PJB

The concert last night was at a centre in Gradignan for kids with severe behavioural problems. Some of them were obviously handicapped in some way. Others were all there, but you could see that they were pretty hard. They learn to live together and hopefully some skills for the future etc.

It went very well. We were three trombones, two trumpets and 5 saxos. Four trombones if you count Renaud but these days he seems only to play his solos. During Critical Mass we invited kids to come up on stage and play bongos, congas etc. The noise was deafening and we need some new drumsticks !

Afterwards we dropped off the drumkit (ba-tte-rie, three syllables) and chatted at the music school. It's always very good for my colloquial French. Renaud : "Tu répètes pas ça à l'église." Me: "je répète tout..." It's useful really. You have to know what you can and mustn't say !

And we were paid. And paid well. The money will go to the music school and will enable us to buy more equipment - for example saxophones are extremely expensive and the baritone sax belongs to the school, etc.

And we were fed. The first course was a salad with some kind of terrine on top. Completely unidentifiable, I suspected it came from inside the head of a cow, but really I didn't know and neither did anyone else. OK. Get it down quick. The second course was nicer, fried chicken with rice and a kind of mousse of tiny mushrooms. There was a dessert, too, of a chocolate cake served with custard.

One of our trumpeters was sick. I don't really think it was the terrine, but the others thought so.

Comments

Ken said…
Saxophones are expensive???? Do you mean to say that you pay money to acquire a saxophone? I might well be prepared to pay money NOT to hear a tenor sax, with a few notable exceptions - none of which come readily to mind - but definitely not the other way around. Sorry Alan.
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