Tuesday 28 April 2015

ANZAC Day ~ Marching in the Band

So I have deemed the day post worthy! Now where shall I start? At the beginning...

I woke up (I know, it's amazing) and thought about all those poor people out at 4 in the morning doing the dawn service, poor, poor them....

A bit before ten Clare and I drove to where the band was meeting. Only problem was that there was a massive traffic jam. We had to be there at ten so I was sitting in the car going, "Hurry up cars, just hurry up!" it didn't really work. I must mention that I was wearing my formal uniform which consisted of: a long sleeve white button-up shirt, black trousers, my red band vest, the random tieish kind of thing, and some 'nice' black shoes and socks. Not really my style...

Look at all that lovely red and black and white.

Eventually we got there and parked the car a bit down the street then started running up the road. Then a friend of ours (let's just call him Cal) jumped out of his car and started running with us (may I just mention that he was also in band and also running late). I heard later that he and his dad had been driving slowly and looking around to work out where it was they were meant to be and then his dad saw Clare and me so Cal got kicked out of the car to follow us because we looked like we knew where we were going! We only kind of did.

Me! I'm very glad that I didn't look as weird and uncomfortable wearing these as I felt...
But we found everyone else fairly quickly and Cal and I had to grab our music and our hats (lovely sailor kind of hats...again not my style) and get to our places. Then since some people hadn't arrived yet I had to change lines and moved around and it was a bit confusing but I ended up stuck in the middle of a row of Saxophones. When we were about to move off the extra-late people turned up but there wasn't time for everyone to move around again so the late ones just had to march up the back.

The person in the middle is Cal...well his back at least.

So we marched along the street, I'm quite surprised how much I played, and I only got out of time once for a step of so! One drummer dropped his drumstick but luckily he could get a spare from the person beside him. It was a bit random walking/marching along and then going, "Oh, look at that, someone dropped their drumstick..."

Me marching..and frowning...I was concentrating very hard as you can see.

I enjoyed the marching and playing, I'm not so keen on the counter marches (look it up if you don't know what that means) when we have to walk right between two drummers and it's just so loud. I don't know how they stand it! 

After the counter-march.

After we finished the march we sat down...and sat down....for an hour....in between the sitting we did have to play a few songs like 'Oh God our Help in Ages Past' and the Australian and New Zealand national anthems. During the space between the playing everyone got hot and one person decided that at the next band meeting they'd request for band singlets and shorts to be made! My fellow flute player and sitting-next-to-me person for some random reason asked me what year I was in...after some thought I said 8, and the look on her face was so funny. Apparently she didn't realise I was that old. I'd better not forget to mention that during this time my photographer sister was climbing a tree to get better photos...well she was until she realised that if she could see everyone that meant everyone could see her...Ah, Clare, you are funny sometimes...

You can't actually see me in this one, just my hat if you look closely.
I'm in the second row 'cause I'm a second flute.
(For all you unmusical people out there that means I get slightly different music.)

Last night at band practice at the hall she (my friend) still hadn't gotten over it. She kept saying, "You're not that old" and "My sister's in year 8 and all her friends are so old, but you aren't!" and one really cool thing she said was, "You're not like any of those teenagers out there" waving her arm around the room at several of the other people. I was like, thanks so much! I don't want to be like them! It was really cool. I think she's one of the people who'd call themselves Christian, once when I brought up to subject of church she said she went to church sometimes. But it's quite interesting the things we have in common, we both like medieval weapons and reading and other things like that.


So that was my ANZAC day, I hope it wasn't too boring, I've probably forgotten something extremely interesting and will remember as soon as I've published this post...but by that time it will be too late, so Fare Thee Well!

~ Jane, Misty Maiden

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