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?