for beddy-byes. Until next time... (note I don’t say ‘next week’. Better safe than s...y).

xx