Well, here we are again. Another entry in my diary, which means another 3 weeks have passed, and how quickly they seem to be passing!

It's our first rehearsal back and the question on everyone's lips was not "Did you have a good Christmas?", but "Have you done much practicing?" The conversations went some thing like this:
"Have you done much?"
"Oh yes."
"Really - how much?"
"Well, actually, not that much"
"Neither have I. When you practiced, did you know all the words?"
"No, I just la la’d to the music."

I was not the only one who ... was still at the "la la" stage!

Thank God I was not the only one who had done little work over the Christmas break and was still at the "la la" stage! After our warm up exercises, which are not dissimilar to those practised at Nissan, we recapped on how to breathe and then off we went singing our hearts out. Isn’t it amazing how much you can forget over such a short period of time? Well, Gary soon pointed out the errors of our ways and got us back on track.

John Morris [from Sing Live] attended this evening’s rehearsal and commented on how much we had improved from our first get together, which was the last time he had seen us. I thought to myself, "I bet he's just saying that to boost our confidence". Well, he must be a mind reader, as in the next breath he asked those who had not sung before to raise their hands and selected myself and some others to come out of the choir and go to the front.

What a fantastic sound: The Phantom of the Opera sung by 150 people!

Horror!! Yes that’s how I would describe the feeling when he said "come down to the front". He wasn’t going to get us to sing on our own just to prove how much we had improved, was he? Please no!

Luckily my worst fears were not realised we had merely to stand at the front and listen. And listen I did. What a fantastic sound: The Phantom of the Opera sung by 150 people! I was amazed at how wonderful that wall of sound was and how well all the different voices came together. A truly remarkable achievement for a choir that had only been together for such a short period of time.

The tenors are singled out to stand and sing alone

In the pub afterwards, it did not go unnoticed that all the Tenors wanted to know what they had sounded like, so of course I told each one of them that they sounded the best! Well, someone has to keep them happy. For those who do not go to the pub, you are missing part of the experience ... and yes, you sounded great too!