HoHoHo? HoHum

Here’s another New Year. And a long time since I posted anything here despite best intentions.

I was going to write something about pride coming before a fall, but then the proud moment had long passed and the ‘fall’ element had somehow been absorbed into the acceptable now. *[see below for explanation of cryptic comment]

I was going to write a jolly piece about Christmas, but I was too busy getting on with it and then too tired to think of intelligent or amusing ways to recount it.

I had intended to record and publicise my silly version of The Twelve Days of Christmas and become a TikTok or Instagram star, but somehow in the manic weeks in the run up to Christmas I missed whatever small window of opportunity there might have been for such blatant self-publicity and decided that there would always be another Yule. (But will there? One never knows.)

So, there was no blogging or online sharing to be had in December and I find we are already in what might be termed mid-January, the first two weeks of 2025 having fortunately been very personally productive but not at all conducive to sitting creatively at my laptop.

I promise (to myself as much as to you) to keep writing stuff down here for posterity, amusement and therapy. In fact, I have an idea for the next one which I may even start today. 

In the meantime, many good wishes to us all for 2025.

And in explanation of my first point above, here’s a piece of the recent past which may be best forgotten.

*A much-admired first attempt at producing flyers, posters and concert programmes for my ‘big’ choir’s Messiah just before Christmas was a source of great personal pride in myself. Despite not wanting the role of publicity manager, I seemed to have made the best of it and done a decent job. I was relieved and pleased in equal measure.

The printed programmes did look really good … until someone spotted that I had misspelled the name of one of the soloists on the cover. One letter in her surname was wrong. And when I checked, the same letter was wrong on the flyers, posters – the lot! For sure, very few people would notice the mistake and the same name was correctly spelled inside the programme. What was even worse though was that I had spotted the exact same error (it is a very unusual name!) made online by our website manager and alerted her to change it months before.

So all my hard work and success were immediately dashed. I humbly and hurriedly purchased a pdf-editing licence, made the tiny change in the file and persuaded the printer to print me 20 additional copies of the programme with the right spelling at the same unit cost – lovely man, thank you! – so I could give our soloists and sponsors a ‘correct version’. I then gave the soloist a face-to-face personal apology at the rehearsal before the concert. 

I reckoned that by the time the concert was due to start, I had calmed down enough not to be fretful anymore – then, after making my apology to a gracious young soprano, laying out the imperfect programmes on the rows of audience seats and having an indulgent little snack…I lost my music! I was sure I had left it on my seat onstage after the afternoon rehearsal. But despite several furtive and increasingly anxious trips onto said stage I could not see it on, under or near my seat. I asked around, with mounting fear. Could I really sing completely off-copy? No. This was a complete disaster.

People rallied round and suggested places to check –  my bag, the now-empty programme boxes, the Ladies’. As if I hadn’t checked all those three times already.

It was only when someone helpfully pointed to a seat in the middle of the stage with a folder on it and asked could it be mine, that I realised I had been looking at completely the wrong row of chairs – several times over. I pulled myself together with relief and sang the concert tolerably well (we collectively performed very well indeed), but spent several hours later fretting that I really was losing the plot. A slightly tearful train journey home lugging a too-heavy bag full of discarded (and misspelt) programmes (they are given to each ticket-holder so inevitably many are left on seats – and then our choir members can have them if they want, so I have to take them to the first rehearsal) gave me enough time to compose myself before rejoining my relatives at home and putting a brave face on. 

With hindsight, it was a dreadful editing error to make but I can see how it happened and can hopefully catch such errors in future. And I was probably so stressed with the various plates I was spinning, dropping and catching in the pre-Christmas rush that anyone else would also have lost the plot a bit.

But… that little fear inside just grew a tiny bit bigger.