"You should consider yourselves just as important as the wind machine."

This was my favourite Jamieism of tonight - it appeared during his inspirational speech on our role in the Ravel. At least I think it was intended to be inspirational :p Maybe he was feeling inspirational because it was his birthday today - we sang happy birthday to him and he seemed quite pleased (well, he didn't ask us to sing it again with more ping or higher cheekbones, so I took that as a good sign!)

There was also "Reminds me of a Police song!", which I think went unnoticed by most people, and those who did hear him say it were a bit baffled... but Sting is one of my idols, so I realised immediately that he was referring to the fact that we'd just been singing "dee doo doo doo" :p This was during the first half of the rehearsal, when we spent a LOT of time working on the weird chords in the middle bit of Daphnis. This wasn't helped by the fact that many people are now singing a different part to the one they learned a couple of weeks ago, and so it was slow work, but it was successful, because by the break the chords all sounded correct and confident. Which is more than can be said for page 11, on which most of the altos are still singing the tenor part. At least some of them did start to realise they'd done something wrong (judging by the flurry of exchanged puzzled looks afterwards), even if they didn't twig what it was :p

Oh, and there was the charades thing, but that was a bit visual! Jamie did the charades "it's a play" gesture in an effort to describe how to sing a chord. Then he realised that many of the other charades gestures were relevant to choral singing, and proceeded to demonstrate them all and explain why. You probably had to be there!

And then of course there was the drama of the chairmanship election. I must say that whatever I'd expected, it certainly wasn't that there'd need to be a second vote even after all four preferences for everyone had been transferred! Just goes to show. Anyway, I am pleased with the result - I think the best person won, and he will have my full support (but he already knows that). I'm not desperately upset that I didn't win, as the main (although not the only) reason I was standing was because I felt I ought to - I thought it about time there was a female candidate. However, it turns out the choir doesn't want a female candidate (cue chorus of "yes they do, just not you!") - but at least it was given the chance to choose :-) Never mind. I feel a bit like Cap'n Jack Sparrow in the first Pirates film, when he said "you will always remember this as the day you almost caught Captain Jack Sparrow" :-)

(That may not make any sense, but I know what I mean!)