"Christmas is all about the baby, right?" "I warn you to seriously think twice before suggesting juggling babies..."

(The Songs of Praise episode would probably be more appropriate, but I already posted it... so here's the Christmas episode. Fun times to be had with auditions and improvisation exercises - make sure you watch the second clip for Mary giving Joseph a beat-down)

So, with everyone out of the Halls, I started putting on Gilbert and Sullivan and my various Italian pieces from voice class and realized - you know what? I really, really miss chamber choir. I miss belting out the high notes, rolling my R's, and pronouncing things in a massively, ridiculously posh English accent. So, I went online, looked up St Peter's Church (just down the street) and found the contact person for St Peter's choir. David emailed me back almost instantly - he just took over as head of the choirs in September and is desperately trying to rebuild the choirs. As of January, he'll be starting up the girl's choir in addition to the established men's choir, boy's choir, and "mixed volunteer choir" - however, if I popped in today around noon, I could meet him, see the choir, etc. Sure, why not.

Well, turns out the organ concert planned for this afternoon was cancelled, so they decided to throw in the choir instead. I wandered into the church at a little after noon and was almost immediately handed three choir books, a cassock and surplice, asked if we sang "Ding Dong Merrily on High" in the States, and met people as they filtered in - David the choir director (who looks exactly as you'd imagine a young, British, church-mouse looking choir master to look), Alice his wife (who looks exactly like the actress who played Evangeline in Nanny McPhee [she's one of those "oh, that girl" actresses and I know I've seen her in a bunch of stuff, but Evangeline just jumped straight out as that's how she behaved and carried herself), Ann (the middle-aged, strong-arm primary-school teacher soprano, there with her husband and late teenage son), Sam (who was the second to arrive, but I still barely spoke to), and... the guy who stood on the other side of the room... um... him. Cutest of the cute, however, were the two choir boys, who had to have been under the age of 9 and were running around in cassocks and could never find their place in the hymn books. (Eeeeee! Sooooo cute!) Thank heavens we were simply doing Christmas carols and I'm a soprano (huzzah for the melody line!) - there were only two songs I didn't know and one that I knew the lyrics but had a different melody line than I knew. People flitted in and we rehearsed for about half an hour, before the Vicar came in to give us a blessing and we walked out to our places in front of the much more massive congregation than I'm used to, usually only coming for Evensong. (And generally not on beautiful, sunny days like this one) That said.... ah, how I missed the sound of a chamber choir with the slow reverberation of harmony as it rings through the stone cathedral... Alice (which stills makes me giggle, as I watched an episode of Vicar of Dibley last night on youtube) sang two solos, David played the organ for a few of the numbers (most we did a capella), we probably did about 8-10 songs. Nearly towards the end, David asked those who had been in the choir for a year to stand - then those who had been there since Easter - then those who had joined over the summer - leaving me alone. He informed the congregation that I had joined up about half an hour before the concert and I got applause (whilst blushing terribly, I'm sure). He also informed the congregation that we'd be starting up the girls' choir in January, and would be getting two new boys for the boys choir - huzzah! Ann later informed me that it's getting competitive these days to sign boys for the choir, since they lose most of them to footie. ("It's not "cool" for boys to sing in the choirs anymore - is it like that in the States?" I had to stop myself from saying, "I don't know if boys in the States ever thought it was "cool" to sing in the choir". Especially with those FANTASTIC neck ruffs - seriously, so cute) 

So, yeah. Good times. I'll be back in January and bid them all Merry Christmas before heading out the door and back home for a snack. Duly fed, I am off to find the elusive fabric store in Winton, in the hopes of getting some of my projects for January started before I head off home. (My goal is to get them all cut out before I leave [provided I can find the right fabric at "Sewing World"], hopefully get a bit of sewing started tomorrow)