It's been a long couple of weeks!
I've looked back at my blog and realised I haven't really said much for a couple of weeks!
I thought I'd start with today's outfit:
This was worn for a day at home. I didn't leave. Not once. I completely missed church since I woke up at around 11am, despite having set my alarms. The clocks going forward didn't help,nor did my Saturday adventures. More on that anon.
Outfit first.
I love my Seasalt corduroy trousers- these ones are the Asphodel trousers and they are super comfortable. I own them in Onyx and Burgundy shades. I teamed them with a River Island stripy turtle neck I bought secondhand from LorelaiLQ. I really like this top. Then I added my 2nd hand handmade crocheted waistcoat. The Dr Martens boots (also bought from Lorelai's instasale) were just worn to go out into the garden for some teabag ripping and composting and the photos. The black velvet hat was secondhand and I wore it indoors all day. I love it because it reminds me of my 90's black velvet hat that I used to wear for Windband on a Saturday morning at the Music centre. My conductor, Mr Beal used to call me Paddington Bear when I wore it. Nostalgic vibes of happy times.
So...what have I been up to?
Well, on Monday 13th March, I took my 33 children from the Year 5-6 choir to the Royal Albert Hall in London to sing at our borough's biennual choral festival. I realised that this was my 30th year of taking part in this concert (should've been in 2022 but for Covid putting it back a year).
The amount of prep for this seemed quite alot, not helped by travelling by coach with 2 other schools to save money (they asked us to join us me on our coach). We arrived a little late as there were several annoying road closures which weren't on the SATnav so the poor driver had to loop around several times which made us waste about 20minutes. We ate our lunch outside fairly swiftly then went inside. We were placed right in the middle of the choir stalls so we had a really good view. There was some annoying kerfuffle over putting coats in yellow bin bags. I had come prepared with my own big holdall bags. The kids were really excited and I have to say, they were the best-behaved choir I have taken to this festival in 16 years. I didn't have to tell anyone to be quiet at all- the headteacher of a local school even complimented them to my headteacher a couple of days later. I was amazed as the rehearsal was really long and involved lots of sitting around so they did really well.
After the rehearsal ended around 5.15pm, after the children having been in the arena (apart from loo breaks) since 12.50pm, we went outside, hoping to go to Hyde Park for a play. Alas, it looked like rain so we sat on the steps and ate our second packed meal of the day. We managed to take a team photo before the rain started and we had to head inside. Typical!
After the toilet break and putting our bags in the fancy 1871 bar area, we went up to our seats. Every previous year, I have been envious of schools who had made a banner to hold up so this year, I'd got the children to make individual letters in our school colours from cut up cardboard boxes (ever the recycler) which we held up. Unfortunately, the photo I was hoping for wasn't quite achieved as we couldn't get a photo with everyone in face on without lots of other schools in the way.
It hit 7pm and the concert began. The children were excited and sang brilliantly. I was very proud of how accurate they were with their singing, counting and rhythms (they commented that other schools weren't doing some of the rhythms correctly! My pedantry over their counting seems to have been passed on to them!) The theme of the concert was the Queen's life and Jubilee with some other pieces thrown in for good measure. To make things even more exciting, we had been given tiny LED lights in red, white and blue to wave during 'Sing' by Gary Barlow, flags to wave during the National Anthem and our own flags to wave during Sweet Caroline.
Unfortunately, as we were in the middle of singing a song called Hope, when all the lights were on us, composed for this concert by my school friend Kayleigh, my lovely choir assistant L turned round to me to say that one of our pupils, a boy with ASD had just said he felt sick. In the moment I stood thinking, "Where is the sick bucket?" and "Should I take him out now?", he then proceeded to projectile vomit in about 5 directions!!! It smelt very strongly of smoky bacon. There was absolutely loads of it. As she led him out, I went to try and find some paper towels (I had used our supply during the rehearsal to clear up a spilt bottle of water.). I managed to find a roll outside. By this point, the performance had moved onto 'Sing'. Myself and our Assistant head were on our hands and knees trying to clear it up during the song. It was awful! It was absolutely everywhere including inside L's carrier bag on her cardigan, down the back of a girl in the school in front, all over her chair, under his chair. I felt really helpless! In retrospect, I should have just carried on singing and waited to clear it up (apparently, it was allvisible to the audience according to our parents and Head who saw everything!)
During the interval, I went out to go and find out what was happening with the boy. He still felt sick and had thrown up again in our bucket. He had some icy water from the First Aid team. I felt really bad for him as he is not always able to express his feelings. He looked very sweaty. After a while, he said he wanted to go back in. I took him but then thought better of it, so the ushers allowed us to place a chair near the door so he could exit when he needed to. Our kind Assistant Head told me she would sit with him as I needed to be with the kids to sing. Apparently, he was continually being sick during the second half but really wanted to come back in to sing. The AH was one of the best people to be with on this trip as she is so good humoured and just laughs at stressful situations (whereas I spent the whole second hand fretting).
The concert was amazing- the children were so excited and buzzing about their experience. 2 of our children had been filmed for an interview about preparing for the concert and they said some really beautiful things!
At the end, we had to wait for an usher to tell us when we were allowed to exit our seats. The concert had ended some 30minutes later than it was due to and then we seemed to not be called to leave. I was getting worried about leaving so we tried to make our way back to the Bar where our coats and bags were but the exit we'd been using had been blocked off. We ended up going on a massive wild-goose chase right the way round the hall to get back there with an usher and eventually got our coats. When we finally made our way back up to the top and kids had been to the loo, we tried to find my AH and the sick boy, but our sick bucket had gone missing whilst being washed. We were worried as he was still being sick. I tried to call a parent who was coming back on the coach with us and the coach driver to find out where he was. It was so stressful getting out as there were still masses of parents and children waiting. As we walked, one of our parents started to ask me if she could take her child and I'm afraid I was rather abrupt in my negative answer in my anxiety to get the children safely to the coach.
We got on the coach and I hoped and prayed that we would not hit awful traffic like we had done in previous years. The sick child was thankfully sleepy so he started to go to sleep (though he did wake up to vomit once later....). I was so thankful that we didn't hit traffic and only got back to school around 30minutes late, 11.07pm exactly. All the parents turned up!
I got a lift to my interchange station with my AH as she lives near my midpoint train change station. We were almost crying with laughter at her hilarious retelling of the events of the evening despite how tired we were. I had to wait 25minutes at the station and got home after getting a taxi around 12.50am!!! Only 6 hours till I had to get up again!
That whole tiredness stayed with me for the rest of the week. We had 2 days of teacher strikes that week but this time, we opened for a few classes so I did have to go in (my union didn't strike).
I had a really useful gamelan rehearsal on the Wednesday night- there were only 6 of us there but we got some focused practice done.
Thursday, I only had the Year 6 children because of the strikes but I had decided to organise a second performance of our Albert Hall songs with another local school for the parents who couldn't afford to watch the concert so we tried out the songs with some of our children singing the parts the secondary children sang including solos.
At the weekend, CBC and I headed out to various towns to try and get some supplies as well as camping gear for our forthcoming trip to walk some of the Pennine way. We ended up at Lakeside to visit Go Outdoors as other camping shops had closed down. We managed to get a few supplies and then had a look in TK Maxx too. We bought a new Bamboo chopping board as our Joseph Joseph one had snapped last week. We ended up in a Thai restaunt for dinner which was yummy.
On Sunday, I headed over to my Mum's for lunch to give her some Mother's Day presents. It was so nice to see her. I ended the day at a Gamelan rehearsal in London.
Sadly, my Monday flute quartet rehearsal was cancelled due to illness. School was busy this week.
We had a rehearsal at the local school for the choir concert next week. Their piano is dreadfully out of tune! I managed to play all the piano parts for the songs.
This weekend had two more Gamelan rehearsals on Thursday and Friday. The Friday was great as one of the Balinese dancers had bought cooked Balinese food for all of us! It was amazing!
On Saturday, CBC had a concert and rehearsal in the afternoon and evening. His brother came out on the train to do a practice trek with me for our family trip to walk some of the Pennine way in the Easter Holidays. He's doing 9 days of trekking whereas CBC and I are only doing 4 (though 17.5miles each day with camping gear- eek!). CBC was rather cross about this plan since he had to do the concert rehearsal despite having been in the Whatsapp group where it was arranged so I felt a bit miserable when we started.
Once I'd met my BiL at the station, we went to buy some rolls from the bakery and set off on our walk.
It was remarkably muddy in places which was a bit difficult in places. We ended up getting lost and finding ourselves in the 'Poo farm'! The sewage treatment works really! After a few wrong turns, involving a tiresome railway crossing closure, we ended up stopping in a churchyard for lunch. It was SO nice to sit down! The weather was mostly kind to us though we did get rained on!
By the time we got back to my house, we'd walked 23.3km! We were so tired. We had some tea, biscuits, showers, cheese and crackers and then walked the mile to town to find dinner. We tried the Indian restaurant which was full so we went to the Italian instead. The food was delicious though took a long time. CBC got back to town just as we were finishing so we met him at the station and my BiL got the train home!
Today, I spent most of the day cleaning and tidying and preparing my camping stuff for the Pennine Way.
I should probably go to bed!
Hope you are well!
xx
