...with the sound of music

So my next musical challenge came courtesy of my confidant and knight in shining armour who had a friend who sang in a choir in a local school. The instructions of how to join were sketchy and suspicious to say the least, I was basically just told to turn up at the car park at 7pm and to try and grab someone who was going into the school. In all honesty I half expected to be bundled into the back of a van with a bag on my head and to wake up in an ice bath missing a kidney. Anyway as it turns out that didn't happen, I turned up and followed a couple of ladies into the school (cue me looking weird and suspicious) and found my way into the music room where a large group of super friendly gals greeted me into the fold.

I was thrown in at the deep end and placed in the middle of the choir on the front row where a gap had formed from people not wanting to sit at the front. The first rehearsal was a blur of me trying in vain to remember how to read sheet music while also smiling like a maniac at everyone hoping they would think that I wasn't some weirdo for just turning up.

A few months down the line and I'm happily unleashing my inner Rachel Berry. We had our first choir competition back in March, tensions were high, we'd spent weeks practising a Hungarian folk song which was supposed to only take 48 seconds to sing (without any music) it was tantamount to torture. We turned up on the day all dressed in black and donned our blue and red scarves ready for battle. We turned up in the hall and faced our foes, I've never been so threatened by two bunches of middle aged ladies in floral shirts in my life. We eyed up our rivals (I felt like I was in Westside Story) and got to the stage, gave it our all, waddled off with jelly legs, sat down and attempted to look diplomatic while the other choirs sang.

The adjudicator got up to give her results after a long a drawn out story to create set the scene, honestly Chris Tarrent has nothing on this woman in terms of creating tension. We held our breaths, grasped the bottoms of our cheap school plastic seats and awaited for the results.

Anyway as you've probably gathered from the picture below we won! Two trophies in fact, we even got told off for celebrating too loudly when our name was called out and the hall erupted in a chorus of cheers and whoops!

All in all a massive success. I'm still singing with the choir and have even put myself forward to do a solo in our up and coming concert, anyone would have thought I'd been on the wine when I put my hand up to volunteer, but needs must and the point of this adventure is challenging myself and pushing my boundaries no matter how scary that may be!

The show must go on!