Balls (in the air, etc.)

I wanted to find a picture of balls of some sort for today but didn't have time to look for any.

At 23:04 last night I got an email from an official involved in the twinning programme, to whom I had sent the programme for comments 34 hours earlier, to the minute, saying that two large pieces of text were unacceptable and needed to be removed. She sent alternative text for the shorter of the two pieces.

The programme was already printed.

I alerted our choir leader, who was waiting for the second of the two arriving coaches of musicians, by that stage expected at 2am.

I went to bed with my heels dug in at such an unreasonable demand so late. I woke this morning wondering about the funding implications of not complying. So I spent 40 minutes  replacing our text with hers, deleting a piece that everyone else who'd read it really liked then changing photo sizes to fill the gaps. I did a lo-res pdf and sent it to those who needed to know and told them not to use it for printing.

I went to our day-long rehearsal and spent the first 90 minutes texting, emailing and WhatApping:
- the person (volunteer) who was going to have to reprint it and who understandably didn't want to.
- the builder who'd told me that everything was stalled on the build planned for 10 days time because I hadn't replied to the architect's email about how much more I was going to have to pay him.
- the architect, telling him I would pay to make sure the build happened.
- Firstborn, who has professional expertise in building and contracts and who was advising me what to say and what not to say.
- the programme printer who'd got to bed at 3am and didn't want another late night.
- Firstborn who'd asked whether I wanted a phone conversation (I told him I was in a rehearsal).
- the programme printer who'd run out of paper (I offered to bring my stocks this afternoon - about half of what was needed).
- the builder again, saying I hoped I'd unblocked things.
- Firstborn again.

All the young people around me (you know, those people who spend all their lives on their phones), were reading their music and singing. I was responding to messages every three minutes - and singing. I was quite surprised how much of it I knew by heart.

Everyone else ate a picnic lunch on the grass in the sun while I walked my bike home during a long conversation with Firstborn. When I got home I had fifteen minutes to eat breakfast and check something in the programme and... there was something else but I've forgotten what it was.

I went back to the rehearsal, this time with added orchestra in a horribly echoey church where we couldn't hear the conductor telling us which bit we were to sing next.

I texted Secondborn who was going to meet me at the church with some bubblewrap and my spare keys so that Firstborn, who has to come to Oxford tomorrow, can come into our rehearsal in the Town Hall and collect them before he goes to a funeral.

By the time she arrived I was so manic that she told me to breathe and walked me home.

I took her to see what the forest in the garden has done in the last fortnight and we both breathed.

This evening I've had a message from someone involved in the programme (whose lovely text was cut) who said I shouldn't have complied. It occurred to me too late that I should have been too busy to see that email...

I know it's not quite dark yet but I'm going to bed now.