Where’s my sunshine????

You have not heard from me for several weeks because I have been on holiday – and I have been badly spoiled. Three weeks of almost uninterrupted sunshine. Good food, far too much wine and beer (but lots of water, too, to compensate), the company of my husband and, eventually, once they’d finished with their own gadding expeditions - one to the festival in Benicassim and t’other to Ibiza, the girls as well. Oh what a lovely time we had.

And now, here I am in Edinburgh and – nice to be home and all that BUT... where’s my sunshine???? I seem to have missed whatever paltry amount has been on offer since my return by being at work while it was making its brief appearance. Darn! My tan will fade and then I’ll be just a little, pale, old lady again (with a few extra wrinkles courtesy of la lovely France and Espan-with wiggle-a the excelente - but so worth it. I think... will keep you posted on that one) and all the loveliness will be forgotten.

I don’t know if anyone kept you in the Rudsambee loop while I was away but I doubt it as lots of other warblers were away at the same time. This appalling holiday-taking nonsense even led to the cancellation of one rehearsal as there were too few people around to make it worth meeting. Imagine! Perhaps we’ll have to institute a sort of office-type holiday rota so no two (or three or, God forbid, four) members of any one part are away at the same time. We have a concert coming up (Sunday 14th Aug, 6 o’clock, St Giles’ Cathedral btw) and most of us will be around for that, I’m glad to say and from what I could gather on Wednesday, in spite of the shameful summer-absenteeism, much hard work has been done while I’ve been away – particularly on Leonardo’s machine which just about sounds ready to take off now. As long as it launches itself in the right direction and doesn’t crash halfway through the flight it promises to be quite spectacular. There is the occasional cough in the engine and I am often in danger of running out of fuel but I think between us we might manage to keep airborne for long enough. And here’s to a gentle landing.

A few adjustments have had to be made to the programme and the parts because poor Marie Claire has to work during the concert – that’s the trouble with being clever and qualifying as a doctor; not very easy to get out of it if the hours don’t quite suit. We won’t be singing Quand j’ai ouy which is a shame because it’s a great song and MC’s solo is gorgeous and Natalie has taken over singing MC’s triplets in Leonardo – seems to have got the hang of them very quickly (they’re yummy, listen out for them if you’re at the concert). I’m not sure whether this rearrangement has led to Susan’s part changing or what but there was some discussion as to whether or not she was happy with whatever it is she’s doing now. Some sort of run somewhere (or is she actually going for a run? She did a charity walk recently, perhaps she’s moving on); apparently she can manage perfectly well when singing along with a recording, “Because”, she said, “there are lots of people singing the right notes.” “Ooo,” said Ollie, “so damning, Susan.” Quite amusing to watch her trying to wriggle out of that one. I knew what you meant, Susan. Those other sopranos are dreadful.

I’m not sure if Robin ever got an answer to his question – “How much wind should we be producing?” As much as poss, lads. We need to blow the audience away.
We did some perfecting work on Fog Elna Khel – without Arno to begin with because it’s quite high for him to sing without a warm-up. Having said that, none of us got a warm-up until about halfway through the rehearsal – what possessed the BW to allow us one then is beyond me. Maybe we were grating on his ears. We sang a few arpeggios or something and then Natalie asked what the highest note we sang was… “A C#, I think,” said Ollie, prodding at the keyboard. “Surely not!” someone exclaimed. “Yes, I think it was.” More prodding. “If it was, why are we singing alto?” asked Nat. Why indeed. And I echo the ‘surely not’.

We sang through Bog Off – which is being re-introduced after far too long a gap – for those newcomers who needed to learn pronunciation; Kiisu-miisu for Natalie who has never sung this with Robin doing the solo and was keen to give it a go (not sure why when all we do is make meowing noises in the background but hey! and it’s an absolute delight to hear it because Robin gets better every time – brilliant); Visur Vatnsenda-Rosu for ditto Bog Off; Envoi, which nearly caused fisticuffs... “That was rubbish,” the Lord and Master announced, stopping us after all of two bars of whichever bit we were practising. “Did he call us rubbish?” asked an outraged bass (or was it a tenor? It was male, anyway). “There’s only one of him,” says another b or t, male anyway, “We can take him.” We didn’t. Ollie protested innocence and he is only very small, so instead we just sang it again and did it better. He’ll never learn, will he, if that’s the way we behave? ; and Desh, during which we had to close our eyes and pretend to be Augustus Gloop, the fat greedy boy from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. “I want the sweets. I want the sweets,” we chanted as crossly as possible and boy! were we disagreeable. That is how we have to sound when singing bits of Desh. We will have to try and do it with a smile for fear our petulance upsets the audience and has them marching out in disgust.

Eh, voila! C’est tout. Oh – except for how’s this for stoopid? I spent really rather a lot of time this afternoon booking a ticket for a fringe show – the Traverse box office web site was being contrary – but I got my ticket in the end. It took me about half an hour to realise that I had booked a non-refundable, non-returnable ticket for Sunday 14th August at 6.30pm...

Am I not supposed to be elsewhere at that time?

A***.

xx from your bird-brained blogetteer.