I woke up sort of dead this morning.
You know how scientists will calmly tell you that you stop breathing for a few seconds at a time some times in the night? Yeah - woke up smack-dab in the middle of one of those, so suddenly I was awake, and not breathing, and not, really, able to work out how to do it either. Felt kinda like my heart was about to either burst or shut down. Then I blinked, and normal service was resumed.
As it happened, d had to go into work early today, so this happened at stupid o'clock, and after a little while, I got up and decided that if I was going to be awake at such an hour, I was going to make use of the time - got up, got dressed, got out the door, walked five miles, just like the old days. And, just like returning to the old days of anything, it ached like a sonofabitch with lack of practice. Felt reasonably good to do though, especially given the weirdly cardiac beginning to the day.
Ma was going to Cardiff today, so she offered to pick me up a pair of size 38 black trousers for tomorrow's choir concert.
She brought them round on her way home. They didn't fit. They didn't fit in the kind of way that a gallon of semi-melted butter doesn't fit in an egg-cup. She took them away again, mystified.
"Can't believe you've gone up two sizes..." she said.
"It's Continental Shift," I muttered. "It's like I lost five stone from all over, and then grew two of them back right here," - I almost bit my lip in frustration at this point, holding a kind of wobbly housebrick of human flab at my belly - "S'kinda vexing really..."
"Yeah," Ma agreed, going away again.
About forty minutes later, she called me up.
"I've just picked up a pair of size 40 and a pair of size 42 in Tescos," she said. "I'll drop 'em round."
She did.
The size 40s didn't fit. The size 42s did...just about, with a judicious amount of in-breathing. Thankfully I'm not actually singing tomorrow night, or I'd be screwed.
The outfit of course is all black and white. Never mind penguin suits, for I am Orca, the Whaleboy!
Oh, one thing from last night's choir practice which is entirely unrelated to Disappearing, but made about 30 grown men lose it completely.
Tomorrow night for the concert, we open with a Cole Porter medley [Spoiler Alert - ah, damn, too late...], included in which is a chunk of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire". Our choir mistress had impressed upon us previously that the need to use long vowels was perhaps never as important as during the phrase "A count-ry es-tate, is something I hate..." And yes, I've broken the words up as we sing them, rather aggressively as instructed.
Last night was the final rehearsal before the performance, and it's understandable of course that instructions and imprecations get rather truncated mid-song. As the choir sang "A count-ry es-tate, is something I hate..." with, as it happened, short vowels, a voice rang out.
Let me just say that if you've never heard a short blonde woman yell the first syllable of the word "country" at a group of 30 grown men while standing in a grand old church...you haven't really lived. The giggles began in the top tenors (my section!), and rippled all the way down to the basses, faces turning red, then puce, then eventually indigo with the effort of holding it together enough to make an intelligent sound to the end of the song. Then we all lost it.
The choir mistress winked at us.
"I won't be able to yell that on Saturday," she noted. "Long vowels, pleeeease!"
It's six to five and pick 'em whether the choir gets through that song tomorrow now.
I'll let you know. Meanwhile, I'll be in the corner operating the microphones, adding my own sotto voce whalesong to the whole affair. The choir mistress did collar me at one point though, saying this would be the first and last time I wouldn't be singing in public, which means I've passed my choral probation. More walking, more working out, more fitting into the goddamned trousers called for!
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