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This week, I got it together.  I seemed to spend most of yesterday pointing my camera at the sky.  For some reason every picture that should have had the sun in, did not. Here is a picture that Mr P. took of me photographing the sun, somewhere on the Camden Islington borders (dahhhlink), on our way home from Hampstead Heath. Although it looks cloudy, the sun was peeping out in the direction I was pointing my camera. So the theme is covered !

SONG OF THE DAY –

You are my Sunshine -Norman Blake

From the soundtrack of one of my favourite movies

‘Oh Brother Where Art Thou’

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Such a lovely week. Mondays are always made good by The Bishopsgate Singers. I went and sang with a lovely bunch of vocal practitioners in Hampshire on Tuesday ( hence the very early start!) and yesterday my ( yes they are mine…all mine!) primary school choir ( 4 -8 year olds) which  started in May has just moved up a notch. I think the promise of singing in St Pancras station before Christmas, and a trip to sing at the  the Albert Hall in March has helped.

Last night I finished  running a  fabulously relaxed six week acapella singing course  funded by Camden School for Girls and Acland Burghley, which was free for the participants. We  did a little sharing sessions, for family and friends, of the 6 songs we had learned. Here is a video of one of the songs we shared, I got to sing in the back row, rather than wave my arms around at the front, as it is a lovely simple piece. I am  also running an all day singing workshop in Shropshire on Saturday, so am  really hoping the annoying little signs of flu  that have been plaguing ( !)  me for the last 3 days will not manifest themselves into full blown virus. A singer’s worst nightmare! Definitely a bit out of sorts. It always happens at this time of year and is probably not helped by the amount of small children who want to play my piano and hold my hand and big people who kiss me at the end of concerts……Not one to complain about being kissed though!

SONG OF THE DAY – Down in the River to Pray

Here is an interesting bit of history of the song. I heard a lovely version of this that my mate Polly Bolton had arranged that she found in a really old book of songs by the Fisk Jubilee Singers from the turn of the last century. This version is much like the version from  the movie”Oh Brother Where Art Thou” and as I said, this is a little group of non audition singers who before 5 weeks ago had never sung together did a cracking version of it. We are going to do another course at Acland Burghley starting 1st Feb, for friends of CSG and AB..so near to my house as well, which is always a plus.

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Well the calmness of yesterday was short lived. On the journey home on the bus  from Angel, I had to listen to the ‘life and times of a Glaswegian in London’ (usually deeply love the accent , today it was like grating my fingers down) – I think she was under the misaprehension she had to talk so loud so they could hear her in Glaasgee. The woman was half way down towards the back of the bus twanging away at full throttle for 25 minutes, with hardly a pause, apart from when she lost signal for a couple of seconds “och, I thought yer battery had gone dead hen!”….not a dialogue, but a veritable monologue, and I feel like she is family now. Ah!  I heard all the trials and tribulations of her exciting(?) and  complicated(?) life, and  now know where not to eat in Holloway if you don’t want to get mild food poisoning! So with gritted teeth and no distractions I arrived home unable to eat nuts as my jaw was so tense….So now I try to write with no distractions….! Easier said than done, I write  4 words and Mr P arrives home from work with stories from his day, I get to 15 words and he leaves the room again.

–  he returns from the kitchen, with news of the rest of his day, and then my word count stops telling me anything, it  sticks on 15 – oh there she blows…. word count working again, I get up to 51  words without saying diddly squat. It  is day 146 of my post-a-day and I am losing the will to…. anything really. Everyone  in my family seems to be on meltdown and I am trying hard not to be dragged down too, trying to stay upbeat, but it is quite tiring….. ah Mr P re-enters, and now he’s gone again, to lie down. 10 hours of landscape gardening (or smelling the flowers as I like to put it) has obviously taken its toll.

smelling the flowers

So much for the ‘no distractions’. Now I have to put up with all the inner distractions in my head. Need to learn some music for tomorrow, need to find some much more fun songs for my  new choir of 4-11 year olds, need to record parts for lovely  grown up choirs, and have to decide if I can get myself in any kind of shape to get on a train and have a break this weekend , which seems completely absurd seeing as I have such a long list of things to do. If only I had a Tardis or a Scotty to beam me up, so I could be surrounded by sheep and sunsets without having to do the 4 hour  journey.

Ah Mr P is back, what happened to the sleep?…you know what…I am feeling a bit tired myself…got to go to another meeting  in 35 minutes. I might just have a little lie down too. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

SONG OF THE DAY Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch and Alison Krauss sing their song from“Oh Brother where Art Thou” GO TO SLEEP YOU LITTLE BABY

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The Sound of Music, over 20 times. When I was about 17,  I watched it twice in a row in our local flea-pit, in the days when you could spend all day in the same cinema without being thrown out. The film is almost 3 hours long, and in those days they  had a 15 minute interval just after the ball room scene when Julie is running back to the Nunnery. Both times I went to see it at the SING-A-LONGA-THE -SOUND-OF-MUSIC, I was the loudest heckler in the audience, as  almost I know the whole script, so could scream out ridicuous questions just before dialogue. ha ha.

I have already mentioned that in my younger years I  had a complete adoration of Julie Andrews, and how I always seemed to end up with a haircut like Maria Von Trapp.  I first saw The Sound of Music when I was about 6 and my head was turned for ever. I remember switching all the lights on in our front room when no-one was looking and dancing around to what I recollect was the  fake version of the soundtrack,  hoping to be ‘discovered’  by some big shot producer who might have been walking past our obscure street in our obscure town in our humble home county. The real  soundtrack record was considered much too much of an expense in our house – one of the first huge life  disappointments . Now I may be wrong about the fake soundtrack,  as I seem to find no record of there being one, unless they all got chucked away, but I know for sure that either  the Mary Poppins or  Sound of Music record in our house was the cheaper alternative, just like the ‘Top of the Pops’ records you could buy where all the songs from the charts were re-recorded, so you could buy the LP for half the price. They just really upset me when I was a younger as I had such a good ear, I could not stand them.

SO there it is – The Sound of Music. I have to say I have not seen it for a while, but then have not sat still for 3 hours, doing something so frivolous for a long time.

My second and third  most watched films are probably Oh Brother Where Art Thou and Two Weeks Notice   (don’t ask!!)

SONG OF THE DAY  –I have confidence – Julie Andrews

I went on a The Voice Explained  course ( highly recommended by me) and Anne-Marie  played this as an example of the finest vocals. It is really superb. One thing you cannot fault J.A is the fact you can hear every word. And if you are putting a song across that is so  fundamental…go on listen to it with fresh ears, without the visuals, it is superb!