The Suckage of Circumstance

 

So, how many crummy ARRRRGH sort of things can happen in a single day?  I don't mean life-ruination kinds of things, but definitely a few rungs up the hierarchy of eccch from merely bashing my foot against the attic ladder-stairs at the cottage AGAIN.*   Not that I didn't know the first manifestation of serious suckage was coming—I've spent all week bracing myself for it.

            I told Oisin this afternoon—and emailed Minnie this evening—that I'm dropping out of The Octopus and Chandelier.

            Sigh.

            It's time:  I don't have the time.  I never have had the time, but it's really in my face these last few weeks when rehearsal is about to ramp up to forty hours a day.  I am brutally behind on PEG II and while I got through last Sunday's rehearsal by reading a lovely book, there was still a small voice in the back of my mind screaming YOU SHOULD BE HOME WRITING PEG II!  YOU DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS!  And I don't have the moral energy to shut my conscience up when . . . I'm not even getting to sing.  Which is what I signed up for. 

            Sigh.

            I mean, I was already behind on PEG II when I joined the company and paid my membership fee last summer, and I was more behind by the time we started rehearsals in—November?  October?  But being behind on a book is kind of normal for me** and it wasn't a huge big deal yet.  I have some hope that PEG II and I are finally entering into a happy fruitful phase instead of the drooling demon from hell/inscrutable granite monolith phase we've been in for the last two or three months.***  Which is all the more reason not to spend the next month mostly in rehearsal.

            I also realise that I got into this slightly on false principles—my own false principles, mind you.  It's not like they had a hypnotist at the door last summer at the 'meet the gang and SIGN UP HERE' get-together intoning 'You will sign up.  You will sign up.  Look at the nice shiny swinging something or other.  You are getting very sleepy.  You will find our membership form irresistible.'  But the amateur local theatre thing is the whole group thing.  And I don't really do group things.  I haven't even made it to the annual tower lunch the last two years.  I want to ring bells and go home.  And I also want to sing and go home.  I was talking to Oisin about this this afternoon too and he was saying in his kindly-music-teacher-and-professional-patient-as-Griselda-all-purposes-maven voice that, well, yes, the buzz is about it all coming together for the performance.  It's all about, and all worth it after, the performance. 

            Er.  Yes.  I believe you.  And I don't mind putting in hours learning stuff.†  But the thrill of after the performance is not going to happen for me this time.  I will probably try again some other year . . . some year when (a) I'm not trying to finish a book the exquisite beauty of whose inner soul seems to be made chiefly of flint and rabid vampire bats and (b) the back row of the chorus has more to do, which is to say sing.  There's an uneasy subheading to (b) which is—as I've told you—the O&C chorus that is having a really good time are the dancers.  I am not going to learn to sashay around the stage while singing.  There are LIMITS.  And so I am wondering uneasily if this isn't kind of generally the case with musical theatre?  Doesn't the chorus usually sashay, one way or another?  Maybe I should learn to paint scenery.  No, no!  The idea is that I WANT TO SING!††

            Which brings me (cautiously) to the next thing.  You know I've been teasing Oisin—pretty much as relentlessly as he'll let me†††—about the New Arcadia Singers‡—the nice little singing group he's going to start.  Since he's never quite told me to shut up I've kept on nagging.  Shhhh.  Don't tell.  It may be working.  He was talking this afternoon about stuff like when we'd meet‡‡, how many people we'd need‡‡‡ and what subscription/expenses fees should be.  And before any of you say ROBIN, HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND?    YOU'VE JUST SAID YOU'RE DROPPING OUT OF O&C BECAUSE YOU HAVEN'T GOT TIME.  True.  But my sanity also has its limits.  And I'm dropping out because I haven't got time for 1,000,000 hours of rehearsal this month, most of which involve standing around and waiting for a cue to sing ten words and then wait some more.  I wouldn't be dropping out if I got to sing.  I would be tying my conscience up in knots§, putting a bag over its head, and shutting it in a closet.  And even if The New Arcadia Singers start up in March, after O&C is over, I'll have turned the fabulously complete and utterly satisfying PEG II in by the time we get to frantic pre-concert extra rehearsals. 

            But the New Arcadia Singers are still pie in the sky.  Dropping out of O&C is real, and however much I feel this is the right decision, it still feels crummy.  Very crummy.  And then I got to tower practise tonight, put my first practise quarter up on the board, put my and Niall's and Colin's and Penelope's names in it—two more people to entice/threaten left for the necessary six to ring doubles—and Vicky tells me that we can't do it.

            What?  Sound of Robin's heart thudding to the floor.

            Our bells need a lot of remedial/repair work.  We all know this;  I think I blogged about it here.  Our annual tower meeting spent some time making a list of fund-raising possibilities.  We're presently waiting for a second quote on the work and then we have to tackle our parent authority for some funding—how much we can stick them up for has an enormous bearing on whether or not it's likely we can drum up the shortfall ourselves—or how soon.  Meanwhile we're ringing as normal . . . but Vicky feels it's not a good idea to do more ringing.  It's not going to look good when we go round hat in hand and ask for money . . . and the bells do need work, and we don't know when we're going to be able to afford to get it done, and what if something, you know, breaks?

            So . . . no practise quarters.  Frell.  At least not at New Arcadia.  So for my next trick I need to try and find another tower.  Who said this was going to be easy? 

* * *

* OWWWWW.  My left foot is All-Stars purple (again).  It looks better on shoes. 

** Some of you may remember the screaming last autumn, getting PEG I in.

*** ARRRRRRRRRRGH.   Why didn't I become an astronaut?   Or a petrol-station attendant?   Maybe it's not too late.

† Ahem.  Method ringing.  Also on handbells.  Why can't I get passionately worked up over something . . . easy?^

^ No.  I have to decide my next challenge is frelling knitting.  Which is knitting my brains.  I admit however that some of the reason I decided to let myself hear its siren song at last+ is that it's another of these things you can do indoors and sitting down.  This is important to someone pushing 60 and resigned to the likelihood of a permanent relationship with her ME.  I'm also under the impression that when you're not counting wrong, dropping stitches, ripping things out, and screaming, there are long soothing stretches of peace  and productiveness and clicking needles.  Yes?  After you get past the Mutant Lint Second Row stage, that is. 

+ It's not like it doesn't totally appeal to me.  It does.  It has for a long time.  But among other drawbacks, I'm a klutz.  Me, knitting needles and yarn?  This does not sound like a good plan. 

†† Have I mentioned I still haven't heard from my Theoretical and Possibly Imaginary Voice Teacher?  A disembodied voice on the phone (occasionally).  She could be a computer programme.  Well, fine, but can it teach singing? 

††† In the first place he's a lot bigger than I am.  I remember this every time he stands up from that organ bench.  In the second place . . . I wouldn't know what to do with myself on Friday afternoons if I were banned from Oisin's studio.  I am programmed for a blast of music to wind-scour the webby corners of my PEG-oppressed mind on Friday afternoons. 

‡ Which name I have just invented.  Has a nice, er, ring to it, though, doesn't it? 

‡‡ Tuesday or Wednesday evenings.  Those are the only evenings I've got left.  And it's still going to cut into my occasional extra Tuesday and Wednesday rings.^ 

^ There's also the little matter of my husband and his peculiar desire to have me eating dinner at the same time that he does occasionally. 

‡‡‡ I was saying gaily, oh, ten or a dozen would do, and he—the weary and jaded choir director—was saying, no, you need enough that you can still hold practise when half of them don't show up.  Oh.  Dear.  Like bell ringing then.  Since I'm . . . er . . . obsessive, I tend to forget that most people aren't.  

§ Possibly with yarn that has REBELLED against being purled (wrong) again.  Tie someone up? it says.  Sure.  Makes a change.