That Crow!

My voice has gone again.  A day and a half of normal vocal sounds was as much as I have been able to manage since the 12th of December and I'm tired.  I'm not sure if I'm tired because I'm ill or I'm tired because I'm tired of not being able to speak properly.  It makes me rather useless (after all what is the point of a music teacher who can't sing - or even speak?) and I'm struggling with the constant dilemma of whether I should be working or not.  I had a sick day yesterday and felt guilty.  I did nothing.  I didn't practise the piano or write my blog or read a book or do some knitting or sort out my recipes or bake cakes or go swimming.  Instead, I sat watching rubbish TV, worrying about what I would do the next day.  Today, I decided to go back in.  After all, what is the point sitting at home worrying?

Now, I don't want to appear ungrateful and I know that people are only trying to help but I really want people to stop asking me what I think it is.  I don't know.  I have to wait another 2 weeks until I can see someone who might have more of a clue.  I also find I'm getting a bit tetchy with people who are telling me about when they lost their voice, about someone they know who lost their voice,or how they know how it feels.  And I'm afraid that the worst thing of all for me is the people who are telling me what it could be.  I'm still holding out for 'nothing - it will just get better.' I don't want to know about stretched vocal chords, polyps, nodules, throat cancer or bugs.

Despite the difficulty of teaching music with no voice I am really glad I went in today.  The foundation stage class and I created a 'Rumpus' that Max from Where the Wild Things are would be proud of.  Year ones and twos sang in Chinese, Japanese, banged instruments in time (sort of) and sang about having a mouse in their hamster jam.  That would be terrible, wouldn't it?  It would be like having a rogue plum in your strawberry jam - yuk!

  

Now sing with me.  This is fun, Honestly....

"I saw a mouse, where? There on the stair.  Where on the stair? Right there!  A little mouse with clogs on well I declare going clip, clippety clop on the stair! A mouse in Old hamster jam!" 

Although, I've been ungrateful for the suggestions of what is wrong from adults the children have been a delight.  When I aplogised to a class for coughing and then croaking at them a child said, "You can't do anything about insects."  I was confused until they sang me the B.U.G song.  

Today I couldn't find the audio lead for the computer and so it had no sound.  "Maybe that's what's happened to you?"  I've lost my audio lead.  There's always a technical solution.

 

We have a crow that visits our school.  We have one of those 1970's school halls with a flat roof and tiny windows all the way around the top.  The crow sits on the flat roof of the kitchen and bangs on the window with his beak whenever he can hear singing.  We haven't seen him since before Christmas and then last week (during my day and a half of normal voice) he re-appeared.  A colleague suggested that he had been absent because he hadn't heard my singing and we laughed that maybe he had stolen my voice and only brought it back last week.  I shared this idea with the infant children, who all agreed that that must have been exactly what happened.  Today, I told the children that the crow had stolen my voice again and they all needed to sing beautifully, so that he would re-appear and bring my voice with him.  This prompted a little boy to say, "What I don't understand is...." 

"Oh dear," I thought, "This sounds like a question I'm not going to be able to answer."  Sometimes the pressure of small children who think you know everything can be too much to bear.

"What I don't understand is why the crow would take a beautiful voice and leave you with an old ladies voice!"

We did have a theory that maybe the crow was the re-incarnation of an old music teacher so maybe it's that old ladies voice.  I like that theory and won't be considering any of the suggestions that google gave me for what being stalked by a crow symbolises.