The Best Ever

Everybody likes compliments, don’t they?

Compliments make you feel good.

Unless, of course, you are me and then they make you feel a bit confused. You also feel your insides squirming up into a knotted snake and your face take on the colour of your favourite Christmas jumper.

Mostly, I am able to deal with it by blaming everyone else.

“I’m just so lucky to work with such brilliant children,” is usually an effective distraction and has the added bonus of being true.

I have been involved in making music with children for seventeen years now and at every performance someone says, “Wow, that was the best ever!” or “They are so much better than last year. You’ve developed them so much.” This is something Ofsted would be very proud of: showing progression. However, it confuses me. 

Maybe, I’m more of a perfectionist than most. I hear the mistakes. I know that the choir never quite sang ‘to see if reindeer really know how to fly’ in tune. I know that at least two weren’t looking at me and so managed to sway in the wrong direction. I know that the youth orchestra forgot that there were Aflats in In a Bleak Midwinter and completely mucked up Ding Dong Merrily, so much so that one wanted us to stay out in the cold long after we had lost all feeling in our extremities. “Please can we play it again? I need a chance to redeem myself.”

Knowing all these things I think about the last seventeen years. If things have genuinely got better each time then just how bad were they all those years ago?

Taking Mum for lunch

I’m currently treating my mum to lunch once a fortnight. I admit that there are better places I could take her but you can’t beat a Marks and Spencer prawn sandwich, cheese tasters, tiny Jaffa cakes and jelly babies.

The other diners have kept us entertained and we have shared some eye rolling over things we have seen and heard.

In the waiting room (I know most restaurants don’t have waiting rooms but this is quite a special place) the maitre d’ came over to a woman, who had been waiting to be seated for 45minutes.
“I am sorry but they’ve written down your reservation wrong in the diary. It should be tomorrow. You’ll have to come back tomorrow. You can’t eat today. It’s a day too early.”
The woman looked shocked and thought about getting cross but decided she didn’t have the energy. She looked at her companion and said, “Can you do tomorrow?”
Her friend was overly cheerful, “Of course,” she bubbled, “These things can’t be helped.”
Mum and I both thought they could be helped and rolled our eyes at each other.
The Maitre d’ was very apologetic and waffled on about how busy they were. Everyone wants a seat before Christmas.

When we finally took our seats, we looked at the other guests. Most people sat in pairs but there were a couple of solitary diners. Some, who were visiting for the first time were excitable, giggling about their choice of sandwich or offering the waiters jelly babies. Others who had been many times before knew all the staff by name, often sitting alone and eschewing all food, prfering to concentrate on the free cocktails that the people in the comfy chair got.

This is a long leisurely lunch. Five and a half hours is a long time to take over a prawn sandwich and so being a work and a book-a-holic I had both with me. My work caused the man in the next chair to give me his life story. Apparently, sorting scores of Christmas carols is just like the time he wrote something about radiation in refrigeration units that had a print run of one thousand. He had made an error where he put a ‘the’ instead of an ‘and’, which was only spotted by a proof reader after the copies had been made.He had the choice to do it all again or change each one by hand. I bet you can’t guess which one he chose? Apparently, that one small word changed the entire meaning of the piece. I must admit I was confused as to what was similar to sorting my Rudolph score from Santa’s Coming to Town but he was insistent that it was exactly the same. He had never made the best of his education and music was a total mystery to him. The waiter agreed and told of how he had been told to mime by a teacher while the other boys were to sing louder. I said that music wasn’t as complicated as it looks and all it takes is practice. The waiter thought that teachers were more patient these days but the man quoted the Daily Mail on the fecklessness  of teachers and how so many children were leaving school without the education of an eleven year old. I tried to protest that most children work very hard, some will always find things difficult and that standards have changed but he countered in time honoured tradition, “I bet they can’t even use a slide rule!”

I tried to share an eye roll but Mum just said, “I wasn’t listening. It sounded boring.”

She was having much more fun watching the waiter attach a bottle of cocktail juice to someone’s jumper.

It was so much fun, we decided to do it again in two weeks time.
“A little earlier next time,” she suggested, “If we go an hour earlier, we might not have to go home in the dark.” Although I think that might be a little optimistic.

More boring voice stuff

My voice is being very stubborn this time. Like a naughty toddler or Donald Trump it is stamping its foot and whispering, “I won’t come back if I don’t want to!”

People are very frustrated for me. Adults are still full of advice (that I’ve tried) but children are amazing. They are also concerned that it always happens at this time of year, although I'm not sure it's a reliable harbinger of Christmas. If anything, the children should be most frustrated. Can you imagine trying to learn from someone who can’t speak to you? I feel sorry for them but they are brilliant.

I leap around the room, pointing and gesturing. Playing an extended game of charades.

At the youth orchestra I smiled and gestured ringing a bell above my head and they played Ding Dong Merrily on High. I wrote on my paper that there should be prizes, touched my nose and pointed at the girl who’d said it first. It seems that I am, again, showing my age, as absolutely nobody does that when playing charades anymore.

At school when I get to the completely silent stage many of the children think I’m making it up. They can imagine it would be quite useful to point at their throat and shrug their shoulders when asked a particularly tricky question. You would think they would take advantage of a silent teacher but this doesn’t happen very often.

Their advice and comments are brilliant and have cheered me up enormously.

I found one child looking under my desk. I shrugged and applied my questioning face.
“I was looking for your voice. I thought it might be hiding under your desk. It’s a busy time of year. I thought it might need a nap.”
Apparently, it wasn’t there.

Another asked me what I could do for it. When I gestured that I didn’t know she shrugged, looked at my bottle of water and said, “I dunno either, maybe drink.” I assume she was talking about water but when a ten year old suggests you turn to drink, you know it’s serious.

I love children’s sense of optimism. They still think that everything can be fixed, easily. They also think that if it’s gone on a long time you might need to turn to more drastic measures.
“It’s no good,” said one girl, earnestly, “It can’t go on like this. What will you have to do? Get a new head?”

That’s the solution, like Worzel Gummidge it’s just that I’ve got the wrong head on.

You probably don’t remember Worzel Gummidge. He was a scarecrow, played brilliantly by Jon Pertwee on children’s TV in my youth. He was made by the Crow Man, who would make him a new head whenever he needed it. He had heads for thinking, dancing, arithmetic. He had a riddle-me-ree head and a wrangling head and he once persuaded the Crow Man to make him a handsome head, which gave him teeth like Rylan, before Rylan was even born.  In the episode where he uses his singing head (which is probably the one I need to borrow) the vicar is distressed because a member of the choir has lost his voice. His wife has brought him to see the vicar to explain and the vicar says, “Speak for yourself man,” but he can’t because he has laryngitis. Oh, how we laughed. “You’d better be alright for the Harvest Festival,” says the vicar. The wife reassured him that it will be fine (that’s what wives do) and suggests that God will provide. The vicar, knowing God’s limitations slumps and says, “Not tenors, though.” The man with laryngitis and the wife walk away just as Worzel appears, wearing his singing head, humming All Things Bright and Beautiful, slightly out of tune. It’s only then that we realise how desperate the vicar was as he thanks the lord.

It’s a thought. If only I could find the Crow Man, he could make me a new head.

There is an odd synchronicity to this story, as when I first lost my voice I used to joke with the children that it had been stolen by the Crow that used to sit and tap on the hall windows when we were singing and this week a crow hand puppet appeared on my desk from nowhere.

Maybe it's time to search for Nellie (we named the crow after a music teacher who was at the school in the sixties) and demand my voice back.

Cold Fish

I've never been a warm fuzzy kind of human: not someone you'd go to for a hug.  I'm the sort of person who gets called 'strong' or 'good in a crisis' but definitely not someone who 'wears their heart on their sleeve'. This probably makes me an odd kind of friend. 

Yesterday, I met a friend in London.  We haven't seen each other for a while and I kept thinking that people not like me might have hugged and I wondered if she was disappointed that we didn't or get drunk and take selfies, pouting over the top of our over sized Margarita glasses. I hope she wasn't and enjoyed what we did as much as I did.

Standing in the cold drizzle queueing at the TKTS office she asked me what I wanted to see.  I was only prepared to say what I hadn't seen and what I knew about the shows that were available.
"Big Fish.  That sounds interesting. What's that?" she asked.
"It's new.  It should be good, funny and sad.  It's a great film."
She hadn't seen the film but we settled on that one and went to Barrafina for lunch.

Barrafina is a Spanish Tapas bar in Covent Garden.  It has smart red bar stools, a shiny counter, waiters with proper Spanish accents that mean that they spit a little as they talk. You watch your meal being prepared and the vegetables and fish are on display.

It was delicious and your glass keeping filling with free fizzy water, which is my idea of a good time out, although I wasn't sure about being watched by the fish.  Then a big red prawn thing jumped. It was like a scene from the little mermaid.  We could almost hear the chef singing about poissons while Sebastian hid under a cabbage leaf. 

As we ate we talked and I ended up telling my friend all about the elephant. I didn't mean to. Just as I refuse to give him space on the blog I wasn't going to take him to meet my friend. However, just a few questions and I described him in full technicolour detail but as though he was sitting on someone else's blog and I was just watching him. I refused to give any of his histrionic emotions houseroom.  My friend apologised. "It's fine. I can talk about him now," I said going on to explain how he was effecting everyone else.  I also talked about my Dad's last few days and grief. I can't think it was the best fun she's ever had.

We had to run across Green Park so we didn't miss the start of the show. It was at The Other Palace Theatre in Victoria, which is quite like the Mercury in Colchester and we had front row seats, which give you a bit of a crick in the neck and make you fear that a giant might land in your lap. It was different from the film but not too much. It was still about the death of a parent.

At the interval my friend looked worried.  

"This probably wasn't the best thing for you to come and see, under the circumstances," she said.

I laughed. 

You've got to laugh.

I think you know you are doing okay if you can laugh.

Big Fish would make anyone laugh. It had some wonderful comic performances and a brilliant joke or two.

"They've crossed a Hippopotomus, Elephant and Rhino."

"What do they call it?"

"Hell if I know. (Helephino)"

Maybe the elephant is actually a Helephino.

A musical can't convey the weirdness as well as a film does but it does a pretty good job.  The songs, however, bring so much more emotion into it. Most of the theatre was sobbing or at least dabbing an eye. My friend thought that it could have sent me over the edge but being a cold fish it just made my cold a little worse.

When I got home the Long Suffering Husband asked me all about it. 

"It was really good," I told him, "It had some famous actors in it. I think the man who played the Dad was someone and the the circus man was Gene Wilder."

"Gene Wilder?" the LSH asked, "He died."

"No. He didn't die.  It was the other one who died."

The LSH explained that he meant Gene Wilder had died in real life. He said that he'd been one of the victims of the great 2016 celebrity cull. I didn't believe him, so he looked up who was in the musical.

Kelsey Grammer was the Dad and the person I thought was Gene Wilder was someone called Forbes Masson, who someone should discover as a comedy genius (if they haven't already)

Not Gene Wilder

If it had been Gene Wilder then they could have called it Big Cold Fish.

Give me a sign

I lost my voice again last Sunday. I know. It's boring me too, so I decided to go to the doctor. 

I saw a GP very much like Doc Martin. 
"What can I do for you?" she asked
"I'm not sure," I croaked.
"Oh dear. You need to stop talking!" she barked, "What do you do for a living?"
I started to tell her and she quickly interrupted shushing me and saying that was no good.
"I'll sign you off for a week. No talking until Monday and steam for 10 minutes every hour."
I tried to tell her that it happens every seven weeks or so but she put her finger to her lips and said, "No talking."

I had no one to dep for me at the Youth Orchestra so I had a notebook and made myself a sign.

It worked reasonably well but conflict resolution with eight year olds and a notebook is tricky.  Sign language would only work if the people you are talking to know how to sign.  The LSH does know the few swear words I have learnt.

It is also completely exhausting to have no voice.  You are playing a constant game of charades, which although sounds fun, very much depends on who you are playing with.  

The Long Suffering Husband finds it very difficult when I lose my voice: He is used to being able to have shouted conversations from different rooms in the house, can't see well enough without his specs (and he can never find his specs) to read my notebook, doesn't have the patience to wait for my phone to speak each word that I type and he is terrible at charades. Really terrible.  I have very many fond Christmas memories of him being the worst charade player on the planet.  Let's hope he never loses his voice because if he is bad at guessing that's nothing compared to his ability to give clues.  One year we were all laughing at him, waving his arms in a circular motion, which we all took to mean, "just keep guessing until you get it." When it was his next go he pulled the card from the hat and looked defeated. "I don't even know how to begin," he said. We were encouraging but resigned to the fact that we would be there for some time.  He started by cupping his breasts. "Ship shape and Bristol fashion!" my dad shouted.  We never found out whether he cheated or was inspired. The LSH was so shocked that he couldn't speak for a while and stood continuing to gesticulate until we told him to stop.

Both my children came home for the weekend, which was handy, as they are much better at charades. 

It was irritating not being able to talk. I like talking and after four days you start to lose a sense of yourself.  I found myself checking in the mirror to make sure I was still there. By late on Sunday night, when both children had gone home and the dog was sulking I was feeling quite miserable and not like my usual cheery self.  

"The problem is not being able to talk really messes with your mind and my mind is the last bit of me that needs to be messed with," I told the LSH (I might have substituted messes for a ruder word that begins with F)

The LSH perked up and offered his services if I needed him to mess with anything; just give him the nod, tip the wink and he'd be there. Bob's your uncle.  Fanny's your.....well, you get the idea.

On Monday, able to talk again, I was driving my mum to her chemotherapy appointment and a programme came on the radio interviewing a man who had lost his voice and whose wife had cancer.  It doesn't make great radio; an interview of someone you can't hear but it is odd how everything seems to be about what's on your mind.  My mum has decided that the whole world must have cancer because everything she sees or listens to mentions it.  If you are someone of a slightly hippy nature and prone to a long flowing skirt and dangling earrings then you will be familiar with the idea of the universe sending you a sign.  A Taoist friend once told me that if you hear the same thing three times then the universe is trying to tell you something and you should listen.  

Today, in an attempt to get my head together I took a long walk (missing out a couple of hours of steaming) remaining open to any signs that might come my way. Hippy-types get very excited by feathers.  Finding feathers is meant to be a sign that angels are near.  As I walked along a footpath I noticed that someone had collected feathers and placed them in the cracks of the posts of the fence.  It was a stunning sight.  There were grey, white, black and brown feathers and then I found a green feather.

If feathers are signs of angels, shouldn't they be white? Who has heard of a green winged angel? Maybe I don't have angels but sick parrots stalking me.  I kept holding the feather until I reached the last post, when it felt right to add it to the display that was there already.  

I kept walking, thinking about signs.

Who put that sign there and why? The only way to reach this path is up or down a very muddy and slippery slope.  It must be a message. Life is a slippery surface.

Closer to home.

This sign made me laugh.  I imagined dog owners squatting on this person's garden. I thought about them sitting in their kitchen, watching owners join their dogs in a spot of outdoor defecation.  As I dog owner I get the message and will try not to foul.

Finally, one last sign.

CYCLISTS PLEASE USE YOUR BELL!  Some of us are hard of hearing and the rest don't hear you coming!

Who writes these signs? What is the message? Should I be using a bell or am I the one not hearing things coming.

I think that's quite enough signing for now.

Small Things

When you are having an "annus horribilis", as the Queen would say, it's the small things that tell you how bad it is.

Even if you are just having a, "2017 is a shit year," as my friends would say there are still loads of small things that go wrong.  You would imagine that these small things could break you but you are wrong.  In a good year, they can do that.  Log onto Facebook and you will see loads of people moaning about stuff. Fridges have broken, washing machines have leaked, the dog has been sick on the carpet, the GP receptionist was rude when someone tried to get an appointment for a cold. Friends console with the well known fact that these things only come in threes.  Enemies point out that as these things come in threes they have two more to come. Those people think that one more thing will cause a mental breakdown.

It is true that this year is proving to be a bit of a bad one for me and I'm certain that things don't just come in threes.  Big things or small things.  Yesterday, these small things went wrong.

1. I lost my voice (again)
2.The heating broke on the first cold day.
3. The steering lock on my car got stuck and I had to walk back from the supermarket (without a coat)
4. When I tried to ring the Long Suffering Husband to tell him what had happened he thought I was crying (stupid voice) and he rushed home from work.
5. The gas man said that we need a new boiler.
6. The dog stole my KitKat and ate it wrapper and all
7. I banged my head on a tree.
8.  The dog, on a sugar high, got stuck on the garden table and then threw himself at me, when I came to see what was wrong, hurting his gammy shoulder.
9.  A pupil's flute fell apart.
10. My voice completely disappeared and I didn't even sound like I was crying.

None of these bothered me.  That's how you know things are bad. The little things don't break you. Weirdly, they put a spring in your step and make you feel normal.

You also notice the small nice things.  You notice the friends that check on you. You notice the people that appreciate the effort you go to.  You notice the sun and the birds and the things that are working well.