The Jiggling Kangaroo

''The Kangaroo has started on his Long Long trail, He bounds across the hillock on his Big Fat Tail!'' Great song - Great lyrics!
______________________________________________________________

Up and running - back to the grindstone - normal service resumed! The sun was glorious today and it was so good to be back at my own piano, with the ever hanging bird table just outside the window. Today a mother starling was feeding a fat and fluffy baby starling close enough for me to touch had I not been teaching of course!

She was not listening to a single crotchet's worth of the singing, as she was much too pre occupied with the babe. Priorities, priorities!

My pace has slowed down to the civilised Paradise speed of '4 songs per hour' (that is 4 Sph), and lots of cups of tea as fuel. Oh Bliss!

Working away is so frantic, and adjudicating is full of consistently intelligent listening. Not, you understand, that I don't listen with all antenna wiggling to my pupils in their lessons.

My day was a complete spread of 8 years old, to marginally older than 8 years old!.....my typical Monday is possibly the widest age range of my week, and boy does it keep me on my toes. Teaching small people is such a combination of fun, crossed with total exasperation, and I would not have a week without a dose of uninhibited and undiluted child, boys or girls.

Being able to see their eyes light up with excitement, or open wide with incredulity when asked to sing about a strange and puzzling marriage between a 'Frog and a Mouse' is food for my soul. Today, a jazzy and upbeat song called 'The Kangaroo' by Alec Rowley, was presented to me with the consummate ease of youth, and all the evidence of much parental imput, and performed largely whilst jigging and jogging a small bounding dance of triumph. (Kangaroo impressions perhaps?)

Actually, moving around whilst one sings definitely makes the body do what comes naturally, and I have spent much of my teaching life proving this point! I cannot ever decide if it is the psychological distraction, and so we 'forget' for a moment how tricky classical singing is, or if the movement frees up the muscles and allows the sound to resonate and ring unencumbered by tension - the weapon of mass destruction for every performer. In the end I imagine it must be a fine combination of both, so keep doing it!

It feels like summer today, the air is warm and the midgies are vengeful in their need for blood, but not when it is sunny, then they hide like nano sized troglodytes and I can keep the doors and windows open. Sometimes I have to give in and close all portals on the grounds of not having the noise abatement society down my throat, due to triple figure decibel levels assaulting my neighbours' ears.

The Kangaroo was not in the least disruptive in terms of noise level, but my neighbours (who are, incidentally at least 100 metres away!) missed a treat not being able to see the jiggle!