Not on a school night

In primary school staffrooms all over the country a conversation can be heard.

Teacher 1 (female):  Well we've got to fit sex in sometime before the end of term.
Teacher 2 (female):  Oh, do we have to?
Teacher 3 (male):   Yes, It'll be fine.
T1: Let's just get it over with
T2: OK.  If we have to.
T3:  It'll be great.
T1:  So that's three times this week.
T2:  Three times is a bit excessive.
T3:  No it's not!
T1:  Far too much for a married woman.
T2:  Especially in term time
T3: Where's your sense of adventure?
T1: So when shall we timetable it?
T2: Tuesday morning?
T1: That's a bit risky.
T3: Sometimes the morning's good.
T2:  Not in term time.
T3:  We could just do it when we feel like it.
T1 & T2:  NO.  We'd never feel like it.
T3:  A bit of spontaneity?
T1:  No it has to be planned.
T3:  It's just too hard

I love a bit of double entendre.

And my Superhero Power will be.......

If you could choose one Superhero power what would you choose?

My daughter said, "I'd like to be able to conjure up any food I thought of."  That would be rather useful, as she is about to go to University and last night's pasta that she cooked was a little crunchy.  It would save a fortune too.

The dog would like some control over the weather.  He doesn't like the rain and today is just too hot.

The Long Suffering Husband would like the Midas touch.  Turning me to gold would have the added benefit of stopping me talking.

But I would choose invisibility.

Sometimes I think I'm quite good at it anyway.  At the weekend we went to a BBQ with the cast of the Shakespeare and people kept coming up to me and saying,"We haven't met before......I know the face.....I think.....Ah, Ben's Mum."  This was quite surprising, as I have done front of house jobs for at least 5 years.  People rarely remember me or my name.  Someone I have known for years calls me Hillary everytime she sees me and at the final one of 15 meetings the chap in charge called me Fran. I'm not a huge fan of meetings.  I don't know if you remember Ally McBeal but in the first episode she imagined herself as a little girl, swinging her legs round a board-table full of grown up men.  That is how meetings make me feel.  At those moments I long for invisibility.

Today I met someone I haven't seen for a long time in town.  After the initial how-are-yous she said, "So, you've been busy with the music stuff I keep seeing your name everywhere." Oh no how embarrassing!  "You love it!" she said.  Yes, I do love doing the music stuff but seeing my name everywhere, that's no fun for anyone.  I've never understood why people want fame.  People point and whisper, look into your shopping trolley, or call your name across the street.  Imagine that on a bigger scale. Hideous.

The problem is that I like to do things that people look at.  I like to make music and write.  A friend told me I should start sending my writing out but I think this blog is more than enough.  I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me today when my hairdresser started discussing my 50 Shades of Rubbish blog.

When I was much younger there was a program on the TV called Soap.  It was an American sitcom and one of the characters would click his fingers across his body and everyone would pretend they couldn't see him.  I think it had something to do with Alien abduction.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3liqQa1w2B0

Ok, so he was mad and so was Ally McBeal, after all she was followed around by a dancing baby but I would still choose invisibility.

Maybe I should write under a pseudonym.  How about Fran Hillary?

Biased but Accurate Review

Tonight I watched Mac Theatre's production of Midsummer Night's Dream in the Promenade Park.  Before I write my review I must confess that it is completely biased. I love these people.  They are my friends and my son.  Impartiality is not possible.

It was brilliant.  I often don't understand a lot of Shakespeare because I am uncultured but this performance made me laugh a lot and I enjoy laughing.  I've watched Shakespeare comedies before and wondered what was funny about them.  Not this time.

It was an olympic themed performance.  The set included a horse jump, a medal podium and a gigantic olympic torch, knocked on it's side.  The characters were dressed in red, white and blue to tie in with a Jubilee year. The fairies were flames from the torch.

The Mechanicals - dressed in red white and blue

Puck was played like a wickedly enthusiastic teenager (not bad for a mother and teacher), completely believable and so much fun to watch.  Oberon, next to tiny little Puck looked every inch her boss.  Oberon has been part of Mac Theatre's cast for every show I have seen and he is always a delight to watch.

Puck and Oberon

Last year I made the mistake of calling someone on front of house duties with me, "bouncy Claire" in front of my son, who then went and told her.  She was offended but really it was a compliment.  This year she put that sparky enthusiasm into leading her group of flaming fairies.  One of the fairies had a beautiful voice and sang a solo, backed hilariously by the rest of the fairies aka the Supremes.

The workmen (mechanicals) who began by building the set got excited about performing the play (within the play) to various degrees.  Peter Quince, author of the play rolled his eyes so well at all their efforts.  The actor playing this part has been in every one of Mac Theatre's 10 productions.  Let's hope he continues for the next 10 years.  Nick Bottom was brilliant.  It takes great skill to act as though you are a really bad actor, when you are actually amazing.  When I have seen this play before Bottom has come across as a bumbling fool but I loved this interpretation of an over-enthusiastic amateur.  When he became an Ass and Oberon tricked Titania into being in love with his he was just so adorable that Titania didn't seem at all foolish.

Bottom and Titania

Hermia, Lysanda, Helena and Demtrius played the love triangle really well.  I was particularly impressed with Helena, whose delivery made me understand every word she said.  There was no shrillness to her voice either, that you sometimes get when female actors have to raise their voices other the wind in an outdoor performance.  Hermia was a little too convincing as the clingy, boyfriend-slapper I hope her great performance doesn't put future boyfriends off.

Hermia, Lysanda and Helena

The Pyramus and Thisbe play was my favourite part.   The Athenians had clearly studied a critical audience and their comments added even more light and humour.  I confess that when my son came home and said, "I'm playing Francis Flute and I get to wear a dress," I was a little concerned.  It's not every mother's wish to have a 14 year old boy who is excited about wearing dresses. However, I needn't have worried. This is not a boy who wears dresses well.

Thisbe

He was so funny and cute.  I know I'm biased but I think the audience agreed with me.  They laughed at all the right moments and when he died a spontaneous, "ahhh" filled the ampitheatre.  One of the problems of performing in the park on a summer evening is that 'cool (not) year 10s' feel threatened as their dope-smoking space is invaded.  During Thisbe's death scene, one of them decided to contribute a line of his own.  The result, I thought, was quite funny: "Adieu, Adieu, W****ERS!, Adieu"  Luckily, Thisbe's death was sad enough for the audience to overlook it. At the end of the play the Athenians beg the Mechanicals not to perform their epilogue and so they treat us to the funniest dance, to the tune of  'I believe in miracles', whipping their pants from under their hard hats at the end.

You can leave your hat on

I believe in miracles.

Overall, Mac Theatre's 10th Anniversary performance was a triumph.  I'm not just saying this because I am a proud mother, or because the lovely cast bought me delicious chocolates for doing front of house or because Nikki and Barrie are my friends but because I thoroughly enjoyed it as did the rest of the audience. 

Please put your hands together....

In any setting, other than church or school assembly, "please put your hands together" is your cue that it's all over.  Time to smile, clap and go home.   In yesterdays EYFS assembly when the two very cute little girls stood up and said, "please put your hands together and close your eyes," everyone in the audience clapped.

 From my half asleep position behind the piano I was momentarily confused, as I thought there was still one more song to go and then I realised their mistake.  It is one I had singularly made at one Easter Service when my daughter was in year one.  When the whole church looks at you as if you are some religious philistine, who has lacked any kind of moral upbringing you do wish the ground would open up and swallow you.  Luckily, yesterday's parents were in the majority and were able to just smugly giggle to each other.

Who decided that clapping should be the way to show approval at the end of a performance, though? Clapping is quite a complex physical manoeuvre.  It requires a certain amount of co-ordination.  It isn't something that happens spontaneously.  Apes occasionally clap in the wild but it is usually out of fear, to frighten something away.

I asked an actress friend.  She said that it must have come from Greek theatre that the applause were probably a chorus in a particular play and that it stuck.  I can see that but why particularly clapping?  Why not shout 'brava', as the Italians do or click your fingers as the Romans did?

I think that making a noise at the end of a performance helps to dispel the energy that has built up.  Theatre and music creates a spiritual holding of the breath, a magic feeling that no one wants to break.  A clap breaks that energy up and allows normal thoughts and feeling back.  I'm sure that is why there is a convention not to clap between movements of a symphony.  The composer wants the tension and energy to remain from the previous movements right until the end.  Mozart, apparently, didn't mind.  He just though people could enjoy his music any way they wanted.

After we made our Wedding Vows the Vicar asked everyone to clap.  I don't know why there was so much tension at that point but everyone was holding their breath.

In my search for an answer I turned to Google.  There was a lot of information about clapping etiquette, when to and when not to clap. Wikipedia made me laugh, as it said that it was convention for violinists to tap their bows and for woodwind players to tap their hand on their knee.  As a woodwind player who taps my hand on my knee and the mother of a violinist who taps her bow I can categorically say that no one has ever told us to do this.  It is purely because with an expensive instrument in one hand or an an expensive instrument and expensive bow in each hand clapping is not an option.  I also found out that people at a Bruce Springsteen concert shout, "Bruce! Bruce!" Bruce!", which sounds like booing.

"Bruce, Bruce, Bruce!"

The word applause arrived in the English language in 1590, from the Latin applausus, which means struck upon.  This would imply that applause started much later than the Greeks.

Jean Daurat - Inventor of applause?

Claque is the French word for clapping. Claques, were groups of people employed to start the clapping (I've been to see some things that could definitely use these people)  The first claques were employed by French poet, Jean Daurat,in 1567,  who would give tickets for his readings away for the promise of applause at the end.  Then he hit upon the genius idea of paying the same people to go to poetry readings of his rivals and boo to show their displeasure.  Maybe it was this poet who invented applause but I still don't know why he chose to bash hand together as a symbol of pleasure.

Too Numerous Too Mention

I was mentioned in the local paper this week.  There was a review of Little Shop of Horrors and it said, "The production was masterminded by Kris Rawlinson, who also masterminded a group of 12 musicians too numerous to mention by name." Apart from making Kris seem like an evil genius (a double mastermind)  it does seem strange to write the number of musicians and then say there were too many to name.

I quite like being too numerous too mention.  It appeals to me to just be getting on with loads of things without the need for ego massaging.  In the same paper was a letter from someone complaining that the choir they sing with wasn't mentioned the last time they sang.  Maybe they are too numerous to mention.  

I'm thinking of starting a "Too Numerous to Mention Award".  It could go to the people who are the glue.  Those who work hard, those who don't normally get awards or pay rises or even get to keep their hours.  The mothers, the workers, the little people.  Children who just get on with their work, who don't cause trouble, don't need shed-loads of praise to do a good job.  The people who smile, who look for the positive rather than endlessly moaning about what could have been better. 

But I can see that the interest lies in the 10% of people that don't deserve this award.  Today, one of the 10% made me snigger in a lesson I was teaching.  We were doing football songs (if you can't beat them....) and this child said, "When the football is on in our house my Dad keeps shouting w****ker at the TV."

Just Keep Swimming

When  a busy period ends the temptation is to stop.  To sit in the rocking chair and make burbling noises, gently hugging yourself. When you are in the middle of a 'running around like an idiot' phase everyone tells you how nice it will be when it's all over.  The truth is that it isn't very nice.  It's boring.  You have time to think.  You go over, what you would have done better or differently.  You are tired and the slightest thing makes you feel a bit weepy.  Your throat is sore and you seem to have only half the vocal power you had the previous week and you have no reason to keep going.  You could stop, get sick, stay in bed all day and watch Jeremy Kyle (although, shouting at the TV is out because of the lack of voice).

Over the years I have learnt that it is best to find displacement activities, to gently ease myself into rest.  Go to lunch, tidy cupboards, finish knitting jumpers, make cakes and just keep swimming.

Beginning of Midsummer Night Dream Cakes

Of course, none of this displacement activity stops you feeling tired, weepy and endlessly thinking about what you could have done better so bear with me if I'm not my usual bouncy self.

Silly Suffolk

There are more pigs than people in Suffolk and the county has it's very own Sheep society.  In fact, Suffolk has so few people they have to make them.

Suffolk Village Scarecrow Trail

We ventured into deepest darkest Suffolk to collect our son from his DofE walk and popped into Snape Maltings.  It's a funky arts centre with a pub, tearoom, shops and it's on the river with great walks around it.  Today we saw some great and strange art.  

Next time I have weeds on the allotment I'm just going to say it's art.

The few people there are in Suffolk keep themselves well occupied though.  In every village we began to drive through there was someone on duty to drive out in front of us and keep our speed to 20 miles an hour.

Where have all the ambulances gone?

Yesterday evening we needed to call an ambulance.  One of the children at the orchestra fell over a chair and broke their arm.  It was a really bad break so we called 999.

HOW CAN 999 BE ENGAGED?

Eventually we got through and they sent a paramedic car.  A lovely woman took one look and radioed in, "Can I have some assistance please?"   "Ermmm.....there are no ambulances going out of Maldon tonight.  Is it code red 1 or 2?"

DISGRACEFUL!

No ambulances on a Friday night, when England are playing football.  What is going on?

Where have all the ambulances gone?  There used to be ambulances.  Were they all busy with a major incident?  The East of England Ambulance Service website lists; a woman taken to hospital after a road accident in Grays at 2pm, a slightly injured woman taken to Colchester hospital after a traffic accident at 1pm, a cyclist taken to hospital at 3pm and an injured child, from Watford who was taken to hospital 8am.  This doesn't seem very much.

The poor paramedic was very apologetic, "poor boy. We would wait 2-3 hours for an ambulance now.  If you take him I will ring through and make sure you are admitted straight away."

You hear stories about people who call  ambulance because they need someone to pick up their shopping or help them trim their toenails, so I wondered if all the ambulances were out on errands for people. (Read Nee-Naw blog http://www.neenaw.co.uk/ if you want to find out just how much time paramedics waste)
 Then I found this statement on South Central Ambulance Service website:

On average, there is only one ambulance per 23,000 people during the day, and one per 35,000 people at night available in our region. So, make sure you need us before you call.

 I wonder if it is the same in our region and if it's enough. Maldon has a population of 61,000 people so even if there was one ambulance that would be half the amount South Central feel they need to warn their patients about.  What if there was no one to take this child to hospital? What if someone were having a heart attack or a stroke?  It's just not fair to put the paramedics in this position. We couldn't have asked for a quicker initial response or for someone with a better manner - she was wonderful but who can do a job like that without backup?

The good news is that this child did get to hospital in one piece and will be having the bones set this morning.  He was one very brave boy.

Get Well Soon

I'll name that song in 5 shows

Music follows a set of rules; there are 7 notes in a diatonic scale, some chord sequences work better than others and these rules make  a collection of sounds pleasant for the human ear. They are also extremely limiting and so musical plagiarism is everywhere.

It's what we like, though.  If I was going to write a pop song I would reference a nursery rhyme and take people back to their childhoods, where the sun shone all summer, everyone was their friend and they were never tired.  The beginning of Somebody I used to Know by Goyte does this brilliantly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UVNT4wvIGY

Musicals often add in themes from other bits of music.  They are usually themes from popular culture at the time that help the audience identify with the story that is being told.  Avenue Q, is one of my favourite musicals because it doesn't pretend to be anything other than a reference to Sesame Street and Children's TV shows.

Little Shop of Horrors has the Goodies theme tune in it.  Every night this week I've come home and watched a clip from the Goodies on YouTube.  Oh, how I loved the Goodies but now it makes me laugh for all the wrong reasons.  I wonder if Graeme Garden and Co watch Ecky Thump back and cringe at the racist, politically incorrect jokes that were acceptable in the Seventies.

The Goodies just had the best songs as well.  I loved, "Everybody Loves String.", "The Funky Gibbon" and "Father Christmas Do not Touch me."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC3AphnJLbE

This song takes me right back to my school days.  Those glorious days in the 80s where teachers were allowed to be human and no one complained.  Our school choir was a Staff and Pupil choir.  The music teacher bribed his mates (with beer I believe) to sing Tenor and Bass.  A group of rugby playing maths teachers taught the whole choir how to sing "Sir Jasper", which we thoroughly enjoyed, especially when we got to breathlessly moan, "Oh..........Oh............ Oh,"

At the beginning of  The Meek Shall Inherit (in Little Shop of Horrors) a musical reference is made to a   TV crime show from the 1970's.  It's not Miss Marple, Murder She Wrote or Poirot.  I can't quite work it out at the moment but there are still two shows to go, so maybe it will come to me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhCo6PUVf3k&feature=relmfu

The Glamorous Life of a Musician

There's a fine line between doing what you love and being a mug.  Recently, I think I've slipped into the latter category. I have been practising saying, "No" but it happens at the wrong times.  Yesterday, a lovely colleague came up to me and I just said, "no" before she'd even asked anything.  The trouble was she was going to ask if I wanted a drink.

I had a difficult day yesterday and would have happily ended the life of one or two people.  I started a whiny blog last night but luckily had to go out before it was finished.  I was a little confused to find that I was playing for the Little Shop of Horrors show.  A tiny memory in the back of my brain is telling me that I said I couldn't do it because I would be too busy this week.  Luckily, my part is mainly rests, so no practice was required.

There is nothing quite like doing what you love, with a group of people who are also there doing what they love.  The pit band are a brilliant group of people.  They all give up their evening because they love music.  They sit in a cold, dark barn at the back of the stage not seeing the show or the audience. Hidden from view because of their extreme ugliness.  Occasionally, a Lovie, trips past, "oh no, I completely mucked that up," they giggle.  The percussionists leap about, making faces and rude gestures.  The trumpet player constantly checks his Twitter feed.  The musical director counts in, giving  a "3,4" count for all pieces, even those in 2.  The 2nd keyboard player can't hear a note he is playing and hopes that it sounds OK.  The Baritone Sax player has a nasty cold and it's difficult to tell whether the honking is coming from the instrument or the nose blowing.  The first reed player keeps forgetting that there is a microphone above her head, using colourful language when she misses a note or has the wrong instrument in her hand.  I read my book and hope I don't miss my four notes.

From where we are there are several scenes that just don't seem to make sense.  I am particularly confused about the monkey in the Dentist Chair number.

People think that musicians are happy to work for free.  "Yes, but you do it for the love," a colleague said to me yesterday, when I complained that his wife would be getting paid (well) for marshalling an event that I was doing for nothing. Maybe they think the kudos of being seen and heard is enough.  Personally, I hate that part.  I'm not comfortable with praise but I do like to be able to pay my bills.

Clichés

In an interview, an author, whose name I can't remember said that any description that you have heard before is a cliché.  She said that she sat for 5 whole days to think of a new way of describing the palm trees that line the streets of LA.  At the time, I remember thinking that life was too short and that the idea of ever being a writer was one I should abandon immediately.

I'm going to lay my cards on the table here.  I love a cliché. They have me in stitches, they make me laugh until I cry and laughter is, after all, the best medicine.

At the Allotment this weekend I heard loads of clichés: You have to make hay while the sunshines; All things grow with love and weeds grow without love; Can't see the wood for the weeds (sure it was trees last time I heard it!); I don't like dishing the dirt but have you seen Fred's plot? If they think those leeks are going to taste nice I reckon they've just fallen off the Turnip truck;  In every life a little rain must fall.

The weather always throws people straight into Cliché Mode.  It's been raining cats and dogs for days.  It's great weather for ducks but not so good for the rest of us.  With outdoor musical events planned this week I have been hoping it will stop soon as I don't want to be responsible for 300 drowned rats.  Today, I found out that one event (2 singing opportunities) has been cancelled.  It's a washout.  The other event Sparks Will Fly will not be cancelled.  It will go ahead come hell or highwater and it won't be over until the fat lady sings.

On Saturday my son is doing his DofE walk.  The practice walk was a washout.  The whole thing was mud, sweat and tears and at the end of it they were not as happy as pigs in mud.

Next week is Mac Theatre's Shakespeare in the Park.  They are doing Midsummer Night's Dream and the weather will not stop them either.  I have watched their plays in the rain.  As Shakespeare wrote, "This very midsummer madness."  In Thunder Lightening or in rain, when shall we watch Shakespeare again.

Whatever happens this week I will be ready with my net to catch the pearls of (cliché) wisdom that fall from people's lips.

50 Shades of Rubbish

I was going to title this blog '50 shades of shite', which would have been better in terms of alliteration but my daughter would have told me off for swearing.  Oh, dear, she's still going to tell me off.  Oh well, never mind - it can only get worse (and probably will)

I read a lot.  Even from the age of 8, I could have told you that Weetabix was made in Welwyn Garden City and that Pork Pies came from Leicestershire.  I always finish a book that I've started.  I finished, The Finkler Question, even though it was totally up it's own bottom. I finished, Yellow Dog despite it's lack of plot.  I finished the whole Twilight Series even though it irritated me from the very first word.  I finished We Need to Talk About Kevin with it's bizarre punctuation.  I even finished the Bible and I can tell you that was a tough read.  Today, I decided not to finish 50 Shades of Grey.

It made me angry.  Not because of the terrible writing, or the fact that the characters are so obviously 'borrowed' from the Twilight books or even that the plot is tired and worn (young virgin tames older bad boy).  This book pushed every feminist button I own.  I'm not against sex, in fact I quite admire a book that doesn't stop at the dots.  (He led her to the bedroom, pushed her inside and......)  At 14, like Caitlin Moran, I discovered the Female Eunuch because I was searching the library for help with my sexual education.  I'd been through the dictionary and cross referenced every rude word I'd ever heard and needed more detail.  You could usually get an idea from the cover which would offer up interesting bits of erotica.  The Female Eunuch, with the naked body on the front cover didn't automatically open up to a page full of rubbing, sucking and thrusting but it was a fascinating read.

50 Shades has been described as 'Mommy porn', from which I assume that women in their 30's and 40's are reading the sex scenes and then saying to their husbands, "Darling, would you mind wrapping your silk tie round my wrists - not too tight though!"  Maybe it's spicing up their post-baby sex lives.  But this book isn't aimed at them.  It's aimed at 14 -18 year olds, thumbing through the library for an imagined sexual experience.  And they ARE reading it.  Of course they are. Everyone is talking about it.  I bought it by accident (from the cover, I thought it was a thriller) and both my teenagers asked why I'd bought it.

This book is about S&M.  It's about the total control of one human being by another.  In this case the man controlling the woman.  Some feminists have said that they admire this book because the girl is choosing but read between the lines and you will see that she is being manipulated.  The book is made warm, fluffy and unrealistic by suggesting that everything works out just fine, that he falls in love with her and ends up living a perfectly normal life, with the occasional beating. (I haven't finished the book - I'm just guessing).  But we live in a world where one in three women is likely to be beaten and or coerced into sex at one time in their lifetime.  We live in a world where there is serious gender inequality in some countries, where no woman is allowed to look at a man, receive education, travel or leave the house without permission, where baby girls are killed at birth, where women are not allowed to inherit or own property, where women are not allowed to work, where one woman needlessly dies in childbirth every minute of every day where women are not allowed to vote and are subjected to genital mutilation.  I can not understand why, women who live relatively equal lives entertain sexual fantasies of domination and control by a man.

Fred and Rose West were Sado-masochists in their sexual life and look how that turned out for them?

Elderflower Cordial

Sitting, looking at the rain and seriously considering going to the allotment to dig out the weeds has made me realise how desperate I'm beginning to get.  I do have things growing but there are more weeds than anything else.  I often look at the weeds and wonder which ones we could eat.

 My new book, The Hedgerow Handbook by Adele Nozedar, should help but in the meantime I used it to make some elderflower cordial.

The first challenge was to pick the elderflowers.  They should be picked in full sunshine at exactly the right time.  When you shake the flower heads they should stay on the stems.  You shouldn't pick them from the roadside because of the petrol fumes.  Finally, there was half an hour of sunshine and I managed to pick 20.

Warning:  If you don't make the cordial straight away you will be searching the whole house for the smell of cat's urine!

I couldn't make mine straight away because I didn't have any citric acid (or enough sugar).  Citric acid has to be bought from the chemist.  If you go to get some, learn from my mistake.   Don't go straight from the allotment, with soaking wet hair, muddy fingernails and scruffy clothes.  Don't say, "that's not much!" when presented with a 50g box.  And don't look very confused when the pharmacist smiles and says, "I'm only trying to help you, love"    Apparently, it's sale is restricted as it can be used by drug users.

The recipe uses 1 1/2 bags of sugar.  That's an obscene amount of sugar. I added 1.8litres of boiling water and stirred until the sugar dissolved.  When this it was cool I added the elderflowers, two sliced unwaxed lemons and the citric acid and left it for 2 days.

After putting the cordial into bottles I had some left over so I've frozen them.  I think elderflower ice cubes will be fantastic in my fizzy water.