Bad Friday, Good Thursday

It’s a bank holiday. If things were normal then you would be waking to the glorious freedom of not having to go to work today, having hot cross buns for breakfast and the inevitable family arguments about what you are going to do today. For several years, I have called this day Bad Friday. I wasn’t the originator of this term but somehow it has stuck.

I run a youth orchestra and we meet every Friday except for those in August and as we meet in a church, religious festival days. This means that we don’t rehearse on Good Friday. A few years ago one of the kids sent me a message to explain how if he couldn’t come to orchestra then it was definitely a bad Friday.

Making music is a human response. In times of crisis it makes us feel better. Playing music together is one of the most sociable but insular things you can do. You keep yourself to yourself; no touching but you connect through the music. The clapping for the NHS is a primitive form of this musical connection. Smarter people noticed this and brought out pots, pans and vuvuzelas. Then a musician, in a music teacher’s forum I’m on, suggested that we join the clapping by playing Somewhere Over the Rainbow. There was some discussion over the key (because musicians couldn’t bear the idea that they might play in a different key to their neighbours) and concert G was settled on.
I wrote it out for my orchestra members and suggested that we have a remote rehearsal, every Thursday (sharing videos) until we are able to meet again.

I’ll be honest, even though I had suggested it to them I still felt awkward about actually doing it. Luckily, I wasn’t alone. I live with a violinist and there is an oboist opposite, so we went for it.
“This is weird,” the violinist said.
“Very,” I agreed, waving at the oboist.
We might have been in the same key but keeping in time at a distance was tricky and there were the usual problems of playing outside in the dark, of music blowing off stands and not being able to see the sharps. However, every musician should give it a go.
As Michael Ball said on Twitter after the first Thursday clapping session, “So proud of my street in London. Nearly everyone came out and clapped and cheered. A beautiful moment...mind you I’m so starved of applause I wanted to walk into the middle of the street, bow, wave and thank everyone for coming #needy.
“That was nice, actually,” I said.
“Lovely to be clapped all the way through a performance,” the violinist agreed.

For a while, we will have to put up with bad Fridays but at least we can have some good Thursdays.

May You Live in Interesting Times

The Chinese have a curse, which goes something like, "may you live in interesting times."

These are interesting times and they are hurting my head.

Everyone else seems much more confident about what is wrong with  society are and how to fix it than me.  All I can see are problems and no solutions and it just makes me want to run away and hide.

Theresa May is going to be Prime Minister on Wednesday.  Whether she's still Prime Minister on Thursday......well, the way things are going, who knows?  People are saying that she doesn't have a mandate, Jeremy Corbyn has a huge mandate and Angela Eagle will never have a mandate.  I don't even know what a mandate is.  It's one of those words that makes me snigger, like a naughty 14 year old in a sex education lesson.

Theresa May's first words were, "Brexit means Brexit," and again I'm confused.  I don't know what Brexit means, especially when she pronounces it Br-egg -sit.  I imagine a sit in protest by British hens. If you have read my blog before then you know what I think about the vote to leave the European Union and I know that people have voted to leave but how that leaving happens, well, I'm completely confused.  I just hope no one actually invents a time machine to take us back to the 1950s because I suspect it wasn't as great as people imagine. The only thing that really seems to know what Brexit means is the jet-stream, which has firmly cut us off from the rest of Europe.

Politics isn't the only thing that is happening.  Schools are getting ready to break up, giving parents, teachers, students and politicians one last chance for a row before the summer break.  Everyone is a little tired and fractious.  Exams are done, SATs results are out, and the hard work is over. Teachers are desperately trying to cram all the lovely things that kids will remember into the last two weeks.  They have planned more than they can fit in.  Parents are feeling the pressure and are writing blog posts about being asked to provide a yellow t-shirt at a moment's notice, or pay for an autograph book. They are complaining that they shouldn't have to give up an evening to bring their child into school for the play, when that child only stands up to mumble, "Please turn off your mobile phones," wondering how hard it would be to teach them to enunciate. (Trust me: it's very hard)  Politicians are blaming the teachers for the incomparable SATs results, teachers are blaming the politicians, parents are blaming everyone and the kids are keeping quiet, hoping that nobody blames them. In the blog posts everyone seems very certain of how much everything should cost and how much work everyone should be doing for the money they are paid.  I don't even know how much work I'm meant to do for what I'm paid.

This idea that everyone knows how much money, time or effort it takes to do someone else's job baffles me.  Until you've walked in someone else's shoes, you have no idea.  It's the kind of thing you hear when people talk about teaching.  "How hard could it be?  They start at 9 and finish at 3 and those holidays!"

The Guardian, this morning had an article about Newsquest newspaper group offering a very senior journalist £100 a week to 'put together' 5 pages of news content.  https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2016/jul/12/newsquest-to-freelance-fancy-producing-five-pages-for-100
Newsquest is the group that took over (and in my opinion) ruined our local paper by reducing the pages, having less reporters, relying on press releases and moving offices out of the town.  The most stunning thing about this article are the comments.  There are people who are saying they could do the job for half the price, which I'm sure they could, although whether it would be a good job and whether they could pay their fuel bill is questionable.  The suggestion that one person could write 5 pages of news in a day and sub-edit it (so that it fits on a page) seems a bit of a push to me but even if they could then I question whether the comments suggesting £100 for a day's work is good pay.  Freelancers are always paid more than full timers - that's because they don't have any of the other benefits in a salary package. So, at £100 a day, you are looking at a maximum full time salary of £25,000 (for an editor/journalist/sub), as a senior position.  That's not going to pay your mortgage in Reading. You might earn less than that but should a highly qualified person (degree and further exams) really be earning that when MPs are earning about £75,000 a year (plus expenses).

Then there's music.  Today music is interesting.  Piano keys are shifting, children are shaking in their sandals and people turn up to exams without their music or instrument. At least David Cameron cheered me up with his happy tune last night and some very clever musicologists have analysed the ditty and others have turned it into a proper piece of music.

I'm thinking about starting a new political party.  I might call it, "let's just be nice to each other party."  We could wear beige, drink tea (or hot water, in my case), share cakes.  We wouldn't be the party for people who want to take control but the party for people who find it difficult to decide what to eat for dinner.  We'd make sure that people were paid fairly and that everyone was allowed to have a nice time. It would be the party for the people who don't want to fight and certainly don't want to live in interesting times.

Late to the Party

I've just discovered the awesomeness of YouTube.  How was it possible to have lived with my daughter for the last 5 or 6 years and not have realised?

It makes me feel like a bad parent.  She told me about creative people putting on videos.  She told me about John Green (and I read his novels) and went all mooney about someone who I think was called Charlie Blue Sky.  She went to Hyde Park when she was 15 and got all excited about meeting her creative heroes.  I did listen, honestly I did but I just thought YouTube was a place full of teenagers expressing their existential angst (maybe it was).  I thought it wasn't for me.  As she got older she learnt how to put on make up from YouTube mainly because she was never going to learn it from her frumpy mother and has become slightly obsessed with Sprinkle of Glitter and a girl who has just married her vlogger boyfriend.  All I ever really found was Sneezing Pandas and small children biting each other's fingers.

Then my son became 15 and found YouTube. He spends hours watching people playing the video games that he plays.  I am becoming a bad parent again because I can't find any interest in what he's watching.

I had used YouTube to find things.  I'd re-watched things like the news, music videos or old comedy programmes and I'd found videos parents had put up of their children playing flute and piano exam pieces.

This morning the Long Suffering Husband was watching a YouTube video about golf balls and my son was watching people play Minecraft and so I sent a 'HELP ME' text to my daughter.  It is when the house gets very masculine and nerdy I really miss her.  She suggested I fight back by watching Ocarina videos and so I have spent much of the day wasting my time on finding wonderful mind expanding videos given for free by people who are more intelligent and creative than I could ever hope to be.

I started with Ocarina workshop, learning the parts for the Guinness World Record attempt at the Royal Albert Hall and moved onto watching some things I'd seen before, like Axis of Awesome and their understanding of 4 chord songs and the Pachabel Rant.

Then I remembered the brilliant Mom Song and watched that again.

Then I discovered the most amazing Vi Hart.  I want to have a fraction of this girl's intelligence and creativity.  

This is something I have to go and try and I might even listen to Schoenberg with new ears.  I have now watched most of Vi Hart's videos and am in complete awe of her.  I'm sure most of them will excite my son and terrify my daughter (as they are about maths and sometimes music) but the final video is the the one that is going to make me stop watching them and get on with being creative myself. 

Oh, and I might make some wax fingerprints too.