Choir Envy

So, this weekend, I spent several hours rehearsing and performing a concert of music in celebration of the BVM* to an audience of about 65 in a beautiful but tiny provincial Essex church.

And then The Husband showed me the TV coverage he'd recorded of the BBC Electric Proms. This is the gig I would have been doing instead, if I lived just 30 minutes nearer to my old choir.



I like my current choir, I really do, but they're just a bit, well, *meh* in comparison. They make a great sound and don't often disappoint me, but this gig, we tackled 2 pieces that the conductor featured on the video taught me, and did it with such passion I'd end up nearly in tears in the performance**. It makes me sad when I do them again and remain mostly unmoved.

* That would be Blessed Virgin Mary, by the way
** O Magnum Mysterium by Morten Lauridsen, and Bogoroditse Dyevo by Rachmaninov.

The Philosophy of Malcontentment

Apparently, I am 'not satisfied with anything I have'. This accusation was levelled at me yesterday morning, and not for the first time, either.

It's got me thinking, and two key questions are begging to be dealt with.

1) Am I guilty of this crime of which I stand accused?
2) Would that really be such a bad thing?

Let's deal with the first one. I've given it serious thought and reflection, and I'm going to have to plead Not Guilty and ask to be acquitted on a technicality.

I have so much to be grateful for in my life, and I have no intention of forgetting that there are billions of people out there with far, far less. Put like that, it almost seems rude to continue posting. But I decided to blog about stuff that we all often think, but don't necessarily like to say out loud. It's my belief that a permanent state of low-level dissatisfaction with life is a lot more usual than you might think.

For me, as for many of us I'm sure, this simmering low-level grumbliness has nothing to do with being dissatisfied with 'anything that I have'. In case I wasn't clear the first time, I'm happy with all of it.

It's about what I don't have, and in may cases, what I used to have, but don't have now. All of these things are intangible, and some of them are no longer realistic or appropriate, but that doesn't stop me missing them.

For example, I can no longer expect the level of freedom and autonomy that I had as a single late-20-something living and working in London. I have a husband and a child, and I therefore can't just pop out for a drink, and end up rattling home at 3 am in a cab, realising as we pull up outside the door that I have no cash left, and I am too shit-faced to write a legible cheque, or even sign the one that the driver has written out for me because I am on my sixth attempt and he is getting a bit bored with me by now.

I'm not saying that given the choice, that's what I'd do, but I miss having the freedom to make that call. I miss spontaneous visits to concerts and galleries, popping out for lunch, 'popping' anywhere! I miss being able to go to the gym any day I like, rather than when I can get a babysitter. And yes, sometimes I do get pissed off with all the restrictions that security and responsibility bring.

But is that such a bad thing? Let's look at it this way;

I chose to do a degree in Music and followed it up with a diploma in Arts Management. This was for a reason - I care about these subjects, and get great pleasure from being around them in real life. Yet I live in a town which is a cultural and creative vacuum. There is approximately fuck all going on within at least a 30 minute car-driven radius. I simply cannot fill that gap with shopping and TV. It would spell disaster for my marriage if I did.

So, I'm sorry if sometimes, I come across as a bit miserable, I really am. But I am not going to stop trying to achieve some of the things that meant a lot to me when I had unlimited Freedom and Choices instead of Family and Security.

They are the clotted cream in the jam doughnut, the gravy on the chips, the freshly chopped mint in the Pimms. But settling for life without them would be Giving Up. It would be the first step on the slippery slope towards Really Letting Myself Go. It is a path than can only culminate in weekends spent traipsing round Homebase in leggings looking for the latest crappy niknaks to fill the emotional void that my brain used to manage before I let it turn to mush.

And that's just not the way we do things around here.

Mummy's Day Off

I am going away for the weekend for the first time since getting pregnant 2 years ago.

I'm meeting my best friend from my college years - I'm calling her Betty, with apologies to Ms R, because despite having racked my brains for some suitable alternative, that really is what we used to call her at college and it suits her. Sweaty Betty of Baghdad to be precise. I can't remember why - in reality, she is a clean-smelling Anglo-Saxon lady from Salisbury. Students, eh?

We are going to have a nice lunch, a leisurely browse round some of the lovely shops, then go on to a chapel service in an amazing building featuring beautiful music sung by some of the finest young male choral scholars this country has to offer. Then a concert, then out to dinner with friends. In the morning, we will have a lazy breakfast and then go mooching around all the old haunts where we regularly fell over pissed.

It won't sound all that amazing or glamorous, unless perhaps you have small children yourself, but I am delirious with excitement. I haven't been let off my lead for 2 years, and I am going to make this one count.