Still waiting

We were a smallish group again on Wednesday, the Boy Wonder having failed in wondrousness and yet to audition the remaining Rudsambee possibilities. I think he has another four or five people to see – but I am hardly one to complain about procrastination, so I will presume that his duty is being done (or, maybe, has been done since Wednesday) and that we will see some new faces and hear some new voices next week. That’ll liven the blogging up. I hope.

I have to clear something up and thanks to John for the hint. The Colour Poems are not by Gesualdo at all but by Richard Nye. There is a distance in time of several centuries between the compositions. The Gesualdo we have been working on is called Io tacero (there should be an accent on the second ‘o’ [what sort!?]) which are the first words of the piece. I did think that 'Colour Poems’ was a remarkably modern concept for someone of Gesualdo’s vintage.

Io tacero is coming on – we did lots of work on it. I nearly know what I’m singing. Kirsty was away but Heather was back and once or twice I found myself singing the right thing while she sang the wrong which was great fun and very life-affirming. The sad fact is that Douglas and Chris still believed I was struggling. I do pull some bad faces but I also chortled gleefully and punched the air a few times so you’d think they might have cottoned on.

Once again we separated to practise girl and boy things – how did you do, boys? [we were fabulous as ever, of course!] We were appalling – no idea at all, suddenly, how Mateusz was supposed to sound. We made a bit of effort to get it right but, having pretty much failed entirely, we gave up and gossiped instead. Those men went on for ages. Eventually, at 9.45pm, we had to go in and tell them to stop. Tea and coffee and beds were calling and our girlish enthusiasm had waned long before.

Rudsambee sang a traditional Happy Birthday to me. It started off incredibly tunefully. I was getting ready to be seriously disappointed but then, led by Susan with wickedly glinting eye, the howling began and things fell apart in the most ear-splitting fashion imaginable. A real classic and most gratifying. I received a lovely card and someone posted a jar of yummy chocolate-y pot au chocolat (should that ‘o’ have a hat on?) scrumminess into my coat pocket so I went home a happy bunny indeed.

Ta-rah. Ooo – you should see my new bathroom btw. It’s fab.