Facing the Music Again

Well today wasn’t great; I missed my train, got in to find a crisis to resolve, things left undone after an office move at the weekend and pushy salesmen to deal with. I’d also been left in charge of the Chorus’ new intake evening tonight, as Richard G had been offered a free holiday at the last moment(!) A looming Tube strike planned for tonight meant that that demanded more of my attention than it should have.

For all the anticipation though, things went smoothly once I got there. The first half of the evening was all about form-filling, warm-ups and ice-breaking. The second half we spent learning ‘Seasons Of Love’ (from Rent) with the newbies. Unfortunately because I’d been busy through the first half my voice wasn’t warmed up and, between that and the fact I haven’t sung seriously for nine months, my sound wasn’t really up to much. It got better though and the new guys picked the piece up quickly enough, so by the end of the rehearsal our performance was quite rousing.

I think I’m going to be glad I’m back. Other highlights of the repertoire will be ‘Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien’ and ‘The Internet Is For Porn’ (from Avenue Q), both of which I’m looking forward to – albeit for different reasons!

Brett’s back in Stratford-upon-Avon, so I’m on my own again tonight. He’s found himself a choir to join up there already – although it sounds like spare-of-the-moment serendipity – they’re classical, which it sounded like he could take or leave, but all being well I’ll be able to hear him do Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis at some point in the future.

The weekend was a good one; we hosted another poker game on Saturday (which meant the flat got cleaned some. Yeay!) I think in future that, rather than playing to the bitter end, we’ll put a guillotine in place and split the pot at 10pm. With the limited transport connections it’s just not practical to have late nights in Grove Park the way it was in Wimbledon. It was a fun, if long, day; we’d started earlier than previously, but that didn’t seem to help the finish time as we took a break for dinner. (Chris M had brought a selection of homemade goodies in unnecessary atonement for not bringing anything to the games day we had the other week. Didn’t complain though, as they were all scrummy!) Poor Mark was on call though, so had to keep ducking out to answer the phone and reply to mail and was anticipating spending Sunday in the office.

In the end it came down to Richard T catching a lucky hand against John M. I'd done okay, coming back from a very poor chip count, but then got caught out by a full house against my three of a kind. Ah well, have to find some other way to make the rent!

Generally, I think the poker nights here still need a bit more work for them to go really well. It’s looking increasingly like I might be able to get a small table together from work as well though. I wonder if I (and Rosie and Brett!) could handle two poker nights a month?!

Anyway, after all the excitement we had a really quiet day on Sunday. I spent most of it online and watching the Kyle XY marathon to see if it would be worth watching the second season which is showing now. (Probably, but it won’t be at the top of the ‘must watch’ list.) Friday night’s Dexter was good though!