"In cricket, they have a thing called the TFC award.."

"... It's for players who don't score any runs or make any catches or bowl anyone out - who don't, in fact, do anything at all. It means 'Thanks For Coming'. And, tenors, you are tonight's recipients!"

I'm paraphrasing Wednesday night's only Jamieism, because I didn't write down anything other than "TFC award" at the time. But that's more or less what he said. It was a little harsh, I felt, because it's not as if they did nothing... but they did make us shake our heads in disbelief when Jamie was trying to get them to sing one of their lines slowly (in an attempt to get the notes right) and they went hurtling off at almost double the speed he was beating!

We did the middle section of The Kingdom fairly thoroughly, and it sounded much better by the end. Tomorrow we get to spend most of the day on the piece - maybe we'll manage a full runthrough! Should be possible, since we've done enough note-bashing. We'll see.

Lots of people have written to point out that we got a 5-star review in the Guardian for the Poulenc gig! The Manchester Evening News only gave us 4 stars, but at least they MENTIONED the choir, which they don't always! I haven't seen any other reviews. There have been quite a few more for the Cello Festival (The Times; Daily Telegraph; Independent), but none mentioned our contribution. For that matter, neither of the Poulenc reviews mentioned the Satie encore! I suspect some of these reviewers don't actually attend thw concerts :p

And finally, I'm shocked to discover that there are plans afoot to move part of Chet's! It's only Pal, not the old bit, and it's true that it's falling apart... but that's my teenage years they're demolishing!