All Aboard

Woo Hoo! All aboard the Christmas anxiety train.

Whoever you are, it is likely that the prospect of Christmas makes you feel a little stressed. There are extra things to do and a deadline. If you are a bit anxious that extra stress will make you feel more anxious. If you are a musician then the ‘extra things’ can easily run to two extra A4 pages on your “let’s try to pretend to be a normal person without anxiety” list. If you are also an idiot you’ll keep adding things and make everyone join you on the ‘New Improved Christmas Sparkle Anxiety Train.’

I am an idiot.

As if the lead up to Christmas wasn’t busy enough, with normal music teacher/MD of a Youth Orchestra/member of a band stuff, I thought, “You know what would be fun? We should make a school Christmas CD.”

It will be fun. The children are already very excited. Every child in the school is involved with each class learning one song and what could be better than listening to the whole school singing Away in a Manger while you eat your Christmas Dinner? They have been given a chance to design the CD case cover and I hope I’ve created a buzz around the project.

Also, it should raise some much needed cash for the school. We have been surviving with an ever decreasing number of music stands that we haven’t got the money to replace. We even have one held together with sticky tape. Everyone’s budgets for music have been squeezed, so that things we used to get for free we now have to pay for. For example, Sing Up and Charanga are wonderful online resources that used to be free and now cost hundreds of pounds each a year. It’s true that if we had never had them then we would have to make do with books and talent but as each recorder book costs £7 (= class set £200 and it’s illeagal to photocopy), each school singing book with music in is over £10 and the cost of a pianist who can play well enough to accompany at concerts is phenomenal, these apps are still good value for a school that does music properly. Many schools opt not to do music properly and there are some people who think of it as a subject that should just be for a few. Music is such a fundamental human response to things that it would be great if we could teach all children how to do it well. Children singing in tune can heal a broken heart (trust me) and people not even being able to clap in time can break one.

I have found a company (My School CD) that will do the sound recording, engineering and production. All I have to do is find the music, rehearse, make a timetable for the day, send off the paperwork, write new words to a carol for a staff song, stay excited about the project and sell enough CDs so that we don’t lose any money. It’s not keeping me awake at night at all.

Woo Hoo. All aboard!

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.

C.H.D.

Every year my son is felled by C.H.D.

You might think that CHD, or Christmas Hyperactivity Disorder is something that only affects children and that at 17 my son would be too old to be taken out by this common condition.  However, none of us are immune and I would advise you take precautions if you are suffering from any of the following symptoms.

1. You have looked at the calendar and realised that it is sometime between the 18th and 24th of December.  Aternatively, you might notice that you have less than seven advent chocolates to eat.

2. You have shopped, thinking carefully about which presents your loved ones would like. You have stroked things and twirled around items that you would like them to buy you.

3.  You have seen Santa (at least once), even if he was only outside the Supermarket.

4.  You have brought a tree into the house to slowly die in the corner and have thrown lights and sparkly things at it.  You might have reminded the dog that it is not an indoor toilet or removed the cat from the top.  You will have probably complained that you don't get that proper Christmas tree smell any more.

5.  You have stopped eating properly.  You eat chocolate for breakfast, grab a mince pie for lunch and eat a sandwich on the run, while traipsing around the shops.

6. Your sleep patterns are weird.  You fall asleep on the sofa whenever you sit down, lie in bed staring at the ceiling and wake at three in the morning to make lists before getting up at 6am because you can't think what else to do.

7.  You have cleaned your bedroom, oven, freezer because you never know where Santa might leave your presents.

8. You have to talk to relatives.

These are the early symptoms.  

Later symptoms can be quite severe.

1.  Exhaustion.

2. Fever

3. Headache

4. Sore throat

5. Drippy nose

6. Cold-like symptoms

7.  Man flu

CHD can even be life threatening.  One year my Dad had a heart attack on the 23rd December.  This sounds very dramatic but my Dad has heart attacks like you or I have colds.  He goes to hospital and sits in A&E for a while, has blood tests taken, nurses walk in and stick thermometers in his ear without even talking to him and then he gets transferred to the cardiac ward where they say, "You again," laugh and tell him he can go home. This particular year, he had been suffering from all the early symptoms of CHD, which were particularly heightened by a longer than expected visit from some overseas relatives.  While we were waiting, Santa was brought in on a trolley.  Yes, that was the year that Santa died.  Christmas Hyperactivity Disorder can be fatal.

If you are suffering from any of the early symptoms can I recommend you sit, feet up, with your favourite drink; eat something healthy and repeat the following mantra.

"It's only one day.  It's just a roast.  Presents are nice but not very important."