Choir

Having recently surmounted my aversion to company, I've been tempted to join a choir. I'm no Maria Callas, but my singing very rarely resembles the screeching of a harpy or the bloodthirsty yelps of tasmanian devils. I'd probably blend in okay.

Just don't try to make me sing Handel. 'For weee like sheep, have gone astray-ay-yay-yay! Have gone a-stray-ay a-yay-hey-yay eh-yay-Hey Heh HEY!' I'm not a sheep and I damned well don't like them, docile stinky buggers. I also don't want to say 'Amen,' or 'God.' In fact I may have to induce aphasia in myself, but that's not a problem: two hours of reality TV just before practice should be enough to produce the requisite frontal lobe paralysis.

The other day I caught myself humming 'Like a Sunflower,' a song I used to sing in church when I was working undercover as a Catholic. It goes like this:

Like a sunflower
that follows every movement of the sun,
so I turn toward you,
to follow you,
My God.

My God! That was the first song I learned to play, by ear, on a keyboard. I guess I haven't entirely shed my checkered past. Whenever I feel myself slipping, I just think of Milton's Paradise Lost and I'm cured of such nonsense. But I digress.

I sing pretty much all the time, when no-one's listening (except Mya, who doesn't count because all she ever hears is the sound of cans being opened or mice scritching under the table). I sing Massive Attack, Zero-7, snippets of classical music, Joni Mitchell and Pink Floyd. I sing badly, but with determination. My uvula is a little on the lazy side. I chant nonsense syllables to Mya, to the tunes of Led Zeppelin and Janis Joplin. I do a really cheezy vibrato. I try to sing Ravel's Bolero as if I'm a violin and someone's scraping a bow across my larynx. It's fun.

Two of my favourite people on this planet are already in the choir, so in that way things will be easier. The flip side is that if I make an ass of myself, I'll have nowhere to hide except under the table with all the crumbs and low-flying fart gas. Yuck. We shall see.