Happy days on the talent contest circuit!

After quite a long break we have appeared in a local talent contest - and won it! 

We used to do this quite regularly before Alice and Nicola were born but we seem to have been so busy recently with work and family responsibilities that we got out of habit of performing in public. Because of the long break our qualification to appear in the third tier of competition has lapsed so we are going to have to start again at the bottom level. 

The basic format of the completion is just the same - it is the quality of the performers that is rather different.  We had to do two songs, just like before – so we went for Sadeness by Enigma which is in Latin and French and then Simon& Garfunkel’s - The Sound Of Silence but in the Gregorian version tweaked for 2 sopranos and a tenor and with Mark on keyboard.  

Our "Little Black Dresses" still fit us so we used them and Chris and Mark went down into the town and hired white suits. We certainly looked more professional than most of the other performers and I think that makes a difference to the marks that get awarded.  

We were the only act to have a supporting video projected onto the screen behind us and that in combination with the light show made us look rather better than perhaps we sounded. But the key to our success was that we invited loads of our friends to come along to act as our "groupies" who cheer like mad when our performance was over. It takes a very strong-minded judge to resist crowd pressure of this type! 

Of course I'm biased but we were shed loads better than the opposition and we would have been more than a little surprised if we hadn't won. It is a pity that the cash prize didn't cover the cost of hiring the white suits and getting to the venue. Oh dear! 

We need one more victory to move up to the next level and hopefully that will happen over the Easter holiday when we are booked to appear again. Didi will be free to join us for this competition and she certainly improves the average quality of the singing because she is a mezzo-soprano rather than Ella and I who are rather higher than that. We could also do with a male bass singer. 

Many thanks to our new friend Teacher Sally and her boyfriend who offered to provide child care at short notice when our usual babysitter was taken ill.