Of Minor Ailments & Choristerly Forgetfulness
Tuesday, the 1st of February, 2005 - 26 past 2pm
Current Song ~ "Lovely Face" by Joan Bujacich.
If anyone happens to know how to pronounce the surname of the lady to whom I am currently listening, I would be most grateful for that information. My ever-debatable language skills usually get me through my iTunes playlist relatively unscathed (with judicious use of Google - thank you, all ye wonderful Irish-pronouncing fans of Aoife Ni Fhearraigh out there!), but 'Bujacich' is rather defeating me...
Voyages into increasingly obscure independent artists' back catalogues aside, I'm currently being kept busy by the imminent arrival of this year's OU courses, various things of a choral nature, and my most recent attempt to learn German.
Alas, as is a common feature in my life during the cold/pollen seasons, all of the above must be slotted in around my left ear being blocked, which it has been for up to fifty hours of late.
Research has been done into such conditions, and it seems that possible cures include any form of inhaled decongestant, and sucking on boiled sweets, while possible causes include passive smoking.
If you should in the near future encounter a small woman in the corner of a pub glaring at smokers from behind her wineglass and large bag of aniseed balls, chances are that would be me...
When I haven't been suffering from either dodgy hearing or the peculiar phenomenon that I have come to think of as turbo-flu ('all your favourite influenza symptoms for up to two hours!'), I have - miraculously enough - made actual progress with the German.
Right now I'm one hour down and seven hours to go with the Michel Thomas German CD course, and by the end of that hour I was managing relatively long sentences.
More importantly, they were relatively long sentences of a vaguely practical nature, as opposed to such useful everyday phrases as 'woe is me, oh woe, and the birds sing no more'.
Rammstein-derived vocabulary is quite memorable, but it does have its limitations.
On the choral side of things, last Saturday I took part in an evensong at Southwark Cathedral, for which the anthem was the ever-spiffy Cantique de Jean Racine by Faur�. In the original French, I'm relieved to add; that particular European language may inspire many hours of bitching from most church choristers, but I never did learn the piece in English and would no doubt get horribly confused.
We also did Brewer's Evening Canticles in D, which I would heartily recommend to anyone seeking SATB settings of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis, and of which small samples may be heard on Amazon.
All in all, a very successful event, overlooking someone forgetting to switch off their (rather strident) mobile phone, and my neglecting to bring my robe. My mother very kindly nipped up to the cathedral with it, thus sparing me the implementation of my hastily constructed Plan B: attempting to pass my Burberry coat off as an unusually fashionable robe.
The robe incident was, alas, but one of a series of recent lapses in intelligence on my part, as the weekend before I managed to forget to transfer my order of service book to my folder (and consequently got to test my belief that I could get through the entire service from memory - which indeed I can), and the day after I forgot my entire music bag until the moment I walked into the choir vestry.
The latter incident I put down a total lack of tea that morning; the former I have no excuse for.
Moving swiftly on to the OU: both of my courses start this Saturday, which is slightly alarming, especially where the Religion in History course is concerned. The music, I'm less worried about at present, given that my (fairly realistic) current plan is to get the first assignment done by the time the course starts.
Now I must away before I think of any more tedious details to fling into the above. I should be back tomorrow, memory allowing, and then things are in the lap of the Coursework Gods as I hit the Introductory Tutorial Season (this year to be made more exciting by my having a Tutor of Mystery! ...or a tutor who didn't send out an introductory letter, to couch it in more mundane terms).
T.T.F.N.!
Lily
