No Rest for the Wicked

 

. . . Especially the ones who think they’re learning how to sing.  IF I’D KNOWN IT WAS GOING TO BE THIS HARD, I WOULDN’T HAVE SIGNED UP.  No, no, not Nadia, Nadia is brilliant.  But did I tell you about the choral-singing seminar tomorrow?  At a Church Hall Near You, being run by someone that even those grim arbiters Oisin and Nadia have heard good things about?  One of the Muddles told us about it several weeks ago, and Gordon sent us all an email about it later, but being compulsive I had already signed up*.  And it’s in Smedley-on-Cucumber, which is only a few (small) towns beyond the monks.  One of our back ways to London was through Smedley-on-Cucumber, when we used to go to London a lot.

Tonight—there have been one or two other things going on**—I decided I’d better just check on the map about finding the place.

OH GOD.

Okay, this is MY LAST BLOG ENTRY.  FOREVER.***  Because tomorrow Wolfgang and I are setting out on The Impossible Adventure.  And will Never Be Heard from Again.  At least I refilled Wolfgang’s petrol tank yesterday—we have plenty of fuel to get really, really really lost.  Really.  Which I’m sure will be terribly comforting.

When I originally looked at the map I thought oh, groan, Smedley-on-Cucumber would be the kind of small town that has seven churches all within about a mile of each other—and I will park at the wrong one, and the one I want will be the sixth or seventh, by which time I will have walked three or four miles up and down small crabbed lanes looking for hidden lych gates and it will be half an hour after the seminar began.  The one thing I know about this particular church is that, according to the informative Muddle, it has no car park . . . and parking in a small market town on Saturday morning?  Joy.

I zoomed my Google map out to take a look at approaches, and it was at this point that I graphically lost my nerve.  I then made the further mistake of asking it for directions from New Arcadia to Twelve Saints and a Hedgehog, Smedley-on-Cucumber, and it cheerfully complied, unscrolling something about the length of the Bayeux Tapestry.

Whimper.†

Meanwhile, speaking of my monks, any of you out there know about Taizé?  http://www.taize.fr/  It’s a community of monks in France, and they have what I’m told is an unusual pattern of worship . . . which is mostly singing.  It’s a seriously ecumenical and also seriously international enterprise.  The Tintinnabulation monks laid on a Taizé service tonight with the help of a local chapter and it was fabulous.††  And it was mostly singing.  There was even a rehearsal beforehand, for anyone unaccustomed to the system, but I had to work so I only got there for about the last twenty minutes before the service began.  You’re given a book of songs/hymns/chants and an order of service.  The songs the congregation sings are all short and easy and have a chant-like feel to them and you do repeat them, over and over and over, and while you’re singing a cantor is doing all kinds of wild and fancy stuff over the basic line you’re laying down.  Even short and easy taxes my minimal musical skills, and this first experience I had to think too much about what I was singing to let it become prayer or half-trance or both, which is I would have said what you’re aiming for.†††  But the woman from Aloysius’ church who had given me the heads-up about this service said that the Tintinnabulation monk who’d organized it was hoping to do more.  Yes please.  I’ll come.

* * *

* With the result that, according to the original Muddle, I’m now signed up twice, because he’d also done a block sign-up for interested Muddles.  Does that mean I get to ask twice as many questions?

** Yes, I’m under the impression I’m still on to turn SHADOWS in on Monday.  Or I was, till I realised that tomorrow is going to be epic.

***  You know.  ‘I may be some time.’  It’s even supposed to snow next week.

† Of course I haven’t got satnav.  Fiona’s satnav makes me nuts^, and I never GO anywhere so why do I need to learn to put up with the nuisance?  I DON’T DRIVE.  THE FURTHEST I DRIVE IS TO THE MONKS.^^  Why didn’t I remember that when I signed up for this blasted seminar?  Why?  WHY?  —Because I am a silly person and it sounded like fun.  Remember?  Singing is supposed to be FUN!  Nadia says so!  Flaming arrrrrgh.

^ Especially when it’s telling us to turn left into alligator-infested swamps

^^ Um.  Actually, getting to Nadia is very slightly more mileage than to the monks.

†† I was sitting next to a nun, and I asked her afterward if she was local.  No.  Blurgle Niffnaff, down on the south coast.  Phooey.  If we have a local(ish) abbey, why shouldn’t we have a local convent?

††† There is also a pause for SILENT prayer.  Singing and silent prayer?  I am so there.