For lo! the wind was blusterous

Wasn’t and isn’t it just? I should be going out to the shops but I really can’t summon up the energy or spirit necessary to venture forth. I went out in the worst of it yesterday (it was bad but not so very bad when I left the house but became quite vicious in terms of freezing wind and driving rain once I got too far down the road to make it worth turning for home again) and my coat is not yet dry or my face thawed out (still, that’ll save on the botox bills, eh?) so for now I am staying in and food and other fundamentals will have to wait. I won’t starve though I may struggle. (Emergency food parcels, anyone? Anything will do!)

At least our wayward weather waited until after rehearsal on Wednesday evening to really get going, although both Sebastian and Harriet had to battle against the elements on their bicycles to get there. Sebastian looked so bewildered and exhausted when he arrived that I thought he must be going down with something but he assured me it was just the journey that had floored him. Harriet looked fine and fresh-faced which is what comes of being young and fit but she admitted to having struggled quite significantly uphill against the wind on her way. Presumably that means she’d be heading downhill on her return so let’s hope she managed to stay in control and didn’t end up careering off course and over the horizon. We need her.

We began proceedings with a look at a new piece – a traditional Syrian/Iraqi song arranged by Salim Bali called High Above the Palm Tree. It is lovely though the pronunciation of the Arabic words is proving tricky – not a surprise. There is a sheet provided with instructions of how to pronounce the various variously accented vowels and what is meant by the ‘ symbol and the dots underneath the occasional letter (well – they tell us there are dots underneath occasional letters but so far we’ve not found any) but this is all very well. It is much more difficult to interpret this well-meaning helpfulness than whoever provided it can possibly imagine. Add to this advice as to how some of the throaty sounds should be produced ("imagine you are cleaning your glasses and breathe out hard" – not so easy in the middle of a song) and the fact that the most oft encountered vowel sound (an ‘o’ with a line on the top) is not mentioned at all and you see the problem. Compensation lies in the fact that we are allowed to sing a very brash ‘ay’ sound (this we can do because we do it a great deal anyway particularly when it sounds really horrid and inappropriate) instead of having to ‘ah’. In fact there is an irony here in the fact that Ollie is struggling to get us to sound brash enough. Of course if we succeed in pleasing him in this respect it may bode badly for his blood-pressure when he has to try and get us to sound sweet and rounded again – brassy and bel canto do not bide well together.

We started looking at this before everyone had arrived so there was a bit of shuffling around to get people in a position where they were close to their musical allies. Jenny got lost across the other side of the room from we altos but she seemed perfectly at ease between the sops and the basses. Her first fit of giggles erupted not long after she arrived when she placed some sheets of paper on the table and Susan spluttered "Good God, she’s got her music with her". This IS an unusual occurrence these days – even during concerts Jenny’s file is often empty. Working at a proper job (a few hours a week) and being organised is, as I believe I have had occasion to mention before, something our Jen finds problematic. But she was, indeed, in possession of her music (or what passed for it, anyway; it may, of course, have been an extensive shopping list or a developing short story. Or some grubby old paper she’d snatched up on leaving home to fool us all) and so she was able to carol away without leaning over a shoulder or straining her neck (or someone else’s (mine)) for a change.

Next up, St John’s horsey. This is really coming on now. Susan did a lovely demonstration of a trotting steed – well, it has to be a pony as she’s so small; can a pony be dubbed a ‘steed’? – and I suggested that we have her displaying her interpretive equine dancing skills in front of the choir whenever we sing this in concert – I’m sure it would go down a storm.

There again, do we need another storm?

Just a thought.

Our final job of the evening was to make some more headway with Leonardo. Starting, as usual, with bar 30 we sang and practised our way through to the end of bar 91 and then picked up again at the last note of 115 and sang to the end (well, most people did – more of that later). The bars between 91 and 115 are, according to our Lord and Master, "terrifying". Goody. I presume he considers the bars up to 30 equally scary as we’ve not tried them (officially) yet though the women had a glance at them last week. Personally I find the last 7 pages rather trying. I had to leave my other alto compadres once we reached page 21 and go to join Jenny in the (vain) hope that she’d be singing the right thing and therefore prove of some assistance. I think between us we got every third or fourth note right. As for the last bit – on the face of it this is easy. On the face of it. I managed to sing some of the right notes (in the wrong places, naturally) and wrong notes in the right places (if that’s even possible) but, on the whole, the wrong note in the wrong place entirely was all I could manage. Sing it properly?? Not a chance. And I’ve no idea what Mrs Fardell was up to but I don’t think she was much closer to the music, as written, than I was. I’m afraid this resulted in complete hysteria. Just as well we were at the end of the evening’s work or the BW might have been a tad annoyed because I could hardly breathe and had tears pouring down my face and Jen was as bad. I have an uncomfortable feeling she may have been laughing AT me rather than with but, hey! I can take it. No one could say that her amusement was misplaced.

So to notes – "Any chance you two could control yourselves for a moment?" asked the patient Anne. "About as much chance as of us singing in tune," was my reply. But we did - eventually. A decision about the Poland trip – no for this year. Not enough of us able to commit. But a yes for London in May, so that gives us something to work for and to look forward to. Anne won’t be able to make it, neither will Anna Lauren or Luke (who will either be a dad by then or anticipating the imminent arrival of offspring) and Chris feels it is unlikely that he will make it as he has a pile of college work to hand in the following week (is this a good excuse? Several people thought not!) which is a shame but we will manage without them (just) and a weekend in London will be fun and frolicky for the rest of us.

you soon xx