I bloody love Christmas, I do

"Christmas is just gross, isn't it, Miss?" one pupil asked me early on in December.

We were learning Christmas carols and had been talking about the words and how they related to the Christmas story. I was inclined to agree with her at that point.  Having just returned from a trip to the Church, where the questions got a little tricky I had been thinking about the whole birth story.
"How did the baby get into her tummy?" a child had asked.
The vicar laughed and neatly side-stepped the question.
"They kissed. I bet they did," said another wiser child.
"How did the baby get out?" asked another.
"Pretty much the same way you did," I suggested.
"But they weren't in a hospital," the child protested.
Then they were back to the question of conception. A very enthusiastic church helper tried to answer their questions. She told them that Joseph was much older.
"How old was Mary?," they asked.
"They think she was about eleven," the woman told them.
There was a shocked holding of breath while these year two children processed the fact that someone in year six could have a baby.
"So, how did the baby get into her tummy?"

My year six pupil had looked up the word 'undefiled' in the dictionary (Zither Carol).
"It means she wasn't raped, doesn't it? I mean, how gross. When you think about where you sing, 'veiled in flesh the god head see,' in Hark the Herald and, 'Lo, he abhors not the virgin's womb.' Well. It's just disgusting. Do they really need to over-share?"
I praised her for her dictionary skills and suggested she didn't think about it too much, that we use words differently now and how it was such a long time ago we will never really know what happened.

Despite all this, I'm not put off. I still like the Christian Christmas story. It's a story of hope and tolerance. A story where someone who is displaced from their home can give birth to a person who will change the world.

I'm not ashamed to say that I love Christmas. I love the paganess of it. I love the rituals that help us over the short dadays. I love cutting plants down and bringing them indoors to slowly die, reminding ourselves that things still grow even when it's cold and dark. I love adding lights to things and burning candles, just to help us forget that the days are so short. This year we have lights everywhere and have two real Christmas trees. The Long Suffering Husband and I couldn't agree. I like the tree in the hall, beautifully, classily decorated, so that you get a whiff of pine as you walk in and that everyone who comes to the house says, "Oooh, I love your tree. Gold. So classy." The LSH says it doesn't feel like Christmas unless the tree is in the living room. Last year, he won and I missed the admiring comments about my lovely tree, so it was my turn. As a compromise I trimmed some branches off the bottom and made Beecher's Brook on the mantle piece, while he found the Christmas tree stand.
"It's broken. We'll have to get a new one," he shouted down from the loft hatch. We could get another tree for the living room while we're there."
I've been so excited about my two trees. It feels very naughty, decadent; wasteful, even but I don't care.
"Will you be letting him decorate his own tree?" my mum asked.
"Don't be silly," I said. How could she have forgotten that I suffer from COD? It's like OCD but only at Christmas (Christmas Obsessive Disorder).

I love the pagan tradition of stuffing yourself with fat, nuts and berries to see you through a long cold winter. I make my pudding and cake in November (decorate it on Christmas Eve). I'm even happy to blend in a Thanksgiving tradition and eat turkey and I'll let other commercial enterprises get in on the act. Advent is all about chocolate because we are feeding ourselves up for a long winter.

I love giving presents. I love buying things for people and hoping they'll like them. I love wrapping them, in apaper that matches the tree with added bows and ribbons (see COD). Even my difficulty buying for the LSH, which you will know about if you've read other blogs, would never stop me trying. I love the excitement of gift exchanges. Sometimes the wrapping is better than the present and I think I would just be happy with boxes. I'm trying that theory out on the LSH this year.

I love Father Christmas or whatever you call him. The idea of a spirit that travels the sky in midwinter bringing gifts to children is just marvellous. I love the way that traditions from all around the world get smushed together to make something brilliant. I love to track him on NORAD and love that scientists and mathematicians are happy to believe.

I love that Christmas is a time for belief. The major Christian festival (after Easter) has used these pagan traditions to enhance its own celebration. At Christmas, you can believe anything.

I love singing. Christmas is a time for song. It's the time of year when  you can play songs like, "I wanna go skating with Willie, 'cause Willie is such a good skate." or "I'm a little Christmas cracker, bang-a-bang-a-bang-a that's me." You can shout/sing 12 days of Christmas. You can listen to beautiful choral music and sing Christmas carols, belting out a solo of the descant verse.

I love the traditions that each family develops.  Our family takes a trip to London to see the lights, browse the food halls and enjoy the hustle bustle of the city.  This year it will be just the LSH and me but we are undeterred.  This is one tradition we are never giving up.  I put on my Christmas jumper and the LSH laughed.
"It's a Christmas jumper kind of day," I told him, bouncing up and down excitedly, "I bloody love Christmas, I do."

Tommy

It's not Christmas without the annual youth orchestra Christmas party.  The first one was seventeen years ago. In those days we were in a dusty Quaker Hall, with the handful of children that were members then. The losing quiz team (there were only two) were just as happy with their bag of lemons as the winners were with their sweets. Some things never change: even if there are more teams there is still as much competition for the lemons. Other things do change, though: we get older. Thinking about the seventeen Christmas parties has made me feel a little old, sad and nostalgic.

This was the first Christmas party my dad has missed. When we started, he was the musical director, happily in the limelight, being sparkling and scintillating. He was fun and energetic. I had a small baby and was knackered, happy to be in the background, doing paperwork, writing quizzes, buying lemons. Then time passed and our roles reversed. I had more energy than he did and although I'm more reserved than he is it was time to step out from the shadows. After a while the paperwork became became too much. It was time for him to take another retirement. Luckily, the members we had fifteen years ago are grown up and have formed a team with some current parents to take on these roles. Dad is still on the team, coming to rehearsals when he can. These wonderful people keep me sane. Friday evenings wouldn't be the same without them.

Now we have grown, we hire a room in a local pub for the party and have food, drink and lots of games, as well as the quiz (which is now written by a guy with a PhD). There is still one tradition that is as important as the bag of lemons: Tommy. It wouldn't be a youth orchestra party unless it ended with a game of Tommy.

"I've got the sweets for Tommy but I'm not really sure how it works," said the guy with the PhD. He played the game for ten years but the rules still seem weird and mysterious.

It's a very simple game. All the participants form a large circle and five sweets are placed in the middle. A little time is given for everyone to look,longingly at the sweets, then someone is chosen to leave the room. While they are gone the others choose which sweet is called Tommy. If they have been clever they will have seen which one the person drooled over the most. When they return the room goes silent as they pick sweets, one by one. As soon as they touch Tommy everyone shouts as loudly as they can. "TOMMMMMYYYYYYY!" This makes the person jump and they can't have any more sweets. This is repeated until everyone has had a go, the party is over or everyone is bored.

"Where does it come from then?" asked Dr Who of History.
"It's a really old children's party game," I told him.
"Oh, because I was thinking your Dad just made it up."
"No. We played it at our birthday parties."
Then I began to doubt myself. Had I played it at anyone else's party? I couldn't remember. I remembered pass the parcel, musical bumps, the memory game, guess who I am but not Tommy.
Could it have been a game invented by my grandparents in a party version of 'pinch pudding day'?
Pinch pudding day was a method my grandmother used to make a six person apple pie feed nine. She knew that there wasn't enough to go around, so made a game of it. If you had finished yours then you could steal from someone else's plate unless (and here's the good bit) they had their little finger on the edge. Tommy is a bit like that. It makes you think you are going to get five sweets but you could end up with none. In those poorer than church mice, post war years no child would have ever dared to suggest, "it's not fair."

It might have fallen out of favour now that every child has to win a prize. The way we play it is brutal. The only reference to the game I could find on the Internet was a description on a Mumsnet party forum. It suggested that you put some coloured smarties on a plate (a plate? We put wrapped sweets on the floor. How can you lunge for them on a plate?) and named one Tommy Smartie. If a child chose that one the other children were to say, politely, "No, no, don't eat Tommy Smartie." You can imagine them putting their little hands to their mouth, smoothing down their velvet party frock and giggling guiltily.

This is not a game for nice middle class mum's in their Joules gilet and nautical top. No. In fact it always goes best when it's delivered by a man who played pinch pudding day and understands the rules of survival in a large pack of children. Someone who can prance around in a tutu or silly red braces getting people excited about the prospect of getting more than one sweet from the Quality street tin and changing the rules at a whim, so that all the sweets are suddenly called Tommy, or none are.

"They're all Tommy, aren't they?"

The Show Must Go On

"I love that. I want it at my funeral," is something I've heard a lot recently.

After a Carol concert, that was in a church in aid of a hospice and felt more like a remembrance service, the poems and song choices of people's own funerals were the main topic of conversation. The problem is that even if you plan it you won't be there to see it. Still, it seems to be human nature to think about these things as you get older. It's like planning your imaginary wedding and practising different surname signatures in the back of your RE book when you are in the fifth form (year 11).

I sometimes wonder if I should have the Queen song, 'the show must go on' at my funeral.

The psychology of this phenomenon is interesting. Why to people continue with things in front of an audience that they would stop doing if they were on their own? Is it a survival instinct? Never show a crowd your weakness or they might turn and eat you. Some people are more prone to trouping on regardless.

Musician forums are full of anecdotes about violinists who kept playing after a string snapped and nearly took their eye out or choral singers who kept going even though their hair had just caught light on a candle, or a drummer who thought he'd killed a nun in the front row when his stick flew out of his hand and knocked her off her chair (if you ever wonder why drummers are in Perspex boxes then this is the reason). My funniest moment was probably in a band for a show. The band were on stage, pushed right to the back, on the less sturdy part where the floorboards didn't quite meet. Just before the curtain opened I moved my chair into a slightly better position only to get a slow sinking feeling as one leg of the chair disappeared down the gap. The other band members grabbed various limbs that were sticking in the air and got me back in an upright position while the curtains were opening and we all played from the very first note.

The offending hole

I've never missed a concert due to ill health. My body always seems to know that it has to wait, or if it refuses to wait then I ignore it. One December (it's always December) I had a chest infection and had fallen asleep on the sofa, biting my bottom lip during the afternoon. That evening I did the concert with a temperature and an ulcerated bottom lip (torture for a flautist).

When you put on a show with children the risk of some being ill on the day is huge. Children have more bugs that their immune systems need to catch and so you can never guarantee that your whole cast or choir will be there on the day. Worst still, you can never guarantee they will make it through the whole performance. Once I took a choir to an old peoples home and a girl in the front row went a funny colour. A conductor's job is to keep the choir going and so I held out my hands, she vomited into them and left. My face continued to make the 'keep singing' gestures and the old folk thought it was all part of the show.

In this season of Christmas concerts, nativities and vomiting viruses we all need a little bit of Queen in our lives.

Empty spaces what are we living for.

Abandoned places I guess we know the score.

The show must go on.

Ladies and Gentlemen, please take your seats for today's performance of Strictly Camel Vomiting.

The power is strong in this one

Star Wars metaphors are wonderful. The idea of people having superpowers that although untrained, hidden and suppressed still can be seen or felt by others is a common theme in fiction. It's a theme in the new Harry Potter film too, where the superpower (in this case Magic) becomes an uncontrollable monster (no spoilers but it's a film worth seeing). What happens with real life superpowers? Is suppressing them always bad or are they impossible to hide?

I was beginning to get worried about my own superpower of invisibility. I've been in lots of places this December with different groups of musicians and have provided music at quite short notice when other people are sensible and drop out. People have smiled at me and occasionally thanked me (not always, which is where I sometimes feel that the uncontrollable beast of rage might emerge) and I was starting to think people might know who I am.

However, it appears that the force of invisibility is particularly strong in me.  I turned up at a venue I had been to a few times that week and smiled at Clifford, chatted a while about the perils of being the technical wizard in a church, got the piano key and had a little practice .
"Oh, you know your way around then? That's good," he said, scratching his head. The vicar turned up and blessed me for standing in at such short notice. I think being blessed is the same as being thanked so the beast was abated for a while. I mentioned something about it not being a problem and apologised for the fact that it was me again. "People will start to get sick of looking at the back of my head," I joked. There was a long pause, a sharp intake of breath and a mental glossing over the confusion before he took my hand, squeezed hard and blessed me again.

The mayor was at this event. This year, I have been working closely with the Mayor to put on a charity concert. When he arrived, I smiled and greeted him by name and the thought that he hadn't recognised me crossed my mind. I was with a different group, although at least four of the children were the same. Maybe it was the fact that he didn't use my name or that he looked blankly at me that made me think this but it was an unshakeable thought.

As I was leaving the concert I was feeling particularly visible. People had come to tell me how great the choir were. They had recognised me from the back of my head and the feeling was making me a little anxious and sweaty (or it could have been a hot flush).  I stopped to talk to the Mayor and his wife who were shaking hands and making polite conversation by the door. I asked how their last charity event had gone. "Oh, not too bad," she gushed, telling me about the people that were there, the money they raised and how many chips she'd won at the roulette table. She went on to advertise the other events that they had coming up. I looked at the Long Suffering Husband, who was now deep in conversation with Mr Mayor about golf. They looked like they had been besties since birth. Mrs Mayor talked about a curry night which, "you simply must attend," and told me about a charity concert with a fabulous local orchestra that they have coming up. I shifted from foot to foot for a while, wondering whether to say anything, while she continued to extol the praises of the orchestra.
"Oh yes, I know about them," I decided to say.
"You know them? How wonderful. They really are the most amazing group of children, led by really wonderful people - all volunteers."

Awkward.

Still, it's good to know my force field is strong.

How to distress a music teacher in December

It's not hard to unhinge a music teacher in December. Life is so finely balanced: carved into 15 minute chunks. Every music teacher knows that you must never try to eat an elephant whole. Exhaustion and having no time to think or worry about anything (except at 3am) means that music teachers appear quite calm. They are not worrying that they haven't done their Christmas shopping or ordered a turkey or checked their fairy lights are working or washed the spare bed linen in time for the return of the prodigal daughter. There is a small chunk of time already allocated to those things.

Adding something to a music teacher's schedule, you would think might cause stress but provided there is a fifteen minute window it's all perfectly fine. If there is no gap then the rarely used word can be employed. I'll practise it with you now. Come on. I can do it. "No." See that wasn't so bad was it? Taking something away can cause a brief moment of anxiety but a few seconds later the gap is filled and there is no need to panic.

The thing that really causes stress is changing the time of things. If you had planned to meet a music teacher for coffee in December then remember that 11.30 isn't the same as 11. Changing the time of something without remembering to mentioning it is absolutely the worst thing you can do. Never leave a music teacher sitting in a pub only to turn up and say, "Sorry, I forgot to tell you I wasn't going to be here until 8.30." If you have organised a concert then you must be very clear with timings and never change them. To get a school choir to attend a concert will have required letter writing, permission slip chasing and logistical planning of soloists that would make Santa's elves sweat. You must not send different pieces of information by email that suddenly have the concert starting an hour earlier. If the music teacher checks the timings with you and you have changed them you must be very apologetic.  Know that this change will cause speedy letter writing, permission slip chasing, re-arranging of soloists, who now can't make it because they have a gymnastics competition or lunch with their elderly great grandma. The music teacher will wake in the middle of the night imagining that the fussiest, most complaining parent will arrive with their precious offspring at the end of the concert and book an appointment with the headteacher the next day to demand the immediate sacking of the incompetent teacher. Do not under circumstances say, "Oh well, an hour earlier is probably a good thing. At least the children won't be so tired." This might be true but whatever the music teacher was doing in the hour before (like rehearsing pupils ready for an exam the next day) will have to be rearranged until after the concert and when you can't give an exact finish time of finish the fifteen minute chunk schedule is falling about around the music teacher's ears and she is dreaming of ordering a whole elephant for her Christmas dinner and making everyone eat it whole because in December life is very stressful if you can't eat your elephant one bite at a time.

It's a good job I like elephants.

Politics

Suddenly, we, as a nation has decided that we hate politicians.

Instead of admiring the people who have to sit through hours and hours of boring meetings to get democratic changes on our behalf we now think they are all slimy and untrustworthy. This could be do do with awarding themselves an 11% pay rise at a time of austerity, taking their basic salary to £66,000 a year, or that they claimed for a duck house on expenses, or just that the big institution of government makes it hard to carry out all their principled promises.

But what is the alternative?

 If we are that disillusioned we could have a revolution. Man the barricades, wave flags and sing songs from Les Miserables. Unfortunately, no one writes romantic stories about what happens after the revolution. We could put a military dictator in charge: someone who would promise great things and deliver on many of them, smoke cigars and shoot anyone they don't like but chaotic dictators don't make the best romantic leads. We still have a Queen, so we could revert all powers back to her.  Let her decide that we can eat cake.  That doesn't sound so bad.  I like cake.

Unfortunately, we haven't done either of those two things.  We've just used the voting system to 'stick it to the man'.  I know several people who voted to leave the European Union, just, "to show that tosser Cameron what we think of him." When people are asked why they like Nigel Farage they say it's because he's not like a normal politician and they can relate to him.  They like him because instead of doing the job he was elected for (i.e. sitting in the European parliament holding officials to account and getting the best deal for the UK) he is leaning on the bars of the world, pint in hand, making lewd comments at young women.  Jeremy Corbyn is the same.  Well, obviously he's not the same but he is popular in the same way: not for actually doing his job and opposing the government in a sparkling and scintillating way at PMQs but for sitting on the floor of a train complaining that he can't get a seat.

Local elections are coming up and in the depths of Essex you can vote for a conservative candidate or you can 'stick it to the man'.  Socialism and liberalism doesn't get this far east from London.  Recognised parties don't bother fielding candidates for the disillusioned Tory voter, so it's left to the independents and it's up to us to decide who is least qualified for the job.  We could look to Flo, the flower arranging sixty year old, who seems nice and liberal with a pleasant smile and can talk at length on the subject of keeping gardens tidy.  We could choose Mark, the ex-policeman who has a history of wearing dresses (only in panto) but he has been the Mayor, so he might be over qualified.

I'm a little wary of voting for an independent candidate.  It feels like a leap into the dark.  How do we know what they stand for?  At least if they are Conservative we know they put wealth creation above everything else; if they are Labour they are fighting for social welfare and workers rights; if they are Liberals, they are trying to make everyone happy; if they are UKiP, they want to leave the European Union and if they are BNP the most important thing is to send all the foreigners back home. They have manifestos and they try to stick to them An individual within that party can't make it their sole mission to ban cake but an independent candidate could.

  I would like to vote for a candidate who is clear and honest.  Someone who is standing up to do the job, with the backing of a party registered with the electoral commission, so that I can check on their principals because I don't think that choosing the most incompetent person is the best way to get what you want.

One candidate on our ballot paper is running under the party name  "Fighting Unsustainable Housing Because We Care Party." I was confused.  What does this mean?  It seemed very vague and I had images of people in nurses uniforms battling straw houses, so I looked them up.  The electoral commission has the name registered as one of eleven name changes the BNP made in 2016.  The BNP have worked out that if they choose a stupid title that everyone agrees with like, "Because we can make Britain Better," or "Because we love Scotland" or "Local people first" they can win, especially if they have chosen a candidate who appears to be totally incapable of doing the job.  They have scoured the country for anarchists and idiots and promised to pay for their leaflets and told them that they are just going to help them 'stick it to the man.' They have done particularly well in this area by managing to find a man who can't even sign his own name.

Politics is important.  Democracy is vital.  The alternatives are worse.

I will be making certain that I know who I am voting for and will try to put my cross next to the person I think is most capable of doing the job I want them to; the person who has similar principals to me and will go to meetings and argue and vote on my behalf.  I hope you do the same.  If you want to vote for the BNP candidate then you should so.  I won't agree with you but that is what democracy is for.  However, you shouldn't be fooled into thinking that voting for someone who is pretending to be something else so they can not bother to turn up for meetings and do the job you have elected them for is somehow 'sticking it to the man.'

We want pockets

Tis the season of Christmas concerts.
Fa la la la la. La la la la.
Working hard no time for nonsense
Fa la la la la. La la la la.
Don we now our black trousers
Fa la la la la la. La la la.
Tight they feel after serveral hours.
Fa la la la la. La la la la.

So we brave the shops before us
Fa la la la la. La la la la.
All we want is plain black trousers
Fa la la la la. La la la la
They must have two deep pockets
Fa la la la la la. La la la la.
Room for i-phone, keys and wallet
Fa la la la la. La la la la

"Pockets spoil the line," they tell me
Fa la la la la. La la la la.
Sod the look I'm fat and ugly
Fa la la la la. La la la la.
"Don't you have a great big handbag?"
Fa la la la la la. La la la.
Not on stage for fear of mishap
Fa la la la la. La la la la.