To everything

I've put hours and hours into the programme for Friday's concert and this morning I made the final corrections before it went to print. It's not easy finding appropriate cover images that the choir can afford, i.e. free, and for the second time I turned to Blipfoto. This is a blip by PaulFS posted six years ago, which he very kindly allowed me to use. Thank you, Paul! My version of his image is much brighter than his because mine is the version for printing, and images for paper have to be lighter than images for screen. The actual programme will be more subdued.

Seven days ago I was frantically, and uncharacteristically, cleaning my house so I could make some acceptable space to host four young people from Bonn. Six days ago I was told about my building work starting so I backed out of hosting, cancelled my big food-shop delivery and abandoned the cleaning. But even though I'm not involved I've been following our 92 guests' progress today on our WhatsApp group. In the past it's often been my job to coordinate the collections at the Park and Ride so my responsibility to let all the hosts know about any changes in expected arrival time. It's very much easier with a WhatsApp group than it used to be having to phone everyone individually. Remember telephone trees?

The bus bringing the 55 singers and musicians from Bonn arrived on schedule about 8 this evening. But in Leiden this morning there was a traffic jam so their bus was late to pick them up and they missed their ferry. Instead of arriving at 10 this evening it will be 2 in the morning for those 37. And we have a full day of rehearsals tomorrow. They will be exhausted.