The Messiah

"Oh we, like sheep" The Messiah is a Handel's choral work that my dead husband used to play of an evening. We'd stop work, studying OU courses or stop marking, fixing the house, paying bills, whatever, and at nine thirty sit down together for a while in our sitting room on a comfy sofa. It was a time to chat, chat about nothing in particular, just whatever came up. Just time together. And he'd put on a record or a CD. Mostly he put on Bach, but The Messiah was definitely one of his favourites. Being more comfortable with modern pop, I was a bit fazed initially by some of his choices. "Oh we like sheep...." really threw me as I couldn't hear the next bit several bars later "have turned". So I'd sing in the gap, "And I like lamb". I was mocking it, and DH would smile. After he died, I played his music to keep me company. I had a few dates, and the best one was to a performance of Handel's Messiah. I married that date.
In January this year, a neighbour told me that the local choral society was learning to sing The Messiah. I've never sung it, heard it lots but never thought of singing it. No - when I joined the Next Stage Choir, a partnering choir suggested we sing The Hallelujah Chorus, so I'd learned that, or tried to learn to sing it and assessed myself as pants, but still enjoyed it.
I joined the local choral society intending to learn, not perform on March 25th. The choir master is great at teaching us to sing emotion. For example, singing "Unto us a child is born" he told each part to think of themselves as parents or grandparents. This child is born - the mother and father are the sopranos and tenors, the grandparents are the altos and basses. And of course I could think of my newly born grandson.
In the event, the concert was cancelled because of lock down, and I still couldn't sing most of it very well. I was getting better at the Hallelujah chorus. However, a self isolation choir sprang up: The Self Isolation Choir. Thousands of us  from all over the word, England, Scotland, Wales, Canada, US, log into a YouTube live recording several days a week for the director, Ben England to teach us to sing and we're singing The Messiah. We had pdf copies of the music and access to Choraline. We had to video ourselves singing in time to a click track, then upload each piece. So we've had to learn some new technical skills too. It's come together into a decent performance, so good that it got publicity on BBC radio and TV yesterday. Our live performance will be on https://www.theselfisolationchoir.com/ this Sunday evening. I shall stop marking at 7.30 and sit down in our sitting room on a comfy sofa for the evening to listen, watch and join The Messiah. This time I'll sing more than "We like sheep"

Tae kwon do under lock down

Are you keeping fit during lock down? Or too miserable to be bothered?
 "CV won’t worry you - axe kick it! "said my tkd friend
Bytomic tae kwon do has kept me and other students fit by presenting classes despite the lock down on Facebook Live, but has done even better now by offering us feedback via Zoom classes. Last weekend, I took part in an interim grading for black belt practising in our dining room. Hurrah!
This is so much better than this time last year. You're supposed to do an interim grading at least once a year once you get to black belt, but last year I couldn't cos my retinas fell off and the medics told me not to do any jumping (probably would have been better telling me to sort my infected tooth). So it was extra special that I had the chance to do the interim this way. It's not that I did well or badly; it's that I could do it, last the hour of high intensity exercise and sequences of movements at a high standard.
After an operation, you're vulnerable to infections because the anesthetic reduces your immune response. If we hadn't had lock down, after my op I would have followed medical advice and not gone to tae kwon do classes for two months. The lock down however gave me opportunities to watch on line, and realised that I can still do squats, and lunges and kicks and punch and block with my left arm, so I could keep doing a lot.
Our neighbours shop for us, and I have some online shopping. One neighbour saw on FB my need for tonic to go with my gin and passed a bottle over the wall. Otherwise things are as normal because my work, at a distance for 30 years, carries on as normal.
Enjoying the solitude like Georges Moustaki: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9-OzSzCDWo