I'm pretty sure the other one is called Becky

I went sailing tonight, as I usually do on Mondays, at Hollingworth Lake. But this time one of the Youth Choir altos was there too! I recognised her immediately - at least I thought it was her, but when she didn't recognise *me* I thought maybe I was mistaken. But when I was dismantling my boat at the end she asked me if I was in the Hallé Choir. I was delighted, because she is one of the only two people in the Youth Choir whose names I always remember (because they've been in since the start), so I was just about to impress her by knowing her name, when my mind went blank! Very annoying. I was determined to remember it, but I didn't get the chance because someone else told me it was Katie while I was still thinking. Oh well. Sorry, Katie, I did know really! (She told me it's her birthday on the day of the Poulenc concert, so when people sing "happy birthday" to her, as I'm sure they will, you'll work out who I'm talking about!)

(I thought there were only two HYC people I knew the names of, but I've just remembered James the Red-Nosed Reindeer as well...)

As a matter of fact, I also went sailing during the Easter holidays, with Soprano Claire - she hadn't done it before, and we had a great time. We didn't capsize, but we did crash into a wall (my fault, I wasn't looking where we were going!) We sang some duets afterwards, and played some piano duets. The previous day I'd also played piano duets, this time with Abi - she's REALLY good (much better than me, whereas I think Claire and I are of a similar standard) so we had a bash at the piano duet arrangement of The Planets that Dr Liz bought me a couple of years ago. Unsurprisingly they're really hard, and I've never managed to get very far with them with anyone else, but Abi and I played more or less the whole thing, although some bits were rather more accurate than others!

And to complete the musical-things-I-did-while-choir-was-on-a-break, last Monday we had a Pleiades rehearsal, but we were a bit depleted, so since it was just Rachel, Alison and I, we sang ALL THE TRIOS THERE ARE. (Well, probably.) Great fun.

Lots of singing yesterday, because we had an all-day Kingdom rehearsal, and it was fabulous! Oddly enough there were no Jamieisms that I noticed, despite Jamie being back (well, unless you count "Wonderful pain!" during the warmup), but we sang most of the piece. And we sang lots of it in long sections of sight-reading, continuing for page after page even if almost everything sounded terrible. I know some people hate it when we do that, but it's SO good for improving sight-reading. And I love it!

Anyway. Ladies' sectional tomorrow, which I also love, but unfortunately I'm going to have to miss it because I'm off to Old Trafford. I've been very good and not missed any other choir things due to football, but this is a Champions' League semi-final so I can't bear to miss that!

(Oh, and ladies might like to note that there's, erm, a football match on tomorrow night. Plan your journey accordingly.)

Finally: Hallelujah Nuns. Can you imagine how much fun that must have been to rehearse? :p