It�s the blade that poisons you!

In preparation for the choir concert of next weekend, we had a marathon rehearsal tonight, three and-a-half hours of standing on risers, singing through most of Haydn�s Creati0n, several of the student soloists sick and laryngitical, one absent altogether (he has come down with something rather serious rather suddenly which necessitated his being driven to the airport yesterday and put on a plane home to England, where he can infect the inhabitants of that island nation), and great gaps in the ranks of the choir itself (I personally found myself isolated in the soprano section, the girls who are my usual riser mates sitting in the chairs with runny noses and coughs), Kevin O playing untunable tympani, and your intrepid diarist sore in various places from having been on skates for the first time in at least 25 years (but that is fodder for another paragraph).

We had a short break after the Haydn, the chapel choir performing its nine minutes� worth of Mozart, and I noticed something which I�m sure no one else found commentworthy. The director of the choir (someone who was given the job in an attempt to appease her [heretofore it was a student bursary position, as is that of chapel organist, but was changed so that this woman would �have something to do�] and whose qualifications I question, but that is another story) is left-handed. I mean, lots of people are left-handed and I�ve never held it against them. But she conducts with her left hand. When I learned choral conducting in university, our professor made it very clear to us that, regardless of your paw orientation, the hand that the choir and the orchestra watch is the right. Period. No argument. She plays piano and was a violinist. Did she play a left-handed fiddle? Most definitely not! I just found it very strange and had to share that sense of oddness. That�s all.

Now, the summer I got married I put my skates of many years (white figure skates, the kind that every girl gets at some point) in a St. Vincent-de-Paul box as I was clearing out my apartment for my move to Ann Arbor and I had not skated since. The day that Hubby bought his chainsaw I bought new skates, almost identical to the ones I got rid of, and today I wore them for the first time. I fell almost immediately, forgetting about the toe grips, and now have a nasty bruise on my left knee (it�s really quite painful, as I landed rather hard on freshly-zambonied ice), but I soon got the hang of it and was whizzing around the arena with the best of them. My companions were Little Princess and her BF and two friends of theirs. I met neighbours at the rink, people who were rather shocked to see me there as hitherto I had been conspicuous by my absence, and I caught up with my across-the-street neighbour, being so engrossed in our conversation that I ended up falling a second time (not seriously) because once more the toe grip caught in the now roughened ice from the many skaters. I shall surely feel the stiffness of unused muscles tomorrow. But it was fun, and I�m looking foward to doing it again next week.

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