Jun 23, 2015

Choral Fanfare Competition

Eloise is in the school choir, and seems to enjoy it, to the extent that she is prepared to go in before school to participate in it, assuming that she's telling me the truth about that and she's not up to illicit thing-taking behind the bike racks, which wouldn't be a very secret location to be doing illicit thing-taking in anyway.

She probably is doing choir, because she certainly seems to be in it, as evidenced by the Choral Fanfare Competition, a competition that is held between school choirs across Brisbane, perhaps Queensland even, maybe even across Australia or the World, who knows?

She attended some heats from Northside schools at Kedron State High School (which incidentally, by way of high school selection for attending in the future has been now judged as "too twisty-turny") which I could not find it in my heart to disrupt by dragging Lyra along. But by all (both) accounts the choir sang very nicely, and guess what? they got through to the regional finals.

The finals were held in the Old Museum building of a Tuesday evening, rather inconveniently just as ballet class was ending. Nicole picked Lyra up from Nursery - we found it our hearts to disrupt the finals, clearly - while I picked Eloise and Maya up from ballet.

Needless to say, ballet overran as it generally does and I had to over some encouragement in the punctuality department to young Miss Kristin, who after all had denied the girls an early exit, choosing to highlight their lack of dance commitment in the light of what was only the regional finals of a singing competition after all, and as clearly unrelated to dance therefore in no way important to anybody.

So she very obligingly called a halt to dance proceedings five minutes late after my gentle encouragement, whereupon we bundled into the car and drove very slowly to the choral thingummybob, first behind a very careful (and understandably so) learner driver and then behind a cyclist riding hell for leather but not hellishly leatherishly enough for us. However I have sympathy for cyclists, even hellish ones, and chose not to overtake on the three-lane highway that he was valiantly holding up completely.

Girls safely delivered with only minutes to spare, I parked the car nearby then hot-footed it down to the Old Museum, provisions in hand, to rendez-vous with Nicole and Lyra in the foyer.

The place was ram-packed with children and parents, children lining up all in their fancy choral costumes tailored for the hallowed halls of their fancy educational establishments, hair finely tuned, nervously donning their best sanctimonious choristers' expressions before their time in the limelight singing whatever they were going to sing, no doubt very nicely. As a sledging tactic we did set Lyra off on a few of them, but absorbed as they were in the event they were in the midst of they barely batted an eyelid.

Lyra of course, it being the evening and having spent a day at nursery was suffering the sort of emotional and moral crisis that she generally suffers around that time of the day. She managed to lock herself in a ladies' cubicle, which I understand Nicole resolved by scrambling underneath the door like a paratrooper travelling in mufti disguised as a professional student.

A game of hide-and-seek was disrupted when she spotted someone with the temerity to put some money in a vending machine and decided that they required some assistance with the buttons.

After a while, and some coffee, it became apparent that our lot would be on soon (last of course) and they filed through, dressed to the eights in their usual school uniform, putrid yellow and turgid brown, hair in disarray, expressions working their way up to sanctimonious chorister but still stuck on excited and mildly perplexed. Just to be fair I let Lyra loose on them as well.

It seemed that Eloise had landed herself in a spot of bother by disregarding the uniform rules and wearing trousers rather than a skirt, but I think as far as the judges were concerned any minor eccentricities would have been drowned out by the disgusting colour-splurge of the uniforms anyway.

We made our way into the hall and managed to secure ourselves a vantage point that wasn't too dreadful. Nicole let Lyra off the leash again and she found Jessica's family to go and sit with. And then she ran away and had to be chased down by Nicole before she did some real damage.

And then the Wilston Wonders (no, really) came on and began to sing their sings and I was very pleased to hear that they were actually pretty damned good, in tune and everything. The sang a song that went de-de-de-doo do-do-do-doo very nicely, then one that had something to do with singing with nice voices, and then some biblical thing about a bloke called Joshua. That one had hand actions and everything. All very nice.

A Mum thought that the uniform would probably be the clincher and send them tailspinning into the Nightmare of Failure, after a performance she deemed as "quite good" but how she had to eat her words, poor dear, when after an interminable speech from the judges about breathing technique they pronounced that the Wilston Wonders had in fact won, were officially the best choir in Greater Brisbane, and we all (even me) broke out into shrieks of frank flabberghastment and something bordering on joy (let's call it pride) at the amazing, yes amazing achievement of each of our children. In particular.

And so, onto the State Finals at some indeterminate point in the future! Brilliant!

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