Ears, but Could Be Hands

Boy, I'm tired.
I enjoyed last night's gig. Paul the Girl came, and I'm glad. She is very funny. She said my day of seeing 40 students one by one for ten minutes each was a bit like speed dating. Not quite as entertaining, perhaps.
I liked the first band, Olympic Countdown. They were 'mature' but as enthusiastic as teenagers, with a very competent drummer and a bass player whose fluffed lines only added to the charm. 'A', shouted the singer/guitarist. So the bass player played A, but by that time the music had headed off somewhere else. They had good songs, though, in spite of the ramshackle delivery. Personally, I prefer my music thus, ramshackle, enthusiastic and utterly natural.
I wasn't so keen on a bill with so many poets, but that's just me, probably. I know Ingrid is a poet too and I like her stuff, but I felt like listening to songs and having my spirits lifted last night. I did enjoy singing though and I played the Christmas Queen for the first time ever and possibly the last, as I will never ever be able to learn that many words.

Then
This morning I was up with the lark,
Up in the dark
Hark!
I heard a dog bark
Across in the park
I had work to mark.
Poetry, nix, nix.

Down to the University of the East I drove, filling up on screen wash for the second time in as many weeks, being as I put the last lot in the engine cooling water but it said on the internet that it doesn't matter (not in a Peugeot, anyway, although I haven't got one of those).
I met many jerky drivers on the road- whizz, screech, whizz, screech: slam-braking with a jerk as they tried to force the people in front of them to drive faster. Jerk in practice, jerk by nature. Don't they notice how many accidents there are on that road? Here's a hint, tailgaters- if you're in a hurry, don't use that road. It is slow and full of speed cameras. Stay at home and think of something else to do, like chasing your cat up the stairs.

You drive jerkular
Round the North Circular

I fanned my guilt for a while at work- there's a major thing I haven't done but I'm putting off worrying about it until I have some spare worrying capacity. I came home late morning to find a Christmas Tree had been thrown over the fence. Well, hootly hoo, I had thought it was going to be respectfully delivered this afternoon, but maybe that's just me again.
It was seven feet high and I had to hack away at the trunk with a rusty saw to force it into its red tin stand. We decorated it, even with the lights that don't work just in case they change their mind. Then I sat back and smiled at it for ages, as they make me ecstatically happy; the smell, the look, the ridiculousness of dragging a massive tree through the house in its white net foreskin thing and scaring the living daylights out of the cats in the process. It was very heavy.
Now I am listening to the beautiful voice of Colin Blunstone. How I wish I could sing like that! Bending and soaring, his voice slides with ease across the octaves, through different timbres, breezing out of his nose, his mouth, his body.
Wow.
The DVD camera is charging so Ian can film Helen and the Horns tomorrow. Dunno how I'm going to get it on to Youtube though, because my camera is ancient, but I'll have a go. I am really looking forward to it- there were moments when we were rehearsing on Monday when all the excitement came back. I have been singing and playing this afternoon, but we did so many gigs the songs are physically part of me, like my ears.