According to the lady I share my office with, today I am a grumpy old man. Admittedly this has nothing at all to do with Belper Musical Theatre - the reason for my grumpiness is being expected to remember hundreds of usernames and passwords for online accounts that I only use once or twice a year, then having to jump through hoops to try and find out what they were. Maybe I should follow the approach of one of my fellow train travellers and just write them all down in a book...
Anyway, it reminded me that at our last committee meeting, Richard decided to preface one of his little outbursts by excusing himself for starting to become a grumpy old man. In all truth he did then demonstrate that he will one day be an excellent grumpy old man, having started on the way already!
So in the same way that my Aunt told us that she thoroughly subscribed to the sentiment in that wonderful Jenny Joseph poem 'When I am old I shall wear purple, and a red hat..' I wondered if there was an equivalent verse for us guys on the lines of 'When I am old I shall become grumpy'.
It seems to me that there is an almost inexhaustible supply of things to be grumpy about - for example adverts on the BBC but only for their own programmes - and a real delight to be had in doing the grumpiness well.
There is however also a great joy to be found in leaving all of the grumpiness behind and being part of a group of like minded folk and singing fab songs. You know (and I am sure are looking forward to) that I plan to tell you a bit about our programme on this blog. Perhaps the one that is most appropriate for today is 'You raise me up'. You will probably have heard the song already, whether in the version by Josh Groban or Westlife, or indeed for those of you fortunate enough to have been present, by a quartet at the St Johns Music night on Monday. With a key change in the middle (try hitting the right note every time after they throw that at you) and some interesting timing (it wasn't supposed to be as interesting as we make it), it's a song to ease the mind and reassure you that in the silence you can feel uplifted (presumably however the noise we make before the silence is a good thing!). You'll love it!
So until I am raised up later on this evening, I will focus on being really good at grumpy. After all, he was my favourite of the seven dwarfs!
