Friday 23 December 2011

December. A Day in the Life

Dear Debs
It's December, and you have have yet to leave these shores. Hmmm. This below is Claudia, Millie S and Evie from the Sparrows with me, Nat, Vicky and Bex being Christmassy at Little London Community Centre.

It's been a whirlwind of end-of-term and end-of-year concerts for me. And sometimes when I look at all these shows I wonder what would have happened if the World hadn't started counting exam results as a marker of how good a school was, and Foxwood School had stayed open. As Head of Music and Head of Expressive Arts, I used to run the whole show. It wasn't all pans back in the day, and quite a few of my rock musicians went to play semi-pro. One ex-student, even, used to used to busk and beg outside the Cardigan Road Co-op, Leeds, for years. Another ex-Foxwood student was the manager of said Co-op and he [Steve] gave busker [Adam/Seb] the boot. Can't say I blame either of them.

Now I am just a part of everybody else's show, and then, in Christmas week, I can't even get to them all. And often when I do, it's the periaptetic's nightmare - take 7 December for example.

8.00 am load van and car

8.50 Pudsey Crawshaw teaching

10. 20 Leeds Town Hall, unload pans .
11.20 Quarry Mount Primary School teaching
12.00 home load drum kit into car
12.30 West Park Centre load double basses into car

1.oo home, unload drum kit back into house [hmmm!]
1.20 Sharp Lane Primary School, teach, load half their pans into car.
3.00 Cockburn High unbload one pan, teach

4.20 Leeds Town Hall, unload the double basses and give Rick car

4.45 Vicky S and I set up the pans on the Town Hall stage
5.50 sound check .
6.30 YAMSEN:SpeciallyMusic concert with East Steel

9.30 unset stage pans, stack by Town Hall back doors


and after that it was Thursday, collect Town Hall pans, teach a bit, concert at Allerton Grange; Friday collecting more pans and loading van ready for the London trip to the pan tuner's; Saturday Sparrows at Little London Community Centre, then later that evening unloading the precious cargo that was a vanful of tuned pans, sparkling tuneful from Grafton's expert hands and hammer.


More December anon






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