Reggae a la Poles

Please imagine an accent on that ‘a’. I really must learn to put them on myself.

So – an apology is fidgeting away at my conscience but I am ignoring it, manfully. This edition is very late indeed (in case you hadn’t noticed). It is Monday evening (night) and I am only just settling down to write. Now, sometimes these blogs are not posted until Monday anyway, even if I have written them considerably earlier. This all depends on Christopher’s other activities. As I have said before, he is a very busy lad. I am not complaining. Not at all. Honestly. No, really, please believe me. If I must rely on a very busy lad then I have to take my turn. It may be that this is not posted until Wednesday or Thursday. It may be that it is not finished ‘til Wednesday or Thursday but I will try extremely hard to stay awake long enough to get it done. There is not very much to say, after all.

I have been pretty busy myself, actually. Thursday was a day which involved shopping for various things I will need this week and won’t have time to buy because I am working more than usual. Then yoga. Then food. Then starting to prepare for installation of new bathroom i.e. moving all my stuff into a downstairs bedroom, emptying the hall of furniture, dust-sheeting bookshelves. Then packing. An early start on Friday; a weekend in Munich mit hubby; a late-ish return yesterday and then more preparation for the great works mentioned above which started today. Do you see any opportunity there for blogging???

A new bathroom? I hear you ask. Did the woman not have a new kitchen recently? Has she come into an inheritance/won the lottery/been a-thieving? Yes, a new bathroom. Which is needed as badly as the new kitchen was. I have been ashamed of my bathroom for years – since we moved in here, to be honest and it will be wonderful to show people where to find... ahem... facilities, without feeling either embarrassment or the urge to apologise. I only hope I like it once it’s done tee hee.

Wednesday last was an odd occasion. For a start, I arrived at the almost-end of a Recruitment Committee meeting. Not much interest in the position of Ollie Replacement yet so some hard work to do (not to say desperate measures to take). I put my ha’pence-worth in, of course. I do like to be of assistance if at all possible.

Also, poor Heather was there with a bare foot and a half-empty (-full?) pack of frozen peas resting on her ankle. She had given it a twist when getting off the bus and a fair old wrench it had got judging by the swollen state of it. Eventually she decided to go home as it was causing her such discomfort, so she called her husband to come and get her and bid us goodbye as we headed off to rehearse. We were a very small group because Ollie hadn’t finished auditioning all the potential new members. He would like to get everyone started on the new repertoire (oo, posh) at the same time so is hoping to be able to ask his chosen people along next week. Robin did the warm-up and was very theatrical about it all, wiggling and shaking and then testing us with one of his favourite challenges – he only does this so he can laugh at our feeble efforts. Try it yourselves at home: start by holding one hand up in front of your face. Then lift this hand up and stretch your arm above your head. Do the same thing with the other hand/arm. Once you’ve done this a few times add in another move: after holding your hand in front of your face, move it around to the back of your head before stretching your arm above your head. This is all very straightforward until you try to do it quickly with both arms alternating. Chaos. Like trying to pat your head and rub your tummy at the same time only worse. I can manage the pat-ty, rub-by thing (if I concentrate really hard) but this, as above, not at all.

So, once that was, hilariously, out of the way we got down to the little work we did. The ‘we’ in that sentence applies to the women because we split into two groups again and the men worked very hard indeed, it seemed, on Zikr while we began by working hard and ended up doing nothing much at all. I think Ol was expecting to get more done but then, having done some teaching-of-Polish (again), and teaching of (a little tiny bit of) music with us he went off to see how the boys were getting on and didn’t come back for ages by which time it was after 9.30 and time to stop.

[When we left the lads to themselves we returned to the dining-room where the committee-meeting had been taking place. Heather was still there, frozen footed and forlorn, awaiting her husband. Talk about taking his sweet time. And they’ve only been married since the summer. Shocking behaviour. I hope he had a good excuse.]

I have no idea what our new piece is called but I know (sort of) how to pronounce most of the words and what some of them mean (kissing behind the stove has got something to do with it; hot stuff, eh?) and, best of all, how it is supposed to sound. Well! If we can manage that I, for one, will be delighted. Once the BW took off to work with the men, Chris arrived with music for us to listen to – our new song (a Polish folk-song, in case that had slipped past you) as performed by a group called The Warsaw Village Band. Listen to them if you can. “I know they’re Polish,” says Kay, “But are they black?” You will see what she meant if you listen. Their music is a sort of fusion and there is a definite hint of reggae in there. And jazz. It is fantastic. And that harsh, nasal tone Eastern-European voices can manage so brilliantly when required to do so. Wonderful and really rather weird and crazy stuff. Chris put it on a loop and we listened in awe as these girls managed to fit five words into the space two fit in comfortably. We listened many times without working out how to do it and then we gave up and just chatted.

And then Ollie came back and apologised for being away so long and said that would do for the night.

So we went home.

No Jen to give me a lift.

Just as well, really. I have got very lazy about walking home and it only takes about five minutes.

Bedtime. Night-night.