a concert

The chairman of the music society emailed a couple of days ago asking if I was better and whether if I would be able to come and put the stage up in the church after morning service for this afternoon's concert.  I agreed to go and help, on the grounds that I'd missed the young musicians' concert and so failed to provide the promised egg sandwiches as well as a bum on a seat, because we were snowed in.  And she sounded worried about a shortage of volunteers, or at least volunteers who understood how the stage fitted together, and where to start building it so that it would fit in the gap between the pulpit and the lectern.

With the wretched ear I was not really better, but I didn't think that she wanted to know about that.  On the whole people don't.  They would like you to be better, for the pleasure of your company or because they want you to do something for them or because they dislike thinking about illness.  As a compromise, and so that I would not have to crawl around on the floor trying to work above head height, I asked the Systems Administrator to come and help, although the music society and the stage were strictly speaking not his problem.  Once in a committee meeting we were discussing another jazz concert, and the chairman referred to the SA as a real jazz aficionado and was surprised when I said in confusion that the SA hated jazz.  But he came to a jazz concert, she said.  He was extremely polite, I explained.

The Systems Administrator said that it was no problem to come and help with the stage, and offered to drive.  The lanes were icy, although the main roads were OK, and we arrived before the service had finished and had a chilly walk up and down the high street until the agreed starting time.  I think the others might have coped with the stage without us, but it was probably easier with the extra hands, and our joint presence tipped the balance in favour of those who knew where the stage needed to begin and which way round to put the boards.

The chairman had other problems to deal with, because due to the snow the clarinetist was stuck in the Home Counties.  Luckily the second violin had an uncle who was also a professional clarinetist, free at short notice, and willing to fill in.  That's the trouble with putting on concerts in obscure locations in the winter months, about one year in five weather causes a serious hitch.  It's no good trying to hold them in the summer, though, because people are on holiday or don't want to give up their afternoon outdoors.

By the time we got home my ear was aching from the cold, and I decided that having done my duty by the stage and produced an additional competent volunteer in the form of the SA, I could not face driving back for a second time, or spending two hours in a rather cold church, or the journey home in the dark up the icy lanes.  I was half deaf anyway.  And so I stayed tucked up in front of the fire, once again failing to add to the tally of bums on seats.  It's a shame.  If I hadn't been feeling as though somebody had poured glue into my head I should have enjoyed it.