Angels – click here to watch the performance

…and finally a service by PHHS choir in All Saints, Evesham, also including my carol.

We actually filmed part of it in France in April 2010 – here we are in October 2011 putting the finishing touches to the editing! It’s amazing how the months fly past when you have to work for a living as well!

Far from sitting back and relaxing before we tackle Grade 5, I have actually been working out what to put in each module already and we hope to start making the first one in the October half term holiday. We are very aware that Grade 5 is what most of our present and potential customers need (indeed, it was the very reason for starting this project in the first place!) but I make no apologies for giving them a really solid foundation in the earlier grades before we tackle all the skills required for this exacting exam.

I had hopes of retirement after we make the Grade 5 modules but The Boss says we should start at the beginning and re-make all the earlier modules in wide-screen HD. Now then, 18 months per module, 15 modules already made, plus at least 5 for Grade 5 – that would make me about 85 and him 93!

Think I’ll go and buy some lottery tickets…

Stephen drove, along with one of the parents, a 3-ton truck containing all the instruments and sound equipment. I took the easier option and went by plane with the rest of the party.

We were based in Bussolengo, in the region of Lake Garda, arriving on Wednesday 20th July and departing the following Tuesday. In that time we visited many places including Verona, Garda and Venice. We performed several concerts, sang Mass in the Duomo at Pescantina and performed four motets in the Basilica of San Marco Venice.

There were also ad hoc performances by the Barbershop Boys in St Mark’s Square and by the tour choir in the raked seating in the Arena at Verona,  at the dinner table in the hotel and in the foyer of Heathrow Airport!

All in all we had a fantastic time. The students were a credit to their school, both in behaviour and in the excellence of their musicianship, and were genuinely a pleasure to be with all week. The whole experience was rewarding and exhausting in equal measure!

Do take a look at some of the videos shot and edited by Stephen. Keep in mind this is just an ordinary state secondary school – not a specialist music college!

Sheila Evans, Lenzie Academy, Class 1A 1969

For reasons I won’t go into here, it has become clear to me that if you want to find old school mates, it is MUCH easier to find men than women.

Why?

Because women change their names when they marry – at least by tradition. There are some school friends I would love to trace – Gillian Robertson, where are you? I have had no contact with her for at least 33 years. She might have married a couple of times for all I know.

It occurred to me that any idiot could find me and get in touch so long as they know my current surname. Very few people I have known in the past 30 years would know my maiden name.

Just for the record, if anybody out there is looking for me (I have no reason to think there are people in such a sad state, though!) I was Sheila Evans until I married in 1980, I went to Blackness Primary School, Dundee, Lairdsland Primary, Kirkintilloch, and Lenzie Academy, Lenzie before going to Glasgow University and Jordanhill College of Education.

There – I feel better now!

Oh yes, the Maths department would LOVE that!

Believe me, teaching a child how to do vibrato verbally is a non-starter! Most youngsters think they have to wiggle their hands rather than the whole forearm and I always end up holding their wrists, as if in a splint, and doing the motion for them until they feel the rhythm and sense of it and start to be able to reproduce it themselves. Usually as I move towards them I say, “Excuse me – they always say don’t touch the children, but I’m going to have to if you’re going to get this right!”

So far, ( 35 years or so of teaching later) I haven’t had any problems with that approach.

There have also been occasions when kids get upset during lessons. This is not because I’m a nasty person, I hasten to add! Quite the opposite – I have a good rapport with all my pupils, adults included, and they tend to tell me their tales of woe on occasions, again probably because it’s one to one and I actually have time to listen to them. I’m a warm, emotional, tactile person. I’m a Mum who sees an upset child and want to offer some comfort. To stand back, saying “sorry you’re upset but my reputation is worth more than giving you a hug” is just plain inhuman in my view.

A spokeswoman from the Musicians’ Union was interviewed to put the opposing view to Mr Gove’s. She argued that children should be taught by example and watching, and would learn more effectively that way. Try telling one of my blind pupils to watch how to hold the bow! With sighted children I try to be a good rôle model and encourage them to practise in front of a mirror trying to look like me (poor things!) but for some of my pupils this luxury is not available. I appreciate this is a special case. Nevertheless, THOSE children are quite used to people touching them in an appropriate manner to guide them in the right direction in all senses. I’m told that dancers and gymnasts just accept that their teachers will be pulling them around in lessons. Accept that, or don’t take lessons. “End of” – as they say!

I have a piano teaching colleague, who, in order to avoid physical contact, uses a pencil to poke errant child’s hand, finger, wrist, into the right position for correct technique. Now THAT is what I call perverted!

Thank you, Mr Gove for bringing an element of reason to this land, which has been slipping ever further down that slope of suspicion, accusation and litigation. I’m with you!

The words as I remember them are;

The cloak of sleep now wraps us round

Each small bird has sought its nest

Beasts lie still upon the ground

In my arms come take thy rest

By, by, my son, lulay.

I’ve written in Sibelius how I think the melody went – I may be slightly out on the length of notes. I may even have imagined the whole thing!! We are talking at least 47 years ago after all..

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It’s always a wrench – tearing myself away from all those jobs I had intended to get done over the “long” “summer” (what sun?) holiday. I DID manage to sort out all the family photos into video cases marked with the relevant year. I DID manage to sort out all the Tupperware I had been trying to get to since we moved here 3 years ago and even forced myself to throw some of it away. I, or rather, we, did NOT manage to make the 4th video in the Level 4 Theory series – Stephen is still trying to get his head round editing the wedding video so I haven’t had the heart to crack the whip by getting the preparation for it done and waving it under his very nose!

It’s always tiring – going back to work and starting the term at 8am on a Monday morning after a weekend of Chandos rehearsals  and concert (who on earth had the brainwave of moving our mid-year concert from May to September?) came as a bit of a shock.

It’s always rewarding – for example, two of my new pupils… one 7 -year-old on cello who thanked her Mummy for paying for a course of 10 lessons… aaaaaaaaaaaaaw!! and one 6 yr old double bass player on a 10th size instrument who, on his second lesson, handed me an envelope containing this card and a little  green flower brooch he had made.

It’s always nice to find that I still love teaching!

On June 5th, I found I had a different role. My daughter, Helen, was married in Arlingham Church, Gloucestershire. I wasn’t required to play the organ. Helen is a French Horn player and had asked 8 horn friends to provide the music in church. I wasn’t required to play at the reception. “No, Mother, that’s not what you’re there for.” …and a superb jazz pianist had been booked to be followed by a disco.

So I played the role of Mother of the Bride.

It was the most wonderful wedding of all those I have ever attended. My daughter was the most beautiful bride – and no, I’m not just biased! The weather was not too hot, but dry and not too sunny for me (note the big sunglasses in my hand), The service was personal and appropriate; the setting for the reception, in a  marquee on David’s family dairy farm, was perfect and the bride and groom were driven back from church in a 200 year-old open landau drawn by a pair of perfectly matched, stunningly beautiful Gelderlander horses, with Helen’s Springer Spaniel, Tangle, running alongside. It was like something straight out of Pride and Prejudice.

The most impressive thing for me, though, was the smile on my beloved daughter’s face all through her day. May it stay that way for many a long year to come.

I always keep a record of my pupils and their lessons. Now, using Google Docs, all that is ‘in the cloud’ and I can write the records as I go along.

New this week is Swype. This is the means of using a different sort of virtual touch keyboard. It is really intuitive, following finger movements, guessing what word you meant where you are inaccurate, and offering alternatives. I’m hooked! And will probably write screeds now rather than short cryptic notes.

This blog post has been written on my phone while I’m sitting in the corridor in a school between candidates for accompanying in the County Youth auditions.

The provider of the old blog page decided to discontinue, so you should be seeing this in “wordpress”… and very im”press”ive it is too – so far at least!

Stephen the Wizzkid moved everything across here from the old pages, so I didn’t lose everything I had already blogged about. This is my first visit so bear with me while I find out how to use it.

More when I have done so!