h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

No, you posted it in exactly the right place.

On the other hand, I think I might have posted a Thursday entry into someone else's journal, as I can't find it.

OK, here goes again.

Thursday 20th November

I'm in two choirs, which I call the big choir and the small choir. The big choir are putting on a Christmas Carols concert in the National Concert Hall on 1st December. It's a Monday night, which is not a good night, but it was the only one the Concert Hall would give us.

Tonight was one of the last rehearsals for the concert. It will be a nice night - we're doing the Britten Ceremony of Carols which is interesting and reasonably challenging. We're also doing some of the standard carols, and will have a gorgeous soprano and a children's choir to add a bit of variety.

I missed the last two rehearsals for various reasons which were discussed earlier in this journal, so I have a bit of catching up to do. I'll have to do a bit of note bashing over the next few days.

To liven things up tonight, we asked people to wear Christmas jumpers, and there was a silly Christmas hat competition. We also had the raffle, which is the biggest fund raiser of the year. In a choir of about 80 people, we had 50 prizes, so most people went home with something, and some won two or even three prizes. I managed to bag two bottles of wine, one of which looks pretty respectable.

And tomorrow it's the weekend!

[Amy P]

Deb

Your carol concert sounds good.

Friday 21st November

Well the weekend has arrived, as predicted. Today was a very wet day and I didn't feel like doing much.

It was not too busy in work - I had time to investigate a few things without having to fix anything that was broken. I managed to avoid the worst of the rain on the way home; it only got really bad after I was home.

My coffee maker is acting up. It's a great machine: grinds the beans and all. But there's something wrong with the grinder. Recently it has started making the coffee too weak, and sometimes it says there's no coffee being ground, even though the hopper is full of beans. I'm going to have to get it repaired, so we may be without the good coffee maker for a while until it is fixed. Tomorrow's first task is to drop it into the service agent.

My second task is to sort out the leaks in the greenhouse. I have a plan which involves transparent plastic and paper clips. I'm quietly confident. We'll see how effective it is soon.

Then I can continue tidying our music room, which has become a dumping ground for all sorts of junk. I uncovered a guitar stand I'd forgotten I had, and found that it is adjustable, so it fits the bouzouki! Now I don't have to keep the bouzouki in a giant plastic bin.

[Amy P]

Deb

Well, the coffee maker is in for repair; the greenhouse is waterproofed; the guinea pig hutch cleaned out. The software that wasn't working is now ok. So all together a good day.

Good to hear that one of us has got the hatches battened down; the list of jobs for the Spearcarrier's visit in December gets ever longer.

Sunday 23 November.

Started the day with a trip to my brother-in-law's office. They've an overhead projector which needed a bulb replaced. This an easy task but requires patience and a selection of different screwdrivers. The hardest bit is standing on the boardroom table and supporting the projector with one hand while unscrewing it from the celing bracket with the other hand.

This afternoon I'm dropping Iz to a rehearsal of Noyes Fludde, a musical pageant for children. The performance is at 6 and I think I will attend. The highlight from last year was the scene where they pack about 100 children dressed as animals onto the ark. I never knew there were quite so many giant pandas on the ark.

It makes me tired just reading your journals sometimes, you seem so busy

Deb

"Noyes Fludde"...


Are my suspicions correct? Is that pronounced "Noise Flood"?

It's more like noy-yuh's flood. It's an Old English version of Noah's Flood. A very strange event. A mixture of play, oratorio, pantomime and religious service. The storm scene was really good, and there was a greater variety of animals than last year. Not so many giant pandas.

[Amy P]

I like the idea of a kids concert called Noise Flood.

Tuesday 25th November

Well, I never got a chance to type anything yesterday. I was busy enough in work, but managed to finish a little early, so I was home by 5:50. Unfortunately I had to leave home again at about 6:40, so I only had 50 minutes to cook and eat dinner. I made pasta with a tomato and vegetable sauce - it had tomato, onions, red and yellow peppers, courgettes and tons of basil and oregano. Served with grated parmesan, it was delicious.

At 7 we had a long choir rehearsal which lasted until 10:35. It was the final rehearsal for our carol concert next Monday in the National Concert Hall, other than a run-through with the instruments on Thursday, and an hour in the concert hall before the concert itself.

The Benjamin Britten Ceremony Carols is a lovely piece, but it is very strange. It's written in what I think is Middle English, for a start. It also relies on a lot of imitative entries (like Three Blind Mice sung in canon) which can be tricky enough when the tune is fast and the different parts start a half beat apart.

I think we'll probably need to organise an extra rehearsal to polish it off before it's ready. Still, we have a week.

I conducted Noye's Fludde once, with a Dublin Orchestra for Young Players in the National Concert Hall.

I was most impressed by the handbell-ringers; somebody had the good idea to commandeer a recorder group to play them. There are not many sets of tuned handbells in Ireland, and I think we had to borrow a set from the North. (Northern Ireland has for a long time had much more finance put into arts resources than the Republic).

So with only a week or two to get used to playing them, the recorder players did a brilliant job. It's all a matter of counting your rests (or better, following the tune) and swinging in at the right moment; one bell in each hand. I think they had prepared themselves by playing their two-notes-each on recorders for a couple of rehearsals; by the time they joined in with the orchestra they were spot on.

The UCD bell ringers used to have a set of 8 handbells.

I have a little set myself, which you hit with hammers - it's great fun at a party to hand them out and get people to play their bell when they're pointed at.