Singing for a Wedding
It was fine. I think. The wedding. Singing for the wedding. Well, as I tweeted, nobody died. And they were still smiling when we sat down. But then most people at weddings are in kind of Permanent Smile Mode, aren’t they? I know I’ve been to weddings when you doubt that what’s going on behind the permanent smile is smiley, but through the haze of We did it! And I’m alive!, this afternoon, I wasn’t noticing the quality of anyone’s smile.
EMoon tweeted that your first choir performance is the worst, and it gets better. Well I hope so. CambridgeMinor also tweeted that I’d probably end up enjoying it—that anticipation is always worse than the event. Well, that’s also true—I did enjoy the actual on-my-feet-making-a-noise part but the anticipation just about did kill me and I’ve been in the post-adrenaline fog the rest of the day which is impractical in terms of getting on with life and as a long-term prospect as a choir member Will Not Do. But. Hey. One down, 46,712 performances* to go.** It gets better. EMoon says so.
I was so appalled at my immediate future that I didn’t hear anything on the morning hurtle as hellhounds and I panted from tree-shadow to tree-shadow in the unseasonable oven-like temperature, while DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT [American] HISTORY*** via http://www.audible.co.uk/ was trying to tell me something about some bloke named Clinton.† And then I had to figure out what I was going to wear—what I could bear to wear as passing for Sunday-best with the weather pressing down on you like Shelob.
You may recall that I have been known to complain as a bell-ringer about what day-eaters weddings are. Singing in the choir is WORSE. We were supposed to get there twenty minutes before the wedding started—at least as a bell ringer you start counting from when it’s supposed to end. And—as a bell ringer—I know that weddings always run late. This one was no exception. We sat in our choir stalls for a total of two hours—and the grand sum of our contribution was maybe seven or eight minutes of singing††—ringing a wedding is usually about twenty minutes.††† Feh. I had brought my knitting of course‡ even though I put it away once the show started.‡‡
Harpergray wrote: When my choir sang at weddings, we usually kept our eyes out for the dresses (of guests and party), and adorable children in the wedding party. General people watching, which in most cases was of a benign nature.
Yes. This proved to be more fun than I was expecting. I am a people-watcher‡‡‡ but I had been so preoccupied with them staring at us I forgot that this would work the other way too. A wedding takes on its Major Life Ritual aspect when you’re right on top of proceedings, even when you have no clue who these people are. There weren’t really enough great frocks§ but the adorable children quotient was high—especially one little girl in the wedding party who was, I’d guess, in her first grown up dress.
And then there was the singing. I was beautifully placed, because once the men swept forward to create the back end of the horseshoe with the sopranos and altos facing each other from the choir stalls, I was pretty well hidden. Our copies of the Cantique are bound into hard covers and I’d been planning to carry mine to put the appallingly flimsy little wisp that is the Locus Iste on, to stop my hands shaking. But everyone else was only picking up their Locus Iste wisps so I thought, okay, fine, I can do this. And my hands didn’t shake enough that I couldn’t still read the words. The best thing was that as they gave us our first note—the Locus is a cappella, drat it—and we all started off I thought, oh, yeah, I do know this one.
The Cantique is longer and while you have the benefit of organ accompaniment, we were singing during the signing of the register, which was causing a certain amount of distracting hilarity behind us.§§ But this too was negotiated without any throwing of custard pies.§§§
And then at the end as the choir exited through the side door . . . the bells were ringing.#
* * *
Mirkat wrote: A bookmark!!! why didn’t I think of that. Have ordered a doodlier doodle post-haste, of Robin – deep in the fog of a new novel – running into a pole. Or the like. There wasn’t much to convey in 40 characters. Just so long as it’s relatively skinny enough to fit on a handy bookmark (2-3 inches?). Am I asking too much?
Erm. Well, yes. With the exception of the bats in the belfry doodle and the odd special commission## which are larger, doodles are a standard size, which is to say UK paper size A6###. A doodlier doodle will be more crowded than a plain one, but they’re all A6. And I don’t do the Sistine Chapel on the inside of a thimble—I’d have trouble drawing anything to fit 2-3 inches.~ At least around here every stationer’s now has a laminating machine, and you can get a little home dealie for about £20. I have one. You run your doodle through and lo! it is plastic, and all is well.~~ Personally I have very few bookmark-shaped bookmarks. I use postcards and business cards and photos and (laminated) newspaper clippings and good bits cut out of old illustrated calendars and so on. And if any of the authors I follow start selling doodles, I’ll buy several and laminate them before I have the opportunity to spill tea or chocolate on them.
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* Not that I’m trying to be difficult or anything, but before Aaron points this out, if I live 50 more years—hey, I’m planning to go out old^—that’s 18,250 days I’ve got left. That means two and a half performances a day for the rest of my life. Hmm.
^ Fifty would be good. I’d like to hang on for that first cartoonists’ round-up Antiques Roadshow.
** Not including the Muddlehamptons’ winter concert because I will be humming at the Met Live GOTTERDAMMERUNG. But . . . counting Oisin’s and my new barbershop quartet which will unveil itself to a disbelieving world this time next year.
*** Part Four apparently successfully downloaded at last.
† So I listened to it all over again on the evening hurtle. Oh, that bloke. I knew the name was familiar . . . ^
^ JOKE. Although given that how well any president does seems to be depressingly and increasingly dependent on the luck of the national/global draw, would the first (white) woman president have got beat up any more or less than the first black (male) president is?
†† Plus the soprano descant on the final hymn. I don’t know how many other people heard us, be we heard us.
††† The happy couple pays through the nose for the privilege too. It would be entirely unfeasible to pay us individually, but I asked Cindy if the choir coffers are enhanced and yes, they are, to the tune of better than twice what the New Arcadia tower charges—and while the ringers do themselves get paid, half of it goes into the tower fund. Weddings are expensive. And I’m not at all sure the Muddlehamptons are worth it. Eeep.
‡ I have got to get used to the guillotine jokes. As we were leaving one of the tenors fell in step beside me and said, I kept looking round for the guillotine. The what? —Oh.
‡‡ Although since I had thoughtfully chosen to sit at the far end of the first-soprano front row I might conceivably not have had to . . . ah well.
‡‡‡ I defy you to find a writer—or for that matter someone who draws^—who isn’t.
^ Since I am including myself in this category I hesitate to use the word ‘artist’
§ I wonder how many gorgeous 1st-October-in-England frocks remained hanging in their cupboards however while their would-be wearers groped for something short and sleeveless.
§§ Worst for the basses, who have to start off All Alone.
§§§ It is of course possible that this is only because no one thought to equip themselves beforehand.
# . . . Not very well. Never mind. Not my tower.
## !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’ve received my first COMMISSION!!!!!
### http://www.ukofficedirect.co.uk/iso_paper_size_cp.aspx So, officially, about 6” x 4”. But I have several brands of A6 pads and they vary kind of a lot in practise.
~ A hellhound face. A rosebud. One vampire tooth.
~~You’re probably destroying their eventual value on the Antiques Roadshow, but in my life anyway plastic has a much greater survival rate.
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