Ruby Rose - Girl Adventurine

Last night I got a CD in the mail.

It is from Gregory Lewis, the organiser of the Wodonga Carols by Candlelight, and it contains the instrumental arrangements of the Carols I will be singing.

I put the CD on and would like to note the following:

1. Truly, this is CBC fare - you have gotta hear the big cheesy finish for both Joy to the World and Mary's Junior God.

2. In case (1) left you in any doubt, you have SO gotta hear the unsubtle key changes at exactly the two-thirds mark in both.

3. I started to sing along with the first track and realised about halfway in that there was no singer on the recording. It was....just the backing track.

It's......CAROLOKE!!!

When I was just a wee thing in my 20s and the world was full of wonder, I found myself in a massed choir, sitting behind Ray Martin at the RVIB Carols by Candlelight.

(We had Humphrey B. Bear for the Kiddies - not a Wiggle or a Webster in sight - and admission was free - even the chairs at the front - and the choir was all in hideous purple gospel robes and there were fake stained-glass windows and the word "Christ" was mentioned - that's how long ago it was, back in the CBC Dreaming).

Anyway, in the vein of one of those humourous "I'm holding up the leaning tower of pisa - see? see? Take the friggin' picture take the friggin' picture ARGH" holiday snaps, I appeared to be sitting on Ray's head. My mother and sister watched the show on the telly and were able to pick me out from the semaphoric flashes of my earrings of Pure Bling. Because I wasn't sitting there chatting all through the show and looking at everything but my music. Nope. That would have been dissing Ray and his Happy Shiny Hair and the Folx at Channel Nine with their proven commitment to Quality Family Entertainment.

Anyway, I remember two things from CBC rehearsals -

1. meeting Anthony Warlow and getting his autograph for my Mum and trying to explain to him that no, really, her name was actually Noelle (Captain Context says: "this WAS after a three hour christmas music rehearsal, remember, people!")
2. When Marina Prior came tripping gaily down the centre aisle of the REHEARSAL VENUE, smiling and twinkling in a lacy skirt and ballet slippers and carrying a covered basket. She wasted all those twinkles on a bunch of very hung-over choristers who just thought "oh purLEESE" at her before she launched into "Angels we have heard on high". What we should have done was thrown her to the ground and savaged her scrawny carcass - we coulda taken her. What price your twinkles NOW, bitch?

Ahem. Sorry. Channelling the Ghost of Party Seasons Past there.

Ah - but how the wheel turns!

After some back and forth, it turns out I will be doing the Wodonga City Council Carols by Candlelight.

Which, while not being the big CBC at the Bowl, is still an Event, as apparently they get anything up to 10,000 people there. Ten thousand! That's 10% of the entire regional population. Wow.

Dunno about you, but that would make it the biggest room I ever played as a soloist.

Now, given that they will have any number of Idol Wannabes on hand ready and willing to murder any number of carols by the sheer power of their nasal whine, that puts me in THE MARINA POSITION.

Yup - I am officially the Sole Source of Class and Refinement for this Gig.

(Today I am dressed in a fetching ensemble of old cotton pants (unironed), a weekend-quality top (unironed), scuffed sandals, no makeup, and my hair is falling out of its shower knot and it's not yet 10:30am. Although I would like to point out that my jewellery is still diva-class - two of diamonds ALWAYS wins).

To prove this, I will be singing "Joy to the World" (okay, that's a Naice Traditional Carol, I can definitely live with that, although nothing can ever stop me looking out of the corner of my eye for Ned blasting out "JOYyyyyyyyyyy" on the bass drone note when I hear or sing it - too many carol gigs in too many forsaken shopping centres, that's my problem)(well, one of them).

But then I get to do the solo "Mary's Boy Child". Oh NO. I HATE that song, purely hate it.

But I will smile and smile and sing it prettily and everyone will say "awww" and there's the magic of Christmas for you - pasting a smile over the hate and making the flim-flam real for three minutes and 20 seconds.

Although if I have to do a little dance with Humphrey Bear or Santa gropes me or they give me a fake prop guitar to hold there will be TROUBLE.

I am not a luddite, but the saaaaaga of me getting broadband has been dragging on for far too long.

Even my mother has broadband. It comes to something when your parents are more techno-groovy than oneself. (Mind you, my parents love The Chaser's War on Everything, so it only goes to Show. What it Shows, I have no idea).

So Fiona has undertaken to find me the right package. I can't do it - I look at the thingie on Whirlpool and my brain just shuts down after about a minute. But Fiona has an In at whirlpool and will find things out for me.

So in the anticipation of being able to come home and download my angst, I'm attempting to get back into the bloggin' habit. (before my mother gets one, which shall surely be a sign of the End of Days).

Things going on:

1. This - wheeeee! It's fun being a choral grunt again. Mind you, it is also most fun singing next to the Young Sopranos and watching them trying to hear themselves when they've got Kim and me blasting away in the foreground. One of them so forgot herself last night that she renounced her membership in the groovy music nazis clique and actually stood with a hand over one ear and looked even more constipated than usual trying to Hear the Muse. (Oh I am so going to Heck.)

2. I've rejoined FlyLady - oh thank dog! Such a relief to have some order back in one's domestic arrangements. Plus I have had the parental units and Isabel and Josephine flitting about the place for a couple of days. Young children and older people really dig routine and they've dragged me back into some semblance of order. I've had breakfast four days in a row now.

3. This will either kill me or cure me - oy vey - 10 ceremonies in December - and to think I used to complain about just the one when I was at Swinburne!