I didn’t write yesterday about the choir meeting on Friday. There were 43 participants and some of those were couples, so probably just under fifty people (about half the full choir) logged in I’m sure lots of people enjoyed it, but for me the singing part was truly awful. Because the way it works is that you can’t hear the other people singing, everyone is on mute apart from the musical director, so all you can hear is his instructions and the keyboard, and you sing your part along with that. For a start, I hadn’t realised that there was a link to the sheet music and audio files in the email, so I wasn’t prepared. The music was shared on the screen, but I couldn’t see it well enough to read without having to scroll round it all the time. We did two songs: ‘Panis Angelicus’ and ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’, both of which I know (though I didn’t know the alto part for Over the Rainbow). I had got the music for ‘Panis Angelicus’ because we were rehearsing it for the Easter concert when lockdown started, so I was able to follow that, and I have sung it before, but as soon as I opened my mouth all that came out was a horrible scratchy squeak. Horrible. It was like being before an audition panel, except that no one could hear me – which is strange, if you think about it, because if no one can hear why would that make me nervous? The thing is, I can’t read music, so I’m dependent on picking up on the voices of the other people singing the same notes, whether that’s the whole choir or just the other ladies in the alto section. Even ‘Over the Rainbow’ – which I used to sing to my kids when they were little, so you’d think I’d know it – was a struggle, because if I sing it by myself it doesn’t matter if I’m in the wrong key, and anyway, as I said, I didn’t know the alto part.

Well, that’s what I should have written about yesterday, only I didn’t feel like it, and today… Today I was originally going to write about anger, how angry I am with everything, with the state of the country, with the state of the world, with everything, with myself. I’d be angry with God if I believed in him/her/it, but of course I don’t, so that’s someone I can’t blame.

On Facebook yesterday I saw a Wordsearch, and the instructions were to share the first three words you noticed because that says something about you. The first two I saw were: ‘One’, and ‘Lesson – I was intrigued to find out what this ‘one lesson’ was – and then I saw ‘Strength’. Oh great. So is that a lesson I’ve learned, or one I need to learn?