It is more than two months since I last persuaded my tired old self to sit at my laptop and document some more of my little life. In that time, I have covered a lot of ground, quite a bit of it by train, and sung a couple of concerts. I like to think I have achieved a few things – although why I feel the need to achieve anything at all still puzzles me. Why can’t I just sit and read a book without fretting that I’m not ‘achieving’ anything? I suppose I could also question the need to write everything down here – aside from feeding my adoring public of course (hahahahaha) – but let’s not go there.
As on many previous occasions, I invent a silly heading and begin writing but then become distracted and abandon my wordsmithery for more exciting pastimes: walking and nattering for hours with my aunt; booking flights for a trip next April; re-potting a patio rose (yes, truly scraping the barrel of displacement activity with this one, but it has been on my list for ages and Mr J produces a large bag of potting compost from his motorcycle pannier and I finally feel obliged); and of course the inevitable choral practices and theatre bookings.
As I return once more to the laptop, I realise that not only have I been lax with this blog, but I have completely overlooked my other ‘holiday’ blog which is supposed to document in detail, and with pictures, my travel adventures. A quick check reveals that my three most recent jaunts overseas are missing from this important record of my life – and I immediately throw myself into the first of these reports, becoming immediately transported back to the Wadi Rum desert and the Dead Sea. Now I am hopelessly distracted from my original purpose. Focus, you silly woman!
Aaargh, ok, I really must put finger to keyboard for onecryingeye. I begin again.
Aha, I know, I’ll document my recent experience of singing in a huge choral concert at the Royal Albert Hall! I bandy around some ideas for my narrative.
- The excitement at discovering the Lady Tenors have been allotted their very own exclusive dressing room, much to the amusement and slight annoyance of everyone else in the choir in their much more crowded spaces!
Female Tenor dressing room – result! - The bewilderment at endlessly being unable to produce my performer’s pass for inspection as I move around the august surroundings of the confusing round building, even though it is always secreted somewhere (secret) in my tiny handbag which is always with me.
- The vertiginous choir seating.
- The disconcertingly delayed sound from the other half of the choir seated on the other side of the organ. Are we singing in time together or effecting a slight syncopation?
- My apparent inability to sing the right notes (in the right order, at the right speed etc etc) despite practising quite extensively, and the general lack of useful clues from the conductor (not ours!) on the day.
- The regular whisperings, once the Youth Choirs have arrived for the afternoon rehearsal, of “Don’t touch the children! Don’t touch the children!”
- The amazing organ and orchestral sound and my fascination with the percussion section arrayed in front of me.
View from the choir – before the children arrived (and we had to hide our phones) - The beautiful Ravel Daphnis et Chloé which I had completely omitted to listen to until the final week of rehearsals and then fell in love with. (I may have loved the piece but did not enjoy singing the wretched thing. The direction for the final section of this piece was to ‘sound orgasmic’ – which, I’m afraid, might usually at least raise my spirits by making me laugh, but in this case, coupled as it was with unsettlingly fond looks from the conductor towards his wife sitting two along from me, fair nauseated rather than tickled me ).
- The astonishment that Mr J actually turned up to watch after a weekend of winning medals (again) and didn’t even fall asleep. Huzzah!
Themes and ideas suitably bandied around, I realise I have to once again rush out to the theatre which is to be preceded by a brief lunch with Son J. I grab my current paperback and lurch up to the station, plonking myself and my paperback in a quiet seat on a train up to town. I am reading Helgoland: The Strange and Beautiful Story of Quantum Physics. And I’m afraid that, by the time I arrive at Waterloo I have somehow been convinced that all my efforts at writing a blog are pointless* because without an interaction (a reader) it will not actually exist. Or might not. Or might be blue. Or red (or un-red/read). Or a cat, dead or alive. And who wants that in their inbox?
Son J and I have a spirited discussion on the topic of Quantum theory, where I am more than somewhat impressed that we both seem capable of using the word ‘superposition’ without even seeming self-conscious about it. I suppose it relieves both of us from worrying about whether to talk about feelings or personal relationships.
Returning home, I find it is easier to press Publish on the above and start again another time – perhaps with links to my holiday blogs when written – on the basis that, in the meantime, if anyone interacts with these jottings, they will be real. #
* weirdly, when I drafted this on my phone, predictive text offered ‘poo’ instead of ‘pointless’, possibly trying to tell me something!
# Can something actually be ‘real’? Read the book – you’ll be none the wiser!