Further Eisteddfod Update
Further update: I am very, very tired.
We didn't make the stage for the mixed choir. Both the Girls' and Boys' choirs came second, although it's generally agreed that we ought to have won the Boys. It mightn't have helped that our head of music was talking the judge beforehand, and said "Who wrote this arrangement? It's dreadful". To which the judge replied: "I did." :D
I did get to go on stage to collect the medal though, having been there since the beginning in year 7, when we did win. It was pretty incredible to be allowed to sing on THAT STAGE though, so I'm content. In five years' time when I tell the story I shall claim that we won in any case. Although I expect some livejournal-reading smartass will pop up and contradict me.
Alice won the Piano as well, and Marged our cellist won the strings.
When we were getting ready to practice for the last time, there was a boy of about 14 playing the piano, going through his repertoire and generally showing off. The piano competition had been by this point, so he was just an impediment with no reason for being there, so Mrs Lloyd went up to him and asked quite aggressively: "When's your competition then?". When he looked blank she shooed him away!
It's odd that the whole Welsh singing thing is finishing for me, since it really has been the only thing I've done consistently throughout secondary school, and is my main link to a person I'm not really anymore. And even though performing itself has been wonderful, with only a few exceptions, I shan't miss the choir people, and the musical crowd at my school in general. Standing around waiting for my actual friends to meet me afterwards, I realised how little I have to say to these people these days, even though in the past I did try to be part of their circle. The whole Welsh chapel\singing\Plaid Cymru freemasonry is off-putting, and I've never properly felt part of the Eisteddfod business: much as I've respected many of the musical people as performers they've never really been my friends.
At this point I realise I sound very much like Heather and Ohmie in their posts on leaving and so on. And until quite recently I felt similarly about pretty much everybody at my school. I was strange and off-putting up until about year 11. But since then I've made friends who've seen past the shell I'd constructed, and genuinely like and value me. And I them. Which is great. And I really will miss them; we'll try and keep in touch as much as possible for as long as possible, but there's no way it will be quite the same: We will always been in a rush to squeeze in everything during the half of the year we spend together, before leaving to see a completely different set of new friends.
Still, I speak as if it's all over already: it is not. For a start, we all still have a load of nasty exams to do; then there's the Prom, which is going to be a great time, spent with people I really like and without regard to the rest of them. Then the summer; various 18ths including my own; RESULTS DAY and everything that entails, and finally that bitter-sweet final week where we all set off on our different courses. And the best part about that is that I have friends to meet at the other end already, and won't have to undergo a painful reinvention in the way I did before, because with you all I've always been as I am, rather than as I feel I ought to be.
That was unexpectedly open and emotional. Don't start thinking that'll ever happen again: stiff upper lip, what?
We didn't make the stage for the mixed choir. Both the Girls' and Boys' choirs came second, although it's generally agreed that we ought to have won the Boys. It mightn't have helped that our head of music was talking the judge beforehand, and said "Who wrote this arrangement? It's dreadful". To which the judge replied: "I did." :D
I did get to go on stage to collect the medal though, having been there since the beginning in year 7, when we did win. It was pretty incredible to be allowed to sing on THAT STAGE though, so I'm content. In five years' time when I tell the story I shall claim that we won in any case. Although I expect some livejournal-reading smartass will pop up and contradict me.
Alice won the Piano as well, and Marged our cellist won the strings.
When we were getting ready to practice for the last time, there was a boy of about 14 playing the piano, going through his repertoire and generally showing off. The piano competition had been by this point, so he was just an impediment with no reason for being there, so Mrs Lloyd went up to him and asked quite aggressively: "When's your competition then?". When he looked blank she shooed him away!
It's odd that the whole Welsh singing thing is finishing for me, since it really has been the only thing I've done consistently throughout secondary school, and is my main link to a person I'm not really anymore. And even though performing itself has been wonderful, with only a few exceptions, I shan't miss the choir people, and the musical crowd at my school in general. Standing around waiting for my actual friends to meet me afterwards, I realised how little I have to say to these people these days, even though in the past I did try to be part of their circle. The whole Welsh chapel\singing\Plaid Cymru freemasonry is off-putting, and I've never properly felt part of the Eisteddfod business: much as I've respected many of the musical people as performers they've never really been my friends.
At this point I realise I sound very much like Heather and Ohmie in their posts on leaving and so on. And until quite recently I felt similarly about pretty much everybody at my school. I was strange and off-putting up until about year 11. But since then I've made friends who've seen past the shell I'd constructed, and genuinely like and value me. And I them. Which is great. And I really will miss them; we'll try and keep in touch as much as possible for as long as possible, but there's no way it will be quite the same: We will always been in a rush to squeeze in everything during the half of the year we spend together, before leaving to see a completely different set of new friends.
Still, I speak as if it's all over already: it is not. For a start, we all still have a load of nasty exams to do; then there's the Prom, which is going to be a great time, spent with people I really like and without regard to the rest of them. Then the summer; various 18ths including my own; RESULTS DAY and everything that entails, and finally that bitter-sweet final week where we all set off on our different courses. And the best part about that is that I have friends to meet at the other end already, and won't have to undergo a painful reinvention in the way I did before, because with you all I've always been as I am, rather than as I feel I ought to be.
That was unexpectedly open and emotional. Don't start thinking that'll ever happen again: stiff upper lip, what?