Zimmers on a wet Monday
Sorry to those of you with a day off work today, it's typical bank holiday weather - dreich!
I remember when I was working how much I loved May as we had two or three long weekends in it and it always felt like the threshold of summer, having staggered through from Christmas without any real break apart from the Easter weekend.
I got a nice surprise at the weekend, a friend paid for a day workshop that we did together and also bought me The Tree House by Kathleen Jaime, who is a wonderful Scottish poet. It was such a kind and unexpected gesture and it really touched me. She said it was in thanks for me ferrying her back and forth to things - but I'd have been going anyway. There aren't enough gracious people in the world, but J is one.
The workshop was on reading your work to an audience. Colin Will and Debs took it with input from another friend who has a drama background and I learned quite a bit, although I doubt I will ever overcome my natural shyness.
There's a great poem by Kathleen Jamie about being in a black and white minstrel show at primary school sometime in the 1960s. She's a little younger than me, but we both grew up in the same education authority area and my school did these concerts too. (It's hard to believe it now when life has change so much, but back then the schools were just copying a much loved BBC television programme.)
Anyway I got picked, in my absence with chicken pox, to sing "If you were the only boy in the world" to a boy I didn't like - called Robin. I think that sealed my fate as a performer as the teacher prodded me on to stage with a shepherd's crook from the Christmas nativity play, and I stuttered out the song through a petted lip and a blotchy tear stained face.
And yet I'm still nearly word perfect on all the songs we learned for that show. So if ever get to my dotage I'll probably serenade some poor bugger in the next bed with "My Grandfather's Clock" rather than the much better option of My Generation,
brillantly performed here by the UK's new rock power, the Zimmers:
I remember when I was working how much I loved May as we had two or three long weekends in it and it always felt like the threshold of summer, having staggered through from Christmas without any real break apart from the Easter weekend.
I got a nice surprise at the weekend, a friend paid for a day workshop that we did together and also bought me The Tree House by Kathleen Jaime, who is a wonderful Scottish poet. It was such a kind and unexpected gesture and it really touched me. She said it was in thanks for me ferrying her back and forth to things - but I'd have been going anyway. There aren't enough gracious people in the world, but J is one.
The workshop was on reading your work to an audience. Colin Will and Debs took it with input from another friend who has a drama background and I learned quite a bit, although I doubt I will ever overcome my natural shyness.
There's a great poem by Kathleen Jamie about being in a black and white minstrel show at primary school sometime in the 1960s. She's a little younger than me, but we both grew up in the same education authority area and my school did these concerts too. (It's hard to believe it now when life has change so much, but back then the schools were just copying a much loved BBC television programme.)
Anyway I got picked, in my absence with chicken pox, to sing "If you were the only boy in the world" to a boy I didn't like - called Robin. I think that sealed my fate as a performer as the teacher prodded me on to stage with a shepherd's crook from the Christmas nativity play, and I stuttered out the song through a petted lip and a blotchy tear stained face.
And yet I'm still nearly word perfect on all the songs we learned for that show. So if ever get to my dotage I'll probably serenade some poor bugger in the next bed with "My Grandfather's Clock" rather than the much better option of My Generation,
brillantly performed here by the UK's new rock power, the Zimmers:
posted by apprentice at
10:32 am
2 Comments:
I quite like 'My Grandfather's Clock', which might be just as well if I finish up in the bed next to you...
I'll remember that lol!
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home