A bit less bah! Humbug!

On Tuesday at work, I received an e-mail from the boys' school. Not a particularly uncommon occurrence as the school is obsessively in touch about every aspect of its operation and I have therefore developed the unfortunate habit of not exactly reading every e-mail thoroughly. Ahem. Anyway, it's a good job I did so this time because the e-mail was about the arrangements for the choirs participating in the evening Christmas Carol Concert. Which was taking place on Wednesday, ie The Next Day.

Now, Second Born is in the P4 choir. I know this mainly because his blazer has a badge on its lapel bearing the legend "Choir" and I am observant that way. Had it been left to SB to tell me he was in the choir, I would still be in blissful ignorance. Needless to say he had not mentioned any evening Carol Concert happening on Wednesday. When I got home from work on Tuesday I asked him if he was singing. "Oh yeah, I have to be there at 7.10" he replied. Nonchalantly.

I gritted my teeth. "Were you planning on telling me about this at any stage?" He looked at me in polite confusion. I could see the thought process in his head: "But you're my mum. You're psychic, aren't you? I don't have to actually tell you stuff. That would be, like, really hard work for me." Proto-teenager, I tell you.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that on Wednesday evening, Husband, First Born and I dropped SB off into the seething mass of hyped up eight year olds in school uniform, tinsel and santa hats and then joined the audience for the concert. Which was lovely. The choirs (none of the members of which were older than 11 or 12) were just brilliant and I am absolutely positive that my primary school choir (had such a beast existed) would not have been able to produce those beautiful harmonies.

The audience joined in the carols including a weird version of "The Holly and the Ivy" to a different tune with the choruses done as a round, which worked far better than it sounds. I was giggling slightly all the way through as the couple in front of me, who were almost certainly about my age, were doing that thing that couples do when only one of them has remembered to wear their glasses, and passing one pair of spectacles back and forward between them. Like low-rent opera glasses. I am assuming, in my benignly sexist manner, that it was the wife who remembered them and the husband who had to keep borrowing her pair. Feel free to disagree with this assumption (but I bet you're wrong.)

The concert finished off with a rousing rendition by all of "O Come All Ye Faithful" which is the carol which is guaranteed to make me feel like Christmas is near. I used to sing in the choir at secondary school and always really enjoyed the Christmas Concert. I was never a good singer, but could pretend reasonably well. I realised on Wednesday that even the pretence is now gone. I can't sing. Couldn't carry a tune in a bucket. First Born, who was sharing the programme with me, leaned over at one point and said "You sing really strangely, Mum". Yes, son. Yes, I do.