Warm fish and four candles

On Sunday we had our first choir practice with the children’s choir. This event took place in the Espace multicultural of a nearby town.


Eventually the children began to appear. The original dream of our musical director (and author of this years main project) had envisioned 2 separate childrens choirs. Unfortunately the music teachers in the local schools were not too keen. Only one music teacher stepped on the plate. He would be able to supply a choir of 15 children.
This figure has now shrunk to 10....


What fun we had, standing for most of the 4 hours. The children were only with us for the first 2 hours.
The room that we were rehearsing in had a stage and facing the stage, steeply banked cinema seating. This is also the local cinema, so the stage backdrop was also the cinema screen.


It was very hot in the room but after 2 hours we were allowed out into the buildings main entrance corridor, where tables with food and drink had been set up for our rest break. Not a chair in sight to sit down on though.


We are so far behind with our preparations for the piece that I am not looking forward to the performances.
We have to dress completely in black with no sparkly items. Only our faces and hands will be visible.


There have been workshops to build the scenery that will be used during the performances and last Friday there was a costume making afternoon, with 6 sewing machines in use. The children will presumably be fisherfolk or fish or something like that. There will be a fishermans wife, a fisherman and the fish (who is really a prince who has had a spell cast on him). There will be adult soloists too, but we have yet to meet them.
Can’t you just feel the tension and excitement building?.....


for those of you who don't know the story, here is Rik Mayall telling the tale of the fisherman and his wife. www.youtube.com/watch?v=boRowDEAJ7Y

 My younger sister used to love him in "The young ones", in fact I think that she thought she was him, as she practiced his facial expressions and phrases from this and his other TV shows.
Here is a clip of Rik in angry young poet mode www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMQNH9G5nbI


After the practice, I returned home and got ready to have an evening meal with Madame, my tenant. She had invited a couple of her friends who want to go on holiday to Scotland, and wanted information about distillery visits etc


So it was an evening of 5 courses, listening to people speaking fast French in the local accent.
By the time it was over, I knew that I was in for an night of dreaming in perfect French ; if the music whizzing round my head let me enter the land of nod.
But before you go, here is the famous "four candles" sketch from the Two Ronnies. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz2-ukrd2VQ