Busy bee

You may have noticed (or not) that I have not been posting for weeks. My diary has been a merry-go-round. Apart from the usual stuff that keeps me occupied, I have been experimenting with new things.

My friends and I are still looking for a choir that has a similar sort of vibe and repertoire as our old one that broke up in March 2020. The woman who ran that had simply given up under pressure, as she had too many irons in the fire and couldn't cope. The choir was the one thing she apparently found dispensable. The lockdowns were the perfect excuse not to continue and we were dumped unceremoniously by email. I had made four lovely friends through that choir and we became "ladies wot lunch" outside the choir rehearsals. Once lockdowns and choir restrictions were relaxed, all five of us sought to find a choir similar to the disbanded one. We found one local choir in September that we love and will continue with that, but the genre of music is more semi classical (whereas the old choir was lighter - pop, soul, folk, musicals) so it still did not quite fit the bill and we wanted to find a second one. as a contrast.  We must have tried umpteen different choirs since September and from January we continued in earnest to find more. Two weeks ago, we tried another. It is supposedly more light-hearted although this term we are singing the entire score from Hamilton - for those who know that musical it is predominantly rap and very challenging. I think we shall persevere if only for the challenge! Unfortunately, despite very stringent rules (open windows in freezing weather, lateral flow tests before rehearsal, nobody to attend if they even have cold), we received emails ten days ago to say the choir leader and eight sopranos have all tested  Covid-positive, so this week we have had a firebreak and there has been no rehearsal.  I have been testing  every day for the last ten days and so far so good......

The other demand on my time has been that I have joined a gym. I really enjoyed the twelve free NHS-referral sessions I had last autumn, so felt inspired to take up membership. Membership for the over-60s costs less than the weekly single pilates class I used to go to, but membership allows me to go to the gym as many times and for as long as I want, get a choice of over 100 classes a week and use of the swimming pool. It is, as they say, a no-brainer. I've had a health-check, in which I was told I have a metabolic age of 56 (in reality I am 71), so that cheered me up no end,  and my bone density is fine for my age as is my blood pressure. I need to lose half a stone (the excesses of Christmas and a November birthday always pile on a few pounds). I also had a proper induction to all the equipment in the gym and have managed two classes all in a week. I have another 98 classes to go to and see which ones become my favourites, so am feeling positive.