More on this later...

I am going to yoga now so there is no knowing just when ‘later’ might be... you may wonder why I have made a start on this with so little time in which to finish it but I think I have explained before that carrying on is much easier than beginning and, with even so few sentences set down as this, there is more hope of a completed blog winging its cyber-path to Christopher in a timely fashion than if I put off writing anything at all until I have time to write everything.

Oof – yoga was TOUGH. I am all stretched and strengthened and absolutely exhausted...

Choir practice. Nikos was supposed to be doing the warm-up but Nikos has gone. How sad is that? I will tell you more anon. Ol warmed us up instead, brains too by teaching us some little ditty-ish, round-ish thing in a language which was never established, (as far as I could gather, anyway). Having got our minds and bodies into some sort of working order Ollie moved on to rehearsing us in just two things: The Seal Lullaby, for those new to the choir and therefore the song and She Moved Through the Fair, which was a small-group piece originally so, really, only well known by a very few of us – in fact, most of the erstwhile singers of this have gone and left us. I was one of the originals but you’d never have thought it. This was a piece I could sing off-by-heart once upon a time but I couldn’t remember at all where I’d changed parts, which bits I’d sung, what the pesky notes were. Disaster. Poor Heather was singing with me and, confused enough as it was with having to sing alto sometimes and tenor at others, she also had to stand next to me and hear me dithering. She needs to have the courage of her convictions in these circumstances. Stick ta yer guns, Heather, old girl. You’re far more likely to be right than am I!

When it came to The Seal Lullaby there were only one or two little mistakes (as far as I could tell) and plenty good enough for us to sing along to. I’m not sure we sang it very well but Sarah and anyone else who’d never sung it before (was there anyone else who’d never sung it before?) will have some idea, at least, of how it is supposed to sound.

These two songs are two of the choices for our CD. Ollie is going to ‘insist’ Anne comes along to play piano for us on recording day. I do hope she does. Seems fitting.

So then... Nikos. He has gone back to Greece in order, I believe, to work on his... on his what? Can’t remember what qualification he is working towards but it involves composing and his librettist is in Greece as are his family and friends and I gather he is struggling a little financially here and prefers to be at home while he is trying to complete his work. Who can blame him? He has said he would like to return to us in September and I, for one, hope he does. Strange to think that will probably be up to our new leader... In the meantime he has left us with Brodmann Area 47 and would love us to record it if we can manage to do so. How encouraging to know he trusts that we can do it justice (or perhaps the Scottish weather has driven him crazy. He was mighty discombobulated by the appearance of SNOW in April. We tried to explain that the soaring temperatures of the days before were far more to be wondered at but he still seemed at a complete loss to understand what was going on).

There y’are then. I’m sure I had something else to say but it has gone – poof. Off into the ether whither this blog will follow. But this blog, unlike whatever it was I had to tell you, will re-appear, miraculously at some point (it is miraculous, isn’t it, like it or not – all this technology?).

See you next week.

xx