"I'm the worm. You are the blackbird. Watch me!"

(This was Jamie's instructrion to the sops in The Music Makers just before Friday's gig. It was preceded by him telling them that they should be "Like a very excited blackbird who hasn't fed for two days and has just seen a worm.")

I haven't sung as much as I would have liked to, in the last week. I've had a sore throat and a tickly cough which has been driving me up the wall. I actually had it before the Ashton gig, and I think it would probably have been sensible, in hindsight, not to sing in that, but I thought I could just about manage. It would probably also have helped if I'd cancelled my singing lesson on Tuesday, and taken some time off work so I wouldn't have to use my voice. But it was my last ever week as a teacher, so I had a huge number of loose ends to tie up. And now I'm free! Just need to work out where to get money from :p

I thought my throat was OK on Wednesday, so I went to the rehearsal (I would have done so even if I'd been ill, because I'd promised Maggie I'd provide her with the 500 Miles CD - and before you ask, it was her idea, not mine! I thought it went down very well - fun, wasn't it?) (For those who weren't there, I should probably explain that Maggie started the warmup by playing the Comic Relief song for us to do our stretches to.) I discovered after about 10 minutes, though, that I couldn't sing without coughing, so I stopped trying, and at the break I moved to sit at the back to listen. It was particularly frustrating because I *love* sight reading, and I missed the chance to do loads of it! Jamie seemed very determined to get to the end of page 123, because he finished almost 10 minutes late in order to do so, naughty man. And now I know that my sight-reading skills aren't actually as vital as people tell me they are, because the altos didn't do too badly without me! I'm a bit more enthused about The Kingdom than I was - there are some good bits. I'm looking forward to learning it.

My throat wasn't much better by Friday, but I was determined to try to make it through the concert, if only because I'd been looking forward to it for so long (singing on the day I stopped being a teacher - yay!) Typically, it was fine in the rehearsal and the first half of the concert, but as soon as the intro to The Music Makers began, the tickliness came back, and I had a really difficult time trying to hold it in until the first loud bit. I made it to the end, but not without various coughing bouts and the consumption of half a packet of Hall's Soothers. Sorry to anyone who was sitting near me and had to put up with the fidgeting.

(Does anyone know, by the way, why a tickly throat always becomes more tickly at moments when one needs to be silent and still? Is it just psychological or is there some other reason?) (And, also - is there anyone who has ever actually tried CAYENNE PEPPER to cure a sore throat? It seems a bit unlikely to me, and I'm not quite brave enough to experiment - but this page of sore throat cures suggests it's the best one!)

The concert went well, I thought, and I loved singing in the Cathedral again - it's one of my favourite buildings, and I haven't sung in there for many years. There were various hassles beforehand - a huge number of people were really, really late, which meant that the seating took absolutely ages, because Jamie arranged people and then had to keep rearranging as more people turned up and had to be accommodated. Unsurprisingly this meant that the actual rehearsal started very late indeed, which resulted in Jamie still rehearsing at gone 7.20 p.m., at which point lots of the audience were in their seats. Maybe he didn't realise. The seating was then messed up even further by at least one person (and possibly more) turning up to sing in the concert but not having been in the rehearsal. I presume this was the cause of poor Lizzy being without a seat. No-one would move for her, so she had to sit in the only seat available, which was next to me on the back row of the 2nd altos - but she's a soprano! We tried to get someone to swap with her so that she was at least on the FRONT row of the altos and hence just behind the sopranos, but the two people in those seats wouldn't swap - I'm not sure why. Maybe they didn't realise why we were asking and thought they wouldn't be able to see if they moved back. But the result was that poor Lizzy had to sing the Bach as a soloist - at least, that's how it must have felt to her, surrounded by 2nd altos. Thankfully, after the Bach we did manage to get one of the altos in front to switch with her - just as well, because in the Rachmaninov the 2nd altos spent most of it humming, so she would have stuck out even more!

Anyway, I don't seem to have any Jamieisms from Wednesday or Friday, apart from the worm/blackbird one. I did have one from the previous week, which I don't think I've quoted: "Otherwise it sounds like a lovely crust with no pie. Gentlemen, you are the pie." (This was in Svyati, and referred to the tenors at the beginning and similar bits. Which they did perfectly on Friday - yay!)

Finally, though, I wanted to mention my favourite moment of last week's rehearsal, because I forgot to do so at the time and only remembered this week. It was in the warmup, when Jamie had us arpeggiating on a chord (I think it was C major, but I could be wrong). That in itself was lovely - I like it when we do that! But then he asked us to all shift up a semitone (continuing to arpeggiate) and then down a tone, and finally back up a semitone. So the resulting chord progression went C - Db - B - C. And when the whole choir shifted from Db to B - mmmmmmmmmmmmm :-)