Remember this?
Scroll back – if you can be bothered… on second thoughts, that’s far too much hassle.
I’ll recap:
28th December.
“On Christmas Day, diminished as we were: only three of us available to sing. The Coventry Carol. Ben on the bass. Lara gamely sight-reading the tenor line. (Only I, with the tune, kept getting it wrong. The other two never thought to tell me we were singing the alternative version.)
“I had asked on the local neighbourhood forum.
“Does anyone know of anyone who might need a carol beyond the doorstep over Christmas?
“Yes! My neighbour is alone and widowed, wrote a stranger back. I am stuck in Tier 4 elsewhere. This is his address.
“So we went. And we sang.
“(And, sad to say, the old man looked terrified rather than cheered. But he left the door ajar so the sounds could drift in.)”
We really didn’t do a particularly good job of it.
Not that this matters, to most people: outside in the cold; muffled in one’s mufflers and holding music in one’s fingerless mitts; dark gathering; all seasonal, and all.
The effort in itself is usually greatly appreciated.
Plus the bar (no pun i.) is often set quite low…
Years ago, when we were first married and I happened to be alone in the house, I heard a ring at the door and a strange, slightly strangulated sound beyond, as of a few small animals being inappropriately handled.
I opened.
Mercifully, the noise stopped.
And there were three lads, rattling a tin.
We’re carol singing, they said. And rattled the tin again, expectantly.
Go on, then, I said encouragingly.
Wot? They asked, confused.
Sing me a carol. That would be lovely, thank you.
Never in the history of the world at large and Christmas in particular has a more inappropriate adjective been employed by man or beast.
Waddya mean?
You said you’re carol singers. Sing me a carol!
(I admired their pluck. But I did think, as a point of principle, it should be tested a little further.)
Oh. Yeah. They shuffled a bit and looked at each other.
I smiled brightly. I thought this might help.
They looked down, and up, and at each other again.
A slight cough. Playing for time.
Nervous glance. Ragged breath. While shepherds watched. They intoned vaguely.
Sadly the conventional Latin alphabet cannot adequately convey the approximate nature of that attempt to aim at a normal E major key. If, indeed, that’s what they were aiming at. Rather than something pentatonic or chromatic or tetratonic or goodness knows what creative and obscure musical system.
Possibly hieroglyphics have this flexibility, lost to modern Western literacy. Or Chinese characters. But not any symbols this text is written in.
And? I said.
Continue! I urged.
They tried again. While shepherds… urble urble urble.
One of them, thinking of a way out, rattled the tin once more.
Can you sing any more of it?
Er…
Their sheeps, or somefing, innit? The better educated of the three hazarded.
I tell you what, I said kindly. You go away and learn a carol. And come back and sing it to me. And then, if it’s good enough, I’ll pop something in your tin.
I thought this might inspire some endeavour. Moral fibre. That sort of thing.
Actually, there’s a better carol singing anecdote than this.
I think I’ve indicated before that my father was head master of the choir school in Cambridge that provides the music on Christmas Eve that we’re all so familiar with. And that he was very old friend of David Willcocks who wrote all the arrangements we’re also all familiar with. (Even those of us who haven’t heard of world famous counter tenors and don’t recognise the name of the most well-known carol arranger ever. I’m not making a point. We all move in different circles. I’m probably not up-to-date with the latest… You know. Coding inventor person.)
My father and David Willcocks were students together; then close colleagues and also neighbours, for years. We all knew each other very well.
Every year the Willcockses had a Christmas party for the choir, which I often attended: I was at school and university with their daughter, also Anne. We’re still very good friends.
Charades. Quizzes. Treasure hunts. All wholesome stuff. Mince pies and mulled cheer. When Shaun first took over as Chaplain of Bedford School, Anne gave me lots of ideas for games for Christmas parties for young choristers.
And one year, during this party, while the sixteen boys with the most divine treble voices in the world were having a whale of a pre-Christmas time, the Willcockses’ doorbell rang too. Presumably with similar tortured sounds coming through their letter box.
David had an ever-twinkling sense of humour. And a staircase that went round and up and up and round and round and up, all the way to the top of their three storey house.
Quick, he said to everybody. Up the stairs! So they all went up and hid behind the bannisters.
Come on in, David said warmly at the door to these enterprising carollers. Who, by all accounts, were considerably better than the songbirds at my door but nevertheless still quite small and nervous. With absolutely no idea whose door they’d just rung at.
They, too, embarked on relating what the shepherds did while they were tending their ewe-lambs on the mountainside.
Got several verses in.
And just as they reached the part about the angels bursting into heavenly song, whether David gave his choir some kind of sign or they all simply knew how his mind and jokes worked, this is what those songsters suddenly heard, lifting the roof of David and Rachel’s house a few inches off the walls: scroll forward to 2’ 28” in, turn the volume full on and imagine yourself in the shoes of those young entrepreneurs who, until that moment, probably thought they were doing rather well. Here.
Anyway, the point being that you don’t have to be terribly good to be better than some of the rival artistes out there.
The fact that you are attempting SATB is usually enough to put you in the top one per cent.
Although, as I believe I’ve also established, we were merely attempting STB. Seeing as there were only three of us. Two of us being normally smack-bang in the middle of the second (rate) sop section. And the bass properly a counter tenor himself.
We rang on the doorbell, too. But no, we didn’t have a tin to rattle. We were simply spreading seasonal whatnot.
I’ve never seen anyone look so scared. I think he vaguely muttered that he couldn’t come near, on account of there was a world-wide pandemic out there.
He said he’d lost his wife. And also mislaid his neighbour, not that he was putting them in the same category.
We only sang him a couple of verses. We thought that was probably enough suffering for someone we’d never met.
Then we wished him a Happy Christmas and beat a hasty exit.
All the way home saying nothing to one another.
All thinking the same thing.
Wondering why we’d been quite so cruel to a complete stranger we had nothing against. Who had already lost his wife, as if that wasn’t enough.
Dear Michael
We went to your neighbour today and sang to him.
He seemed very nervous and a little anxious. I told him his friend Michael had suggested he might enjoy a carol, and he pointed to the house next door – but seemed a bit confused as to where you were, so I said you'd found yourself locked-down in Tier 4 elsewhere.
He also told us his wife had died.
I hope it was some comfort to him to hear a little singing... but I'm not sure it was!
Very happy to oblige again next year, DV.
Anne
Dear Anne
Sorry for not responding sooner.
Yes, he's had a terrible year and he's feeling the strain.
What I can say is that he was absolutely overjoyed with your performance and has talked about it every time I've seen him since. He really loved it but I daresay was initially confused and taken aback when you showed up – I should really have told him about it first. I can't emphasise enough how cheered he was by it during a time of need.
But yes, if you can see him again next year I know he'd be thrilled.
Thanks again
Michael
So there we are.
How a very, very tiny (not to say, tuneless) act of neighbourliness can go a very, very long way.
Indeed.